Action: A Book About Sex (21 page)

Before you lower your camera/phone/computer and put your pants back on: You’ve got other options. When I was first arranging myself into sultry-ish poses intended for the consumption of others, I never included my face, deciding instead to focus on body parts without clearly identifiable birthmarks on them (because I thought that people would recognize the Cindy Crawford blotch on my right ass cheek, having never seen it? I don’t know) and sent them from a dummy email address registered to “Simone de Beauvoir.” When I felt less skittish, I gradually showed more until I was totally cool with full-frontal (and back-al).

These days, I don’t think I’d mind too terribly if “explicit” photos of me emerged for the consideration of the general viewing public, no matter if I weren’t artfully censored by burgers. To my knowledge, there’s no easy way to access my full-bore naked photos unless I want you to, though I think the number of people to whom I’ve sent explicit camera-phone selections nearly qualifies as “public,” so I’m not very stressed out about it. People have seen human bodies that are more beautiful than mine, yes? Yes. People are aware that we are not brains floating around in white dress shirts clamped closed with buttons at the throat and wrist, paired with three-ply khaki snow pants with reinforced iron crotches, yes? I strongly hope, yes.

Some people are fearful that being sexualized, or sexualizing themselves, diminishes them in the eyes of others, especially professionally. I have had friends for whom this anxiety has
been well-founded thanks to others’ actions, if not reasonable or empathetic logic: A teacher pal was once disbarred from an enviable title after an anonymous person sent the administration for which she worked old-fashioned editorials of her from one of those too-expensive Euro magazines you can get only at the bookstore.

My friend protested her dismissal so cogently and persuasively that she was reinstated, with her students none the wiser, and I’m pretty sure that in five years it won’t even fuck with your chances of running for Congress, if it even does now. Your life is never “over” if photographic evidence of your involvement in adult practices is discovered. The only trick is not acquiescing to shame. Shame wrecks your pride both sexually and to a larger, life-minimizing size. If my friend had rolled over (in a different sense than what was depicted in her contentious photo, I mean), she would be out of that job, and, worse, she would have been disavowing something she believes—
this is a hot thing to do, and who cares?
Shame doesn’t make the situation go away. It makes you look pathetic, and you’re not, so why act like you believe otherwise?

HOME FOOTAGE

Let’s say you are well aware of the risks involved with DIY video smut. Your concern is not with security, but with quality: How do I shoot porno in the first place?

Here are some options:

• Use a camcorder. This seems laughably quaint—
hey! why not just go the extra mile and make one of those classic peephole flip-books of your butt-nudes?
—but if you want to make a private, one-edition-only memento (and what feels more lurid than secreted-away analog porno? You have to find a HIDING PLACE for it, just the thought of which is devastating me with hotness), dig the VCR and camcorder out of storage, or cop them
for a dollar each at just about any yard or sidewalk sale, then take turns maneuvering the camera’s point of view back and forth with your person.

• If you’re using a phone: Handheld cameras are some of my favorite sex toys, and their perspectives and angles, as seen after they’re recorded, are the most reminiscent of what fucking is actually like.

• If you’re more likely to be distracted or made self-conscious by a camera all blatantly up in your face, set up a computer on a surface above the one where you’ll be having sex. Keeping it on the bed with you
can
work, but a relaxed attitude toward the positioning can also leave you with a work of film like one that an old boyfriend and I made. The best part of making porn is watching it right after, and as we reviewed that one, we saw our sex lives as we never had before: The laptop had shifted around alongside our bodies, eventually settling on a tight shot of our two stomachs clapping against one another. It wasn’t quite the movie we had intended to auteur, but it was a better comedy than most of what you’d pay to see in a theater, based on how hard it made us laugh.

ON FETISHES

Fetishes are another avenue for experiences you typically do not have and identifying new selves as you go along with the kinky shit at hand.

For a solid hunk of last year, I had sex with Jaskov, a brilliant rapper. I discovered that the only time he ever seemed withdrawn while talking to me—he was a world-class yammerer—was when, after we’d been boning for a fortnight, we started talking about whether we had any offbeat sexual proclivities.

“I have this… one thing,” he admitted, sitting on top of my desk at 5 a.m. (my personal fetish: fellow nocturnes). He was so reluctant to vocalize his secret outright that he had me guess it. I
tried in earnest for a while, but quickly cycled through the exceedingly common BDSM and gender-flipping stuff to no avail.

I would have to think harder. “Is it dungeons, but Dungeons and Dragons themed? No? Ben wa balls embossed with the faces of our founding fathers? Nah? Fine—it’s drag, but we’re wearing our normal clothes and SAYING we’re in drag? Toe parties? What’s a toe party, if yes? Are you attracted to snowpeople? I could put a carrot on my nose if you were into that.
Jas-kovvvv!
Are you into girls sitting cross-legged on super-burritos and wriggling their eyebrows lasciviously à la Groucho???!!!” I would have been down for all of this. (Especially the last one, as long as we ordered another for me as compensation.)

He pointed to my nose.

“Nostrils?” I said uncomprehendingly.

“Kind of. I like watching girls sneeze.” He looked terrified by this admission.

