Let’s take a step back in time to back when we were all virgins hoping to get laid. At thirteen, we hoped it to be an extension of an epic romance, like how we imagined Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy to have sex. At fifteen, we graduated to Japanese porn (or Savita Bhabhi graphic art. Hey! No judgment.) By seventeen, we were busy spilling DNA in the back seat of any car we could get into!
But many of us did not have sex for a very long time. These were virgins summersaulting toward adulthood with limited understanding and an unlimited appetite for sex. To this lot sex appeared more like a forbidden dessert. They were thrilled to turn eighteen because now they could legally have sex, but didn’t actually end up getting laid until well into their twenties. Some infact had to get married in order to get laid. Which is why, the idea of ‘suhaag raat’ elicited both, fervent excitement and paralyzing fear.
Many people, mostly women grew up so sequestered from sex that they associated it with pain and discomfort. Few had agency over their bodies. Which is why their first sexual experience, even though it took place with their consent, was probably terrifying. They accepted and made peace with sex instead of embracing and enjoying it. Those who did gradually learn to appreciate it had other demons to battle. I mean, how do you explain the void inside you even when your partner is technically inside you? Do you wonder if you should give feedback? Tell them what you need? Would they judge you for having desires instead of being a good passive living sex toy of a person? OMG! Is that what you have become?
Even today many men and many many women, who discovered that sex didn’t quite live up to its promise, have gone on to rationalize their own desires as a figment of a teenager’s imagination. An unforgivably large number of us are sexually unfulfilled, and yet have made peace with that state of constant hunger. Magazines and blogs talk to us about wild orgasms and yet many of us believe orgasms are like aliens. You always hear about one but never have an actual experience with one.
Many a desperate housewife believes that the myth of an orgasm is just a comforting yet totally imaginary escape hatch like a Bollywood movie where they mentally edit out Kajol and picture themselves in her place just so SRK would look at them the way he looks at Simran. What? Hindi movie analogy is too down-market for you? Sweety, there is a world outside our island of privilege and that dream sequence just made Pinky aunty and her friends Dolly bhabhi and Mrs. Sharma very wet for the first time! (Though they might have even peed a bit. It’s OK)
Point is, we need to acknowledge that we are alive. That we are red blooded creatures with beating hearts and a throbbing pulse. We have desires. We want sex and we want to enjoy it… vaginal, oral, anal, sideways and on the face. We want lips, tongue, breasts, nipples and buttocks… we want it all! We have to start communicating in bed. Tell your lover if you want him to angle his penis a little more to the left. Tell your partner if you don’t like it when they use their teeth while blowing you. Tell your boyfriend if you want him to use his tongue instead of his fingers. Tell your girlfriend your nipples are sensitive and she shouldn’t treat them like gummy bears! We have to express ourselves if we want anything in life. Why should sex be any different?
Start talking. It’s your bedroom, not a library!
