A very, very special friend wrote this for me. It is deeply meaningful and quite, quite accurate. It is perhaps the most beautiful thing anyone has ever written to me.

My Darling Whore

Slut. A slut to the gray-green wilderness that hovers over her home, the misted mistress of the environment she loves so deeply, that covers her, disguises her, renders her safely anonymous and—at the same time—places her at the center of the universe, demanding her full attention with senses, camera, and pen, embracing her with the quiet inevitability of adiabatic currents that rise from river, creek, and marshlands, gentle powers that blend air and water, seamless, the water breathes the air, the air inhales the water. Slut.

Whore. A whore to self-discovery, prostrating herself to the truth of where she comes from, selling her past to understanding, spreading herself open to redeem her future and celebrate the day in which her heart beats, now. Today. Here. Whore.

Harlot. A harlot to hedonism, to the exultant complexity of unabashed awareness–of the body, its senses, their frenetic, joyful dialog, the dance between body and soul, mind and heart, brain and genitals. Harlot.

Bitch. A bitch to her own unique principles, snapping at any bastion, shibboleth, or vestigial, arcane supposition that dares to hint at impinging on the freedom that she carves from the dense environment of ponderous, bible-bound past (not her own), a reactionary society, and a bankrupt, dumbed-down culture that would surround her with tawdry stereotypes and diminishing contempt. Bitch.

Concubine. A concubine to knowledge, knowing its power, a courtesan devoted to the nurturing of of the millennial growth of understanding, at once a geisha and a canny perpetrator of the struggle that all artists and thinkers have undergone to leave a deeper imprint of human experience for others to share. Concubine.

Goddam! What a fuckin’ whore this woman is…

Thank you, love. I may be Simone de Beauvoir to your Sartre, but you are Henry Miller to my Anais Nin.

Some of the essays I relate to, some of them I don’t. I mean, women writing about how they miss the boys their husbands once were, or how their children’s demands cut into their “me time” doesn’t really affect me… I don’t have a husband, don’t have children, and don’t have any angst about the lack of either, as some of the single writers do in the book. Still, its a great glimpse into the female psyche, from some very well-spoken and educated women.

Next on my list is “The Bastard on the Couch” edited by Daniel Jones and subtitled: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood and Freedom. This is the partner book to Bitch in the House, and the editor is married to Cathi. I’ve heard that this is an interesting and entertaining collection of well-written essays, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

This podcast is about conquering, about the distinctions between submitting and being conquered, about the contest of wills between a strong-willed woman and her  equally strong-willed match. This podcast is hot, rough, and more than a little spanked.

The music featured in this podcast is Melissa Ferrick’s song Drive.
This podcast is sponsored by AdamAnd Eve.com — visit the site and enter “SILKEN” into the offer code field and save 50% on any item!
For longer, hotter, higher-quality audio erotica visit the shop at SilkenOnSex.com.

He said he’d tried talking to her, had even asked her what he could do to spice things up, and her response was “I shouldn’t have to tell you what I want.” Which blew my mind. Amy was playing the You should read my mind and if you can’t I’ll punish you until you’ve tried everything game that many women play — a game that one of my lovers played so well that I swore off women for years.

So I invited Amy to meet me for coffee.

We’ve known each other for well over a decade and she’s accustomed to my directness, so I dispensed with the preliminary chit-chat.

“Boriska is worried you’re either having an affair, or that you’re going to leave him.”

Amy’s expression changed. I think she’d been expecting to play the sympathetic listener to my woe-is-me-my-sister-has-cancer tale, so she was completely surprised to find that her marriage was the topic. I sat in silence and watched her run through a series of emotions: surprise, anger, chagrin, and finally, something that looked like pouty resignation.

“I’m bored,” Amy said, looking down into her coffee cup. Definitely pouty.

“Bored?”

I couldn’t help but remember the last time I was bored.  I was 9 and I told my grandmother I wanted to go somewhere because I was bored. “You’re not bored,” Grandmother had said, looking over her glasses at me with her intense blue eyes, “You’re boring.” Something about the way she explained it to me really hit home, and from that day forward I was almost obsessed with being the opposite of boring. Today, one of the highest compliments anyone can pay me is to say that I’m interesting.

