Not That Easy

by Radhika Sanghani

  “Whoah,” said Lara. “That’s so intense. I’ve never heard of a guy doing that. He must be pretty fun in bed.”

  “Yeah,” said Emma. “I love a guy with tools—especially if he knows how to use them. So you didn’t come even with a vibrator on you?”

  I shook my head glumly. “No, and I don’t know if I ever will. It’s just . . . he can be doing it perfectly with the exact technique I like, but I just can’t let myself go.”

  “Does the whole trying to clear your head thing not work?” asked Lara.

  “No, it just makes it worse. Even if I’m not really worrying about stuff and it feels nice, I just can’t come. Also, he doesn’t really last long enough for me to fully get into it. Even though I only need like five minutes when I’m doing it to myself.”

  “Oh, babe,” said Emma. “I wish I knew how to help. You’ve tried everything I would suggest. Do you try and imagine a scenario in your head?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You know, like a fantasy. My favorite one is to imagine I’m lying on my back naked in an auditorium with loads of naked men around me. I’m touching myself and the men are all wanking over me and they try to climax as I do, and the goal is to get their jizz on my body—ideally into my mouth.”

  Lara and I exchanged a glance and we heard a cough from behind Emma. “Are you ladies ready to order?” asked the waiter. He was bright red.

  We all caught each other’s eyes and started giggling. The waiter backed away. I realized that meant we weren’t going to get our dinner and quickly called him back. “Can we just have three pizzas to share? Your best ones please.”

  “Which ones?” he asked.

  “You choose,” said Emma, licking her lips. He nodded quickly and walked away as fast as possible.

  “Oh my God, that was hysterical,” cried Lara. “The waiter looked like he was about to die. But, to be fair, I was dying a bit too. I mean, I have fantasies as well but yours is hardcore.”

  “Is it?” asked Emma, sipping her wine. “I thought everyone imagined stuff like that during sex.”

  “No,” I squeaked. “I had no idea anyone visualized things.”

  “Of course they do, babe,” she said. “Women get off on fantasies during sex and masturbation, while men are way more visual. That’s why they like hardcore porn and magazines while we’re happy with more of a storyline. Surely you imagine stuff when you wank?”

  “I guess I do,” I said slowly. “I just never realized that’s what I was doing.”

  “Well, what do you imagine?” asked Emma.

  “Um, my favorite one is . . . oh my God, this is so embarrassing. But I guess I like the thought of someone just coming up behind me when I’m in a crowd, and whispering that they want to shag me, and then, well, doing it.”

  “That’s a good start,” said Emma. “But I reckon if you imagine more and really hone them, you can get some really fun ones. Some of mine even get a bit sci-fi. I swear I should be a porn director.”

  “I kind of wish I could get spit-roasted,” said Lara.

  I choked on my wine. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No,” she said, flushing. “I don’t know what it would be like in real life, but I love the idea of me giving head to one guy while someone else fucks me from behind. Especially two hot strangers.”

  “That’s totally normal,” cried Emma. “But so is the bit about not needing it to come true. That’s the whole thing about fantasies—they’re just stimulation. Guys sometimes get weird if you admit that’s what you’re thinking about during sex, but, honestly, everyone does it. It’s not like you wish the guy you were with was different, but they don’t always get that.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “My Secret Garden. It’s a seminal seventies book about women and sexual fantasies. Have you never heard of it?”

  “Um, isn’t that a book about a little girl and a guy in a wheelchair?”

  “No Ellie, that’s The Secret Garden. This book is a little bit more X-rated. It’s just a collection of women’s fantasies. There’s hundreds. Some of them are amazing. They admit rape fantasies, bestiality, everything.”

  I gaped at her. “Am I the only one freaking out about this? Lara?”

  “I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it,” she said. “It makes sense though, doesn’t it? It’s all forbidden, so it’s already exciting, and it becomes this sexual taboo. It’s like how men love the idea of schoolgirls or nuns because they’re so forbidden. God, I wish I could do my thesis on this instead of property law.”

