Copyright © 2019 by Olive Persimmon
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3241-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3244-5
Printed in the United States of America
coitus
noun co·i·tus 'kō-ə-təs, kō-'ē-, 'kȯi-təs
Physical union of male and female genitalia accompanied by rhythmic movements.*
Also, a fancy way of saying sex.
Anyone who uses it is probably not having sex.
* As copied and pasted from www.merriam-webster.com.
CONTENTS
The Brief History of an Unintentional Celibate
Knot What You Think
OM’ing
The Stealthiest Ex
There’s a Boy in My Room
The Most Beautiful Penis in the World
All the Deep Shit That Is Really Wrong with Me
Fetish Fervor
Goddamnit, There’s Still a Lot of Shit Lurking Around
Secrets from a Top Pickup Artist
Bringing Sexy Back
Foot Worship, It’s a Thing. You Should Try It.
An Itch to Scratch
Apples and Oranges
The Stupid Things You Do after a Breakup
What Is Sex Even?
Clark Kent
The Friends with Benefits Experiment
A Cuddling Catastrophe
I Paid a Man to Cuddle with Me
Tantra
Squirting Lab
Everyone Told Me Not to Do It and I Did It Anyway
An Ending That’s Happy
Acknowledgments
When I started this book, sex, for me, meant a penis entering my vagina. I’ll be the first one to acknowledge that my scope was limited and naive. Thankfully I learned that sex means a whole lot more than that to a whole lot of people.
This book is for anyone who feels as insecure and confused as I did about sex. It’s for anyone who thinks that everyone else is having more, better, and kinkier sex than them.
WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER.
THE BRIEF HISTORY OF AN UNINTENTIONAL CELIBATE
There are a few things you need to know about me before reading this book.
1. I’m twenty-nine and the last time I had sex was four years, five months, three days, and 1.3 hours ago.
2. I’ve had intercourse with two people, less than eleven times in total.
3. I’ve never done reverse cowgirl.
Or doggy-style.
Or anything with whipped cream.
I wrote a book about my tenantless vagina called Unintentionally Celibate and my love life has only gone downhill from there.
Maybe you’ve already pegged me as some sort of undateable weirdo who smells like onions. Let me assure you, and you’ll have to take my word for it, I don’t smell like onions. And although I don’t look like Angelina Jolie I can more or less hold my own at a bar.
So how did I wind up here?
Here being a desolate wasteland of no sex. A Sexmageddon. A Coitus Catastrophe.
It’s a question I’ve asked myself ad nauseam for the past four years, five months, three days, and 1.3 hours.
My friends are surprised that I’m in this sexless situation.
Honestly, I’m not. I kind of saw this coming.
It hasn’t been smooth sailing for me in the romance department. As far back as middle school, when other girls were discovering their feminine charms, not one single boy at Klimpton D. Walton Intermediate School “like liked” me.
Not one.
Granted, I did look exactly like Danny DeVito.
I was seriously overweight with nerdy glasses. My mom bought all my clothes, which meant that I was wearing pom-pom glitter sweatshirts well into seventh grade. My hobbies included volunteering at the nursing home across the street, crafting, theater, and sitting in the middle of my front yard in my inflatable chair.
Needless to say, I wasn’t killing it in the middle school dating scene.
In high school, when other people started exploring sex, I still said “fiddlesticks” instead of “fuck,” and boys were uncharted territory.
When it came to sex, everything I knew I learned by cybering and downloading illegal porn on Napster.
Which means I knew NOTHING about sex.
To this day, my knowledge of the female anatomy is often ill-informed. Case in point: I thought it was possible to lose a NuvaRing inside of you until a friend of mine informed me that my vagina “wasn’t the gateway to Narnia” and things couldn’t get lost in it.*
I blamed my midwestern education for my lack of knowledge, but none of my friends had this problem. Perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention during sex ed because sex wasn’t even on my mind.
I didn’t talk to boys until I was fifteen.
My first kiss? Sixteen.
My first kiss without a face full of slobber? Eighteen.
At twenty-four, I lost my virginity to a Ken doll look-alike who cared less about me than I’d like to admit. We had sex a total of eight times and never moved beyond missionary. We broke up after I came over to his house without any underwear on and he decided to build his patio table instead of sleeping with me.
Not the best introduction into the world of sex.
My next partner was my long-term friend with benefits, Tyler. On and off for two years, we exchanged oral pleasantries, but surprisingly, never had penetrative sex.
Until one night we did. Three times. He was a gentle, giving lover. He kissed parts of my body that Ken doll had ignored. We went to the grocery store afterward and held hands.
It was Sexual Redemption.
It was also the last time I had sex.
I moved to the Big Apple one month later.