“I’m going to take a page out of my grandmother’s book, Amy, and ask you to consider that you’re not bored so much as boring.”

Her mouth fell open with a gasp and her eyebrows drew together in a frown. I raised my hand. I knew I needed to speak up fast or she’d flounce off in a huff. I love her dearly, but Amy’s what most of her friends call “high-strung.”

“Now before you get all upset with me, give me a chance to explain. When you say “I’m bored” you’re speaking as though the world, or in this case, your husband, is somehow failing to entertain you. That is a very passive place to be, Amy.”

She went back to pouting.

“You own your life, and you’re responsible for whether you’re bored or not. It is a choice. You’ve made choices that have led to you feeling bored in your marriage, so you can certainly make choices that make it more exciting!”

“It’s a lot of work!” she exclaimed.

“I know,” I answered.

“How can you? You’ve never been married.”

I looked into her eyes and smiled slowly, meaningfully. “Why do you think I’ve never married?”

She laughed, thankfully.

“Fair enough, Kay. Fair enough.”

We sipped our drinks for a long moment. Amy’s never been good at concealing her emotions. I could see her turmoil all over her face. I could also see that she wanted to talk, but just didn’t seem to know where to start. I decided to give her a nudge.

“So… why are you bored?” I asked.

“We’ve been having the same sex over and over for 8 of the last 10 years!”

“Well whose fault is that?”

“Whuuut?”

“If you’ve been having the same boring sex over and over, why haven’t you told Boris you want to try something different?”

“I shouldn’t have to!”

Oh. My. God. It was my turn to say “Whuuut?”

“He should know me by now…” She sounded both outraged and plaintive, if that is possible. I could almost see her anger and disappointment over her husband’s failure to magically transform into Fabio-the-Mindreader during the course of their marriage.

“Amy, you’ve been reading waaay too many romance novels. Sure there are men who can intuit what you want, but how can they know for certain if you don’t tell them?”

“Not everyone is like you, Kay… I’m not comfortable talking about sex…”

I got what she was saying, and yet I didn’t. Yes, there are few people so comfortable with talking openly about sex, but surely…

“Are you telling me that you and I can talk about how much we want to be bent over the couch for a hard fast fuck — but you aren’t comfortable talking about what you want in the bedroom with the man you’ve been sleeping next to for the past 10 years? Amy!”

She looked miserable and sheepish at the same time.

“Good sex is artful and intuitive. Great sex is artful, intuitive, and informed by communication. If you aren’t communicating your wants and needs to your husband then the only person you have to blame for your boring sex life is yourself, damnit!”

“How do I know he’d even want to try anything else? He’s got his routine down and seems pretty happy with it!”

I gave her my best oh come on, really?! look.

“I’m going to tell you a few things about men, Amy dear. At heart humans are novelty seekers, and we know that monotony in monogamy is almost inevitable… but we still settle down into monogamous relationships. Why? For women, it’s about security. For men it’s about guaranteed pussy. They give up variety in the hopes of increased frequency. So if you tell your man that you want to spice things up by having sex standing on your head in the corner — he’ll make it happen even if he has to build a scaffolding in the bedroom.”

Amy choked on her coffee, then gasped with laughter at that mental image.

“I’m serious. And another thing — In the absence of clear communication, men do their best to read us. They try anything and everything, and each time they are slapped away, or get an annoyed look, or a hurt yelp, they eliminate whatever they were doing from their repertoire. Forever. Most of them won’t try it again. Most of them don’t get that what irritated the fuck out of you last night might make you moist today. They just don’t want to feel rejected, Amy. People feel vulnerable when they are making love.”

She looked very pensive. I gave her hand a squeeze. “Think about it. You said he’s got his routine down — did it ever occur to you that he’s narrowed it down to those things you’ve never objected to? How many times was Boris doing something and you pushed him away and he never tried that again? Face it, Amy. You’ve insisted that he read your mind all these years and punished him for failing to do so. You’ve created your own boring, monotonous marriage, my friend.”

