Defending Vanilla Sex

I just read Mistress Matisse's latest Control Tower column from The Stranger. I read every edition of Matisse's biweekly column, follow her blog and listen to her podcast and this is the first time I've found myself completely disagreeing with her.

The premise of her column is this: Matisse is kind of a celebrity in the Seattle kink and poly communities. She thought it would be fun to go on a few dates "without the backstory" so she dated several guys through a social networking site and found herself having vanilla sex for the first time in a long time.

Quoth she:

I went out with several pleasant, good-looking guys from a social-networking site. I told them all, "I'm pretty kinky." They all replied, "That's cool." But the sex was all pretty unkinky—and not terribly successful. I have skills and confidence in bed, but I came away from those encounters thinking, "I do not understand how to be sexual like this."

Now, one can debate endlessly about what qualifies as kinky sex. But I've figured out exactly what makes sex vanilla. The defining feature of vanilla sex is this: You communicate about it using only mental telepathy. Or so I'm forced to assume, because nonkinky people don't talk about fucking. Not before they fuck, and definitely not while they're fucking. With every kinky person I've ever dated—which is a lot—there was some conversation about "So, what are you into?" And during kinky sex, it's normal to give overt instructions: "Lick me there. Higher—yeah, like that!" Or ask questions: "Is that good? Faster or slower?"

I don't use this blog to write about my own sex life much but I will divulge that at various times I have sex that is kinky and at various times I have sex that is vanilla too. I think I've experienced what Matisse is describing. When I've gone a long time without having vanilla sex it will sometimes seem like kind of a letdown -- like it's less exciting than the kinky variety. But I've experienced the opposite too -- gone a long time without kinky sex and missed some of the tenderness or felt unsure of myself in the dominant or submissive role. That's because being vanilla and being any one of the different kinds of kinky are skill sets that require practice. You have to relearn them after too much time away.

Matisse is oversimplifying dramatically when she says that people don't communicate about their vanilla sex. She's probably right, however, that vanilla people communicate less. Vanilla sex does not always require the same amount of conversation. Vanilla is ONE of the 31 flavors, which makes "kinky" everything else in the metaphorical Baskin Robbins, including the frozen yogurt and the ice cream cakes. When you embark on kinky sex one of the first things you have to do is talk to determine what's on the menu and what isn't -- if someone tells you they're kinky you can't be sure they're into bondage, electo-stim, pegging, worshiping your feet, dressing up in a fur suit or even getting fucked. You have to ask.

When you decide to have vanilla sex, on the other hand, you can be relatively sure that certain things are on the menu. You've basically got making out, caressing each other's bodies, kissing, nibbling, sucking, manual and oral stimulation of various erogenous zones, oral sex and vaginal sex in a wide variety of positions (or anal for a lot of vanilla gay guys), possibly some light spanking -- other things too, but you get the idea. Vanilla sex doesn't always have to include all these things but, if you're not told otherwise explicitly, you could be forgiven for assuming. Knowing beforehand approximately which activities are involved doesn't eliminate the need for communication but it cuts down the amount of ground that needs to be covered. Since the key to vanilla sex isn't so much knowing what your partner wants you to do but knowing how and when you should do it, a lot of the remaining communication takes place through body language. You try something out and pay attention to your partner's reaction for guidance.

This isn't a bad thing. Being in tune with your partner's reactions is the source of a lot of the intimacy in vanilla sex. With no dominant-submissive power dynamic, the subtlety of nonverbal communication -- when it's working well -- is a fabulous way to feel like the evening's activities are taking shape organically and in a way that is controlled equally by both partners. Then, if the train goes off the tracks, or if you suddenly have a desire that you know you partner won't be able to intuit, you can give verbal instructions too. You only run into trouble when one of you, due to shyness or cultural inhibition, can't give verbal instructions when necessary. But just because you're vanilla doesn't mean you're inhibited -- an assumption a lot of kinky people are always making, myself included when I'm not careful. When Matisse says that vanilla people don't communicate she's essentially implying just that -- they're too inhibited to communicate. To support her implication she's forgetting about all the people who do communicate verbally, then grouping all the people who communicate mostly nonverbally, but successfully, together with the people who really don't communicate at all. Not fair.

Reading Matisse's column, I had to wonder if her vanilla skills have atrophied from lack of use. It has happened to me in the past. Going from kinky sex to vanilla is like listening to quiet classical music when you're used to blasting punk. It takes a little while to stop missing all that raw power you're used to feeling and re-learn how to appreciate the nuances. If she was appreciating those nuances she may have noticed that some of the communication she sought wasn't required -- or she might have realized that the guys she were sleeping with were just awful in bed (sounds like at least one of them was) and gone looking for someone with a more complete set of vanilla skills. Having vanilla sex well is, after all, it's own unique group of skills, and it requires every bit as much skill and finesse as being a good bondage top or delivering a good spanking. Sometimes you need to shop around.

