Question: I’m a 33-year-old woman who has never had an orgasm during intercourse. Is there something wrong with me? Am I missing out?

Answer: Hell no, or maybe so. Truthfully, most women (almost 70% of us) don’t orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. And those who do, I believe, have a physical anatomy that makes it easier for them to orgasm by stimulating the clitoral network without actually touching the clitoris. That being said, a recent ridiculous study on why women orgasm during penetration, says it’s the size, or more accurately the length, of his penis that makes a big difference.

I call bullsh-t on that one, because most women would say thick is better than long, but that’s neither the tip or the point here. The point being - nothing is wrong with you, and you’re only missing out because you think you’re missing out. If you’re happy with the orgasms you’ve been having, delight in the squeals of pleasure you can produce. As someone who mainly (TMI alert) orgasms with the aid of clitoral stimulation, preferably in a circular motion, but who has also orgasmed without said aid, I don’t feel like those penetrative orgasms are the ones I want to write home about, if indeed I chose to write home about my orgasms. That’s just me. I’ve been there, done that, and I can say the clitoris is the real deal.

If you want to try orgasms during penetration, try grinding instead of pumping. There are more nerve endings towards the entrance of the vagina than near the cervix, and more sensation produces more sensation.

In the interim, don’t worry about where you’re orgasms originate and (Velveeta alert) celebrate yourself and your orgasms.

This week’s sex product review is an ebook, so I decided there wouldn’t be much to show on video, since, well, it’s an ebook. A Porn Valley Odyssey: Making “The Facts of Life XXX is more about words than pictures (when the movie comes out it will be more about pictures than words) and they are well-written and funny words. Interesting words. Informational words. I loved Gram Ponante‘s (full disclosure: I also love Gram Ponante) in-depth recounting of his experience directing “Facts of Life XXX” in this Porn Valley Odyssey. And what an odyssey it was. From casting a sex worker called Coffee Brown to a Jo with a British/Aussie accent, it ain’t the Facts of Life I was raised on. Or is it?

“Unlike the source material, unlike the source material “Facts of Life XXX” would end with the girl-on-girl Natalie/Tootie bang that audiences have craved for nearly 30 years, rather than the whimper that was Cloris Leachman.”

I learned a lot about porn valley in this 64 page book. Read the original script for the Facts of Life XXX (the one with mention of Cousin Geri, aka Geri Jewell). Mr. Ponante (aka Marty Barrett) reminds us that when making porn, it’s not the sex that’s difficult (although dealing with the smells can be), it’s no shows, poor acting, chlamydia, drugs and crossing the line.

And, I had no idea that:

• Larry Flynt makes his employees pay for parking.
• The People v. Harold Freeman saved porn’s ass(ets).
• Fellation was a word I wasn’t using.* *even if it’s a made up word

The book is short enough to read quickly, funny enough to read again and insightful enough to get this man a literary agent. Buy the book for yourself, and as the kids say these days, LYFAO.

As I head to Momentum this weekend, I am excited to meet the ladies of Athena’s Home Novelties. Sure, I’d like them to carry my book, Getting Off: A Woman’s Guide to Masturbation, but I’m also totally on board with what they’re putting together, the Athena’s Cup fundraiser, in which $5 and used bras can help make a difference in the fight against breast cancer/towards breast cancer research. .

The plan is to break the Guinness book of world records when it comes the largest bra chain, which last happened in Cyprus in April 2006 when 114,000 bras were collected and linked together. They measured 95 kilometers or 59.0302633 miles. (Not to be confused with the largest stretch which happened while women were walking in bras during the MoonWalk in Edinburgh). I also learned that there are Guiness records for unhooking as many bras as possible in one minute (56) and largest bra size, 38KKK. That means there are big boobs and even bigger boobs (like Charlie Sheen). Yeah, I’ll be here all week, don’t forget to tip your waitress.

In this week’s SLW, sex news you may have missed - a pole dancing class…for Jesus. Plus, sexual branding reinvention, a Presbyterian minister who preached against homosexuality until he finally understands it, Vivid doesn’t want Usher’s sex tape and the top seven most embarrassing moments in sexy times.

