Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 771
May 22, 2016
Every mistake I’ve made in bed — and why there’s no reason to be shamed by any of them
Catherine Keener and Steve Carell in "The 40 Year Old Virgin"
I am loath to take part in the narrative trope that conveys, “Young women who have sex, in doing so, are embarking on a wacky, embarrassing, ill-thought-out comedy of errors,” without some recognition of how cool and worthwhile casual sex can be. Sexual autonomy is often presented as “confessional”—either overly comic or overly melodramatic, and when a female sexual youth is described as a series of “misadventures,” it rankles me. Upon taking in movies, magazines, and the anecdotes of others about the so-called bad behavior of a wayward woman they know, I so often feel like screaming, “She didn’t lampoon or victimize herself—she fucked someone!”
I have never once seen a young dude subjected to the same hand-wringing or false pity that his female counterparts are so regularly met with, or a guy who, in every other beat of his story about a physical encounter, feels the need to giggle or apologize it into an acceptable shape for his listeners. If a woman has had sex that she likes: Enough with the jokey contrition. Sex doesn’t have to be bad to be good.
Just as destructive would be recounting a sexual past that’s been edited and finessed into a montage of soft-focus orgasms in which I am played by a young Natalie Wood, except with butt implants. I can’t pretend that all the sex I’ve had was that of a swanlike pinup sans an overbite that makes head risky if I’m not careful. Making mistakes is one of my very favorite things in this life, because then you become aware of how they were forged, and how to avoid them in the future. The key is not letting them define, discount, or dissuade you from the superb aspects of your sex life, or even seeing them as extricable from those. Fucking up is how you go pro. No need to be abashed or apologetic about that.
When it comes to the escaping most perplexing quagmires of sexual propriety, like how to contend with unexpected bodily effluvia, noises, behaviors, and getting caught masturbating by your roommate’s new girlfriend Marie (sorry, Marie—this Hitachi is truly thunderous and I didn’t hear you come in), act under one law: Instead of bugging out about your OWN potential humiliation and what this means about your sexual aptitude/worthiness, think about how to put the other person at ease about what is, in the grand context of life, history, and space, a nothing-event that you will have mostly forgotten about in a few weeks expeditiously. What is the gallant thing to do? Communicating that sense of calm and contextual awareness to your fuck-pal! Preserving your sense of personal security and confidence is easy when you consider that blights on what really should have resembled swan-sex enjoyed by fat-butted movie starlets on le Francebeach are also enjoyed by those same people, who are, by the way, fictitious.
If someone shames you for any natural/unexpected/otherwise potentially mortifying phenomenon occurring from what you’re doing together, kick them to the curb with no compunction: Basic self-worth demands that you shouldn’t be made to feel guilty if the sex you’re having results in unwieldy bodily goings-on. No by-product of sex is repulsive enough to negate the commodities it manufactures: recreational sweetness and connection. And orgasms.
If you find yourself actually hurt or otherwise medically dented-up by any kind of sexual contact, locate real medical care. Though you can pull a mental assist using the following list of what to do should your pride be jeopardized, it does not stand in for a health professional. That said, here’s everything you shouldn’t be embarrassed about.
Queefing
Queefs are the colloquial name for the sound vaginas expel when vacuoles of air are trapped in them and then come out. This usually happens when something is inserted into them, and the likelihood increases if that something is coming from an unusual angle or at a variegated speed. Queefs are normal and inevitable when you’re having interesting vaginal sex, and should be seen as a casual confirmation of that, not a ghastly interruption—or even something worth commenting on at all. Doing so is like admitting, “I have limited experience with etiquette.” Some alternate lines of thinking include…
If you’re the queefer: Oh, a sound happened. Who cares?
If you’re the bequeefed: Oh, a sound happened. Who cares? You do!
Take it as a compliment. To the untrained ear, queefs might not seem harmoanius with the sighs of pleasure you’re more used to classifying as evidence that your work is appreciated, but if you’re smart, you’ll come to hear these as hot.
Caught in the Act (Like the Time Marie Caught Me Masturbating)
If you live with people other than the ones you’re having sex with, they’re liable to know more of the intricacies of your goings-on than you’d both prefer, and vice versa. However vigilant you think you’re being, there’s always room for surprises here (especially if there’s a meager amount of actual room in your home): It’s possible you’ll be caught in some compromising situation.