The Stacks - Brokeback Mountain

“Brokeback Mountain,” from Close Range: Wyoming Stories
by Annie Proulx
Scribner, 1999

A few weeks ago I was reading the Spring ’09 issue of The Paris Review (yes, I do read things that aren’t about sex). It features an interview with Annie Proulx, writer of “Brokeback Mountain” and The Shipping News and in that interview I there was a passage I found extremely surprising and though provoking.

INTERVIEWER: You’ve said that the characters of Jack and Ennis from “Brokeback Mountain” were the first two characters that started to feel “very damn real” to you. (…)

PROULX: (…) I think it happened with “Brokeback Mountain” because it took me so long to write that story. It took at least six weeks of steady work, which is not my usual pace. So yeah, they got a life of their own. And unfortunately, they got a life of their own for too many other people too.

INTERVIEWER: What do you mean?

PROULX: I wish I’d never written that story. It’s just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out. Before the film it was all right. (…) But the problem has come since the film. So many people have completely misunderstood the story. I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that “Brokeback” reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives. And one of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have a happy ending. They can’t bear the way it ends—they just can’t stand it. So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. And it just drives me wild. They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis. It’s about homophobia; it’s about a social situation; it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality. They just don’t get it. I can’t tell you how many of these things have been sent to me as though they’re expecting me to say, Oh great, if only I’d had the sense to write it that way. And they all begin the same way—I’m not gay but… The implication is that because they’re men they understand much better than I do how these people would have behaved.

The first thing that occurred to me is that Annie Proulx, as a literary author, leads a pretty sheltered life compared to some writers with a wider following in pop culture. It’s sort of funny to imagine her curiously reading the mountains of slash fiction arriving at her Wyoming ranch. A different writer—say, Joss Whedon, who created the lesbian couple Willow and Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, equally influential to a certain group, in their own way, as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, and also controversally doomed—would never look at these fan stories. Whedon probably has an assistant whose job is to round file that stuff. You have to feel a little sorry for Annie Proulx, who was not prepared for the consequences of a couple of her characters accidentally becoming pop culture icons.

But, on the other hand, Proulx is right. "Brokeback Mountain" is not a novel. The fantastic film by Ang Lee significantly expands the scope of what is, after all, a short story. Not just a single short story but an installment in a collection of short stories about Wyoming cowboys. Annie Proulx is a very geographical author. The books and stories she writes are about the places the stories occur, not the characters. Proulx characters are frequently the inevitable product of the places they live more than autonomous human beings.

The beauty of "Brokeback Mountain" the short story, as opposed to the movie, is the sense of longing Proulx captures. "Brokeback" the story lacks the movie's grandiose dramatic moments. Proulx tells us little about Jack Twist's life when he's outside of Ennis's company, instead focusing on Ennis, the patient cowboy who over the course of the story watches his entire life pass by as he floats from job to job, living only for the occasional fishing trip with his lover. The story, like the movie, is a tragedy but it is a quieter, more desperate kind of tragedy. It is the tragedy of a man who embodies the socially conservative, homophobic Wyoming cowboy lifestyle in every way except that he happens to be gay -- a fact that his place and time will never allow him to acknowledge and embrace.

Proulx brings up the fact that she is a woman in the interview, and I think that is one of the greatest things about this story. It has really earned a place as one of the watershed pieces of gay literature, yet it was written by a straight woman. In my opinion, we shouldn't be so surprised. It would take an outsider to take this story about an oppressed minority and make it so universally powerful.

Fet Life Interview

I have been a lazy blogger lately. My apologies about that. What have I been up to? Enjoying the summer, reading some good books, going on a few dates, traveling quite a bit and trying to be a bit less technological. But now it's nearly September and the deep seated memory of getting ready to go back to school in the fall is kicking in. I'm getting back into the swing of things. I've been working on a few posts that will appear here pretty soon and I've been catching up on all the great sexy stuff I've been missing -- like my favorite podcasts.

I just listened to a very interesting one. It's an episode of The Ropecast from way back in June where Gray Dancer interviews John Baku, the founder of Fet Life. If you're not familiar with the site, it's like a kinky Facebook and it has been taking the kink community by storm, according to a couple of my friends. I'm not personally a member but two people have asked me if I'm a member on one of the dating sites I do frequent.

