Mindblowing Sex in the Real World
Excerpt from the Introduction to
Mindblowing Sex in the Real World
Welcome to Sex in the Real World: Redirecting the Sexuality of Our Generation
What ever happened to the joy of sex? It seems I read its obituary somewhere between stories about Magic Johnson, Madonna, and condom distribution in the public schools. People over forty revel in all this controversy—talk of danger, promiscuity, and youth—glad, it seems, that they're not involved. They say they'd hate to be young and single again in this age of AIDS and sexually explicit culture. Too dangerous. Too confusing. But what about us? The twentysomethings or MTV Generation or Generation X or whatever tired label they try to slap on us. We're still here. Not only do we want to have sex, we want it to be mindblowing.
Today's society tries to ignore the fact that young adults deserve sexual pleasure, presenting us instead with a sexual paradox. On one hand, we have been given many sexually repressive messages: "Just say no." "Sex equals death." We have been haunted by AIDS, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and date rape. On the other hand, we have been given many sexually stimulating messages, particularly from the media. Howard Stern, Basic Instinct, Kelly Bundy, 2 Live Crew, and the Artist Formerly Known As Prince all enticed us to believe what a naughty thrill sex could be. What our society did not allow us to know is that behind the sexual politics, and somewhere between the sexual repression and the explicit eroticism, exists the realities of sex and relationships. Sex is a lot more complex than most of us were ever told. This book will expose sex as everything that it can be. Sex can be natural, warm, spiritual, kinky, confusing, messy, silly, awesome, predictable, depressing, earth-shattering, and that's just for starters. Sex doesn't have to end in disease or hurt, nor does it always flow as spontaneously as it does in the movies.
Since most of us were denied education about the complex realities of sex, I wondered what my peers still wanted and needed to learn. Besides seeking information from my workshop participants and radio listeners, I also interviewed and surveyed young adults about what's working for them sexually and what's not. Throughout the book, you'll read their quotes. I found one overwhelming similarity in their responses. Above all, people wanted to sort out the complexities of sex, and learn how to make it better and more pleasurable.
Growing up, the frightening myths that we heard about sex were almost as pervasive as the rumor that Pop Rocks killed Mikey, the kid in the Life cereal commercials. Today, most of us know that hair won't grow on our palms from masturbating. We know that douching with Coca-Cola is not an effective means of contraception. We know that we're supposed to use condoms. We know our sexual plumbing. But when it comes to obtaining true sexual pleasure, many of us are still in the dark.
Jerry, a twenty-eight year-old man I interviewed, expressed this best when he said, "The first time I had sex it was like I was having sex in a black hole. I was fifteen, and I didn't have the slightest idea of what I was doing. It didn't even feel that great. It wasn't until recently, more than ten years later, that I started to understand sex. Finally, instead of having sex in a black hole, it's like I'm having sex in the Garden of Eden."
As Jerry expressed, the lack of complete, unbiased information about sex has made it difficult for many young people to enjoy their sexuality. Research has shown that only about 30 percent of girls enjoy their first sexual experience and fewer than 10 percent have an orgasm during that experience. One quarter of sexually active college women still have never had an orgasm. Studies also found that they never learned enough about their sexual response to know how to stimulate their clitoris during sex. About 60 percent of the young men interviewed found that their first intercourse was not as enjoyable as they had expected: it was either faster than they had hoped for, because they had not learned to control their ejaculation, or uncomfortable because their partner was not enjoying it, or upsetting because they lost their erections due to anxiety over first-time "performance."
Many men and women in our generation have been faking their enjoyment of sex, sometimes even to themselves. People should not merely be going along with the moves, wondering if their orgasm felt as good as it should, wondering if sex could be more fulfilling, wondering if they really wanted to be doing it with the person they just did it with.
Sex is a skill and now is the time to learn all about it. My fear is that If we don't figure out how to be happy with our sexuality now, we will end up like the generation before us, crying to Oprah and Sally about our sexual problems. We deserve to help ourselves today. Sex is one of the most important, wonderful aspects of our lives. Now is the time for us to claim our sexual rights, to redefine the sexuality of our generation as important to us, as meaningful, as pleasurable. We don't need to feel sorry for ourselves or be pitied by the older generation because we missed the age of free love. We don't need to feel like losers because everyone on TV seems to be doing it better than we are. Nor do we need to be captivated by sexual politics instead of talking about the realities of S-E-X. What we do need, and what I hope this book will provide, is information that can help make sex blissful, comfortable, pleasurable, exciting—and completely mindblowing.