I laughed, but not because this was worthy of mockery: I was
delighted
—and avid to begin. In college I could
absolutely
sneeze! I was the insufferable snuffler in every lecture hall scoring standardized tests with my six-part gasping and honking fits! (I get that I have now alienated every other sexual prospect I may have had outside of our boy Jaskov.) My dreadful sinuses were, in fact, an asset to somebody?!

“Dude! I am like the Big, Bad Wolf if he had allergies instead of legendary lung capacity,” I said.

He stared. “Yes… I’ve noticed.”

I considered this surreptitious style of pervin’: “That must be both a convenient AND an inconvenient turn-on: I never thought about it before, but girls are sneezing everywhere.”

“Yeah, like, you know how germy the subway is? I think I’m the only person alive whose favor that works in—except I try not to gawk, since it’s impolite, and because they feel like it’s because I think they’re doing something gross when I’m the one who’s guilty on that front.” (He is a good, if peculiar, dude.)

I wondered what other boners I might have unwittingly
launched by guilelessly hanging out in the world—are people into untied shoes? (Is THAT what a toe party is?) Nail-biting? Smoking? Lipstick on front teeth? (I googled it, and the answer is yes on all counts. Take that,
gracefulness
: Turns out I’m perfect at sex after all!)

That night/morning, Jaskov taught me how to twist up snatches of tissues into soft, pointed utensils that induced loud outbursts when I prodded at my nose with them. Privately, I thought this was hilarious, this employment of tissues to aid and abet sneezes rather than deal with their aftermath. How beautifully backward.

I’d sit in my bed in low-cut T-shirts, pouting and feigning “a really bad cold coming on,” and then pester my sinuses with a paper wand. Jaskov watched me, mesmerized by the preemptive, sharp sighs inward, then absolutely lost his mind when I had to sneeze. It was a colossal amount of fun. So, too, was watching his jaw drop, as promised, on public transportation the few times we left the house together. I knew that when he said, “God bless you,” to me, he truly meant it.

Okay. I realize I have just relayed a strange tale of having sex with someone who got off on weak immune systems. But we had a great time, and since I liked making him come, it wound up turning me on, too. Isn’t that wild? Sharing a fetish with a partner is a mad generous act on the part of their owners.

Only total jerk-offs, who deserve only to jerk off, meet “confessions” of Jaskov’s kind with derision instead of gratitude. Even if you’re not inclined to test-drive their proclivities, isn’t it cool that they trust, respect, and find you sexy enough to let you know about it, even if “it”
is
callipygian honeys taking a seat on Tex-Mex delicacies?

It’s so easy to feel shy. No one wants to seem like a WEIRDO, especially when it comes to their sexual fitness. That self-containment impulse is what keeps people from better-than-just-adequate physical coupledom. Here’s a tiny primer on how to introduce your
shameful sexual horror-show behavior
(calm
down; it’s not; I’m fucking with you) to someone you’re all sexed out about. And what to say (and abstain from saying) if someone is admirable enough to entrust you with theirs—that is, as long as they do it with your feelings in mind. Something uplifting to keep in your distorted mind (again: this is not a real thing) as you read: You know who definitely has at least 764 unique fetishes? Prince. I would go to a toe party of
his
any day of the week, no question.

If you are a freaq with a
sensuous secret
, you might wonder how to impart this information to your intended without humiliating yourself and/or discomfiting them. Ostensibly, you’re breaking out your fetish with someone you trust enough to sleep with. That’s a start! You can totally have individuated oddball sex straight out of the gate, but it’s easier for me to work up to the really buck activities I fantasize about, no matter how SEX-POSITIVE (barf!) I and a partner may express to each other that we are.

I consider, too, that more casual flings, as far as they know, volunteered themselves for straightforward sex. While there’s a chance that they’d be down to try other things, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t feel cornered by my asking for them. I prefer to steadily hint my way in the door by testing out the tamest aspects of my fetishes. When I’m ready, I then say, “You know how we sometimes do [X THING] when we’re fucking? I like that a lot, and I’m wondering if you’d be into doing more—like [X OTHER THING].”

As a consummate layabout (one of my many bona fides in this capacity: I am typing this to you facedown on an N’SYNC blanket with mysterious hot sauce stains giving Justin inflamed-looking psoriasis), I’m super amenable to fetishes that handily take a looming task off my Sriracha-laden plate. I was once in a relationship with a man who liked to depilate me. Joe explained his hobbyist aesthetician career thusly: “I’m obsessed with vaginas because they’re so beautiful, so I like to see them as closely as I can. Tending to them makes me feel like I’m at the service of
the thing I love most in the world.” I was like,
Oh, word? Hold on while I grab the shaving cream for you real quick, because I hate doing it myself!

We’re adults, you know? The whole point of being an adult is discovering the weirdnesses of others with love instead of fear. There are so many favorite fixations of regular, hot people: humiliation, forced orgasms, voyeurism and exhibitionism, feet, and choking/erotic asphyxiation. And those are all pretty basic!

THREE EXTRA-SPECIAL FETISHISTIC FIREBRANDS