There are plenty of settings in which you can be witnessed in flagrante delicto. Public sex is the best precisely because of the risk of getting caught…until the rare occasion on which that risk is realized. And if you escape this life without someone interrupting you as you jerk off, it should go in your obituary with the rest of your notable achievements.
You could be apprehended in one of these ways when you think no one else is home…and are dead wrong. Or maybe you and your partner are staying in a foreign living space with others for a big event, like a wedding, family reunion, or competitive spell-a-thon, got a little drunk after, and badly misjudged the window of private time you’d have back at the base. In any case: You’ve been caught, and your face is mad red. Regain your composure and maybe even, if you’re a halfway decent actor, pass off your indelicate intertwining as a more chaste entanglement, by…
Considering your setting: Is it totally “inappropriate” for you to be boning in this context? Do you know you might harsh someone else’s good time (e.g., are you at a christening or something?). Then maybe don’t take off your clothes, or do so only with extreme caution. I don’t think it’s always bad to have sex in places you shouldn’t, as that will probably make for some of the most memorable sex of your life, but draw the line at having it somewhere that’s actively disrespectful to others (most of the time).
Consider your potential audience: If you find you’re not hurting anyone by being a brazen public-sex-having menace (e.g., a national park ranger is not going to be galled to the gills that you’ve deigned to desecrate a redwood with your grapplings—something no one has ever, ever done before). Many other non-forester people in non-woodland surroundings, if they have senses of humor, will laugh this off, and some might even be like, “Good for you—get yours.” That leans heavily on the age and relationship factors in play here: Your mom, unless she is simultaneously unshakably cool and kind of alarming, boundary-wise, will not duck out like “Soz!” and then text you for the blow-by-blow later on, whereas your best friend might be more inclined in this way.
Above all else, try lying: You don’t have to be an actor of Nude-Brando proportions, but you do have to put on a little show about what it was you were doing that was very much not sex, no way, no how. No one WANTS to go through the excruciating conversation about the fact that they recently saw someone’s butt for all it truly was. Do you know how badly the interloper is probably wishing you’ll fill out the tail end of the phony statement, “We were just…” rather than having to accept the reality that they were watching you get some? Lying is the stepladder out of any potential sinkhole of embarrassment on the culprit’s end, sure, but it’s also a relief on the other end. Blaming clothing-related mishaps helps with any apparent nakedness: You were fixing a broken button on your partner’s pants! They noticed your zipper was broken, and knew they had to step in to help! You were cleaning spilled punch off of their bra with your tongue! That is all VERY believable, as long as everyone is uncomfortable enough.
Premature Ejaculation
I have never understood the impulse to knock a premature ejaculator, but I do get it! From what I’ve noticed, no guy wants to be remembered as the one who couldn’t last—the loveless phrase “two-pump chump,” which was popular among my high school girlfriends, whooshes to mind. Much like dudes who aren’t hung, these people will usually put extra muscle into making sure you feel amazing with other parts of their anatomies. This is great news if you don’t get off on penetration alone—so, this is great news for many, many people. If someone is looking to reframe how you characterize them sexually, they probably know the surefire way to go about doing that: giving you life-changing head.
Not Enough Lube/Not Fitting
I once had sex with a person whose genitalia fit so poorly into mine that getting him in me was like trying to hammer a bent-up screw into a sugar doughnut. I had no idea why this could be, or that it could even happen!
We were frustrated because we had been involved in a dire mutual crush for two years or so, and having gotten out of a relationship about five minutes (fine, five days) beforehand, I summoned him to hang (fine, nail/screw/otherwise misapply hardware euphemisms to me).
Even those you foster titanic infatuations with can be subject to compatibility-based bodily oddities. We tried all kinds of different positions and spit-based lubrications to try to make it work, which, eventually, it KIND of did? Instead of the natural pulse of intercourse, that nice rhythmic pummeling, it felt like…scraping?