  “Me too,” said Emma dreamily. “I could read about sexual fantasies forever. Ellie, you should borrow this book—I have it at home. It’s like porn for girls. Maybe it will help you imagine some things that you can hold on to while you’re shagging. You have to concentrate on the fantasies so you can come.”

  “Really?” I asked uncertainly.

  “God yes, orgasms are hard work,” she cried. “Men think they’re the ones doing all the work, but really it’s us in our heads making it happen. Don’t you think, Lara?”

  “Yeah, you definitely have to be in the zone,” she said. “But, honestly, I think I might just be really lucky because I can come quite easily during sex. Certain positions just do it for me.”

  “Huh,” I said. “I feel like there’s so much to learn. There should be a class on this.”

  “OH MY GOD,” yelled Emma. “I can’t believe I only just remembered. There is a class on it. They do it at the sex shop you went to in Hoxton when you got your first vibrator. I’m signed up to their email list and they keep emailing me about their orgasm lessons for women. You need to go.”

  “Yes,” I cried. “This could solve all of my problems. I can’t wait! When shall we go?”

  “Oh, I’m not coming with you,” she said. “It’s like twenty-five pounds and I reckon I’m more qualified to lead the class than whoever their sexpert is.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Lara?”

  Lara rolled her immaculately made-up eyes at me. “Oh all right. Only you would make me go to things like this, Ellie. None of my other friends ever discuss lube or orgasms with me in the detail you do.”

  “I literally have no idea how those girls survive life,” I said. “If I didn’t have you two to offload my sex problems onto, I think I would die a sad, miserable, paranoid death. I would just feel so alone if I didn’t know other people freaked out about VJs and orgasms too. Ohmigod, did I tell you Nick said my pubes are spiky and coarse?”

  “Yes,” they both groaned.

  “Oh sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Look, pizzas are here.”

  • • •

  The waiter put down the bill in front of us and scurried away. We howled with laughter again. We’d ordered two bottles of wine to go with our distinctly average pizzas and we were now officially pissed.

  “Oh my god, eighty pounds?” cried Lara. “How did we spend so much money? We’re all broke.”

  I felt the blood rush from my face. “I don’t think I even have twenty pounds.”

  “More like twenty-seven,” said Lara.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Sorry, guys,” said Emma. “I feel bad because I chose the place. Maybe I should pay more?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said and put down my student debit card. “I still have an overdraft. Let’s do this.”

  “I’m still a student,” said Lara. “My loan’s getting my share.”

  “And I have a job that pays just above minimum wage so I can cope if I don’t eat for a week,” said Emma, chucking her card onto ours.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said. “Let’s just make sure we don’t spend any more tonight. We can have wine back at ours.”

  Lara and Emma nodded. “Definitely.”

  24

  We woke up the next mornin
g with splitting headaches and memories of going to a bar after dinner. Lara and Emma were sitting in my bed drinking tea and nursing hangovers.

  I was looking at my text conversation with Nick from last night, cringing more with every one I read. “I just get more and more incoherent. I can’t spell for shit. I have no idea why he kept replying. Maybe it’s an NZ thing.”

  “Maybe he finds it endearing?” suggested Emma.

  Lara snorted. I rolled my eyes at her. “Thanks, Lar. But you’re probably right. If anything he was probably just amused at how embarrassingly drunk I was. Oh shit,” I cried suddenly. I had an email on my phone telling me that my fifty-pound spend on orgasm classes was confirmed and it was starting in two hours.

  “We’re such idiots,” moaned Lara, reading the email over my shoulder. “Why would we book an early orgasm class on a bloody Sunday?”

  “With twenty-five pounds I seriously don’t have, especially after dinner and the drinks we had in that bar.”