• Pole dancing for Jesus. (HuffPost)
• Must read: Presbyterian minister changes mind about gays. (Salon)
• Quebec and porn. And a mother, a daughter and a promising porn career. (TorontoStar)
• Great advice on maintaining relationships with exes and etiquette on celebration for unmarried, childless people who don’t have bridal or baby showers. (SeattlePi)
• Go Susannah Breslin! How to reinvent your brand when your personal brand is sex. (Forbes)
• Propecia: more hair, less sex. (PsychologyToday)
• Wisconsin governor dislikes the gays. (AutoStraddle)
• Sex workers aren’t child molesters. Leave sex workers in education alone. (Slate)
• Top seven most embarrassing sex moments. (FoxNews)
• Burn this book, or perhaps your bra? One hippy’s rant about another hippy’s book. (EditrixAbby)
• Why doesn’t Vivid want Usher’s sex tape? (Salon)
• The University of Chicago has it’s own casual encounters website. (ChicagoTribune)
• In Flagler, Florida sex education gets majority ruled. (Flagerlive)

Here‘s some light Saturday reading that I discovered late on a Friday afternoon.  It’s an article on the brain and how men and women experience sexual pleasure differently. Using PET scans, sex researchers learned that man relies more on physical touch to get off, and a woman needs to find her brain bliss in order to go the distance.

The article is six years old, but I do declare (okay, maybe declare is a strong word) that reading an article called “Women fall into “trance” during orgasm” can make your sex life feel young again. Or at least help you understand both your pleasure and your partner’s experience with pleasure a little more.

So, sit with it and sit on it, then sit on his dick, sit on her face and stay in bed all day. After all, it is Saturday.

In this week’s Hot Sox Podcast:

Editrix Abby came to NYC in 1995 with big dreams - in advertising! A self-proclaimed smutmeister and experience junkie who once predicted David Sedaris was going to be famous, Abby’s life has been a series of adventures. When she arrived in New York, she became an ad executive, but then everything got “screw”ed. Now a writer and editor, her time at Penthouse Forum led her to become the voice of the misunderstood fetishist. And today, when asked where Abby has room for improvement, she says  ”in being normal.” What defines a real freak? I get to sit down with Abby who happens to have a spot in the TOP FIVE most influential people in my life (she really has helped me become who I am today and continues to be a big part of my close friendship network). Abby was also assistant to Ms. Waxman on my first three Personal Touch movies and who was with me when I got the tattoo that you see on the front of my blog.

There’s way more to say about Abby, and this only touches the surface, but I hope you enjoy this week’s podcast as much as I enjoy the unique and magnificent woman we call Editrix Abby.

Today’s question comes from me, and I answer myself. The truth is, I could use your advice too, so feel free to chime in. All names, with the exception of mine, have been deleted or changed, despite the fact that I’m not sure who is real and who is fictitious.

Photo credit: Ellen Stagg

Question: A totally random stranger watches my videos on Cherry TV and then asks me to make her a private video. She says she’s never been good at blow jobs and that money’s no object. She wants a video of me deep throating, and in lieu of a video I suggest talking with her via skype. I think about doing it, she’s very persistent. She wants me to use a dildo in the video, I suggest a banana. I get cold feet. I tell her again, I prefer to do a private session in which we can interact and ask if we can talk on the phone first. She says she can’t use the phone because the house is so small and her husband can hear everything. She says she’s hard of hearing and reads lips better than speaks on the phone. She can instant message. I tell her there are other videos out there that can help her and she say’s that I’d help her best.

Then, when she who’s supposedly so nervous abou doing something like this, or is it excited?, tells me that she can borrow her brother’s credit card to pay me, and also writes “it’s kinda the same way i tend to laugh when someone says penis or vagina instead of cock/dick or pussy,” my intuition kicks in (again). I begin to doubt who she says she is, and think perhaps she’s a dude who wants to get off to my mouth and my voice. But, what if she’s a really excited homemaker who thinks so highly of me?What would you do? Would you make her your own private video?

Answer: I’ve been wavering on this one for quite a few weeks. Can you go first?

I’ll show you mine, if  you show me yours.

Mine’s after the jump.

Read more »

Elizabeth Taylor died today, and while I can’t say I was her number one fan, even after adding a few zeros I wasn’t close to her number 1,000,000 fan, I can say that she loved love. A recent-enough Vanity Fair article - which was actually an excerpt from the book Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century - had me ferociously flipping through the pages of her love of love.