Neither of us came, I don’t think, and after getting home, I discovered that one of my labia was swollen. I did what I always do in times of medical crisis: avoided googling my symptoms at all costs—the pictures are life-threateningly gross and misleading; I have found 100 percent of the time I don’t follow this rule. Instead, I dialed up my sage older sister, Laura, who is a lot smarter than I am, and less of a sensitive little nightmare who thinks she’s dying or else STI’ed up because of benign vaginal swelling.
“I used a condom!” I wailed, sans salutation of any kind when Laura picked up, because I have excellent phone etiquette. She didn’t balk, but calmly asked what happened, because she is the best and instantaneously gets it most, if not all, of the time. “I finally got it in with Alan and one side of my vag looks like someone took a bike pump to it.”
“Oh, dude, calm down. That’s totally normal! Did you use enough lube?” I recalled that our only kind was salivary, and she told me to go sit on some ice for an hour. Post-deflation, I called her back to say thank you, having sufficiently calmed down enough to even say “hello” first. Since then, I make sure that if I’m carrying a condom, I’ve also got one of those single-use packets of lube close at hand, lest I run into another issue with my and a partner’s construction.
Period Blood All over the Bed
Did you bleed on someone’s bed, or have a bloodletting on your own sheets? No big deal (unless maybe it’s coming from someplace other than a vagina, out of a wound). Like most natural fluids, period blood doesn’t have to stain your bedclothes permanently. If you know you’ll be engaging in period sex, you can avoid any trouble here by laying out a burner sheet—this can be any old bedding or towel that you’re okay with Jackson Pollock–ing with menses. If you discover that you or your partner is beginning their cycle immediately after you’ve finished in bed: Rush some seltzer onto the hemogravy in question.
You know how I can’t seem to stop stanning for seltzer throughout this book, to the point that it almost reads as though I’m an infamously raunchy heiress to the Schweppes fortune? (GOD, I wish that were my life.) That’s because you can harness the powers of carbonated water not only to keep your mouth pleasantly wet during oral and seeming like the kind of “together” adult for whom even WATER can be improved upon, but also to get blood out of fabric.
You don’t want your partner to think you’re grossed out, in large part because you’re not, so don’t act like you’re trying to douse a wildfire. Calmly be all, “They’re just sheets!” omitting any portion of that sentence in which you are tempted to enumerate the thread count of said bedclothes, and pour half a glass of the cold seltzer sitting on your nightstand. If this seems like an excessive amount of water: You want to keep enjoying that jacked-up number of threads, am I correct? Gently blot out the stain with paper towels. They’re just sheets—stain-free sheets on which you also got to enjoy the miracles of period sex.
Condiment Attack
The most painful thing that ever happened to my vagina was when a boyfriend added “ZEST” and “SPICE” to our sex life in a tragically straightforward sense. We had been revising a new recipe for wing sauce to exactitude every few days for one whole summer, so it was a shame that I utterly lost my appetite for it when, after dinner, Chris touched me without washing his hands. We had forgotten that pepper hurts more than your tongue, and wing-based pleasure morphed instantly into intense pain. Even as I was wincing and screaming “THIS IS NOT WHAT ‘HOT SEX’ IS SUPPOSED TO MEAN, YOU JAG” at Chris, I was laughing and grateful to have a new story to tell my friends for the month, but since then, I have taken care to avoid buffalo-style sex.
Handling spicy foods like peppers—or wing sauce—before handling another person’s D or V is the living worst. Wash your hands eleven times if you think you’re going to bone after dinner, and maybe decide against cooking/eating scorch-inducing foods on a date. (And not only because they often incorporate beans, putting you at risk of “letting out” my British friend’s gaseous terror.) If you still heat things up in the most regrettable possible way, get in a cold shower immediately, wing sauce be damned to burn on the stove in retribution for how it burned me. Flush out the point of contact, then take a break from sex until the next day. If you don’t feel better in two hours, call a doctor.
Getting Come in Your Eye
I wear lots of makeup. As such, I’m far from intimidated by the prospect of effluvia around my general eye area. As with mascara, though, the key is making sure your actual optic nerves aren’t suddenly clouded with alien liquids by applying them to your face with precision.
