Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age (2 page)

nothing like a weekly salary, the independence that comes with paying the rent and buying groceries, even if the money barely covers costs, to dispel the self-image of “little girl.” Put another way, depending on someone else for the roof over your head and food on the table puts a big dent in creative sex. At least, this is what I’ve come to believe. It’s not necessarily conscious, thought-out reasoning; it just goes with the territory: “I pay my own way. I want sex my own way.” If orgasm is the state of let- ting go, I can let go because I’m in charge of me.

For over thirty years, I’ve been writing about eros, love, jeal- ousy, beauty, envy, all subjects that invariably lead back to child- hood. Nothing is more immutable than what happened in those years when we had no power at all. What we did have was to- tal
absorption
. We couldn’t control what to take in or leave out. Unable to feed or clothe ourselves, totally dependent on others, they left their prints all over us.

The 1970s, that very special era in which
My Secret Garden

was written, possess continued relevance. They were profoundly influential years, not just regarding sex but all forms of behavior. The top of the list is an army of women who moved out of the home and into every sphere and endeavor that men had owned up to then.

The revolutionary shift in the fundamental truths of what men and women were, how they saw themselves, and what work defined them gave me permission to write about something that had clearly been on my mind and was part of my own sexuality. I loved original work and always had sexual fantasies. As I’ve noted before, when I approached several eminent therapists and psychoanalysts and asked their opinion of my research, I was re- peatedly told: “Women do not have sexual fantasies. Men do.”

I was confused but not discouraged. I had collected a variety of women’s erotic daydreams. We were a new world of sisters, a secret society, about to go public. And if a woman didn’t initially know what a sexual fantasy was, I’d simply tell her my own and the curtains would part. “Oh, is
that
a sexual fantasy!? Sure, I’ve had those.” She’d had them for years, used them to reach orgasm, and then, being a “good girl,” swallowed the forbidden thought. So, here we are, dear friends, a new century, a new age of equality—and what is the overwhelming theme of fantasy in this book, for both men and women?
Domination
. Not domi-

nating but
being dominated
. Relinquishing power in a world that

offers so much.

Women’s worlds used to be limited by Do’s and Don’ts. Even we intelligent, danger-loving girls
had
fantasies but didn’t own them. We secretly longed for a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. We enjoyed him but often didn’t tell the other girls. His “forbiddenness” made our secret thoughts even that much more thrilling.

This book is the first in which I’m including both men’s and women’s fantasies. In a world where we are able to duplicate one another’s jobs, clothes, almost everything in the dance of life, I thought it might be interesting to see where we run parallel in erotic dreams. Do women now imagine themselves seduc- ing their favorite sex objects and do men dream of being taken, often against their will?

Has the Internet leveled the playing field? Can the virtuous woman easily change her identity and take to bed a different stranger every night or anonymously chat online, satisfying both their fantasies?

We lie, pretend, often unaware. Riddled with fear, jealousy,

insecurity, who has not projected confidence? To some degree, we are the serial killer personifying the pillar of the commu- nity. How much more has the Internet opened the door to our fantasy selves—a cyber world of infinite possibilities? Reese, a sixty-five-year-old gay man, admits that “through the miracle of the Internet, I am now a super-hot eighteen-year-old blonde cheerleader.”

It is hard to believe there ever was a time when we weren’t fully aware of our erotic reveries. But sexual freedom is never fully won. When
My Secret Garden
was published in 1973,
Ms.
magazine wrote that “Friday is no feminist,” and
Cosmopolitan
’s

favorite male psychoanalyst echoed—emphasizing again—“Men have sexual fantasies; women do not.” Although this was the past, it’s wise to remember that sexual repression never sleeps. Never take sexual freedom for granted.

Eventually, the pendulum may swing back. It always has. How short a time it’s been that women came to own their erotic fan- tasies. Thirty, forty years, a drop in the bucket.

