Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [120]
Write a script from the YES lists for a satisfying half-hour date you could do on a weeknight—a quickie plan.
Choose an item from your MAYBE list and figure out what you would need to try that and how your partner could help you. What are your conditions?
Choose an item from your partner’s MAYBE list and create a fantasy of how you could seduce him into it. Tell him about the fantasy—this is not a time for pouncing and yelling “Surprise!”
FIND YOUR TURN-ON
Have you ever set out to make love and discovered that you couldn’t find your turn-on? There you are, hunting for that elusive state of excitement and wondering what’s wrong with you when your lover does the things you usually love and your response is just plain nothing, or, worse yet, irritation or ticklishness. Women wonder why they aren’t getting wet, men agonize over absent erections, everybody either fakes it or gets embarrassed. It happens to everybody. Really. It’s not just you.
For some people, losing their turn-on happens when they are nervous, maybe with a new partner or in a new situation. For others, familiarity reduces arousal, and they have a hard time grasping their desire in their relationships with the people they know the best and love the most.
Getting turned on requires a physical and mental transition into a different state of consciousness. Every night, when you go to sleep, you make such a transition: you turn the lights down, get into loose clothing, lie down, perhaps read quietly or watch a little TV, deliberately changing your state of consciousness from wide awake to sleepy. Some people do this automatically, while others have to work at figuring out what helps them get to sleep.
Similarly, we all need to know how we get turned on, what works for us when arousal doesn’t just come of its own accord. Our mythology tells us that we are not supposed to have to do this on purpose, that we are supposed to be swept away with desire, or else something is wrong: we don’t really want to make love to this person, we’ve made a terrible mistake and now what are we going to do with the kids? Men are told that they are supposed to be so turned on by the mere availability of a partner that their erection should stand up and salute without any actual sensory stimulation. Women are taught that they ought to be turned on in response to any stimulus from a partner they care about and, if they aren’t, they are frigid or perhaps feeling hostile. These are only some of the very destructive lessons you may have learned.
The first thing you need to do when desire doesn’t come up like thunder is to remember that lots of serious sluts have dealt with this problem successfully, and so can you. Let’s look at how we could go about deliberately getting turned on.
Some people just charge on, start sexual stimulation, and keep on with it until their turn-on catches up with them, and this works for many people much of the time: Dossie once had a partner who liked to leap into cold mountain lakes when they were camping, insisting that you’d get warm eventually if you just thrashed around. Other people like to get in the water one toe at a time, warming up gradually and sensually, allowing time to appreciate the changes in sensitivity that occur as they move slowly into their sexual response cycle. For many people, simply slowing down gives them the chance to get in synch with their turn-on, and once you find your turn-on it makes it easier to speed up.
Many people experience hypersensitivity, which means feeling ticklish or jumpy or irritated, when they attempt to take in sensations that are too focused or too intense in the early part of their journey to arousal. Such ticklishness usually disappears once the person is thoroughly excited and may reappear right after orgasm. The only way to deal with hypersensitivity is to remember that very few people can get turned on while they are being tickled or irritated, so take your time. (Dossie’s partner who loved to leap into cold lakes also really loved to be tickled—that’s why you gotta ask.) Feel free to tell your