Did you know that when you see the world through a filter of semen, your eyes inflate and redden until they resemble rubber grade-school kickballs? If you’re masturbating and have a curved dick, or if you’re in the mood for a 100 percent natural facial treatment, consider your or your partner’s aim: This is an orgasm, not recess. (Well, it’s kind of recess, but it’s DEFINITELY not happening at a primary school.)
I was given this unfortunate education recently, when I found myself looking down the barrel of a partner’s loaded dick. “Wait—!” I yelp-cooed, trying to preserve both my fake eyelashes and the sensuous tone of klymaxxx, to no avail on both counts. My vision blurred with come. I brushed my tear ducts gently with the back of my hand as the dude susurrated apologies: He had never done this before! He lost control! He was so so so so sorry! I played it cool: It had come from his body, so it couldn’t hurt me too badly, right? There was no need to jet off to the bathroom and flush my eyes immediately, as far as I was concerned.
That turned out to be wrong—semen does not make for a good saline solution at all. The swelling was swift and stung badly…and I had a meeting to go to in an hour. How do you even lie about such a highly visible vision-based irritation? I had no idea, as I’m an unskilled liar with an overactive imagination, but not a useful one. I came up with a bee sting to the eye, an allergic reaction to eyedrops on just the one half of my face, and, “Oh, this remedial sports equipment I’m calling part of my head? I was crying! I was crying very hard about…having…sadness,” which doesn’t work if you’re trying to maintain a professional profile, but which I thought might still be better than the obvious conclusion of semen-eye. In the end, I canceled the meeting.
If this happens to you: Don’t make my mistake of trying to be all casual about things. There’s come in your eye! Get thee to a faucet and wash it out with water immediately! If, like me, you do not actually have an allergy to eyedrops, employ those afterward. Make sure your eye is totally cleansed of all semen—leaving any behind will be sure to irritate it.
Excerpted from Action: A Book About Sex published by Grand Central Publishing. © 2016 by Amy Rose Spiegel. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram. All rights reserved.
Farewell, once-favorite organ: I am officially breaking up with my penis
(Credit: StockImages_AT via iStock)
Like virtually every member of the male species, from Neanderthal Man to whatever Glenn Beck is, I grew up absolutely in love with my penis. This couldn’t be helped. It’s an occupational hazard. You start out as a boy, merely curious about that funny little circus peanut between your legs. If you don’t yet delight in its form, you’re certainly pleased by its function. Which is awfully important, whether you’re whizzing in the school bathroom or snuffing out a campfire in the woods.
The affection continues as you hit adolescence. Maybe because you and your penis are inseparable. You go everywhere together. And as you hit manhood, it starts to have a sensational side benefit. When sex is new and your partner compliments this organ, your pride of ownership goes off the charts. You feel, by simply having this sensitive, shapely appendage, that you’ve won the genetic lottery. I mean, who but the most jaded jerk, could ever tire of having an orgasm? However, there’s a huge spoiler alert that people rarely mention. Nobody warns you about becoming middle-aged, as I currently am. Which is when you start to incur serious problems with your once beloved penis. Problems so plentiful and painful, they probably even piss off the Dalai Lama.
That’s what it’s come down to for me. I now officially hate my penis. I’m sick of my dick. It is no longer a magical joystick. It’s more like that banana you lost months ago and just discovered behind the toaster. It’s dark, mushy and of no use to anyone. It’s prey to disease, infection, dysfunction. In other words, the middle-aged schlong works about well as our current Congress.
“There’s no doubt it’s a complicated piece of equipment,” my urologist told me after a recent scare I had with my former BFF. “From your teens to your middle 30s, it’s usually trouble-free. But if you make it to 40, things can get bumpy. Your penis is vulnerable to a host of malfunctions that make you miserable. After years of treating them, I’ve decided that men’s dicks might be an accident of evolution. They’re too complicated and full of design flaws. You can get cancer of the testicles, prostatitis, balanitis, Peyronie’s disease, Phimosis, Paraphimosis. And that’s just for starters.”
I couldn’t help but sadly shake my head. That simple, enjoyable organ between my thighs, which was once as beautifully-functioning as a German automobile, was now more akin to a goddamned DeLorean. Sure, my dick was comely and could go a lap or two around the track. But after too much use, it proved to have serious transmission problems and (as in an automobile article I read) had “a random tendency for the shaft nuts to unscrew themselves…dumping gear oil all over the road.” Okay, that’s metaphorical. But not by much.
