I can't think during sex. Perhaps because I am a Judaeo-Christian, I can’t mix mind and body at all. This means I can’t describe with any accuracy in plain language my knowledge of sex or my sexual practices. I do try to approximate it, egged on by the challenge this translation of the visceral into the intellectual presents for me; it’s often like hanging off one side of a cliff, trying not to fight the winds and the whipping elements, while I undulate my arms awkwardly trying to reach the cliff on the other side, making of my body a thin bridge between skin and intelligence.

I of course admire holistic integration and continue to work at becoming one with myself, at undoing my training, my upbringing, and my past, but in the process of sex, or, as the expression better puts it, in the throes of sex, I barely know where I end and others begin, and what I know how to do best is turn off my mind. That’s an ecstasy in itself. In general, I’d much rather fuck than talk with anybody, because I don’t like to suffer bores and fools, whereas I can always fuck them. I prefer body language to the language of the psyche, which is polluted by too much mediation. I prefer physical intimacy to hours of heartfelt conversation, because sex gets to the point and, tantric or similar practices notwithstanding, has a definite ending, which can’t be said about anything else in life, other than death. I am convinced I am not shallow for choosing an electrifying release over indirect communication. As the Greeks discovered 4500 years ago, self-examination is an endless loop. Opinions and theories come out of nothing and go back to nothing. Projections, fantasies, predictions, and the other untested methods of harnessing and controlling the future harness and control us. Whenever we hold on to something, we suffer. Whenever we hope to change something, we suffer. Whenever we think we’re other than what we are, we suffer. And at the end of all the intimacy, when sheer physical exhaustion puts a stop to the stories and ramblings, I am never much closer to knowing myself, or to my interlocutor. I am often further removed from myself, or my partner, after all our metaphorical explanations and dizzying verbal meanderings. On the other hand, unless a person is ‘off-balance’, in a fundamental way, I can find something real about them that makes me desire them--like the thought of their hands in my juices, or a radiant flash of grin, or a feral glint in their eye, or a single pulsing leathery curve. That is what we call living in the present. Sex is my best understanding of living in the NOW.

And, as Woody Allen said, I’ve never had a bad orgasm.

In any social situation where I find myself among strangers, I am overcome by my sense of privacy, shyness, and overwhelming urge to flee, and this initial discomfort gives way to boredom, as soon as I manage to swallow my pride and overlook my stultified image of myself and join a lively conversation, in the process of which animated humans of all stripes attempt to introduce and explain themselves to me, just as my sense of humor and my spontaneity and social graces and relative erudition finally come out of the closet; that’s when I lose interest; and regardless of the material we are engaged in, I feel insincere in my participation and increasingly removed from my own banter. I feel as if I’m about to turn to stone. I look around for a means of escape. I recognize that moment, because it happens in every cocktail or dinner or business party and every outing, and is my cue to sexualize the proceedings. I follow my own gaze as it surveys the space like a lighthouse beacon, about to settle on the most inviting specimen, and I know I’m getting relaxed enough to do what I authentically enjoy: flirt, seduce, and get to know someone through sex. At once my boredom dissipates, my self-consciousness evaporates, and I no longer feel watched, I feel unfettered. This shift from sociability to passion, from futility to reality, from trained friendliness to natural genuineness, never ceases to impress me.

I love life with enthusiasm, but I do most daily things as if I were swimming underwater: slowly, with resistance. The one thing I do long before I’m due is come. It only takes a couple of rocking, tapping fingers introduced into my vagina—especially when they’re accompanied by a third lively finger in my ass--for the moaning to start and the gates to flood.

