The Indian culture depicted in
The Kama Sutra
clearly placed great value on sexual expression and fulfillment. Erotic pleasure was considered divine, and the desire to provide it was every bit as consuming as the desire to receive it. Still,
The Kama Sutra
has a decidedly male perspective. While much attention is given to the techniques of pleasuring a woman, it is obvious the information recorded here was gained through observation rather than conversation. It is unlikely that the women on whom these writings are based were actually consulted about what it is that puts them into a divine state. Let me give you an example. Part Two of
The Kama Sutra
is devoted to "amorous advances." The following is excerpted from the chapter on embraces:
Lying on his side, either he rests his best limb on her as on a brood mare, or else lying on top of her, the part of his body below the navel resting on the girl's pubis, he presses his instrument against her without penetrating her. At that moment, the girl's sex opens out, overexcited, particularly if she has a large organ. Thrusting his groin firmly against the girl's pubis, he seizes her by the hair and stays crouched over her in order to scratch, bite, and strike her.
Does that sound like something pleasurable to you? Even those who enjoy sex a little bit rough at times, or who view spanking as something erotic, wouldn't take kindly to being pinned down like a brood mare in order to be scratched, bitten, and hit. Still, I don't think that women at the time, unlike in modern India, were as disrespected as they were misunderstood. In spite of such slights toward women, in Vatsyayana's original version of
The Kama Sutra
, women were nonetheless held in high esteem. The book makes it very clear that, from a man's perspective, being desired by a woman was considered an honor, and the seduction of a woman was a form of art. However, art, as we all well know, is and always has been a very subjective phenomenon. As the saying goes, One man's trash is another man's treasure. Or, as the case may be, one man's perspective isn't necessarily another woman's pleasure.
My reason for sharing this particular excerpt from
The Kama Sutra
was to show you how easy it is to get irrelevant information in the area of sexual technique. And while I learned a lot about fourth-century Indian culture and picked up some very vivid tips on positions from it,
The Kama Sutra
was neither what I expected, nor what I needed. And so my quest for practical sexual knowledge continued.
Secret from Lou
’
s Archive
Ways women can gauge certain male features: I) the length from the tip of his index finger to the base of the palm of his hand indicates erect penis size; 2) the longer or wider the moon on his thumbnail, the longer or wider his penis will be. As one seminar attendee said, "It makes the ride on the subway so much more interesting!"
I soon found other books, some of which provided a modicum of useful information. I was in search of information about what men found most exciting and why, and perhaps even more importantly, what techniques were known to be successful, in easy-to-understand explanations, telling me exactly how sexual acts were done. Where did people put their thumbs? What did they do with their tongues? What were they actually doing? In bookstores and libraries, mostly what I saw were tomes on sexual history with pictures or drawings of men and women in positions that seemed unnatural, uncomfortable, and in no way right for me. Even if I could have followed the accompanying instructions, I felt certain one or both of us would have ended up in traction much sooner than in sexual bliss.
In all fairness, there were a few bright lights on the horizon. Books such as
The Sensuous Woman
by "J,"
The Happy Hooker
by Xaviera Hollander, and Alex Comfort's
The Joy of Sex
presented information in a way that appealed to me as if sexual interaction and the desire to be good at it was something perfectly natural for everyone. In these books, the bodies depicted seemed like they belonged to normal people, and the sexual scenarios also seemed realistic, like they possibly could have taken place somewhere other than Fantasy Island. And I did learn something: before reading
The Sensuous Woman,
I had never even heard of oral sex!
But as much as I enjoyed all three of these books, reading them was like watching television on mute: the pictures were helpful, but there weren't enough specific details on how to achieve these results in my own bedroom.
The next place I went for practical advice was to the movies. While Hollywood does a good job of providing ideas on how to create a sensual atmosphere in scenes in some of the R-rated movies, when it comes to actual sex scenes, directors cut away to exuberant facial expressions, followed by two people basking in the afterglow, without offering a single lesson in how that radiant afterglow was achieved. When the movies ended, I felt frustrated by the mere thought of the actors having information that I didn't. The fact that the men and women involved were only acting did little to quench my thirst for their knowledge, whether it was real or imaginary.
In my search for sexual know-how, I turned next to pornography. This is a $1-billion-a-year business and the majority of consumers are men. Therefore, porn movies are a logical place to research what turns men on sexually. And I must say, you do get to see what's going on in porn films. Unlike in mainstream movies, an X rating pretty much guarantees that all the action takes place
on top of
the sheets, rather than underneath them. But after watching a few of them, I found the films all began to merge and look alike and I was as bored as I was saddened.
I was turned off by the way women were represented in most of the films. It wasn't that what they were doing felt wrong to me, for I expected to see explicit sexual acts being done in a variety of positions and to hear language not found in my everyday vocabulary. As far as I'm concerned, at times there is a place for even the raunchiest sex between consenting adults. Rather, I was disappointed in the total lack of romance, love, caring, and respect between the men and women depicted in the films.
The sex in porn movies is all performance with no connection of spirits. The men and women barely have personalities. I was sincerely open to looking at all the ways I could be sexually masterful and alluring, but that didn't mean being reduced to a sexual mechanic. Nor did it include sharing my body or my man with other people. That would defeat the purpose of sexual intimacy entirely.
For me, there are at least two problems with porn movies as an education source: first, the objectification of women completely destroys any sense of the intimacy most of us crave in our sexual encounters; and second, porn movies present only a male view, portraying what visually turns men on. There's a small problem: they forgot to consider consulting 50 percent of the participants—us women.
