by Faith Salie
I nestled the sex manual behind a large folder. The book was called Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man. It offers a solid premise—who better to teach you how to please a man than a man who pleases men? I was eager for sex tips because I’d recently started dating my wasband. From our first date, I just knew I wanted to marry him. It wasn’t even because he told me he was going to be president of the United States, setting off FLOTUS fantasies in my head. It was because he was confident and tall and handsome. He had a deep, sexy voice. But there was also something vulnerable about him, because he’d been very sick for a very long time. How often do you get to be the first person with whom someone has sex after he finishes chemotherapy? That’s Remission Sex. That’s a big deal. I didn’t want to let him down in any way.
Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man turned out to be more rompy than revelatory except for a few pointers. And by “pointers,” I do mean nipples. Men’s nipples, which, according to this primer, are lonely, evolutionarily impotent accessories just waiting to be noticed. I’m not so sure about this tip, as I have since attempted to lavish attention on the male nipples of a small sample set and haven’t had any takers.*
The other surprising suggestion focused on the overlooked art of hand jobs. I hadn’t thought about hand jobs in years. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever actually thought about hand jobs, because what I was thinking during the three occasions in high school when I’d stuck my hand down a young man’s pants was, OH MY GOD I’M TOUCHING A PENIS AND IT’S GETTING BIGGER. HOW MUCH BIGGER WILL IT GET? NOW I THINK I’M A LITTLE AFRAID OF WHAT THIS PENIS AND GOD WILL DO TO ME.
But the book made a very enthusiastic argument for revisiting the hand job, just as a gastronome might, once in a while, crave a Sloppy Joe. I was persuaded and hungry to try it out. Except first I had to fully understand the directions, which were surprisingly complex for this meat and potatoes move.
And that’s why I was perched beside my brother in the stadium seating of his 2L Torts class, scrutinizing the confusing diagram entitled “The Stroke.” According to the Gay Man, the key to The Stroke was a twisting move. I kept discreetly trying to mimic the pictures full of penises and arrows with one hand while holding up the book and folder with the other. I prayed the professor wouldn’t call on me in a Paper Chase moment, leaving me no choice but to answer, “I haven’t done the reading, sir, but I can speak to manu forte ejaculation techniques.”
David noticed my furrowed brow, so I tilted the diagram at him. He quickly studied it and whispered, “I’ll show you at home.”
“It says to practice on a roll of refrigerated cookie dough,” I whispered back, just to make sure he wasn’t planning on whipping out his thang. I mean, we’re close, but we’re not that close. He nodded solemnly.
Perhaps it strikes you as weird that I asked my brother for help when it came to sex—even if he is the brother who knows his way (up and) around a penis. But you see, I can ask David anything. Although I will always regret asking who does what to whom in his sex life with his husband. To be clear: it’s not gross because they’re both men. It’s a little gross because it’s my brother. Kind of like when my sister-in-law, Lorei, and I took a pole dancing class together. (Yes, that’s how you spell her name; just ask her sister, Carei.) We took turns practicing the lap dance while envisioning our lover in the empty chair. I seduced the chair after her, and my performance was completely ruined by the fact that, in Lorei’s imagination, my oldest brother, Doug, had just been sitting there, possibly erect. Because he was invisible, I was afraid he/it was still there.
I can ask David anything, and I can ask anything of him. With the possible exception of my husband, I can say that as close as I’ve been with any man, I’ve been closer with my brother. John has seen me breastfeed thousands of times, but only with David have I frolicked topless on a beach. John has witnessed wee people come out of my magical lady hole, but David was with me while I had my uterus rearranged by a resectoscope loop to make room for a potential baby. John has watched me become a mother; David has seen me lose our mother.
My husband loves me patiently, but my brother has loved me longer. Even when he disapproved, my brother stayed beside me. When we fought in a Roman amphitheater in Arles the summer I was eighteen because he thought I was starving myself; when he strongly suggested, a month before my first wedding, that I not marry a man who had just fired me as a client because we’d argued about the wording of our New York Times wedding announcement—David stuck around. He held the train of my gown as I married my wasband and never said “I told you so” when he flew from DC to LA for twenty-four hours to help me pack up my life during my divorce.