She made a face. A cross between a wince and a grimace.

“Sometimes you scare me, Kay.”

That brought me up short.

“Why?”

“Because you’re so insightful.  And because you manage to say shit no one else can say without sounding like a complete bitch.”

“You’re welcome.” I laughed.

“Does Boriska really think I’m going to leave him?”

“He’s worried about it. He loves you, Amy. He wants you to be happy, and if he can’t make you happy, why wouldn’t you look for someone who can?”

“Oh god,” she groaned. I could see it on her face, the realization that with her stubborn silence she really had made a mess of things. “What am I going to do?”

I grinned at her. “Well, I just happen to know that he’s got this fantasy about sex in the shower….”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh reaaallly?”

“Yes, really. How about we stop by an adult toy store to pick up a waterproof rabbit? And while you’re at it, send Boris a text saying you’re working on a naughty surprise for him and you want him to send a text when he leaves the office?”

Amy blushed and squirmed in her chair. She looked like an excited child.

“And then what you do is, leave him a note he’ll find when he gets home, telling him to strip down and meet you in the shower, and then make sure you’re in there and playing with your rabbit when he gets home. I guarantee he’ll break his routine.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I suppose he would.”

“Oh, and Amy… afterward… Talk to your husband. Share your fantasies. And be more communicative. I know women think men don’t listen to them, but if there is one place they’re eager to listen, it’s in bed. You’re responsible for your pleasure, so tell him what you want.”

Silken on Sex #66:
Celibacy has been in the news lately, and I don’t just mean the pious form of celibacy. I’m talking grown women and men choosing celibacy as a form of their sexual self-expression. Yes, that’s right: Celibacy is a form of sexual self-expression — it is possible to be celibate without being chaste. (Can you say masturbation boys and girls?)

I am an advocate of the practice of libidinous celibacy. At first the juxtaposition of those two words would appear to be paradoxical, but I know from personal experience that such is not the case. A libidinous person may be someone who has lustful thoughts or is otherwise preoccupied with the drives of the libido…without necessarily acting upon them with a partner.

Few adults can abstain from sexual intercourse (ie, be celibate) and not experience rising frustration at the sublimation of such a primitive and instinctual biological drive. As time passes, this biological drive manifests as a psychological one as well, and the mind becomes preoccupied with libidinous thoughts. Thus, the term libidinous celibacy is not an oxymoron, but an apothegm.

About 5 years ago I found myself newly single. Newly single, and with more than a few people interested in filling the position vacated by my unlamented lover. So many, in fact, that I was a bit overwhelmed. Given that it had been over a decade since I’d been without a partner or a few, I decided to explore my new singleton status by boldly choosing to remain celibate for 6 months.

I think some of my friends had bets on how long I’d last, and I know every one of them bet I’d give up and go boink someone long before my time was up. What no one expected though, was that I’d extend it by 3 more months — which is what I did. I found that, after 6 months of carrying on a torrid love-affair with myself, I wasn’t ready to share. I wanted to keep me all to myself :)

I dated actively, mind you, and had some incredibly hot make-out / frottage sessions, but the only person I had actual sex with was myself. And my toys.  Mustn’t forget them! I had my hitachi magic wand system (the frugal girl’s sybian at 10% the cost), my waterproof rabbit (the perfect bath-time companion), my ben wa balls (always put a smile on my face at the gym), and I can’t forget my Chocolate Dream dildo, which made me come so hard I pulled a muscle in my back the first time I used it. Whee! With those, and a micro-fleece electric throw, I needed neither man, nor woman, nor a cat (which my ex took with her) to put a smile on my face every night.

Looking back, I know it was good for me to be unattached and celibate for a change, good for me to take all that energy that had been tied up in sex and relationships and put it to more productive use elsewhere. I was very happy. My health was great. Without someone at home to distract me, I took the time to develop some of my other talents, and with sex off the table, I learned what intimacy and connection really were. I learned that, as a woman, I didn’t need to be with someone in order to be someone.  And I also learned that having a love-affair with myself meant that one doesn’t have to be a lonely number. Practicing libidinous celibacy thrilled me to the bone!