There’s a rite of passage when you move to NYC that involves owning no furniture, having no friends, and sobbing on the subway once a week. No job, no money, and as a result, no self-esteem. Dating was off the table.
It wasn’t until I was finally settled that I felt good enough about myself to start dating again. There were first dates. Second dates that never turned into third dates. Some make out sessions. Some over-the-pants penis touching. Under-the-pants scrotum stroking. Sexual innuendos. Occasional nipple-licking, butt-grabbing, thigh-stroking nights full of potential.
But no sex.
A few years into the dry spell, I started dating someone seriously but still didn’t have sex with him. By then it had become a thing. I was afraid that because I was inexperienced, I’d be bad in bed. In my mind, that was practically the most embarrassing thing a person could be. I had so many insecurities that I kept putting off sex until our relationship ended before we could do the no-pants penetration dance.
Luckily, everything changed on a Sunday night in November.
By a twist of fate, I wound up at a party with a select group of members from one of New York’s sex-positive communities.
I had no idea what “sex-positive” even meant.
I had been invited to the party by my friend Renee, who, unbeknownst to me, was an active participant in the community. According to her, the sex-positive community was based on the belief that sex was natural and healthy, that it should be enjoyed. She and her friends talked openly about intercourse, went to sexy parties, and occasionally participated in polyamorous relationships. They enthusiastically explored new ways to seek pleasure.
I was oblivious to all of this until I walked in on the middle of a conversation about OM’ing. The only time I’d ever heard the word “om” was in relation to yoga. I was on a yoga kick so I joined in eagerly ready to discuss Downward-Facing Dog.
When someone mentioned their clitoris, I knew we weren’t talking about any form of yoga I was familiar with. Seeing the confusion on my face, Renee told me about Orgasmic Meditation, or OM’ing for short, a meditative technique where one person stroked another person’s clitoris during a timed session.
I stared at her blankly in response.
Renee said, “I could explain it to you, but it might be better for you to just try it. Maybe this is what you need to unblock your own sexual energy because clearly something’s amiss.”
I wanted to deny this but she was right. My mojo was broken and I had no idea how to fix it.
“This is your next book,” Renee said. “You should spend a year exploring a sex-positive lifestyle in NYC.”
I began to protest. “I don’t like cas—”
“Casual sex,” Renee said. “Yeah, I know. Everyone knows. That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m saying that you should be more open to learning about what’s out there. You don’t remotely try when it comes to your love life.”
I folded my arms across my chest defensively.
“I try. I’m just . . . busy,” I said.
“Okay, sure, but let’s say you were open to it, there’s a ton of things you could explore,” she said.
Everyone in the circle brainstormed sexy adventures for me. As they threw out ideas, I remained silent, thinking about the proposition: Explore sex and dating. Fix my love life. Write about it.
It sounded like a terrible idea. My parents would be embarrassed. My employer would fire me. Strangers on the Internet would troll me.
As I continued to come up with reasons to say “no,” a small voice was telling me that instead of ruining my life, it just might save me. For four years I had been doing things a certain way and it wasn’t working. I had to do something differently. If I didn’t, I was going to die alone with a tombstone that read:
Here lies Olive. She never tried reverse cowgirl.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this . . . but maybe.”
Renee squealed with excitement.
“My friend Sheng is a sex guru and OM’ing coach. You should connect with him, he might have ideas,” she said.
I left the party feeling excited and scared; it was fun to talk about, but I probably wasn’t going to go through with any of it.
The next morning Renee unintentionally forced my hand by sending an email introducing me to Sheng telling him that I was exploring the sex-positive lifestyle. She made me seem like an adventurous badass, ready and willing to try everything, which was laughably far from the truth.
“How exciting,” Sheng wrote in his email back. “My friend is hosting a BDSM class this Saturday. He’s one of the best instructors in the city. If you want to come, I can get you a free ticket.”
I didn’t respond for three days. Replying to his email meant that I was doing this. That I was accepting the challenge to confront my own discomfort with sexuality and my non-existent love life.
I wanted to call it off. I wanted to go back to bed, binge-watch Gilmore Girls, and forget I ever received any email at all.
Yet, that was the exact same fear that got me into this situation in the first place.
Which is why I wrote: “I’ll see you Saturday.”
Just like that, the Coitus Chronicles began. . . .
* The NuvaRing is a type of birth control. It’s a magic rubber band coated with hormones that you stick in your vagina and somehow it stops you from having babies.
KNOT WHAT YOU THINK
It was the day before class and I was freaking out. Not only was I terrified about going to a BDSM lesson, I had no idea what to wear. I imagined whips and handcuffs over my tan cowl-neck sweater.
I pulled out my leather pants and a black top and called Renee.