“Remember how much fun your dick was when you were young?” my friend Nick asked over coffee. “You could get en erection just by channel surfing and catching a glimpse of Judy Jetson. Sex use to go on for hours! Hell, I don’t even remember peeing back then. But I must have. Otherwise, I’ve would’ve swelled up and exploded over Morristown. These days, if I need a hard-on to have sex with my wife, she has to time me with a freakin’ calendar. I swear, I have more tenderness and intimacy with my urologist. I should just have the damn thing taken off and put in a penis museum!”
I offered no argument. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to blurt out, Hey, I’ve got my own troubles!
Boy, did I.
Sometime after 40, I started taking so long to pee, I was probably the only guy you ever saw at a urinal, holding his junk in one hand and a volume of Proust in the other. I’d awake several times in the night to go, usually so sleepy and blind, that I’m probably the first fella whose urinary problems resulted in several broken toes. Plus, my discussions about the the damn thing became a terrible game of Choose The Right Acronym. I had to remember that BPH was infinitely better than BPA. I had to to get use to the fact that PSA now stood for Prostate-Specific Antigen, not Public Service Announcement. And I peed so frequently, it seemed I also had OAB. In other words I felt absolutely FUCKED! I began watching those 2:00 AM commercials for quack cures that would shrink my prostate. Which sounded promising. Except the side effects might include kidney malfunction, internal bleeding, abnormal heartbeat, and blindness. Still, I considered taking those supplements. And hiring a seeing eye dog to lead me to the toilet every day.
Then, disaster struck. Which nearly killed me. But ultimately resulted in my being a bit more philosophical about that hopeless hot dog dangling between my legs.
One weekend, not long ago, I went from peeing poorly to not being able to pee at all. Apparently, I had the perfect storm of an enlarged prostate, a bladder infection and, because they’re part of the same union, my kidneys decided to go on a sympathy strike. The pain was insurmountable. And through the night I went from being terrified that I would die to terrified that I wouldn’t. I’d like to take the opportunity now to tell God and Jesus I’m really sorry for the things I screamed at you that night. I was just so sick. And you’re both a couple of swell fellas.
I crawled into the urologist’s office the next morning, walking like Quasimodo, cursing like Joe Pesci. First he catheterized me. Which is like someone taking your temperature by shoving a thermometer where thermometers were never meant to go. I was then put on medication for a swollen prostate and an infection of my urethra. Still, the doc had to warn me about a certain procedure that would have to be performed if the medicine work.
“If this doesn’t do it, Peter,” my urologist said, “We’ll have to perform something called ‘PVP’ (another acronym!), which stands for photoselective vaporization of the prostate.”
I was understandably alarmed. Especially over that word “vaporization.” I thought it meant they were going to zap my precious organ with some futuristic device and send it into another dimension. I told my doctor I was fed up with this malfunctioning organ of mine. But I wasn’t ready to have it sheared off and shot into space. He assured me this procedure just meant he’d “use a laser to destroy some of the prostate tissue and allow you to urinate more freely, with less pain.” This explanation wasn’t soothing. I imagined that scene from Goldfinger, where 007 is strapped to a table, while a laser inches toward his dick. And the villain chortles, “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” I was assured it wasn’t quite so fearsome. Although the doctor did chuckle after saying this.
Luckily, it never came to that.
Thanks to the medications, within a week, I’d moved from the injured to the starting list. Which meant that my prostate was now a healthy walnut size again. Apparently, after resembling a casaba melon. Of course, until the shrinking was complete and the infection gone, I still found urination so painful, I had to bite a rag while I peed-like someone having a bullet removed in an old Western.
The question remains, however: has it been worth it? Having a dick? Were a few years of sexual marathons and being able to pee hard enough to put out an oil fire worth what I was going through now? Or should I just start sleeping with my own personal Lorena Bobbitt? Give her a sharpened knife and let her fix my problem permanently?