I've never joined Fet Life because I've never really felt all that comfortable in the BDSM community. I'm a fairly kinky -- or at least fairly experimental -- person but I always feel a little intimidated at kink events. They are so single minded. It is sex geekery in its most concentrated form and even though I write a blog called Geeky Sex it's a little too much even for me sometime. However, the interview with Baku has changed my mind about giving Fet Life a try. He describes himself as someone who was kinky mainly in his own bedroom and who got kicked out of kink events in Toronto and Montreal for not having the correct fashion sense. He also talks about how he still has trouble reconciling his feelings for his girlfriend with his desire to inflict pain upon her. In short he was someone that I could identify with. In the interview Baku says he created Fet Life to include people like himself. According to the interview there are now 177,000 members, which is pretty incredible, and a very hands-on staff of volunteers.

Sounds like it's past time that I join. I guess you'll be reading my first hand opinion in later posts.

Polyamory in Newsweek

Hi everyone. I'm back, more or less! Just in time to see that polyamory is getting some love in Newsweek!

The Vault - Shortbus

Shortbus (2006)
directed & written by John Cameron Mitchell
starring: Raphael Barker, Lindsay Beamish, Justin Bond, Jay Brannan, Paul Dawson, PJ DeBoy, Sook-Yin Lee, Peter Stickles

The Internet has made film images of sex so commonplace that in this decade several independent filmmakers have declared that they were going to take the next step -- bring real sex scenes into legitimate cinema. But every time a filmmaker claimed they were the one who had finally integrated sex into storytelling I was disappointed. In Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny the blowjob scene seemed like a tacked-on stunt to get people to see an otherwise banal movie, and the French film Baise-moi was an atrocious nightmare filled with violence and negative, self-destructive sex. Those films flirted with the barrier between porn and independent film. The film finally tore it down was John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus.

The film is set in a post-9/11 New York. It's ensemble cast is an attractive yet real-looking group in their twenties and thirties that represent most of the sexual spectrum: straight, gay, vanilla, kinky, monogamous, polyamorous, sex workers, voyeurs and genderqueers, all present and accounted for. The one constant in this rainbow of sexual diversity is that all of the characters are looking for something from sex that will complete them. To find it they converge on Shortbus, a idiosyncratic club in Brooklyn that celebrates art and sex by blurring the line between them. Based on the real-life Dumba (now defunct), Shortbus is the place to go for everything from pretentious film festivals to joyous orgies.

The central storyline -- Sofia, a sex therapist in her thirties, has never had an orgasm and is on a quest to get one -- is a bit of a cliché but that doesn't matter so much since this is a film one watches for the characters and atmosphere. The gays are up to more interesting hijinks. James, who is secretly depressed and suicidal, is trying to create a triad with Ceth so his boyfriend Jamie will have support after James dies; all the while they're being followed by Caleb, a voyeur. And Severin, a pro domme who is miserable because her need to control every situation keeps the whole world at arms length is tormented by an impish client as she tries to form a real friendship with Sofia. All this frustration and sexual energy builds up through the movie until it literally blows a fuse, metaphorically resulting in the 2003 New York blackout.

The movie is set up to give us a peak into the lives of these characters rather than to fully explore their background. A tantilizing hint is dropped that Sofia's unability to orgasm might be related to her strict Asian father, but the film doesn't pursue the matter. We also never find out why James is suicidal. His history as a young prostitute may have something to do with it but when he talks about those days it sounds like he was already depressed. The video he's shooting as an explanation/suicide note (which seems to be based on Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation) is full of interesting images but I wasn't able to glean any clues. The first time I viewed the film I felt John Cameron Mitchell's ensemble cast, who helped write the movie, had gotten lazy with their character work. On further viewings I realized the point wasn't to plumb the depths of these people but rather to meet them in passing as you might in the real world.

But this movie's greatest achievement is to integrate sex into storytelling in as just another human activity. It's difficult to de-emphasize the fact that the actors are actually performing sex acts on each other because it's such a novelty in movie making. John Cameron Mitchell manages it by keeping his sex scenes short and often playing them for humor: straight people trying unsatisfying sex in every position of the kama sutra, a gay man singing the national anthem into his partner's ass, a submissive ejaculating on a Jackson Pollack painting, etc. This film makes sex seem normal, ironically, by playing up the one aspect that is normally left out of porn or Hollywood sex scenes -- the fact that sex is frequently ridiculous as well as hot.

In other words, the sex in Shortbus is sex we recognize from our own lives, shown on screen for the first time.

EMERGENCY! I Need Your Help

I've been on vacation for the past few weeks and I wasn't going to post on this blog (I hope you have all been enjoying the book reviews I have pre-scheduled).