Don’t presume that these dark days are behind us; so powerful is the image of the out-of-control orgasmic woman that it turns off many people, scares both women and men. We may put a woman in the White House but not a woman who comes across as powerfully sexual.

I believe that sexual fantasy is a natural, healthy part of us, an evolved dimension used to aid our pleasure and excitement. Often, it’s a necessity for sustaining long-term sexual relations. I remember long ago someone saying dismissively: “I don’t need fantasy. My sex life is just fine without it.” But fantasies don’t have to make up for something that is “missing.” They can add extra helium to a balloon that wants to soar. For some of us, the

imagery comes unbidden. We close our eyes and let “sex” and “fantasy” join in concert to remove us from the real life that holds us to Earth. Now, here, alone with our lover, the sight, smell, and touch of his body begins to work on us.

The forbidden pleasures, the stolen watermelons in our youth, and the kisses in the parked cars of adolescence—in fantasy, we spread our legs for the stranger who has just blown into town or we imagine the last man who undressed us with his eyes, not our husband, our “legal” mate, no, we may love him, but for orgasm, we need the bad guy, the dark, illicit situation, because that’s how we were raised, conditioned, taught to think of the sex we stole.

Over the years, the voices of the men and women in this book have been filed away in my subconscious. Even when printed on the pages of my books, your voices whisper in my ear. I like to keep it that way, our bond, like the tight allegiances of childhood where we told our best friend “everything.”

I am ready to dive back into your “confessions”—perhaps not the correct word. But I do get the feeling that while you may begin with a “public” story of your life, I am aware of that special moment when you close the door of whatever room you are in and begin to confide in me what you have never revealed before. You have been my teachers, my familiars, letting me into your erotic thoughts, private tales many of you say “you’ve never told anyone before.” The first women who came into my secret gar- den over thirty years ago were breaking the law, saying out loud the thoughts and feelings never before admitted. I often had a sense of looking over their shoulders as they wrote, emboldened

to name their thoughts by other women’s voices.

Slowly, the chorus of your voices has grown bolder. That so

many of the themes of fantasies in this particular book deal with domination—
being
dominated—has certain logic. The dance between men and women in the modern world has changed. I am speaking of the erotic dance where men once led absolutely. As I’ve said, women are formidable. We always were. In the past, we simply denied it.

DOmiNaTiON

d o m i N a T i o N

Nothing has made me more a traveler in the state of forbidden eros, a lover of danger, than the mystery of my father, whom I never knew, never saw, not even a photo of him, and of whom not a word was ever spoken. Silence and secrecy surrounded him to the degree that “forbidden” became who he was and, by extension, other men too. When people asked in a friendly fashion, “Where is your father, darling?” I’d answer politely, “My daddy’s dead.”

He wasn’t. I found this out at the age of twenty, directly after his death in the mental institute where he had been commit- ted not long after my birth. Given the secrets in my home, I’d become an incurable sleuth, opening every door, especially those marked “Do Not Enter.” I’d find a way into neighbors’ houses up and down the street, often by way of a cellar door, a screen door left ajar. I was five or six, and ours was a small town populated by kind and gentle people. In such a place, everyone had time for a little girl on a quest, and I never thought twice about following a friendly elderly couple home for a Coca-Cola and a piece of cake nor did they scold me for opening doors and drawers.

I looked everywhere for him, for a trace, a photo, some clue, though I was never aware of my goal. Had someone asked, “What are you looking for?” I’d have answered, “Oh, nothing, just looking.” It helped that my town belonged to another era. In retrospect, it seems covered with a sheer layer of magic dust. When I was unable to find even a trace of him, I turned my curiosity to the waterfront. We were on the southern coast, and

freighters came and sailed away daily, just a block from our house. I’ve always seen it as a place lost in time.

My absent father had an influence over me unlike that of any- one else. My pleasure of writing about men, women, sex, forbid- den topics, came from him, from my search and eventual need to find in other men what I knew he would have given me. My erotic fantasies of men, my interest in sex as far back as I can remember, all this was heightened by my father, the mystery.