It’s been two months. And yes, the old cocktail wiener is functional again. Of course, I haven’t tried sex yet. But at least now, I don’t head to the toilet at 5 p.m. and finish at sunset. Still, I’ve grown sort of sentimental about my penis. I’ve had it for so long, it feels like a part of me. It’s done great work and made me very happy-at times. In other words, just because Wade Boggs doesn’t step up to the plate anymore, doesn’t mean he’s thrown away his bat, right? So, I’ll soldier on with Old Mr Johnson. With its PBH. And keep getting updates on my PSA and those other scary letters, which one day are bound to spell disaster. In other words, I’m not quite ready to write off my dick. It’s not much, but it’s all I have. And sometimes, I have a little bit of optimism about the thing. That this organ may, someday, again provide me with pride. Or, at least, pleasure. In other words, when it comes to my penis? I’d like to think I’m not quite done with it.
That was when I lost my body: The open-marriage request that opened my eyes
(Credit: varandah via Shutterstock)
It took supermodel Beverly Johnson 28 years to go public with her story of Bill Cosby drugging and molesting her. The catalyst was other women coming forward with their stories. It took me even longer to confront my molestation, but the reason was radically different.
“I want to date,” my husband of 17 years told me one December in our beautiful house in the Hollywood hills.
“What?” I asked. We’re both actors. It seemed like an “SNL” sketch.
“I want to go out with other women,” he said.
“You mean” I said, “It’s like Friday and I say, ‘Will you be home for dinner tonight or do you have a date?’”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I guess I didn’t think that through.”
It turned out he was serious. He was leaving me.
I feared it was about a secret I’d buried three and a half decades earlier, over twice the length of our marriage.
One muggy Minnesota afternoon when I was 10 I wandered into the dining room where my grandpa was sitting by the window. Everyone else was taking a nap or watching TV in the basement where it was cool.
“Come and sit on my lap. I’ll tell you a story,” he said.
My legs hung over his knobby old knees.
“Once upon a time….” he started.
His hand was under the waistband of my shorts. He wiggled his fingers.
“Don’t, Grandpa,” I said quietly. “It tickles.”
He moved his hand to my tummy then under my panties. I wanted him to stop but I was afraid I would hurt his feelings. Then he put his fingers between my legs and into my private place. That was when I lost my body.
From then on I cleaned myself and dressed but I never again looked at my body on purpose. It was at fault for the dirty thing happening. There was just the one instance of betrayal but it was enough to make me hate myself from the neck down, enough 35 years later, to ruin my marriage.
My husband and I were best friends, brilliant everywhere except in the bedroom. The sex was lousy and infrequent, happening, if I really tried, once a month. Unable to solve our problem after eight years of effort, we started therapy with a man several couples we knew were seeing.
I’d been successful at keeping the moment in the dining room hidden even from myself. Then our therapist insisted on seeing us separately. Without my husband there an image suddenly shot through my brain. I was pulled backwards onto Grandpa’s lap, his hand between my legs.
“I think my grandfather touched me where he shouldn’t have,” I tentatively told the doctor. It was the first time I had said it out loud.
“Uh huh,” he said. “But we were talking about your problems with intimacy?”
He passed over it. He never mentioned it again.
It must not be important, I came to think. It wasn’t rape. He didn’t rape me.
Now with my dear husband filing for divorce I had to stop pretending it didn’t matter.
I found a woman therapist and related all of it. Then I let her know I despised my grandfather, long dead by then. When she asked about my relationships with men, I told her about my rage. I began to see how I was making all men pay for one man’s perversion. At home, waking from a nap, I couldn’t stop the bile from rising to the surface. I bellowed.
“You perverted jerk! You used my body for your own sick gratification. And you didn’t care.”
Then followed a string of curses, every vile name I could call him, every hateful word I knew. It cleansed me. I was done with him from after that. The damage he did was another matter.
“I’m sexually dysfunctional,” I confessed to my therapist.
“Oh,” she said, “why do you think that?”
“Because,” I replied, “my husband told me I don’t climax fast enough.”
“Okay, let’s see if that’s true.” She leaned in. “I want you to go home and stimulate yourself. Time it and tell me how it goes next session, okay?”
I slunk home, put a wind-up clock on the table by my bed and did the deed. I had to make myself turn to look. Five minutes. I did it again. Five minutes.