My unspeakable social secret is that I am a master (mistress) comer. As everyone in the know knows, nobody comes better, or at least more, than I. And because I can’t contemplate or meditate or ruminate or mull over anything during sex, I am not subtle in my responses. In my dealings with others I can be sensitive, reserved, tactful to a fault, but in my sexual exchanges I am unrestrained, unqualified, unimpeded, unlocked. Because I was not socialized into my sexual behavior--because I had no daily female role model or endlessly reiterated verbal command or compelling moral narrative imprinted on my sexual consciousness, because the subject was too taboo to tackle in my formative years--I was left free to be myself, unconditioned, unmothered, untaught, unbound by my cultural quotation marks, only in sex. So I come like a man. And I come more than the man. I am told the sound of my coming (my sloshing, to be accurate) is hard to forget. It has taken me to my mid thirties to admit that I was born with the gift of orgasm. I’ve watched famous porn stars come; I’ve interviewed hundreds of people about sex; and I don’t expect to have sex with anyone who may desire me on the basis of reading this factoid; so there it is. And biology bestowed on me another odd sexual quality: I am constantly wet. Thus, I am perennially fuckable. My body is always ready for sex. I can’t remember occasions in my life when I wasn’t lubricated. My juices are running even when I’m not aroused, when I would rather not be, and when I (think I) am turned off. I am soggy and tingling in the midst of death and pestilence and personal tragedy, say when the people I love are killing themselves off, and when I am suffering and suicidal. I remain sopping wet when I have a headache or nausea or fever, when I’m sick as a dog or weak as a twig or disheartened. I’m dripping when I’m indifferent. I only know I am aroused because I feel myself trickling into my panties, or because a potential partner feels me up and is glaring at me with happy anticipation. I hate telling people not to take this physical reaction personally, so they interpret it as proof that I want them more than anyone has ever wanted them and that our bodies are meant to be together forever. My body is always ready for a lay. I live on sexual standby, although I rarely think about sex, and usually have other, more vital, things on my mind. I try hard to keep it empty.

Throughout my teens and twenties, I didn’t comprehend that people clamored to have sex with me and came back for more. I was wide open, energetically, to all comers. And people recognized it by osmosis. So pretty much everyone I met wanted to have sex with me. I thought it was normal. I was sure everyone would rather have sex with everyone else, given the opportunity, than not. I assumed the libido drove us all. I was basically right. But when I started to write about sex, for money, I broke the spell. I did not write about myself, which I do here for the first time, but the simple act of putting sexuality into words let the specter of consciousness into my untainted sex life. Subtly, gradually, I learned to discriminate and resist and withhold, to improve and perform, and to fuck with my mind. The more I talked about sex and thought about sex and wrote about sex, the more conscious I became of my erotic distinctiveness and facility. The more aware I became of myself in sex, the more the enchantment that had vibrated between myself and the world was diluted. I never lost the mystical possession and un-self-consciousness during the sexual act itself, and I don’t think I could ever fuck fully aware, being myself “as my little dog knows me.” I lost the indiscriminate sincerity and acceptance of all beings and things sexual that I was naturally endowed with. Conscious-ness is a double-edged sword. I’d rather be free than powerful. I’d rather be silent than silenced. I know myself enough by now to maintain a blissful smile on my face all day.

When I come, I see the face of God, so to speak. Regardless of the spirituality, performance, or participation of my partner, I experience orgasm as a divine revelation. It clears my mind and flings open all my doors and windows so that a fresh breeze can blow through me. It is the moment—the series of moments—when I am no longer bound by gravity or self-awareness or common sense, when I am released from my memories, attachments, and limitations straight into the pulsing cosmos, when I surrender to the vastness and interconnectedness of life, when I do not know my name. Then, I am.    

We all experience orgasm as freedom. I try to sustain my state of orgasm beyond the sexual experience. I try to live in a state of ecstasy. In that state of sexual grace, I say ‘Yes’ to reality without thinking. I instantly desire what desires me. I don’t take reality personally. I embrace what’s out of my control. At my best, I desire everything I see, hear, touch, and feel that everything desires me back. You don’t touch your teacup the same way if you’re full of desire for it. You don’t push the elevator button the same old way if you’re brimming with desire for it. That’s the ecstatic life. It’s the lover’s path.

I fall in love with my pussy. A person’s ability to gracefully slide a penis or dildo or digit into my pussy and hit the G-spot in a hearty staccato until I ejaculate is my main inspiration for falling in love. I know lust will pass. I don’t confuse desire for emotion. I am not bound by my desires. I’m not attached to my emotions. I just respect my instincts.