Men have come (and come again) and gone, but not my brother. And so I asked him to teach me the twist.
Doesn’t everyone, at one time or another, try to impress in bed? Impressing in bed, though, often means doing it out of bed. The most spectacular sex I’ve ever had—and I use that word advisedly because, if anyone saw us, we created a spectacle—was with a hot triathlete. Trip was so handsome that I always worried that people might look at us and think, What’s he doing with her?, so I really tried to up my game. When we met, I actually had no game—he introduced me to a lot of creative ideas involving baby oil, a waterbed, strawberries, the hood of his BMW, an elevator, his mother’s garden (not a euphemism), and a public botanical garden. Not all at once.
Before Trip, I’d had sex with two people. Not all at once. Seems to me there are a couple of ways to win approval when it comes to sex: one is through having it lots of different ways and the other is by not having it at all. As a teenager, I chose the latter. I was a Very Good Girl. I was saving myself, not out of some chipper Christian youth group commitment to chastity but out of a sense of honor. Of waiting to meet someone worthy. Also, it didn’t seem to fit into my teetotaling, studying, early-to-bed, early-to-rise lifestyle. It’s hard to have casual—or formal—sex when the only crack you want to see is of dawn so you can get in an early run.
I remember being in a college dressing room while playing Sandy in Grease and seeking advice from a castmate about whether I should hold out until after I turned twenty to have sex for the first time. This friend, while applying her dark red lipstick, said, “Oh God. I would never want to be a twenty-year-old virgin.” Obviously, she played Rizzo.
I lost my virginity to my college boyfriend in a responsible encounter after months of dating and earnest professions of love. It was undramatic except for the fact of it. I called my mother the next morning to confess. I needed her to know. It wasn’t so much that I was worried she might disapprove—after all, this was a lady who’d informed me on one of our walks that Astroglide was an excellent product and thought I should know that she and my father had “some kind of sex” almost daily. This was a woman who’d taught me, at age three, all the anatomically correct names of all the parts of the vulva and who’d recently sent me a Valentine’s present of a red lace bra and thong. I’d never seen a thong up close before and therefore wore it backward for a day, giving myself a vagina wedgie. But she was still my mom, the person who thought I could do no wrong, and I just needed to make sure I was still never wrong. So I asked her if it was okay that I’d done…this thing. She was quiet and then asked me, “Do you really love him?” I assured her I did, and we both breathed a sigh of relief.
By the time Trip and I hooked up—and, yes “hooking up” is appropriately applied when you consider we met in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, learned we grew up a few miles apart, and then fell into bed because I’d finally started drinking at the age of twenty-four—I knew sex didn’t have to mean being “really” in love. He taught me it could be purely fun. But for Trip, it would have never occurred to me to go out for the night sans panties. Or to do it sitting on his lap on the living room sofa, with a blanket draped over me, as we nonchalantly pretended to watch an NFL game when his mother, who was visiting, walked in. We pulled off a brief conversation about lunch with her while we scored a
touchdown. More teamwork was to be had when he taught me how to harness the power of a Jacuzzi jet—a helpful skill I employed on my first honeymoon, when three out of three orgasms were provided by five-star hotel water fixtures.
Trip was the first man to ask me to touch myself in front of him. Now, I’d been giving myself hand jobs for years—ever since I invited fingers into my underwear at age eleven and got a surprise payoff—but I’d never considered doing this in front of someone, namely someone who was supposed to be giving me pleasure. I actually thought it might send a rude message to take matters into my own hands, like, “You clearly can’t handle this as well as I can.” But I tried it—I felt really self-conscious at first, to have an audience for something I’d only ever done alone. I started it for him, but I finished it for me. There was something sexy about knowing that watching me was giving him pleasure, but the sexiest part of all was just plain pleasing myself. A spiritual 69, if you will, which is an apt metaphor, since he’s the one who first folded me into that numerical position.
