Not That Easy

by Radhika Sanghani

  My friends still loved me. I had kind of ruined things with Ollie, but I hadn’t been infected by the lost condom and I’d well and truly learned my lesson: guys in relationships were off limits.

  Nick did the same to the other nipple. I breathed out loud. It sounded sexy. Oh my God, I was finally having my film noir moment and it wasn’t even deliberate. I probably did look like a French movie star lying on the sofa with a hot man pleasuring me. I grinned wider and settled into the role with a loud breathy gasp. I imagined Marilyn Monroe would have made the same sound when guys sucked her tits.

  I threw my arms around Nick and snogged him back properly. I sat up and wound my legs around him, so that our very naked bodies were stuck together. He reached across me and pulled out a condom, quickly opening it and sliding it onto his penis.

  Remembering his previous requests for me to go on top, I pushed him down onto the sofa and got astride. I gingerly lowered myself onto his gherkin, biting my lip in anticipation of the pain that never came. He put his hands onto my hips and guided me into the rhythm. I went up and down, while his face spread into a grin.

  It felt good, but clearly not as good as it felt for him. I went faster, and simultaneously tried to rub my clit. I tried to enjoy it but it was too hard multitasking. Nick started breathing heavily and I realized he was about to come.

  Before me.

  I pulled myself off him without thinking and inched up his body. I sat my vagina back down on top of his face.

  “Mff?” he asked from underneath my pubes.

  “I don’t want you to come yet. I want you to lick me.” I did it. I’d told him what I wanted. I was owning sex.

  He groaned and started rubbing his tongue against my clitoris. I cried out loud as he got exactly the right spot. I looked down at him and saw his little face moving as he tried to rub my C-spot. He was doing this for me. It felt good, even though my vagina was pubier than I would have liked and I hadn’t showered since six a.m. Would he notice?!

  Then it hit me—I didn’t actually care. For the first time, I really, really didn’t give a shit if my vagina didn’t look like the perfect ones I imagined existed behind the lacy panties in Calvin Klein ads. My VJ may not look like a bald plucked chicken, or smell like Jo Malone, but so what? It had a perfectly good clitoris attached to it and there was a very willing man beneath it.

  I didn’t even care about what number on my list Nick was. Or whether I was “slutty” or not. That was all totally irrelevant. The only thing I cared about right now was how . . . oh God . . . amazing the sex felt.

  I closed my eyes as he licked me faster. I forgot to breathe sexily like Monroe and made loud grunting noises. The familiar buildup feeling came and I gripped onto his shoulders. “Faster,” I shouted.

  I grabbed onto him desperately as the feeling built up in me. “Oh God, keep going,” I cried out. He obliged. I could feel myself getting close to climax. Oh my God, was I actually going to orgasm with a real live male?

  I felt the orgasm start to plateau and banished the thought from my mind. It didn’t matter if I orgasmed or not, I was just there to enjoy myself. Although . . . if I did want to orgasm I’d better start breathing more and get a fantasy.

  I started picturing an enlarged penis hovering in the air, and tried to do the yogic breaths I’d learned off YouTube videos. “Om . . . Om . . . AHHHH.”

  I cried out loudly as I felt my body melt. I closed my eyes tighter as the feeling ran through my body and my vagina trembled. I breathed out slower as it subsided.

  “That . . . was . . . amazing,” I said, opening my eyes.

  Nick’s eyes were screwed shut and he looked like he was in pain. I shimmied down his body onto his chest. “Um, are you okay, Nick?” I asked.

  He ran his hand across his face and opened his eyes. There was a damp liquid clinging from his eyebrows to his eyelashes. With horror, I realized what it was.

  “Ellie,” he said, “you just came on my face.”

  NSFW

  It is not easy to orgasm.

  I just need to put that out there because I don’t think it’s something that a lot of women hear that often. But it’s true. About fifty percent of women experience problems with orgasms, fact.

  In movies, TV and pretty much all media, orgasms look easy. You see women having mind-blowing sex with a guy they’ve just met, or orgasming every time their boyfriend goes down on them. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

  Which makes it a lie. Perhaps these media execs think it’s a pretty harmless lie—maybe they even think it’s empowering to show so many women having great sex—but I think it can be pretty damaging.

  It means that those of us who struggle to reach those few seconds of ecstasy feel shit. Like we’re not real women. Or we’re sexual failures. Friends have told me they’ve felt guilty when their boyfriends have spent hours down there and nothing’s happened. So they do a When Harry Met Sally and fake it à la Meg Ryan.

  It’s partly to make their boyfriend feel better—but it’s mainly so they don’t feel like crap girlfriends. So they don’t feel like they’ve managed to mess up the one natural joy that God gave us.

  But I think it’s time we ditched that guilt and faced up to this taboo—it’s fucking hard to orgasm. There’s stuff you can do for it—all it takes is a quick Google or a trip to your GP—but at the end of the day, you’re never going to suddenly pull through in a blissful cloud of euphoria unless you accept there’s a bit of a problem.

  I wanted to keep this column a bit less “confessions of a twentysomething woman” and more “serious issues women face” but . . . I may as well admit that I’ve struggled with this.

  Alone in my room with my fingers, I was coming anywhere and everywhere.

  Put me in front of a penis and I was doomed. But, dear lovely readers, I’m writing this minutes after I overcame that hurdle. In fact, he’s lying by my side. He’s not the love of my life, and, to be honest, I doubt we’ll ever do it again (it’s okay, he knows this). But it wasn’t him that helped me get there—it was me.

  I thought that the big hurdles to orgasming were actual issues—his skills, the state of my vagina, the real worry that it was too unattractive for him to spend too much time down there. But now I’ve realized that’s all bollocks. The only real hurdle was my lack of self-love.

  And the second I ditched the paranoia, the insecurity and the worries? A wet, sticky bliss. I’ve also learned that nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter if you’re sleeping with number 2 or number 222, or whether they’re The One or just a one-night stand—the only important thing is that you actually enjoy the sex and feel comfortable.

  Fuck everything else. None of it really matters. Because when it comes to sex, all that matters is that you’re having fun.

  On that note, I’m off for round two.

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