However, an emergency has come up and I desperately need your help. I'm asking anyone who is reading this to donate some money -- doesn't have to be a lot -- to a very worthy cause. Liz, a friend of mine, recently broke her leg falling down some stairs. It's a compound fracture. She's out of work and uninsured and she's going to need surgery. Her housemates in the Revolving Door Commune for Itinerant Artists have started an online fundraiser to pay for her medical and living expenses while she is recovering.

Please, please, PLEASE... visit the Revolving Door Commune blog and donate whatever you can afford. At the moment, I think they're matching whatever anyone donates so your money will go twice as far. The Commune is also going to have an in-person fundraiser in the next few weeks at The Albatross, a gay bar in Astoria (Queens, New York City) where Liz is a regular. It's located at 24th Avenue and 37th Street. Since I'm on vacation I won't be able to post again about that so keep checking the RDC blog or join the Facebook cause if you want to go. (You can probably meet me in person if you come.) And if you would like to do something in person a little more immediately, I will be at the Albatross tonight with the Commune-ists begging for money at the weekly karaoke night that Liz seldom ever misses.

After you have donated, comment on this post so I can send you a small thank you gift after I've returned from vacation.

The Vault - Secretary

Secretary (2002)
directed by Steven Shainberg
written by Erin Cressida Wilson, based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill
starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, Jeremy Davies

Before you see it you expect the clichés: leather, whips, corsets and high-heeled, knee-high boots. You won't see those things at any time in Secretary. What you will see in the film's hypnotic opening shot is Maggie Gyllanhaal slinking gracefully through the office in a normal, if slightly old fashion, skirt and blouse and -- oh, yes -- her wrists restrained at the ends of a positively dainty spreader bar linked to her leather collar.

Secretary is a romantic comedy about a dominant-submissive relationship that forms between the titular secretary, Lee Holliway (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and her shy, sensitive lawyer boss, E. Edward Grey (James Spader). Miss Holliway and Mr. Grey's relationship doesn't involve much violence, aside from one fairly memorable spanking scene. What is on display in this movie is the care and attention to details necessary for one person to sweep another away in a healthy, loving power dynamic relationship.

I recently rewatched the movie with a group of friends, including one who had never seen it before and wasn't much for BDSM. This friend's discomfort was palpable all the way through the movie. Men and women alike, we have become feminists. We like our women empowered. That's why the paradox posed by Secretary fucks with our heads the way that it does. Should women be so empowered that they have the right to give up that power to a man they trust? If you think the answer is yes, you're probably in the minority, sadly enough. The beauty of Secretary is that it posed as a harmless little romance and put that question out there for a mainstream audience. It's also difficult to deny how hot it is to watch Lee and Mr. Grey's little pas de deux, so if you are one of those who think what they're seeing is wrong the filmmakers have pretty successfully implicated you in the crime they're staging.

The characters in this movie are probably the world's perfect dominant and perfect submissive, which is a credit to both the screenwriter and the actors who bring them to life. Lee comes from a dysfunctional family. She has developed a deep need to please those around her and the unfortunate tendency to punish herself with pain when she can't. In Mr. Grey she finds someone who will always appreciate her efforts to please him and who can change the punishment from a ritual of self-loathing to an erotic and pleasurable activity. Mr. Grey, meanwhile, is an intelligent man who is very anal about details and hates himself for using these two characteristics to imagine elaborate tortures to show his affection for the people he loves. In Lee he finds someone who enjoys his affections and really wants to know the side he has kept hidden from everyone.

If the ending is a little unrealistic -- Lee's public act of self-humiliation would probably ruin Mr. Grey's law practice in the conservative suburb they inhabit -- you can't blame a romantic comedy for concluding with melodrama. And don't make any mistake, this is definitely a romantic comedy, complete with the cliché of the woman in the wedding dress running to the one she actually loves in one final, desperate attempt to win his love. Except that in this movie her beloved orders her to stay perfectly still for three days and she ends up urinating in the wedding dress. That's not such a big difference, right?

The Stacks - SM 101

SM 101, 2nd ed.
by Jay Wiseman
Greenery Press, 1996

So, you like rough sex. You want to explore it but you have this nagging feeling that it could be... oh, I don't know, a little bit unsafe. Jay Wiseman to the rescue! In just over three hundred pages Wiseman gives you a basic rundown on the safe and responsible ways to incorporate pain and power exchange into your sex life.

