FAKING IT WHILE MAKING IT

I am a FIRM believer that a woman should NEVER fake an orgasm.  When we are sharing our sexuality with a partner it is only through vulnerability, honesty, courage, and faith that our ultimate sexual and human satisfaction can be achieved.  This isn't necessarily a very easy thing -- especially for a woman, where most of our intense pleasure happens on the inside.

Having made my declarative statement, I admit to betraying my own creed a handful of times in my early years.   Remembering a time I couldn't get "unstuck" in the plateau phase of arousal, I realized I was too self conscious of my body and trying to "perform" for my partner.  The following is an old journal entry of mine answering the question -- why did I just do that?

Dear Passing Lover,

Feeling you between my legs last night was strangely exciting in the most incredible intensity of the word. Under normal unattached and unmedicated circumstances, I would have been able to truly experience the quick and intense orgasm which has come quite naturally to me since the age of thirteen. Last night though, I ultimately felt compelled to fake that part with you. I only faked it because I felt myself at the height of pleasure and vulnerability that I would allow myself to feel with a stranger like you. I may have also been limited due to the cocktail of pharmacology swimming through my own physiology. I was so close and simply wanted to give you credit for a job well done. The fact that I warmed up to you to the point of getting hot enough to carry off a fake orgasm should be a compliment enough, don't you think?

I mean, I eventually brought myself there - after we parted and without anyone else in the room - so the fact I was relying upon my remembrance of our encounter to finish it up should count for something. After you left I could still smell your scent all over my body including that good old fashioned smell of clandestine seamen which somehow soaked into my tucked up bra cups after you came all over my exposed tits. I can still sense it while I write this and I cannot help but smile. The fact that I may not ever feel this again, or at least for a long while, makes it that much more sweet.

So please don't be disappointed with my honesty. Take it as a compliment that I chose not to give up the 20% remaining focus I had which was sucking in my tummy, arching my back, and keeping me in the "perfect porn pose" for your visual pleasure. Were I to let that remaining focus go in order to bring me over the edge - I may not have ever come back. And that would have ruined everything.

Sincerely,

The Faker

WHY I LEFT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

The real title to this post should be, "Why I Left Saint Thomas for Saint Paul."

As an attempt to get out of the house and do something for myself for the first time since having my two children, I joined the choir at Saint Thomas Catholic Church where I had been married five years earlier and a parishioner for twelve years.  The fact that singing with a group of elderly strangers was my best answer to combating the monotony and boredom of motherhood, proves how intense the desperation and delusion of staying at home all day with a two and four year old was for me. Those who say "mother-shock" and post-partum depression don't last past the first few weeks after giving birth are full of shit.

After about six months of singing mezzo-soprano during Sunday mass, the choir director asked me to step off the risers and take a shot at cantoring the mass parts. Although I was quite nervous in the beginning, after a couple of months of singing solo, I quickly became comfortable singing to the congregation.  Hand in hand with that comfort, went the parishioner's respectful courtesy and tolerance of my inability to really sing on key for more than two measures.  It was something of an unspoken agreement I had with the other church goers -- they would pretend like I could sing well, and I would pretend like they were reverently participating in the Holy Mass instead of plotting their premature departure after Holy Communion.

About a year into my wild and crazy hobby, I realized that I had quite passively lost enough weight to fit back into my smallest sized clothes which had been hanging in the back of my "Closet of Many Sizes."  The I time spent singing and practicing must have replaced the time previously spent napping and eating ice cream.  I was more comfortable with my body shape and excited to wear the crisp, white, French linen blouse with buttons up the middle which I hadn't fit into since my honeymoon.

On a sunny September Sunday morning, I approached the lectern feeling fresh and renewed in my Town & Country inspired attire.  Even though my confidence about my voice was strong, I still despised being made to raise both arms straight up above my head in the "lazy touchdown" sign (and keep them there) as a gesture to the congregation to join in song.  My choir director rejected my instinct to gently and briefly raise one arm halfway, and strictly required uniformity in all the actions of the cantors.

As I began to sing "Holy, holy, holy, Lord.  God of power/God of might..." I scanned the congregation for familiar faces.  Oh wow!  I had no idea the gastroenterologist who performed my colonoscopy last month went to church here, I thought, ...I wonder if he recognizes me from this angle?  And isn't that the guy I dated during my eleven week break-up from Ken who asked me to marry him?  He looks REALLY old now, but at least his wife is pretty.  I am SO GLAD that one didn't work out for me!

As I briefly stepped down from the lectern, a woman sprang up from the end of the third row pew closest to the choir and quickly shuffled straight towards me with her hands forward as if she wanted to grab my boobs.  I guess most girls would step back from this type of approaching stranger, but being a busty broad I get this type of introduction all the time.  So I just stood there.

The conservatively looking middle aged woman came right up to me, pulled together my open blouse and said, "Oh Honey - please button up - they popped as soon as you lifted your arms!"