“That’s good,” my therapist said. “Now I’m going to give you a second bit of homework.”
“Sure,” I said, flushed with success. “What’s next?”
“Rent some pornography, watch it and take notes on what’s happening when you have the urge to shut it off. We want to find out what sexual situation or activity upsets you.”
This was going to be bad. I thought it was disgusting to watch people do before cameras what was a deeply personal act — but what choice did I have?
At the time of my therapist’s request, video stores still existed. I tried to guess by the pictures on the jackets which ones might be the high-quality, artsy porn. I rented three.
The covers had had led me astray. Two of the tapes were “Ding dong, it’s the pizza delivery boy” type of porn where dialogue was as sparse as possible and plot nonexistent. The third movie proved the winner. It was what I now know of as soft-core, probably why I liked it. It was well shot, had a story line, featured kind of well-drawn characters and left a lot to the imagination. After watching for awhile I got turned on, stopped the tape and made love to myself.
“I was bored,” I told my therapist. “Who wants to watch other people pretend to have good sex?”
“You didn’t get embarrassed?”
“No. It was pretty skeevy but it didn’t embarrass me. I’d rather be doing it.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “I don’t think you need to worry about this anymore. You’re not dysfunctional.”
It was as simple as that?
It turned out it was. Shortly afterwards on a trip to Rite Aid I rounded the corner of the vitamin aisle, almost running into an impressive set of pecs and abs under a tight T-shirt.
“Excuse me,” he said.
I tingled all over and went weak in the knees. The sensations I was feeling below my clavicle were so immediate and foreign. My head wasn’t the boss of my body anymore.
Next I noticed that food stopped having meaning. I wasn’t evil if I ate a bowl of ice cream, and if I had salad for dinner I wasn’t virtuous. Food was fuel. Already on the “divorce diet,” the weight fell away and for the first time “slender” was a word that would describe me. I looked at myself in mirrors and shop windows, glass doors, windshields. I couldn’t get enough of me.
A lot of acting work was coming my way so I hired a stylist. He went through my closet and donated all my gypsy cover-up clothes to charity. Then he took me shopping. At the Beverly Center I emerged from the dressing room in a white silk Donna Karan dress.
“So,” my Professor Higgins asked, “what do you think?”
“If I walked into a room wearing this,” I replied, “everyone would say ‘who the hell does she think she is?’”
“And?” he asked. “What’s the problem?”
He built me a wardrobe based on his belief that no matter where I was, even alone when no one could see, I should feel beautiful.
I learned how to flirt. I could let myself like a man without feeling I’d have to sleep with him. It stopped being my fault.
Then 35 years of repressed libido hit the streets of Los Angeles. There were dramatic, short-lived affairs that broke my heart for a few weeks but taught me how good sex can be. Eventually I had to admit I was reversing the problem, ignoring my brain and letting the equipment below my waist make too many decisions. There were long periods, sometimes a year or two, when I chose to be alone. Quite slowly but irrevocably I came to love my whole self.
I don’t know what personal hell the women Cosby allegedly violated went through before they felt strong enough to say it out loud. But I do know that when a man forces a woman, whether she’s a child or all grown up, into intimate acts without her consent, he tells her this: “You are nothing. Your body is only a thing for my pleasure and I’m entitled to have it. You don’t get a vote.”
When that happens a woman must, if she can bear it, reclaim all he has taken. I did nothing to make my grandfather come after me but I could do something to put the responsibility where it belonged. I was in my forties when I learned I could say “no” and still be loved.
Eight years after my husband walked out I found a man who did.
Officials: Suspect in fatal shooting of Massachusetts police officer killed during shootout, state police trooper also injured
AUBURN, Mass. (AP) — Officials: Suspect in fatal shooting of Massachusetts police officer killed during shootout, state police trooper also injured.
6 dead in pair of nightclub shootings on Mexico’s Gulf coast
VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) — A total of six men were killed early Sunday in shootings at two nightclubs in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, authorities said.
The state prosecutor’s office said three gunmen opened fire from the deejay’s booth at four men sitting at a table in the La Madame club, killing them all. About a dozen people were wounded in that attack in the Veracruz state capital of Xalapa.
