by Wendy Jones
I can’t tell my boyfriend; he’d be heartbroken. I’m not scared of leaving my boyfriend. I’m more worried about him being hurt. It’s weird because I had to spend some time with my boyfriend last night. It was the Music Final Degree Show. I don’t know if he can sense anything, he’s not that emotionally in tune with me – but he did ask because – well, I wasn’t holding his hand. I did find it harder to look into his eyes. It’s probably not good but …
My family would be horrified. If my mum was as religious and strict as her family back in Iran none of this would have happened. My mum’s Iranian and my dad’s English. He’s not religious, my mum is, though. She doesn’t pray five times a day, she prays sometimes. She’s probably prayed more in the last few years. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself Muslim. I wasn’t brought up a Muslim. My mum’s a family therapist. She doesn’t do family therapy on me. No, no, no, no, no! She’s a really good mum. She’s got many different cases dealing with families – well, no family is fully functional. She works with young people. She hasn’t said, ‘No sex before marriage,’ but she’s said, ‘Go to uni first.’ Which I did! I’ve done what she’s told me to do and waited to get to uni before I had sex. Typical mum. She didn’t even care about the marriage thing, she just wanted me to be older and not miss out on my education.
My mum wants to be open with me now because I have done things. Last Saturday night when I came back from the goth’s house, I went to my mum’s house and I was trying on some underwear and my mum walked in on me and I was like, ‘Oh fuck,’ and she was like, ‘Sexy underwear!’ She would never have said that before. But I felt bad. I put the underwear in my bag for the next day for when I was seeing the goth. Now my mum’s accepting I’m sexual but she thinks I’m going to put the underwear on for my boyfriend so I feel really, really bad.
It’s weird: I should consider my boyfriend now a normal relationship. At the start I was happy, I was like, I’m glad that I’ve found someone my own age; that’s probably better. I don’t know whether older guys are more experienced, or if that’s something I think, or other people think? Both of the older men I’ve been with are different because they don’t watch pornography. The piano teacher – he didn’t watch porn. He told me. He was quite militant about it. He didn’t like porn; he was more strongly against it. It’s a different generation. The young men I know watch porn – definitely. My boyfriend’s got expectations that are not the reality, like me being clean-shaven. He doesn’t expect it, no, but he wants it. I don’t mind that he wants it: but I don’t get why. The way I look – what does it matter? He obviously wants oral sex before, like in porn the girls give the guy oral sex and then they have sex and it seems to always be in that order! And I end up living that out myself. I don’t like oral sex as foreplay leading on to sex in a very predictable way. I think my boyfriend watches too much porn. Recently he’s been stressed so he’s watched it every day.
I found it unusual when I first went out with my boyfriend that he would have to watch porn to masturbate. I realised that’s the norm now. I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ Where he would go and watch porn, I would fantasise. Because when I’m fantasising I’m still trying to imagine it as if it’s a real thing, the touch, even the smell, or the voice. I’m trying to imagine it as a whole. Obviously I’m by myself and it’s not sex, but then porn is isolated towards that goal of getting an orgasm. It’s not trying to encompass anything. The porn industry creates what they think men will like, what will get men there faster, but then everyone’s affected by it, men and women. People are maybe more misinformed now because of porn. Porn can be very misinforming.
I’m feeling like I want more now. Maybe I’m just not happy. There’s definitely a mental barrier between what you think you want, and the reality of it. I think you’re always going to want what you can’t have.’
21
Nurse
Charlotte, 43, Manchester
‘I think vaginas are great’
‘I’m a senior staff nurse in an Early Pregnancy and Gynaecological Emergency Unit. And I’ve had some funny conversations about the fact that my job is looking up people’s vaginas. It feels completely normal to me to do that, but for a lot of people that is like, ‘Ow! How can you look?’ Most people, when I’ve said, ‘Oh, yeah, I spend most of my time looking at vaginas,’ will say, ‘Urgh!’ because vaginas are strong to look at. A lot of people think it’s a really unattractive place to look, particularly if there’s bleeding. Blood doesn’t bother me either. I don’t think vaginas are disgusting at all. I think they’re great. I think they are actually beautiful. They are beautiful because a vagina is how you can get a significant amount of pleasure from having sex or doing whatever you want to do with yourself. It’s also where the baby comes out. It’s creation. It’s life. Life comes out of there. And I think that’s amazing.
