The magic bean. The love button. The hooded lady. The bald man in your boat.
I refer, of course, to the clitoris – the weird and wonderful thingy-ma-bob hopelessly devoted to making fireworks shoot out of our fannies. And with that as its first and sole function, imagine my concern when I consider its sometimes seemingly redundant role in my sex life. Yup, I possess the one and only human organ designed purely for pleasure alone, yet it’s still only my male counterpart who is climaxing with ease in between the sheets.
Here’s where you might expect me to veer off into a rant about how I’m shagging a guy who selfishly neglects the bald man in my boat because he’s too busy utilising the beautiful vessel to his own ends. Wrong. In fact, I’m currently in a loving, considerate, long-term relationship and – believe me – he tries. It’s becoming commonplace to note that orgasms from penetrative sex alone elude a large amount of women, but my issue is a little more extensive than that. My boyfriend has never managed to give me a real orgasm by his own work – be it by tongue, hand or the big guy downstairs. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the ride. I really do. I’ve just never quite reached that final destination I discover when I’m, er, driving myself.
Were I a third-party fellow feminist in the situation, an outsider looking in, I would probably shout something along the lines of, “GET IT TOGETHER AND DEMAND AN ORGASM, WOMAN! DON’T LET HIM STOP UNTIL YOU’VE HAD YOURS! Vshhhh mmm *hiccup*.” (There would inevitably be slurring, because women tend to discuss these things when they’re at least half a bottle of wine down).
The thing is, my boyfriend is all too aware that my sexual pleasure is just as important – if not more – than his own. He can go down on me for hours and may well have developed arthritis from all the diligent bean-flicking. We’ve even tried a bizarre sex position called the Passion Pretzel; full details can be found here, but the two main points to bear in mind are A) sadly it involves no real live pretzels and B) neither does it fulfill Cosmopolitan’s exaltations of optimum clit-stimulation. It will leave you both with some impressive carpet burns though. Anyway, the fact is, my shortage of orgasms is not for lack of trying.
At this point, you may be wondering whether my boyfriend is fully aware of the extent of the issue. For the most part, I would not condone faking orgasms – boys are already taught from so young of an age that they run the world so, as an Instagram post I once saw so eloquently put it, “if he can’t make your c**t feel like a shooting star then, for God’s sake, let him know about it.” Whoever said it (I think it was Byron?), I whole-heartedly agree. And my boyfriend and I have engaged in plenty of communication about how and how not to get me off. But there have been one or two occasions when I’ve been caught in the moment and – sorry – I have faked it.
This is not because I’m complying with the patriarchal trivialisation of female sexual pleasure, rather because my boyfriend tries really bloody hard and I love him and I do want to make him feel good about himself sometimes. I’ll never make a regular thing of it, but I don’t think there’s much harm in having faked it a couple of times as a little reward for his rigorous efforts.
Besides, like I said, I really am having a damn good time when we do it. Feeling that close with someone, whispering naughty things in each other’s ears and writhing around in our sweaty birthday suits – it’s all-round hilarious fun. It’s just that final release that doesn’t always prove easy to reach for me. See, the annoying thing for us girls is that the clit is a complex one to please. Not the same for boys. Touch a dick in any way you like and, chances are, sooner or later it’s going to go off. I mean seriously – you could wank it in and out of your double-chin creases and sing a Grease medley down his jap’s eye. You’d still probably manage it.
So where does this leave me? Am I condemned to a life devoid of sweet, sweet orgasms? Pfft, ‘ave a laugh mate. So he hasn’t worked out how to strum my guitar as well as I can yet – he’s only human. The music lessons will continue, and in the mean time my optimum enjoyment of sex certainly shan’t be sacrificed. We simply introduce other tools to help get me along, like a bullet, or my own hands. This works wonders, and it can actually lead to really sexy ways of mixing things up so that both parties involved can mutually enjoy the most beautiful sensations of bumping uglies.
All in all, I can happily say that the bald man in my boat is getting along just fine. You keep doing you, little buddy.