Trip was really into videotaping sex and had amassed a small library of poignant encounters he never wanted to forget. I found it creepy but tried to chalk it up to his “porno-rakish charm.” I told him never, noway, nohow with me—the only way I’d ever allow myself to be on camera naked would be if I did a thirty-day juice cleanse followed by a chaser of self-tanner. But one day, after amassing both mutual trust and masturbation, I relented. On one condition: no film in the camera. (If you are under thirty, there used to be such things as “cameras” that used “film.” If you didn’t have film in the camera, you didn’t get to watch yourself! I know being unable to video yourself can be a terrifying thought, so let’s all pause to make sure our smartphones are charged.) Apparently, just turning it on was enough to turn him on, and turning him on always worked out well for me.
I’d totally forgotten about the sex tape Trip and I didn’t make until a few months later. My parents paid a visit to Trip’s house, and he was showing us a video tour of his new Palm Beach condo. (Did I mention he was rich?) All of a sudden, while we were all sitting round the giant flat-screen, admiring his new closet space, an image of Trip having sex with some blond woman flashed before our eyes. (I’m not blond.) No one moved; no one said a word. I think we were all saying silent prayers that we’d individually experienced a weird subliminal porno that no one else saw. Almost immediately, the condo walk-through returned, and, as a group, we intently focused on the master suite. It was as if we were willing this incredibly boring home tour never to end, never to have its broadcast interrupted by a special report on boning. Alas, there was more breaking news about urgent boning, and once again—this time for several eternal seconds longer—my folks and I were treated to something more climactic than a Jack and Jill bathroom.
The triathlete fumbled the remote and, for all his athletic alacrity, seemed to take forever to block the screen and turn off the TV.
He didn’t want to turn around. My mouth was open; my mother had one hand over her mouth and the other over her heart. My father saved the day. He said, simply, “Nice ass, Tripper.”
For all his money, Trip had unwisely cut corners by reusing an old videotape.
It seemed that Trip had been the golden era of my sex life until I let someone pee on me. I wish I could tell you there was a jellyfish sting involved, but there wasn’t.
During my first, temporary separation from the wasband, I started seeing someone. By “seeing someone,” I mean I would meet this man at a motel every so often. (There’s a huge difference between motels and hotels, and if you don’t believe me, take a black light to the bedding.) This someone was a six-foot-five person with a cartoonishly massive jawline. He looked like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast if Gaston cut his ponytail and were approaching middle age. He was not so much affectionate as respectfully aggressive, which I found really hot since I was so hungry for sexual attention that I was in ketosis. We hardly kissed, and we didn’t look into each other’s eyes when we were having sex.
Gaston asked early on if he could pee on me, except he didn’t say pee, he said “piss,” as if that’s sexier. Call it piss, pee-pee, or tinkle, nothing seemed sexy about it. I laughed, hoping he was joking, and gave him an incredulous “Uhhh, nope.” Meeting him in a motel was about as freaky as I wanted to get. It was the idea of our encounters that satisfied me. I was acting out of anger, under which was pain, under which was need—I was getting revenge on my wasband even though he knew nothing about it. If revenge falls in the forest, but your husband isn’t around to hear it, is it still revenge? I dug feeling wanted, but I felt lonelier after every encounter, even when Gaston would leave sexy messages for me in the voice that had made him decent money speaking for video-game characters.
I kept hoping the carnality of it all might lead to the kind of sexual awakening you find in women’s erotica. I was waiting for the toe-curling breakthrough. One night when I’d lubricated my prefrontal cortex with some wine, and my generous lover again offered to pee on me, the thought flitted across my brain that maybe I was being closed-minded. Maybe being peed on would make me some kind of sexual iconoclast. I said okay.
He escorted me gallantly in the dark to the shower and did his thing. It was blessedly quick and below the waist. I was frozen with grossed out-ness. He was, obviously, relieved.