  “Sorry about that, guys,” said Emma. “I probably shouldn’t have dragged us there and used Sergio as a guilt ploy. But, in my defense, I did get those two rounds of cocktails for free when I flirted with the barman.”

  I dropped my head into my hands. “My mum is going to seriously kill me if she finds out I’ve been spending my moussaka money on alcohol and orgasm classes. That goes against, like, everything she believes in.”

  “Ah, she won’t find out,” said Emma. “Besides, it was so worth it. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. It was good to have an actual girls’ night out without one of us going home with someone.”

  “Definitely,” agreed Lara. “Anyway, El, I reckon we should shower if we want to get our twenty-five pounds’ worth of this class. I think our e-tickets say it starts at twelve p.m.”

  I sighed loudly and climbed out of my bed. “Fine. This had better be worth it. I expect to start orgasming the second I walk out. Hell, I want to be orgasming during this class.”

  Emma started laughing. “I would have paid money just to see that.”

  Lara looked queasy. “Just . . . go and shower, Ellie.”

  “Yeah, go and shower and maybe start your orgasm practice there?” suggested Emma.

  I threw a pillow at her on my way out of the door.

  • • •

  “Hi, girls, come in,” called the woman at the door of the sex shop. Lara and I nervously followed her into the hot pink room. I had a flashback of buying my first bullet vibrator here six months ago. I still hadn’t progressed on to another vibrator, but I was definitely keen to—especially after seeing Nick’s collection.

  “Have a glass of wine,” she said, handing us some sparkly Cava. We took one each gratefully and sat down on a pair of empty chairs. The rest were filled up with other women chatting among themselves. Everyone looked normal. I felt my shoulders relax and I began to look around the shop. There was a twenty-inch dildo right in front of me.

  “How do people fit these things inside of them?” I whispered to Lara.

  “They don’t. They’re big massaging vibrators that you can put on the external bits of your body.”

  “Oh, right. How do you know?”

  “Ellie, that physically could not fit into a woman’s vagina. Or a man’s bum hole,” she added.

  “I guess. But why would you want that instead of an actual massaging tool? Anyway what’s the time? I guess it’s starting soon.”

  On cue, a dark-haired woman in a kaftan sat down on a chair in the middle of the room. “Welcome, everyone,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming here today. My name’s Veronica. Don’t be nervous if you’re a first-timer. This is a safe, open space and you’re welcome to say whatever you want.”

  I glanced nervously at Lara. There were some things I didn’t even want Lara to hear. She really didn’t need to know about my recurring thrush.

  “So, orgasms,” continued Veronica. “We are all capable of having them, but every single person is different. You watch the movies and see women orgasming left, right and center. But that isn’t real life.”

  I stopped myself from crying out in agreement by nodding vigorously.

  “What is real is women who find it difficult to orgasm. Women who only manage to orgasm in certain positions, places, or with certain people or even just alone. So, I’m going to help you understand your body today and give you some pointers that will hopefully get you to that special place.”

  I grinned eagerly and looked at Lara. “Isn’t this amazing?”

  “Um, it’s barely started. But yeah, it’s interesting.”

  “Right,” said Veronica. “First things first—how to get there. You all need to practice alone. Masturbating alone is the key to getting an orgasm with your partner, or whoever you’re sleeping with. It’s like anything else in life: you need to put in the groundwork to get the results. The best way to do it is either with fingers, or some of these vibrators that I’m going to pass around now. For most women, the easiest way to orgasm is through the C-spot, which, as most of you will have discovered, is the clitoris.

  “But another spot is the U-spot, which is just underneath, around the urethra. All that area is sensitive and erogenous so even though you will probably only climax through the nerve endings in the clitoris, you can get those good feelings from rubbing around that general area.”

  She pulled out a model vagina and began stroking the bits around the clitoris. I stared in fascination. This was so true. I had definitely felt aroused after wiping my urethra rigorously post-pee.