“No, no,” she said. “Don’t wear leather or too much black; that screams newbie. Don’t wear a tight necklace either; that means you’re collared.”
I had no idea what that meant, which made it glaringly obvious that I was in over my head. My only experience with BDSM was from reading Fifty Shades of Grey, which obviously wasn’t the handbook for an intro to kink.
I’d only ever had vanilla sex.
Boring, missionary sex. Kind-of-sweaty-but-not-THAT-sweaty sex.
I hadn’t even done shower stuff. It was all uncharted territory.
Yet here I was, registered for a BDSM class. It was like learning to drive before learning to walk. I still needed my nooky training wheels for God’s sake.
On the day of, I took the train down to Brooklyn. I was expecting a dimly lit dungeon, so I was surprised when I walked into a multi-purpose yoga studio that smelled like peppermint. It was light and airy, with rows of folding chairs facing a man sitting on a stool. There were no visible signs that this was a BDSM class. Our instructor’s name was Mr. Rao and he was . . . normal-looking; no eyeliner or studded chokers.
All the seats were taken except for the one directly in front of our instructor in the first row. I sat down, waiting anxiously for class to begin.
Mr. Rao looked around the room, smiling at his students before saying, “BDSM stands for bondage, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism. Today, we’re going to focus on the first three. Are you ready to play?”
I looked around the room too. There were fifteen people in class including myself.
My eyes landed on the woman next to me. She was wearing a see-through shirt.
Her stomach growled loudly.
“Sorry, honey. My IBS kicks in sometimes,” she whispered, pulling out a comically large container of Metamucil. I smiled back at her.
“I want to find out why you’re here. A lot of this class is going to be us talking,” Rao said. Talking I could do. Talking was cool. Usually you couldn’t get me to shut up.
He started with an older man in the last row, bald with intense blue eyes.
“When I fuck someone, I want to ravage them. I want to rip them to shreds and use their body for my own pleasure,” the man said.
I raised my eyebrows in concern; holy shit, what had I gotten myself into?
The next few answers were milder before Rao finally got to me. He glanced at my name tag and said, “Olive, what brings you here today?”
It was a simple question without a simple answer.
“Um. Well. I haven’t had sex in a long time, so I’m trying to do things differently this year,” I said.
“How long?”
“About five years.”
There was a collective gasp around the room. I was used to that response when people heard the number. You’d have thought I said I was an alien and then pulled off my face to prove it, Men in Black style.
“Why not?”
He was pushing me to be honest. It seemed like he pushed everyone to say three more things than they actually wanted to as a way of getting to the truth.
“I . . . uhh . . . want to be in control when it comes to sex,” I said, my mouth getting dry.
“There are plenty of men in this room who would love that. Raise your hand if you want her to be in control of you.”
Five guys raised their hands. My face turned red as I la
ughed awkwardly, avoiding their gazes.
“Why is that a problem?” he asked.
“Sometimes I need to be too in control. Like, I make rules and sometimes . . . I’m afraid to be out of control.”
“Oh, I see. You make laws about sex. If someone doesn’t do and say all the right things, or follow the rules that you’ve made up, you won’t sleep with them.”
“Yeah. Something like that,” I said.
“That’s going to hurt you,” he said.
“I know. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to do things differently.”
To my immense relief, Rao moved on to someone else. While another woman talked about how she wanted to be tied up, I thought about my need for control. It didn’t make sense. I was a big risk-taker in many ways. My life was full of impulsive and adventurous decisions. I moved to NYC without a job, circled the globe without money, posted vulnerable articles on the Internet. But when it came to sex, I was cautious to a fault.
A handsome Irishman caught my attention when he said, “I feel like I’m so far behind everyone else. When it comes to sex and relationships, I’m like a high schooler, scared of talking to girls.”
Ah, yes, another member of my tribe. A tribe that no one wanted to belong to: The Sexually Inexperienced. I made a mental note to talk to him later.
The final person to speak was a shy girl named Cody. She told a story about how she’d fooled around with someone because, even though she hadn’t really wanted to hook up, she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings.
Rao looked at her and firmly but compassionately said, “You should have said something and stopped. You should never do anything you don’t want to do. It’s not your job to support someone else’s ego at your own expense. From now on you say something.”
Rao stood up, taking in the room, sighing deeply before saying, “There seems to be a common theme here—of guilt. For our first exercise, you’re going to confess everything you’re ashamed of.”
I looked around the room, confused. I didn’t understand what that had to do with BDSM.
“Find a partner. One of you will speak and one will listen. The listener will put their fingers in their ears so they can’t actually hear. For the speaker, it’s about saying it out loud. Maintain eye contact the entire time. Listeners, keep your faces neutral. Give them space. Allow them to be vulnerable.”
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