Because the cocktail hour was a staple of life, come six o’clock, our house was a merry place. I would crawl into the lap of a naval officer, inhale the scent of him, light his cigarette, charm him with my song, do a little dance, and pay no attention to my mother’s repeated “Leave the gentleman alone, dear.” But the gentleman never seemed to mind. How utterly fascinating men were! So relaxed, so easy in their skin. What was their secret, these people in trousers, around whom my mother and all the other women acted differently, all the while pretending they weren’t. Something was in the air when men were around, and both men and women looked at one another as though they had a secret. And who bet- ter to pick up on this unnamed dance between the grown-ups at the cocktail hour than an overly curious, precocious child?

For me to admit that it made a difference, not having a daddy, that I was sad or that I ever wondered about him was unthink- able. Though no one ever said the word, I knew my role was to protect my mother and not ask. Where did I put my dreams of him when I was little, this constant protector, strong, hand- some, kind-hearted with a permanent shoulder for me to rest my head on? The fantasy of being chased by him as he became the “hungry monster” to my gleeful screams of terror, catching me, tickling me, throwing me in the air? When I grew older and

a boy held me in his arms, the missing man in my life clicked in. How I loved being held by a boy, his scent, his wanting me, the whole dream state of what I called “love,” though it was surely in great part eros.

There are more of us today, fatherless children growing up without a male presence, an atmosphere where we might take in the exciting difference between the sexes. Today, births to un- married women constitute 36%, reaching a record high, not to mention the near 50% of marriages that end in divorce. Children are sponges, growing, changing, absorbing everything, so much more than adults want to realize. My search for this mysterious man led a search for myself. Had he been present, I undoubt- edly would have settled down, married, raised a family, with no consideration to writing about sex.

In the ’60s and ’70s, the publishing world had thrown open its door to women and was signing us up like recruits. Editors were eager for books on women’s lives, interior and exterior. We were like an undiscovered continent. The world finally wanted to know: “What do women want sexually? How does eros feel to a woman inside and out?”

To this day, I am thrilled to have been a part of those hal- cyon years when we women came out, came alive, discovered the clitoris and our sexual fantasies—to own them. Our sexual independence—knowing that we control and are responsible for our sexual destiny—feeds into all other freedoms.

Knowing that we no longer had to wait for a man to tele- phone—for him to give us an orgasm—that we could do this for ourselves, and bring him to orgasm, too, was a source of energy to be used in every endeavor of our lives. Owning my sexuality has changed how I walk, talk, and certainly how I write.

The fact remains that in real life and in fantasy, domination remains one of the few forbidden acts that still sexually excites. It is not pain that is wanted—that is reserved for the chapter on S&M—but a powerlessness, a chance to relieve ourselves of all responsibility for the delicious, forbidden sex we crave. We who reach for this kind of imagery in order to let go of the iron self- control that stands in the way of orgasm are wanting a cocktail that “knocks me out beyond my control!”

F a N T a s i e s o F B o N d a g e

“Those Ropes Are Too Tight! Thank You!”
Today, many of us reach for erotic scenes that refuse to take “No!” We crave a source of power and restraint—to keep us “grounded” even as we soar. Listen to the voices in this book and hear how early these feelings begin, often from men and women who have never been abused, neglected, or abandoned. Where do the fantasies start? When we are pinned down in our crib, strapped into our high chair, our stroller, the bed where our diapers are changed, our cries for freedom are heard by a loving mother who gazes down on us, gently singing, comforting, but refusing to set us free from our restraints. Or we see an angry mother, frustrated, tormented by our pleas for help, binding us in an attempt to hold her world together. Then, there are the abusive caretakers—people who should never have or be respon- sible for children. They hit our hands to keep us from struggling for freedom, ignoring, reprimanding our cries as we, in our most helpless state, have to believe she/he loves us, that this is for our own good.