The book is perfectly titled -- if your college had offered a freshman seminar in BDSM this is exactly what would be covered. After dispensing with the basics Wiseman touches on how to find partners, rope bondage, non-rope options for restraint, how and where hit a submissive to cause pain safely, different flagellation instruments (hands, floggers, paddles, crops, whips, canes and the like), how and where to use clamps, a whole plethora of sensation play, humiliation, how to train a submissive, how to have a BDSM relationship, and how to find the BDSM organization in your area or create one if it doesn't already exist.

All of this information is first rate. As a former paramedic Wiseman always errs on the side of safety. He believes (as most responsible S&M players do) that if what turns you on is particularly dangerous there is probably some way of at least simulating your kink safely. As a decent human being he advocated doing BDSM with respect for everyone involved. That means negotiating your scene in detail with your play partner ahead of time. Throughout his book Wiseman makes sure that his reader never forgets that even if the violence is real (though carefully controlled) the power inequality of BDSM is entirely pretend. Even if one person acts dominent and another acts submissive they are both equals who should never confuse the roles they play with reality.

The main criticism I've heard of SM 101 in kink circles is that Wiseman is just too cautious. I see why people say that. It was a little surprising to me that Wiseman introduces his intricate "silent alarm" technique (wherein if a third party isn't contacted by the submissive by a prearranged time the third party calls the cops) before even covering the idea of a safeword. At another time in the book Wiseman suggests that all responsible dominents should keep emergency lights and full size fire extinguishers in their playroom. Valid safety concerns, without a doubt, but most of us don't even have a playroom. For most of us, it's just our bedroom and we have a small stash of kinky stuff in the closet that we'll take out if a willing person happens to wonder in. Despite what Wiseman says, most people just steer clear of open flame and play the odds that there won't be a blackout. I don't think that's blatantly irresponsible. And a scene negotiation would take years if you really covered all the things he's suggesting be covered in detail. However the point of these parts of the book is more to instill a deep respect for safety than to require the reader to follow the instructions to the letter, so Wiseman's overzealousness is easily excused.

The one criticism I will add -- this book is badly in need of a third edition. Since 1996 the kink community has largely moved onto the Internet. This book's discussion of the kink community mainly focuses on alternative papers, bulletin boards in sex-positive stores, newsletters and getting a PO Box to protect your privacy. The only time Wiseman mentions the web is to suggest a couple of newsgroups (remember those? me neither) that might have information. An SM 101 that urges readers to take full advantage of online communities like Fet Life would be a much more helpful book for newbies who are looking to make a connection with the kink community, especially if they don't happen to live in New York or San Francisco.

Despite these problems I would absolutely recommend this book. Experienced players may learn a thing or two about safety. For beginners, this should be the first book they read.

On Vacation... But Never Fear!

Hi Everyone.

I'm on vacation for the months of July and August and I'm cutting a lot of my ties to projects that I usually work on. That includes, unfortunately, this blog.

But never fear! I've been holding out on you!

You see, when I first started this blog last September one of the things I was most excited to do was review some books and movies that look at sex in a positive way. I've always liked this kind of material but it has always been a struggle for me to find it. Over the years, mostly through trial and error, I've found some good stuff. It's a work in progress but I've started to build a library and I wanted to review some of it (mostly positively) so the readers of this blog would know it was out there.

Alas, life intruded into this plan. More immediate things kept coming up and distracting me. Frankly, it's easier to post a link to a juicy piece of news or an interesting article than it is to write a book review, and I took the easy route.

Well, last May, when I realized I was going to be away for awhile I decided the perfect way to maintain the blog in the meantime was to review some of those long neglected books and movies and schedule the occasional automatic update. Maybe you will find something fun to read at the beach or in the hammock!

I hope everyone has a wonderful summer. Enjoy your summer reading. I'm going to enjoy mine!

-Pendard

Isn't Polyamory Easier?

Sure it is. It's also more honest and more ethical than cheating. But it doesn't have its own iPhone app.

From Time Magazine:

Two-timing politicians, take note: Cheating has never been easier. AshleyMadison.com, a personals site designed to facilitate extra-marital affairs, now boasts slick iPhone and Blackberry versions that help married horndogs find like-minded cheaters within minutes. The new tools are aimed at tech-savvy adulterers wary of leaving tracks on work or home computers. Because the apps are loaded up from phones' browsers, they leave no electronic trail that suspicious spouses can trace.

Even as public outrage boils up over the infidelity of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Nevada Senator John Ensign, millions of Americans are sneaking online to do some surreptitious cheating of their own. (...)

The formula is working. AshleyMadison's membership has doubled over the past year to 4 million. (...) Over the past month alone, 679,000 men and women have used the service to contact a cheating partner. According to their profiles, 92% of males on the site are married or otherwise attached, as are 60% of female members. No word on how many politicians have signed on.