Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies. Hadley Freeman

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СКАЧАТЬ the extremely well-endowed porn stars she’d worked with (‘Dean Danners! Dean fucking Danners! None of you have heard of him? None?’), spinning theories about natural design (‘There’s a reason God made your arms long enough to reach the crotch. Think about it’) and describing in extraordinary detail a former colleague whose speciality was triple anal penetration, which seemed to me the complete opposite of what this class’s exclamation-marked name promised.

      In defence of Madam Kim, part of the problem might have been the subject. Perhaps there are only so many ways to skin a cat, so to speak. Bless her, she tried to zhoosh things up a bit, coining all sorts of terms such as ‘the taco hold’, ‘the clam’ and ‘the envelope’ that we all dutifully wrote down in our notebooks, but, even from my vantage point in the front row, they did all look exactly the same, even after I’d moved aside the giant pots of lube that had previously been partially blocking my view. Madam Kim appeared to concede the point when she told us the best thing for us to do was to come up with our own tricks, which is surely like telling someone who has come over to stay the night to go to the bathroom and masturbate and leave you in peace.

      At one point she paused, lost in wonderment at the memory of a former colleague’s ‘most beautiful asshole’, and one of my classmates took advantage of the moment to ask a question: ‘Um, when you’re giving a blow job, how do you stop yourself from feeling like you’re going to puke?’

      Judging from the chorus of relieved murmurs around her, this was the question the majority of the class had given up their Monday night to have resolved.

      Madam Kim looked like Frank Sinatra being asked to sing ‘My Way’ again, if Sinatra gave up crooning in his dotage and moved on to Italian opera.

      ‘Uh-huh, sure. Well, you just gotta keep telling yourself he loves it. That’s a real turn-on. HE LOVES IT. Thinking that really helps to open the throat,’ she replied, slipping over the surprisingly slender line that divides self-empowerment and self-abasement when it comes to discussion about female sexuality. And then she went back to talking about the time she gave Dean Danners’s twelve-inch cock a clam hold.

      Of course, why anyone would trust the wisdom of someone who labours under the occupation name of ‘sexpert’ is a reasonable point. Yet seeing as depictions and discussions of sex in pop culture have so roundly failed to keep pace with sexual liberation, it would be useful if someone out there could offer sensible advice. Someone, ideally, who does not speak in the dreaded newspaper sexpert tone which generally makes me want to vomit without anything at all in my mouth: palpably hushed with self-conscious solemnity and po-faced faux maturity, rather like a teacher reading out a note in front of the class that is full of dirty words. ‘This is a very serious subject,’ the tone intimates. ‘And anyone who laughs is simply revealing their own immaturity.’ As an irritation factor, it is rivalled only by the Sexpert Minxy Byline Photo: ‘Yes,’ say those pursed lips, those lowered eyelids, ‘I’ve had A LOT of sex. See how wild and loose my hair is? It’s because I’ve just had sex. See how I’m holding this pen in my photo? Just imagine what else I could hold so masterfully. See how my shoulders are bare. That’s because I just had sex. You hear me? Sex.’

      Again, speaking purely from a personal perspective, they act like the image of Boris Yeltsin squatting naked on a coffee table used to act on Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World: the ultimate schwing-killer.

      Whether pop culture’s sniggering voyeurism and retrograde misogyny reflect most people’s attitude to sex is a bigger question. They encourage that tendency, certainly, as anyone who has ever, despite themselves, bought a tabloid because of a front page story involving a footballer and his alleged ‘mid-romp’ puking (thank you, Ashley Cole) knows. But at the risk of upsetting every tabloid journalist who makes a living out of assuming that the thought of other people having sex is the most mind-bogglingly shocking concept this side of the Higgs boson particle, I’m going to say that, ultimately, no, it isn’t, or no more than Pringles reflect the human need for regular nutrition.

      Well, at last, all those sex questions you’ve always wondered about will be answered and you won’t have to suffer a Sex Therapist Tone, Minxy Photo or tales of triple anal penetration to hear them. You’re welcome!

       * Hey, why doesn’t the guy ever offer to put on a condom? Why is it always my job to tell him? I mean, it goes ON HIM, right? Even in the rare film that admits, yes, condoms are worn during sex, it’s still the woman who has to prompt the man. It’s not like I’m expected to tell a man to shave in the morning or to do any of his other manly self-care tasks, and I don’t expect him to tell me to put in a tampon, or whatever. So why this craziness, why why why?

      Easy: it’s a little-known fact among the female populace, but a very well-known one among the male populace, that men cannot get sexually transmitted diseases. That’s right: just as they cannot get pregnant, so they cannot get herpes, genital warts, hepatitis, gonorrhoea, syphilis, HIV (am I turning you on yet?) and so on. Men also cannot pass on any STDs because none of them – not one of them – has an STD.

      Moreover, if a guy doesn’t want to get the woman pregnant, he literally won’t get her pregnant. Isn’t that amazing? He just transmits a thought down to his penis mid-sexual encounter that says, ‘Penis, listen to me: I want to get laid but I don’t want a baby. So don’t shoot out the good stuff.’ And it won’t! Ah, the wonders of science.

      So seeing as sex is consequence-free for a guy, why would he sheathe the mini-me?

      Oh wait, what’s that? I’m getting word from a medical-type person that this isn’t the case. They CAN get STDs too? And pass them on? And they can’t telepathically send thoughts to their penises? Huh. So why –? Because they can’t get pregnant? And therefore they don’t grow up thinking of sex as having any consequence other than an orgasm? And because many of them think that, well, the woman can sort it – there are pills, right? And she’s probably on the Pill anyway, right? And because many of them live in the mistaken belief that it is very hard for men to catch STDs from women? Or pass them on? Because such things don’t happen to guys like them? And because they just don’t want to wear a condom? And because some of them, in the moment (and possibly beyond), are selfish jerks who are just thinking about one thing right then and it ain’t their health, let alone her health? And maybe this should make the woman think twice whether this moron deserves the privilege of gazing upon her naked body seeing as he has so little interest in its physical wellbeing? Oh. OK.

      Hope that clears it up for you.

      * How long is it normal for a single woman to go without having sex? Gosh. Well. THAT’S embarrassing. How long are we talking here?

       * Oh, um, I didn’t realise I’d have to say. Well, there was this guy last summer but his, um, didn’t really go in, um –

      STOP! I was just kidding! Please, I beg you, stop making those gestures with your fingers!

      Contrary to common perception, one’s attractiveness is not measured in how many people have seen you naked. It’s actually measured in the quality of your dance routine to ‘She’s Like the Wind’ by Patrick Swayze. Personally, I’m VERY attractive.

      As to how long it’s normal to go without having sex, the thing to remind oneself here is that the human body is not a car. It doesn’t need regular top-ups of, um, a certain viscous liquid that comes out of a nozzle which is inserted – whoa horsey! Sorry about that, I got carried away with my own metaphor. Let’s just say, your body is not reliant on regular top-ups, and we’ll stop there. In fact, it can run on empty for years and years and years. I realise this goes against the wise words preached by Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller (‘Seriously, do you, like, service yourself ten times a day?’), but this is one СКАЧАТЬ