Women don’t generally think, ‘My vagina is beautiful, it’s great, it’s amazing.’ Most women are a bit embarrassed when they have an examination about how their vagina looks. It is private; it’s called your ‘privates’. It is a private place. I don’t think it necessarily translates, though, that the fact that they feel embarrassed about a vaginal examination with a stranger when they’re bleeding, with the associated potential anxiety and stress, that they also feel embarrassed with a partner or in a different setting.
I can appreciate a woman’s body, but it’s not remotely sexual for me. The thing about vaginas and the bits on the outside – the labia – is that they really vary in size and are very different. But the clitoris is pretty much the clitoris unless there’s some sort of abnormality, which I don’t see often. If you’ve had children the vagina can be a bit saggy, if you haven’t had children it’s much tighter. Then there’s the cervix. The point of examining someone if they are bleeding in early pregnancy is to look at the cervix. With some people, examining and trying to see their cervix is nigh on impossible, and there are tricks of the trade.
When someone comes to see me for a vaginal examination I need to build up a rapport before I do an examination. Some women won’t bat an eyelid and are like, ‘Yeah, fine, whatever.’ Some women will be really anxious. Some women will refuse. Sometimes I really need to do an examination and in that case, we might ask if they are happy to be sedated. I don’t see genital mutilation that often but it’s definitely there. There are levels of mutilation. It’s absolutely horrendous. Sometimes it’s cutting the clitoris off. Sometimes it’s cutting the external genitalia and sometimes it is actually sewing up the vagina so there is only enough space for a dribble of wee and blood. But sometimes it’s so bad that the blood doesn’t come out and then the woman gets into a really bad way and has to have surgery, but that doesn’t happen often. The people who carry it out in those countries are experienced and know the minimum size the hole can be. It is culturally acceptable in some areas and the women take the girls to have surgery, they’re involved in it happening.
It took me – this is a bit embarrassing – ten years of being married to work out how to have a really great orgasm. That was because no one had told me. After two or three years of marriage I thought, ‘There must be more than this.’ I asked some girlfriends, ‘How do you know if you’re having an orgasm?’ They said, ‘Something happens in your head, it’s a mind thing.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay, I think that happens, so that’s fine, I’ve had one of those.’ Then several years later I was like, ‘Err, cannot be right. There has to be more than this.’ I asked some other girlfriends and they were all absolutely horrified! They said, ‘No, it’s completely physical.’
This was when I was a nurse. I was unusual in that I was so underexposed. I protected myself, but I was also very protected in the environment I grew up in, sexually. My upbringing was very straight-laced and I was really prudish. I always obeyed the rules, and the rules were that you didn’t have sex before marriage. So how would I find out? Pornography is really fake and doesn’t tell you anything. What would I do, read a book? What happens if someone saw me r
eading the book? And what book would I read anyway? Come to think of it, I did look at the Kama Sutra with David, my husband. Anyway, it didn’t help me realise what I could be getting.
I don’t remember having fantasies when I was younger. I remember as a little girl playing with myself, and when I was ten I had friends and we used to fiddle with each other. I thought that was quite nice but didn’t have any idea of what I was doing and I didn’t do that for very long. The way that I managed to stick to the rules – i.e., not having sex before marriage – was really shutting myself down in that area. That’s partly why it took me so long when we got married to feel free and easy about exploring it all.