Taylor was married eight times, and her greatest romance was Richard Burton. She once said that her biggest problem with Burton was that they loved each other “too much.” It was indeed her longest marriage (the first one to Burton), no others lasted more than six years. And it was on and off, and done and redone, with marriage, divorce, remarriage and redivorce. But more than that, along with her other six marriages (the total of eight includes her marrying Burton twice), Taylor’s love life provides insight into this crazy little thing called love. Love can be crazy, and drive us, crazy. It seems that love is allowed, perhaps expected, to be crazy, if you’re a legend, a superstar, or a passionate beauty. Think about it, even in the seemingly-stable superstar marriages (Brangelina), magazines are always trying to break couples up, shake things up. Caught cheating! Fleeing the house! Fighting in front of the children!

As someone who’s had a stable family upbringing and whose parents will be married 40 years this July, I can say that I understand loving love, but lately I also understand finding the “one” and sticking it out for a lifetime. I didn’t always get that. I’ve never been married, although I have been in love. I didn’t care about marriage (truth is, I don’t care about being married as much as I would prefer being partnered), and until everyone can get married, outside of “for insurance purposes” I’m not sure that I want to. Yet, I desire the stability and grounding that comes with that ideal of deep love. I feel that when I’m in a solid relationship, I do my best, most productive work. I wonder if Ms. Taylor felt that same way, if that’s why she sought out the marriage part in so many of her relationships.

I also see something else here, the other side of the coin. The part that plays out in passion, in newness, in falling in love again and again. The part that excites me about continuously meeting someone smarter, bigger, newer. The part that keeps us alive, and feeling young (and if we orgasm, then looking young too). The part that we suppress when we commit, because “being too much in love” doesn’t make for realistic living. It doesn’t pay bills, take care of children, let us sleep much. Being too much in love can make us delusional and disillusioned, but it’s also the part that’s exciting and keeps us wanting to be alive.

Had she not been married eight times, would we think more or less of Elizabeth Taylor? Does it matter less because she was a legend? We seem to have more empathy for people with pretty faces. Would we have judged her for shacking up with all of these men without wedding bands, or dismissed it, like we do the mad ramblings of a violent woman-hater like Charlie Sheen? I’m reading Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, a most marvelous book on the evolution of sex, monogamy, relationships - or at least that’s what I gather from what friends have told me and from the few chapters I have completed, and I think of Ms. Taylor and her permission to love, and love and love, and what that means about love for the rest of us.

Happy Spring!

This week’s SLW, sex news you may have missed has a lot to do with schooling. From the possibly exaggerated idea of  ”lesbians until graduation” to the UK’s new explicit sex education, what is, and isn’t being learned in schools when it comes to sex. That, and so much more.

• Study undercuts view of college as a place for same-sex experimentation. (NYT)
• An 11-year-old girl caught in the middle of a sex scandal in Texas. (CNN)
• In the UK, explicit sex education is slated to start as early as five-years young. (DailyMail)
• “You don’t bring me flowers.” Same-sex nuptial go on, sans florist. (TorontoSun)
• Lessons from loss in Maryland’s gay-marriage bill. (WashPost)
• The Human Rights of Sex Workers are finally starting to be recognized. (TheSocietyPages)
• ICANN approves .XXX top-level domain. (Wired)
• More on the sex work front. Sex Work Trauma Porn (AudaciaRay)
• California Professor fired for off campus Burlesque act sues for sex discrimination. (InsideHigherEd)
• Everything you need to know about pegging. (Jezebel)

With travel this week, the blog schedule is a little out of whack, or wax, perhaps. I promise to return with the Hot Sox podcast by next Friday (at the latest). In the meantime, here’s what would have been yesterday’s sex advice, if my flight to Tucson hadn’t been so delayed (ah, blame, sometimes it makes for an easy excuse).

Question: I’m looking for any one tip or technique you can give me to make my mediocre sex life a little less mediocre?

Answer: I’m going to keep this short, because the longer answer involves “there’s not one thing you can do for your relationship to take it from average to awesome.”

Still, I get asked this question a lot, and this is the first thing that always comes to mind.  Before I reveal what “this” is, I will say, while it’s not the be all,end all, having “it” and believing “it’s” worth it, can make a heck-of-a-lot of difference in how you have sex. Remember, sometimes you’ve got to fake it til you make it (and if you can’t even fester up the desire to do that, then wait until you can).

The key, if you don’t want what you describe as your “mediocre” sex life anymore, is to get into the mindset that you are totally excited for your new sexpedition.

That “one” thing that could help?

Be in the moment, and be totally excited to be there.

It’s called enthusiasm.