I looked down to see all but the bottom two buttons of my blouse completely undone.  Raising my arms so high must have brought the fitted pleats of the shirt up to my bust line where the tension forced the closure apart.  The worst part was I had about fifteen seconds for the priest to finish saying whatever three sentences he says before I needed to get back up and sing the Memorial Acclimation.

Fumbling like a panicked teen-ager to button up my blouse before Father's attention came back my way, I reloaded and dashed back up to the lectern in time to start the, "Christ has died, Christ has risen..." intro.  This time singing with my hands tightly gripping the sides of the podium in order to keep my cans confined and myself from passing out of embarrassment.  My reunion with my previously scrutinized audience was humbling to say the least.

After our final hymn that Sunday, I dashed out of arms of Saint Thomas and straight into the anonymous and all accepting love of Saint Paul...Church, that is.  Although my cups runneth over wherever I choose to worship, at least Saint Paul's has given me a chance to strap down tighter and start fresh with a clean slate of respect (for myself AND from others).  Two things I promise myself this time around:  I will never join the choir at my new parish, as well as ever wear a button up blouse again.

HOW I TAUGHT MYSELF TO TALK DIRTY

"...and then I go and spoil it all by sayin' somethin' stupid like, 'I love you'."

                                                            --"Something Stupid" by C. Carson Parks

Have you ever had a talent for something you were completely unaware of until someone else pointed it out?  Well apparently I employ a very unique flair when it comes to my proclivity to talk dirty between the sheets.

This was pointed out to me once when a lover stopped mid-thrust, caught his breath, looked me in the eye and said, "Carrie...I have had a lot of chatty lovers in my life, but none that said quite the things you do."  I was a little confused because I figured everyone said these things during moments of passion and so I asked if I should just stay quite in order to not freak him out.  My lover quickly shook his head and encouraged me to continue on with wild abandon.

During my elementary years as a sexually active woman, every intimate encounter I had was a dysfunctional dance of somehow trying to gain back my inner power.  Having been molested during the dawn of my adolescence, I believed my sexual mystery and power as a woman had been stolen from me.  Sexually acting out was my way of trying to take back what had been done to me.  Being physically vulnerable and passionate with a man while simultaneously never letting myself really lose control was my attempt to replay the childhood abuse and somehow regain all I had lost.

I heard it said once that the one who loves the least controls the relationship.  Operating from such a fearful misunderstanding of what real intimacy was, I believed in order to "win" in the relationship you must always make the other person think you love him more than he loves you, even if it is not true.  Especially if it is not true.  This inflates and bolsters the man's ego giving him a false sense of power, domination, and confidence in the relationship.  That way, he never pays much attention to the fact that you are completely available whenever something better comes along.

Purely for self protective purposes I lived out this mental manipulation during every relationship I ever had. My second rule was to NEVER say, "I love you" first.  The only thing those three words accomplished was ensuring forfeiture of the game and complete surrender to the enemy.

(Is it making more sense as to why I have been in therapy for twenty-five years and that it took me seven years, a team of relationship experts, and A LOT of magic fairy dust for me to meet my husband Ken at the altar as my truly authentic and vulnerable self?)

So it is out of this foundation of scrambled dysfunction that the dirty talker in me was born. It was when I would find myself losing mental and emotional control of myself during sex that I would find myself beginning to moan and groan the words, "I love you!"  Not because I really loved the guy or even cared anything about seeing him again after our encounter, but because this seemed the easiest way to express my feelings of gratitude for someone noticing me.  For pathetic as it sounds, it was only during sexual interaction that I felt truly worthwhile and real.

Because of my issues about not losing control, I would catch myself and stop mid-"YOU" of the "I love you" and verbally slide into "YOUUUURRRRRR COCK FILLING UP MY PUSSY"...or..."I love IT when you...(fill in the blank)."  The "I love (blank)" part always needed to be followed up with further dirty talk expanding on the first outburst so that he didn't catch on to my improv performance and really think I was forfeiting the game and letting him "win."  I would quickly continue describing our current physical act and how "hot/excited/wet/swollen/horny/etc." any or all of my body was reacting to the original "I LOVE - whatever."

Once you start with a sentence like, "I love feeling the way your hard cock feels in my slippery pussy!" words like, "Please just keep fucking me all night long!" and "You are making me so fucking wet - I can't stand it!" easily flow from your tongue.  Throwing in a few moans, gasps, and heavy breathing along the way are great no-brainers while you are mentally composing your next line of "Fuck me like a dirty little whore!" or "Every part of me is wanting you to fill it up!"

Nowadays I share the talents of my past with Ken on somewhat of a regular basis.  It is a completely different experience when being naughty with someone out of love instead of fear.  Sex is much more rewarding both physically and spiritually when both partners can truly be naked with their bodies as well as their souls.  And when that level of intimacy is achieved, the results are fucking phenomenal!

Somethin' Stupid -- Frank Sinatra