When I have asked men what they get from watching porn films, they tell me they use them to "get the juices flowing" or "to get ideas for positions." One seasoned infomercial producer told me, "I use them to compare how I'm doing, and measure my performance." But for us women, using porn as a guide to finding out what we like and are comfortable with is at best, inaccurate and at worst, laughable.
So again, I had struck out in my quest to find a useful and appropriate source for further sexual education. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I really wanted to be good in bed, but not at the expense of my values. I hadn't found anywhere that, for lack of a better term, nice upstanding women could go to in order to learn how to express their love for a man in a physical manner, or to have their sexual questions answered. It just wasn't done.
Finally, at my wit's end, I decided to go straight to the source: enter my dear friend, Bryan. The truth of the matter was that the forever love I mentioned earlier and I had long since broken up, but I was optimistic that at
some
point in my life, I'd get another crack at love and romance. And I wanted to be ready. I could talk to Bryan about anything, and his being gay meant that the subject wasn't the least bit dangerous for either of us. In other words, there was no chance of his leering at me and saying, "I'll show you, baby" He empathized with my problem and wanted to point me in the right direction.
Over several cups of café latte at his house, Bryan asked me what it was that I wanted to know, and why I hadn't asked my boyfriend what he wanted in bed. I said to him, "Bryan, how can you ask for what you want to know, when you don't even know what that is?" I told him that I was comfortable with my knowledge about intercourse, but it was the
other
stuff men liked that I wanted more information on.
The more information I have, the higher my comfort level, and the higher my comfort level, the 1 more confidence I have. I knew that with more knowledge on oral and manual techniques, I'd be able to express my love more creatively, and in a way that better represented the depth of my feelings. Bryan didn't laugh or make fun of me. All he said was, "Then you've got to know one thing: for me, the key to great sex is in the foreplay" He explained that when it comes to making love, intercourse is just the tip of the iceberg, and that the foundation of amazing lovemaking lies in foreplay. That's where the great lovers are separated from the mediocre ones. This made sense to me. I knew foreplay was the key to exciting sex for
women
, so why shouldn't that be true for men?
As we sat in his house over lattes, Bryan picked up his spoon and told me to do the same with mine. Pretending it was a penis, lie showed me what feels good to men. He explained which areas of the penis are extra sensitive, requiring a gentle touch, as well as those areas where more pressure should be applied for maximum results. He also showed me some creative things to do with my hands, tongue, and throat that would create a variety of sensations in just the right places. Bryan's explanations were clear and logical. The great part was that I soon found they didn't suffer in the translation from spoon to penis.
That first real sexual lesson was back in 1985 and to this day it was the best latte I ever had. There was one particular move Bryan showed me that I can honestly say has
never
failed me. And all the women in my seminars who have tried it on
their
men say exactly the same thing. I call it "Ode to Bryan," in memory of my dear friend Bryan who has since passed away (You'll find out precisely how the "Ode to Bryan" is done in Chapter 6.) There is no way I could have imagined what kind of impact that conversation with Bryan would have on my life. I certainly never dreamed it would turn into a career. But the transformation in my way of being with and relating to men was profound. It provided me with the confidence I needed to explore my own sexuality. For a long time, I kept the information to myself. It wasn't intentional; I guess I just didn't realize or think about how many other women could relate to the same frustrations when it came to sexual know-how.
One night in 1993 while visiting with a couple of girlfriends, I got to talking with them about sex, our love lives, and men in general. Somewhere in the midst of the conversation, one of them mentioned that the sex had not been everything she had hoped it would be between her and her fiancé. The problem, she said, was hers. Here she was, about to get married, and she had little confidence in her sexual ability beyond intercourse. She was reluctant to try anything at which she might fail. My other friend empathized, sheepishly admitting that she didn't know exactly what to do, either. They both said lack of knowledge made them feel awkward and inhibited in bed. But what were they going to do? There wasn't a place where women who valued their reputations and self-respect could go to learn sexual techniques.
Yes, there is
, I told them, wondering to myself if Bryan was looking down from heaven at that moment. Right here. I got out three spoons and began to talk. I showed them everything Bryan had shown me, and added a few moves I'd come up with myself. We laughed until the wee hours of the morning, exchanging ideas and sexual anecdotes about all the wrong information we'd gotten in the past. Nothing could have prepared me for what was to follow. Within a week I got phone calls from both of my friends, saying that the
things I showed them that night had actually led to dramatic improvements in their sex lives already! They referred to me as The Kama Lou Tra and said I should consider going into the business of teaching nice women about sex.
I became interested in learning about and enjoying good sex, but with HIV and AIDS an unfortunate reality I also wanted to know how to have sex safely. Soon I was holding informal focus groups and the idea of writing a book on safe sex in the nineties began to emerge. In the focus groups, I asked women what questions they had on the subject of sex. Their responses blew me away: I had not been alone in either my curiosity or my lack of knowledge about sex. And while they, too, were concerned about sexual safety, they were, like me, interested in sexual mastery. They believed that being a great lover was very much a part of being a great woman.
That's how it all started. The evolution into The Sexuality Seminars began slowly, with those friends telling other friends about the information they received. Pretty soon I was giving seminars several nights a week after work. After a while, the phone was ringing off the hook and I was getting so many requests that I ended up quitting my regular job and committing full time to developing and giving the workshops. I have to admit that at first, I wasn't comfortable with this new image of myself. It took some getting used to the fact that I was suddenly an expert on sex. Today, as a sex educator, I give seminars all over the country and throughout Canada. The business has expanded beyond women to include seminars for men, couples, and specialty groups such as bridal showers, bachelor parties, and birthdays.