Don’t miss a single naughty bit — subscribe now and get the Silken On Sex Ezine by Email.

Related articles:

• Lady GaGa Is Celibate – And She Wants The Same For You! (perezhilton.com)
• The Celibacy Cleanse: Sex Avoidance for Better Health (blisstree.com)
• No more sex in the city (darkerme.com)
• Celibacy: a curse or a blessing – Dr. Shriniwas Kashalikar (slideshare.net)
• Is priestly celibacy healthy? (osv.com)

Q: “Can you please write something on achieving multiple orgasms??? I find that after oral, when I have an orgasm, it’s over. I am over-sensitive and ticklish. Tips please?”

A: The medical establishment now recognizes that multiple orgasms are possible, and not just porn flick mythology. According to Barbara Bartlik, MD, at Weill Medical College, all women capable of achieving orgasms are capable of achieving multiple orgasms.

That said, the ability to have multiple orgasms is learned — in much the same way we learn to get that first one. And once you’ve done the hard work of getting the first one, the others are easier.

How do I know this? Well, I learned about multiple orgasms through the forced orgasm kink. I had a wonderfully sensual Dominant partner who tied me up and made me come over and over again, ignoring my begging and screaming for him to stop. After an hour I’d come a dozen times and was completely wrung out. I was limp, my body occasionally rippled with post-orgasmic jolts, and I was incapable of speaking coherently. Sounds great, right? Yes and no. I didn’t want to give up control of my clit, so someone had to take it from me. And for someone naturally dominant, it was akin to torture. After that breakthrough, however, I got it and never lost it. Having multiple orgasms is sort of like riding a bicycle.

So… tips on achieving multiple orgasms:

1) On the physical side, in order to achieve additional orgasms, you must press past the sensitivity and languidness that you feel after your initial one. I know how excruciatingly sensitive your clit is after coming, but you, or you partner, needs to keep going, to keep the arousal level up. You don’t necessarily have to keep stimulating the clitoris immediately afterwards. I have been known to climb up the headboard to avoid direct clitoral stimulation after coming (which is where being tied up can come in handy :) Instead, you can back off of it and focus on other errogenous zones, but within a couple of minutes, you must return to the clit, preferably with a vibrator of some sort. Fingers or a dildo applying hard and fast direct pressure to the G-Spot while the clitoris is stimulated will make a woman come, and can make us squirt, too :) Just make sure you have lots of lubrication, preferably your own. Orgasms have half-lifes. What I mean by that is this: if it takes you 20 minutes for your first one, it make take 10 for the second, and 5 for the third, and then eventually, they just come hard and fast one after the other until the stimulation ends or you are completely exhausted. Eventually, for some women, the toys aren’t necessary. Many of us have trained ourselves to come on demand. It is a mental ‘trick’ of sorts — like a button that rises up when we are sufficiently aroused, and that we can push whenever we want.

2) On the mental/emotional side, the only way you are going to be able to have multiple orgasms is if you are completely open to it. You must trust yourself and your partner, and you must relax into it. The wrong kinds of stress or attention to the topic will simply distract you. You need to push your mind and the critical little voice in your head that says “my inner thighs are too fat I wish he wouldn’t caress them” etc, ASIDE. Your partner thinks you are beautiful and desirable or he or she wouldn’t be there. Your body is a sensory array. Allow yourself to feel with it. Let go and lose yourself in the pure sensuality of the moment. It is a gift to yourself and your partner.

3) Readiness and Build-up. This is what must come first, really, but I mention it last because it is more detailed:

Make sure you are rested. If your body is too tired, too stressed, or your mind too active, you will have a difficult time climaxing once, never mind several times.