  “But the other area is that elusive G-spot,” she said. I jerked up in my seat. Were we going to learn the ultimate secret? “It is just behind the front wall of the vagina and if you put your fingers up there you can feel it—but only when you’re aroused. It feels like a small walnut when you’re aroused and the more it gets rubbed, normally via penetration, the better it feels. Finally, we have the last spot.”

  I looked up in surprise. I had no idea there were so many spots. “The A-spot.” Whoah—was she going to talk about bum sex?

  “The A-spot is at the very inner end of the vaginal tube between the cervix and the bladder,” said Veronica. She picked up a long, thin dildo. “The best way to reach this is by depth. You need the penis, or dildo, to go right into the vagina to hit this sensitive tissue. So, that’s it—the four main erogenous zones. Technically, you can all orgasm from these, but we must remember that everyone is different. Two-thirds of women have only ever orgasmed from their clitoris so please don’t feel disheartened if you can’t climax from other places. It takes practice. And now for the tips.”

  The rest of the class passed in a perfect haze. At one point, I lost all shame and pulled out my iPhone so I could take notes. I learned that in order to achieve an orgasm I must:

  1)Breathe deeply. Normally, I held my breath in just before an orgasm but Veronica said the best thing to do was take long, deep inhalations and exhalations throughout.

  2)Practice everything at home. I needed to buy a couple of different vibrators to try them out and explore where my G-spot and A-spot were.

  3)Try different positions. This was slightly more problematic as Nick and I didn’t have any specific plans to meet up and I needed someone to try this out on.

  4) Block off my thoughts. Veronica said when my mind starts trying to panic or go over unsexy things, I should tell it to shut the fuck up.

  5)Try to feel the actual pleasure. I needed to focus on the actual physical feelings from sex and not the commentary going on in my mind.

  6)Have a fantasy or image in your head. Emma was right. I needed to work on my fantasies and learn to focus on them when my brain started trying to think about the aesthetics of my vagina.

  I went up to Veronica at the end of the class to thank her for her wisdom. Lara was too preoccupied rubbing large vibrators on her arms. “They feel so g
ood. It’s like a free massage,” she said. I was more keen to put them inside me.

  “Veronica, hi, I’m Ellie,” I said.

  “Hi, did you enjoy the class?”

  “Oh my God, it was amazing. I felt so bad because I’ve only ever come from clitoral stimulation on my own and I can’t orgasm with a guy, but now after hearing all your tips, I can’t wait to try.”

  She smiled. “Hey, I’m just glad I could help. I reckon you’ll get there in the end. But try not to worry about it. The more you think about it, the harder it will be. Women are so different from men when it comes to climaxing—we’re so much more complicated.”

  “I know, I wish we could come in three minutes flat like some of the guys I know.”

  She laughed and I glowed with pleasure. I was having sex banter with an orgasm teacher in a sex shop. Could my life be any cooler?

  “You should buy some vibrators before you leave,” said Veronica. “We have a twenty percent discount today for you guys. I’d recommend one of our new flexible ones. They’re perfect for getting into those tricky areas. Good luck.”

  She left me staring at an array of vibrators. I reached out to touch them. There was a brand-new range and they felt soft. I picked up a bright purple one. It didn’t look too threatening and now that I knew how to use it, I desperately wanted it.

  I grabbed one simple vibrating dildo with different speed settings, one new bullet and a tub of plain non-scented, non-heat lube for sensitive vaginas. I walked over to the counter to pay for my purchases. I could hardly believe that I had been exactly here about six months ago, nervously buying a tiny bullet. Back then, with my unbroken hymen, I had been scared to put these objects in me. I hadn’t really wanted to lose my V-plates to a lump of plastic. Now, I couldn’t wait to shove it inside of me.

  “Whoah, are you buying all of that?” asked Lara.

  “There’s a twenty percent discount and I’ve never climaxed in front of a guy. I’m as desperate as they get and, if this is going to help me, I’m ready to pay.”