In the other incident, two men died in a gunfight with law enforcement officers at a club in the Veracruz city of Orizaba, prosecutors said.
One of the dead was identified as organized crime figure Luis Alberto Carrera Rodriguez, alias “El Negro,” or “Blackie.” The prosecutor’s office did not say what gang he belonged to.
Veracruz has been the scene of bloody killings by the Zetas drug cartel as well as the Jalisco New Generation cartel. The state has also seen numerous disappearances and killings of journalists.
California bus crash leaves dozens injured, 2 critically
HIGHLAND, Calif. (AP) — Authorities say a shuttle bus has overturned on a highway in Southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains, leaving two people critically injured, four with moderate injuries and 20 with minor injuries.
San Bernardino County Fire Capt. Jeremy Kern says the bus turned on to its side across State Route 330 shortly after 2 p.m. Sunday.
Kern says two patients were airlifted to hospitals, and four more with moderate injuries were taken to hospitals in ground ambulances.
Twenty people had minor injuries including scrapes and bruises and were being examined at the scene.
It wasn’t immediately clear who owns the bus or where it was going.
The highway was shut down for a 16-mile stretch between Highland and Running Springs. The area is about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
Couple credits cat with alerting to fire in Vegas-area home
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas-area couple is crediting their cat to alerting them to a fire in their home.
KTNV-TV in Las Vegas reports (http://bit.ly/243x7kx) that a fire broke out at a home in the Summerlin community around 2 a.m. Sunday.
The husband and wife told fire officials they were asleep when they got woken up by the cat scratching kitchen cabinets.
The husband says he went to check on the cat and found a fire in the garage.
They immediately called 911 and evacuated the home with a nephew they were babysitting and the cat.
Firefighters say no injuries were reported.
The damage to the home was confined to the garage.
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.
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Information from: KTNV-TV, http://www.ktnv.com
Garcia beats Koepka with par on first playoff hole at Nelson
IRVING, Texas (AP) — Sergio Garcia made a par on the first playoff hole at the Byron Nelson on Sunday to beat Brooks Koepka for his ninth career PGA Tour victory, matching the late Seve Ballesteros for the most by a Spanish-born player.
The 36-year-old Garcia shot 2-under 68, making six birdies and four bogeys, to get to 15-under 265. He was two groups ahead of the final pairing of hometown favorite Jordan Spieth and Koepka, who bogeyed the 14th and 15th holes and just missed a birdie chance at 18.
At the 413-yard 18th again in the playoff, Koepka drove into the water.
Garcia also won the 2004 Nelson and is the first two-time winner in the 34 tournaments since the event moved to TPC Four Seasons in 1983.
Koepka closed with a 71.
Spieth shot a 74 to tie for 18th at 10 under.
Hinchcliffe passes Newgarden on final run for Indy 500 pole
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — James Hinchcliffe completed his remarkable comeback Sunday by beating out American Josef Newgarden for this the Indianapolis 500 pole.
The Canadian driver earned his first IndyCar pole with a four-lap average of 230.760 mph a year after a life-threatening leg injury forced him out of the race.
Newgarden will start second in the May 29 race after going 230.700. It was the fourth-closest differential between first and second in Indy’s 100-year history.
Hinchcliffe won it in dramatic fashion, too, on the final run of the nine-car pole shootout. And it came on the fifth anniversary of Sam Schmidt’s team winning the pole in 2011.
Andretti Autosport driver Ryan Hunter-Reay will start third on the outside of Row 1 after going 230.648.
Verdict expected Monday in Freddie Gray-officer trial
BALTIMORE (AP) — A judge is preparing to hand down his verdict in the case of a Baltimore police officer charged in the arrest and subsequent death of Freddie Gray.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams is expected to announce a verdict in Officer Edward Nero’s case on Monday.
The 30-year-old faces assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment charges.
Gray died last year, a week after his neck was broken while he was handcuffed and shackled, but unrestrained, in the back of a police van.
Prosecutors say Nero unlawfully arrested Gray, and the officer was negligent when he didn’t buckle the prisoner into a seat belt.
Nero’s attorney argues his client didn’t arrest Gray, and that it is the police van driver’s responsibility to buckle in detainees.