In order for you to have good strong multiple orgasms, you need to have good, strong pubococcygeus muscles (PC). You can find Kegel exercises online that describe how to work the PC muscles in the pelvis — the exercise is a lot like ‘holding it’ when you have to pee. I do my Kegels all the time — when I’m driving, standing in line, laying in bed, etc. A secondary effect of these exercises is arousal. I tend to get hard nipples and wet panties when I do my kegels, and since I do them all the time, well… I’m almost always aroused. I can even come just from doing those exercises, if I want to, but I usually hold off. I let the arousal build up over the course of the day, and when I do have sex, I *need* more than one orgasm to feel sated. Its awesome!

Having mulitple orgasms is like a good workout with a sauna afterwards. You feel a little shaky, you sweat, and are purified. There is no more tension left in your body, and your mind is uncluttered. Some Buddhists liken enlightenment to orgasm, and after multi-orgasmic sex I always understand why.

—

If you’re like most of Silken’s audience, you want your erotic material explicit and kinky, but also sensual and intimate. Visit the shop at SilkenOnSex.com — where high-quality erotic audios are the norm, and the fantasies are exceptional.

This essay was published in the Exotica section of Clean Sheets in Feb 2009.

It is my assessment that men fear women. They fear women because they do not understand us. Feminine logic escapes them and so they cannot predict us. They fear us because no matter how often they join their bodies with ours, seeking to know and be known — no matter how often they experience the shuddering release of their essence into our bodies — they know, even in that moment of ultimate sharing — of orgasmic bliss– they know they’ve never really penetrated the mystery of our otherness. And never will. And for the male of our species, the systematizers, the catalogers, the knowledge-seekers — what cannot be dismantled, discovered, or known is feared. Sure, there are other emotions mixed in there — respect, for some, and for others, dread, and a need to conquer or destroy — but for the most part, consciously or not, most male interaction with the feminine is characterized by fear.

I usually manage to over-ride the feelings of exasperation, irritation, indulgence, and superiority with which most women greet the male fear-response to our impenetrable otherness. Usually. Occasionally, though, I cannot help it.

For all that I am very female, I have a rather masculine mind. I am highly intuitive, but I am also very logical. The combination of the two can be very formidable. I have excellent reasoning / critical thinking skills and am in the top 1 percentile for intelligence. Science, math, economics, programming, trouble-shooting / complex problem-solving — these come easier to me than to most women. And quite a lot of men. I’ve been called a polymath by people I respect, though I think of myself as a dilettante. Its not that I’m lacking a polymath’s abilities. I’m just lacking the ambition. Winning stopped mattering to me when I realized that other people felt hurt by losing. A rather feminine characteristic.

So, because I am a warm, loving, non-competitive woman, some men underestimate me. They fear me for what I consider the wrong reasons. And this peeves me. And not just me. It peeves quite a few of my peers, women who are feared because they are female but also unrespected because they are female. Because we know that women are capable of terrible things. It just so happens that we rarely tap into the place where that capacity lies dormant because it takes special circumstances to awaken it. For millennia women have made the terrible choice of life or death — history is full of stories about children exposed to the elements for coming at the wrong time, for example. We’ve gone to war and when we fight, there are no rules and there is no mercy — just blood and gore (Go Boudicca). We’ve pitted man against man, country against country. We’ve brought down empires as matters of personal vendettas, to right wrongs perpetuated against ourselves, or more often, against those we love.

But men think that women’s history of needing to manipulate them to achieve our ends still stands today. They seem to think we cannot fight our own battles and thus they disregard us as martial threats. They forget that we can do battle on the field of the intellect, and that this new Information Age is a great equalizer — superior physical strength does not matter here. We, too, can fight wars with keystrokes. And we do.

A question rose in my mind today “Are intelligent women sexy, or just oxymorons?”

I’ve made the mistake of watching television recently, trying to stay abreast of the issues playing out these days: torture, swine flu, and the economy. I rarely watch television, but given that I was out of the country for three weeks, I figured I’d risk filling my brain with bullshit, trusting that my crap-filter would sort the golden nuggets from the brown ones.