Historically, the people who most desire me have been those who, at the moment they finally had me, naked and rearing on a convenient surface, lost their momentum. Too much advance revving hurts our sex engine. So I act on my desire fast and impulsively, or not at all. I’d rather fantasize and masturbate--until my next attraction to another chemistry--than analyze and compromise. A decadent aura around me attracts people to me who believe they can be transformed or liberated by the experience. The accounts of my sexual adventures formed a magnet in my relationships. Sex breeds sex. In mid-cycle especially, when I am ovulating, nothing can get in the way of my sexual satisfaction. I’m thankful that my fondness for sex makes me normal—meaning, more like other people than not. Sex is a great, messy equalizer, and a true, not easy, democracy.

I’m a great believer in meaningless sex. At a time when we are overworked and stressed out from a young age, and so compelled to achieve that even our vacations are rigorous exercises in willpower meant to test our limits or train our bodies or clean out our toxins or elevate us to a higher level of consciousness or self-control, we are in danger of losing our capacity—and our habit--for unnecessary, indulgent, good-old-thoughtless fun that has no objective and no aspiration and requires no excuse. I believe a moment in time is best spent as a moment in orgasm. If it didn’t involve dealing with another consciousness, sex would be the primary therapy in our lives, and the subject of every poem, philosophical essay, painting, and the antidote to misery. If sex didn’t include promises of possessive tomorrows and future guarantees, such as the commitment to monogamy, we would all live (and fuck) better and longer. So I keep it meaningless.

I don’t believe in mixing sex and ideas. I don’t like to confide or confess or even playact during sex, and I don’t like to talk about it afterward. I do not like adultery and am not a fan of monogamy. I do not like how-to sex books, and am not the let-it-all-hang-out type. I refuse invitations to appear on national TV talk shows, and let the Geraldo limo wait downstairs at my brownstone twice. I am not immune to ambition. Because of my upbringing, it’s constitutionally impossible for me to become a cultural stripper. I dislike the inherent risk of moralizing that comes with writing about sex. I only write about sex to debunk some of the lies we accept about our lives that other writers, moralists and sexologists spread. Writing about contemporary sexual life means, for every generation, debunking lots of myths that present people's sex lives as either more or less active than they are. People like me unexpectedly, ironically, almost providentially, become sex writers. I made sex my subject of choice in my work for purely intellectual reasons. I treated writing as any other academic discipline: I tried to find my niche, stake my tiny territory amidst the intimidating greats, and do something new. It came to me like an epiphany that sex was not written about truthfully enough in literature, at least from the point of view of a woman. I was twenty-one.

Sex is a form of communication, a prelingual language. Its usage must be learned and can always be improved. Some people have a gift for languages. Others have to work hard in order to overcome their genetic awkwardness or social conditioning or their defenses. I have a facility with sex. I also happen to enjoy sex as much as any non-psychotic person I know. My idea of relaxation, and of hearty exercise, is to spend a day in bed with a well-medicated and eager man (hard, but not about to come, because of the drugs), whom I can ride till my thighs give up. Some chance combination of inherited fluencies and formative impressions—the sort of coincidence (the Greeks called Tyche) that brought life into existence and that determines all aspects of life—resulted in my being particularly inclined toward sex despite my thoroughly repressive upbringing. 

My rules and directives for sexual play are culled from my years of multifaceted erotic learning. Having early on tested various different partners’ receptivity to sexual experimentation, I learned how to couch it in familiar, appealing, unthreatening terms, and how to adapt my language to the individual and to the physical, geographical, and social setting at hand. My basic rule is that sex is good, and the more you know about doing it, the better it is. Acquiring practical knowledge improved my sex life when I didn’t think it could be improved. Some simple practical instruction can save your sex life, your sense of self, your peace of mind. But sex doesn’t thrive on wordy abstraction. If you stay open-minded and curious, the rest will follow. Live free of past and of future, alive to everything the moment has to offer. The less you try to control, the more you’ll thrive. Know the qualities you are seeking in your sex life, and what your minimum requirements are, don’t deviate from them, lose your fear, and thou shall reap. Know your bliss and follow it.