Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [130]
If you find yourself internally panicking, we encourage you to breathe. Slow down. Remember that you are not in a race, and you are not in a hurry. This is not the Olympics. You have nothing to prove—you and your new friend are setting out to do things that feel good with your bodies. Touch feels good. Stroking feels good. Taking time feels good. Slow down enough so that you can truly feel what you are doing. Worrying about the future will not help you get there: focus on what you are feeling in the present. Erections and orgasms might come, might go, but you can never go wrong by doing what feels good.
The noise and hectic energy of a party can lead people to rush, when slowing down is the best way to connect with your turn-on. People don’t get turned on by magic, at least not very often, or very reliably. And different people are turned on in very different ways. A very important kind of self-knowledge will come in handy at these times: know what turns you on. Whether it’s biting on the neck or sucking on the backs of knees, when you know what gets your juices flowing you can ask for it, and then your play partner will know what turns you on and feel freer to tell you what turns her on, and before you know it there you all are, completely turned on and floating down the river of unbridled lust.
We’ll end this chapter with a true story of love discovered during public sex, just to give you some inspiration to explore.
June had never been to a play party before. That’s evidently what they call orgies in California, she mused. Well, at least it’s a lesbian orgy. How on earth, she wondered, did I come to be the guest of honor at an orgy?
Actually, she knew how it came about. She was visiting her dear friend Flash in San Francisco, and Flash announced that she had the use of a house in the country for the weekend, and she wanted to throw a party and introduce June to her friends. Sounds like fun, thought June … and then Flash began to talk about having a Chick Rite to celebrate the advent of spring by setting up mattresses and safer-sex supplies in the middle of the living room.
June had argued and at first had refused to attend. But Flash talked her into it, pointing out that she didn’t have to actually have sex with anybody if she didn’t want to. June finally said okay, adding that if she couldn’t stand it she would hike down to the local coffeehouse with a book. So Flash went on setting up the house for the convenience of sexual pleasure, and June hid in the kitchen making dip, one party function that she at least understood.
As the guests began to arrive, June began to wonder whether she’d be able to stay at this event. She was introduced to a parade of the most outrageous dykes she’d ever seen, femmes and butches like birds in bright plumage, sporting exotic garments designed to display a gallery of tattoos, gleaming here and there with jewelry set in body parts that June did not want to think about. And they were all so young! June felt the full weight of her forty-eight years. She figured you can’t go wrong being polite, so she said the same how-do-you-dos she would anywhere else, wondering how she’d respond if one of these enthusiastic orgiasts actually told her how she did do.
In, at last, came a couple of women of unabashed middle age. One of them, Carol, was a dead ringer for June’s Great-Aunt Mary, if Great-Aunt Mary had ever chosen to dress in high butch gear complete with boots and cowboy hat. June felt relieved to have found one woman she could relate to. Then Carol smiled a dazzling smile and announced that she would like to put her hand in June’s cunt.
June, swallowing a gasp but resolutely polite, said that she didn’t really feel quite ready for that, and Carol replied