A lot of what I’ve seen and heard appalls me. Especially from women. There are a lot of attractive women on TV and most of them are ninnies, apparently. Either they can’t think or they aren’t paid to think — just read the teleprompter. Regardless of which political ideology a network subscribes to, the attractive women are mostly ditzes, and most of the talking heads the networks feature are either knowledgeable and unattractive, or brainless and beautiful. A notable exception is Rachel Maddow. She’s intelligent, insightful, humorous, easy on the eyes, and obviously a lesbian. Which got me thinking that the only way a woman who was smart and sexy could be on TV (and speak her mind) was if she was a lesbian (enter Ellen).

As soon as that thought occurred to me, I remembered something my paternal great-grandmother told me. I was 10 or so, and I’d done some testing that showed I was not only gifted but a genius and my proud parents called everyone in the family. When Grandmother got the news she immediately drove over to see me. She took me aside and said, “Be careful not to let the boys know how smart you are. Boys don’t like girls who are smarter than them, and if they find out, you’ll never get married.” To which I answered, “Then boys are stupid and I’ll never get married.” (And I haven’t ;)

Of course, boys aren’t stupid, but they are easily led–by the eyes. Flash a pretty girl in front of them and they start diverting blood-flow to a different head. I never considered myself a pretty girl, and I remember I used to look at people who said I was pretty and wonder why they were lying to me. But then, I did have four beautiful sisters, and what I know now that I didn’t know then was that even if I am the least beautiful of the five of us, I’m far from ugly. My beautiful sisters (none of them idiots, mind you) focused on being beautiful and the benefits that could be reaped from it. I focused on being smart. I educated myself. In retrospect I know that I took the ‘easy way’ just like my sisters did–the only difference being in what came easily to each of us.

As a teenager I struggled with my brainy persona. Few boys asked me out, mainly because I either intimidated them or was completely uninterested in them, and when I did choose to date and be sexually active, I chose partners significantly older than myself. People I could relate to, people who appeared to enjoy my mind as much as my body. Away at my Ivy League college, I discovered that I found intelligent women sexy as hell, and that very often they were easy on the eyes, too. I also found that often as not, the ones I found most sexy were lesbians–or at least, bisexual. It was like having my cake and eating it, too.

When I left my Ivory Tower and rejoined the Real World, I was disappointed to find that most of the women I encountered were sheeple. I became rather misogynistic, not because I disliked women, but because I knew what women could be and was appalled by what they had become. Most of the vibrant and intelligent women I encountered were single, most of the sheeple were married. I wondered if marriage and baby-making turned women into sheeple, or if the intelligent women were unmarried because men considered them oxymorons.

In questioning them, I found the intelligent women often said that being unmarried was a conscious choice, or that they were very discerning about their partners and had difficulty finding men who met their criteria. Some reported knowing that they intimidated men and thus had few dates, others reported that they had to beat men off with a stick. It was the latter group, of course, that made me curious. Somewhere in the middle, I found that most of the men I had to tell to shove off were submissives–same with the ones who found me intimidating. For me, I knew it was a matter of being a Dominant, and I wondered if it was the same with them. I learned that, for the most part, it wasn’t. Naturally dominant women are rare. So what was it? I asked myself what quality made these women so sexy that men not only hit on them but wanted to stick around even after discovering that the girls had brains.

I mulled the question over for a couple of years, and the answer came when I asked myself what I had in common with them, besides being smart and reasonably attractive. Sensuality. These women were all very sensual. They had the kind of sensuality that truly sexually liberated women have. “Aha!” I thought. “Guys will fuck smart women if they think they’ll be great in bed.”

Of course, its true in some cases, but not all of them. There are, I learned, men out there who are sapiosexual–who are attracted, first and foremost, to intelligence in others. There are men out there who, being naturally submissive, unwittingly seek out a woman who can dominate them, both inside and outside the bedroom. There are men who are turned off by women who react first instead of think first, and thus date thinking women. And of course there are men who hate women, hate intelligent women even more, and are attracted to them, consciously or not, so they can “put them in their places” as God intended.

The truth is, its complicated as all hell, but there are men (and women) who find intelligent women sexy. I don’t think we are as rare as the mainstream media seems to indicate with its profusion of bubble-headed correspondents, and I hope we start getting better coverage–outside the bedroom.