Well, I became very good friends with a doctor who talks about masturbation, and anything like that, with no problems whatsoever – which I’m happy to now – but this was a few years ago. She said, ‘You’ve got to work on it until you’ve had an orgasm and you’ll certainly know when it happens: the waves, the feeling of it in the vagina. You need to play with yourself, you’ve got to get to know yourself,’ which I hadn’t ever done, hadn’t occurred to me. So I started doing that. And I said to David, ‘There’s more than this; we’ve got to work it out.’ He was great and he said, ‘Okay, let’s work it out.’ And I learned how to give myself an orgasm and then he has joined in working it out and it’s great now!
Now David and I pretend, we have role play, we do all sorts of things; we’re quite creative. For example, I’m a secretary looking for a job. And he’s my boss. And wants to have a good shag, basically. These days the children don’t go to bed early so it’s really difficult! So we meet for lunch on a Friday – well, we meet as employer and employee, have lunch and then have an afternoon shag. I would be the secretary and he would be the dodgy boss.
Personal trainer. I would be a personal trainer and he is someone who wants to get fit. I would dress up in my gym kit – my sexy gym kit – I don’t really have any, but I would dress up in something. He would be in his work suit in the bedroom. We would stay in role for a bit but not very long. David bought me this hilarious bikini from Australia with a G-string and a triangle on the front. Oh my word. I’ve worn it for him, but not very often. I’ve also got this little pink skirt that he bought me. We’ve got a cleaner and she was sorting out our bedroom and she found it and said, ‘Is this yours? Shall I give it to your daughter?’ But it’s obviously mine because it’s big and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t really wear it very often.’
It’s usually David who comes out with the idea. I tried to. We went away for the weekend a couple of years ago and I decided to take the initiative for the scenario. It was a complete disaster because … I don’t know, it just didn’t work. Looked around everywhere for some underwear and bought a negligée that didn’t do it for him. It wasn’t tight; it was a bit flowy, and because it was loose it wasn’t flattering so that didn’t help. Somehow the chemistry didn’t work.
I like a scenario where I dress in something that makes me feel good. Yes. Enjoy that. I’m forty-three and I’ve really struggled with my weight over the years so I have times of feeling better about myself and I know when I feel happier about myself I’m more attractive to David. He’s been absolutely brilliant and never commented about my weight but the whole thing is more enjoyable when I feel better about myself. A best scenario would be when I’m dressed up in something that makes me feel good, that is a bit naughty but not too naughty. I don’t like it if it gets too … I have an inbuilt line and I get to the point where I think, ‘Okay, I want us to be normal now.’ We haven’t crossed that line but we’ve got close to it. I wouldn’t like to be tied up; I wouldn’t like anything that inflicted any pain. If there was something I didn’t like I could quite happily say.
I quite like using a mirror when we’re having sex. I’ve wondered about having somebody watching us or watching other people. I don’t really mean that! I don’t think I really do want that at all, actually. Very occasionally I glimpse it and then it’s gone. I’d quite like to go for it outside; David doesn’t like that at all. We did try once and it didn’t work, because it was uncomfortable and we were potentially discovered! Occasionally we look at something erotic together. There’s a fine line with that as well, sometimes it’s okay and sometimes I don’t really like it. I’m very, very fortunate that I’m in a marriage where we have a great relationship and when we can, we have good sex – not very often! – because there’s a lack of opportunity and David hasn’t got a massively high libido, which is fine. In fact, sometimes I’m like, ‘Come on! For goodness sake.’ I’d probably like to do it a bit more than we do. I think I’m quite satisfied actually.
The exposure from my work does really affect my view of sex and I think I would encourage my children not to, rather than go for it. To not have sex! I need to be careful what I say. For most women, it absolutely would not occur to them to say no to sex. A lot of women I’ve spoken to would feel uncomfortable saying no to their partners if they didn’t want to have sex and would feel as though they needed to say ‘yes’ – I only say that from my observation. I’ve seen a lot of women in my time as a nurse and that is the impression that I’ve had. Because of my experiences at work with pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and the emotional trauma that comes from broken relationships, I think that to have a limited amount of sexual partners – or even none – until you find someone you will ideally marry for a long time is a great thing. Irrespective of my faith and my views, what I’ve observed, and the implications of having a child when you don’t want a child, or having a termination are significant. You have either of those consequences with you for the rest of your life. But I don’t really know how you can achieve no sexual partners without switching yourself off, like I did, and I don’t think that’s particularly brilliant. What makes me really sad is that people do just give it away so freely because it is so fragile and it’s a precious thing. It’s not a robust thing.