Of all the things I’ve ever done for approval, this was the dumbest. It’s not like it was on my bucket list, or even a bedpan list. I didn’t grow as a person; I didn’t learn anything new. Because getting peed on is like…getting peed on. It feels hot like pee and smells like pee. Because it’s urine. It was all consensual, so I didn’t feel degraded, just empty, which pretty much sums up how the whole affair left me feeling. And “affair” is misleading, since it connotes some kind of romance or passion. This was more of an experiment on my part to see if I could be a libertine. Turns out it’s not my bag. Turns out I love to be wanted and treasured and wet but dry in all the right places.
In my experience, real intimacy is quiet, and it is cumulative. It doesn’t arise from outré acts. It’s made of moments when you’re naked with your eyes open, and whether or not you have clothes on doesn’t matter. I can count on one hand the men with whom I’ve been truly unblinking, and they with me, and my brother is one of them. My brother’s eyes are open to my flaws and cracks, and he still loves me. Intimacy is also spontaneous and organic. It’s not something you need to study for, even if you find explicit instructions in a book, and even if you have a brother willing to explain them to you.
There’s really no way of knowing if David and I are so close because he’s my brother or he’s my gay brother. It doesn’t matter anyway; he’s more than a brother and more than a best friend, and he’s better than a sister. I didn’t even know he was gay until he came out to me in our twenties over some Chick-fil-A at the Perimeter Mall food court. Had I a discerning eye for adolescent boy wall art, I might have registered that in my brother Doug’s room hung the iconic poster of Farrah Fawcett in her nipply glory, while David’s corkboard sported an 8 x 10 glossy of Joan Rivers.
When someone has sung the entire cast recording of Les Mis with you on a convertible road trip in 1987; when, years later, after your mother’s death, he’s walked with you beside the Pacific and talked about when it might feel okay to sing anything ever again; when you’ve asked him to buy you postsurgical granny panties and enormous thirsty pads the size of European pillow shams to put in them, it makes sense to ask this man to show you how to give the best hand job ever, even if he is your brother.
As we drove from his torts class to my hand job tutorial, I reminded David that the Gay Man said we should use cookie dough, because it has the right consistency. We agreed that the girth of the dough was aspirational. Plus my gay brother is gay, and no homosexual person worth his pink Himalayan sea salt keeps slice-and-bake cookie dough in his fridge. He said, “I think I have something at home that will work.”
And so we sat at his k
itchen table in his humble apartment on a sunny February day in Palo Alto, and he showed me the twist using a roll of sundried tomato polenta. I have no memories of how my deployment of the twist went over (or under), but I’ll always have the fond memory of sharing that special moment with David.
My brother has always, whenever I’ve needed it, given me a hand.
* * *
* I’ve just conducted a study on this topic using the scientific method, which you probably remember from middle school involves texting both your gay brother and straight brother and asking, “Need to know: do most men like to have nipple action during sex? Thank you for your time.”
Doug got back to me first: “Not my ‘thing.’ ”
Then David: “I’ve always wondered about straight guys. Among the gays, it seems to be about 50/50. Half have ‘wired nips,’ and the other half, no particularly special sensation.” Interestingly, David does not reveal himself to be wired or not. I will ask him during Thanksgiving dinner.
By the time my wasband asked if I would consider undergoing an exorcism, we’d been married three months, which, to be fair, is probably long enough to start suspecting that you’ve wed the Bride of Satan. Sitting in his lounge chair that he’d upholstered in a Latrell Sprewell Knicks jersey, he told me he’d just watched an intense video on CNN showing an exorcism. Then he fairly casually added, “And I was wondering…would you ever consider having one?”
For a millisecond, it looked like he was about to smile. But he didn’t. And I was about to laugh. But I didn’t. I think he registered how outrageous the question was, but he committed to it because he meant it. He really wanted to know if I’d noodle over this dispossession thing. And I really wanted to please him—even surprise him—with my willingness to subject myself to such dramatic self-improvement. So I said, “Yeah…I’d consider it. Do you think I need one?”