The thing about being a Christian is that I’m really working hard at the moment about what to say to the children. I don’t want the children to repress themselves. They’d probably feel embarrassed and squeamish, me talking about sex to them, but I want to say to my daughter, ‘Make sure you know how to get an orgasm’, and to the boys, ‘Make sure you know how to give your partner a really good orgasm.’
22
Circus
Pandora, mid thirties, Kilburn, London
‘Sex brings out what’s hidden’
‘Last night when I was on the trapeze and – you know, it’s obviously very difficult and scary – there was a moment where I was supposed to come down and I ended up doing this really zappy thing. And everybody started laughing. And I couldn’t stop laughing and I felt like I was having an orgasm. It was ‘Yes!’ When I came off that trapeze – trust me – I was full of ‘yes!’ Of sexiness. And I got into bed and I could not stop laughing. I felt really erotic, and not little. I felt really sensual and in my body from the inside out, so it wasn’t a passive feeling. I see men look at me because I’m petite and go, ‘Oh, she’ll be sweet.’ But I’m not; I’m quite a wild one.
Last night every woman who went up the trapeze, I could see who she was, maybe even sexually! One woman got on the trapeze and she was going, ‘ow-ow-ow-ow-ha-ha-ha’, and I thought she could be good fun! Another woman was really scared and she was going, ‘Her-her-her-her’. I could see them expressing who they are and I imagined that is who they are within sex as well. On the final back flip I came down the wrong way. It was a funny moment but I really felt who I was in it. I had this moment of ‘Wow!’ Of being this raucous, outrageous woman really laughing. Everyone else was laughing really infectiously when I came down. I’ve had that from really good sex, when I get that moment where everything tumbles down, and all the things I thought and think – they’re not really anything. It’s a spiritual thing. Sex is a buster: it busts all your bullshit.
I come from an Irish Catholic background: very repressed. I need to say that. Sex is never talked about
. My parents never had sex; we were all immaculate conceptions, which is something in itself, really. Immaculate Jesus came into my mum’s body and she gave birth to me. So I knew nothing about sex apart from rats in the laboratories, which I got taught in the convent school I went to.
One of the things that I caught on to early on was – this is not anything that anyone taught me, I never read it in any books – when I got on a dance floor my body would express itself. I was very shy. I wasn’t allowed boyfriends, and I was ambitious with my schoolwork, which I feel grateful for now. It all used to happen on dance floors, and then I’d get home and be a good girl. People thought I was very promiscuous, which I wasn’t, I didn’t have my first boyfriend until I was twenty. But something would just come out of my body. I remember this guy saying, ‘God, you’re so loose physically’ – and I think he thought sexually as well. Feminists have written things about female rights but nobody talks about the fucking body, which is what sex is. It’s as if women don’t have a body other than what’s projected on the screen and in pornography. There’s something about dancing – it’s the body. I don’t think I was having sex on the dance floor; I was expressing all sorts of things. There’s an energy in the body, and I really got that from dancing. Men often felt like, ‘Whoa – what is that?’ Even to this day: ‘What is that woman?’ and I think it’s my sexual energy.
Recently there’s one guy I do dance classes with. After I’ve been in the class with him, I get into bed and I’m like, I just want him! I’m not even up to thinking there’s a relationship in it. He’s almost a beautiful dancer but he’s massively male. There’s something really erotic about his skin. He’s got a friend and I’m like, which one do I go for? Not that I’m going to. I fancy both of them in different ways, and it’s definitely all physical. One has quite an emotional effect on me. I also feel it in my skin: he makes my skin feel like, ‘Mmm.’ I’ve imagined both of them being in bed with me and then they’d – you know – sleep with me together and then I’d pick one. Maybe I could have a harem of men.