sex positivity

Four years ago, I could be found most mornings at the same café with the same blue notebook and a mug of hot coffee. I was trying to write the story of how I got herpes.

In the spring of 2013, I met a woman on OKCupid. She was petite, with a kind smile and a voice so soft that it could melt all your troubles away. Her shock of red curls went down to her shoulders — and because of this, and the fact that we no longer speak, let's call her Ann.

Ann was a few years older than I, wise and mature. She also, it turned out, spent her professional life beating up strangers for their sexual satisfaction.

Back in the old days, before the Internet was in our pockets, finding a vacation rental involved travel agents. Finding a vacation rental equipped with kinky sex equipment...Well, I don’t know how that would have worked. Luckily for all the fetishists out there, those dark days are behind us.

As with any book that explores a realm diverging from the mundane, there has been a lot of talk about not only the writing (apparently it sucks), but also the topic. While some are appalled by it, others, like myself, are just giving my fellow friends who enjoy some spanking action high fives. It's about time that a woman wanting to play the submissive role in the bedroom is portrayed in a light that makes it seem like a normal sex act, not something that goes on in a creepy S&M dungeon.

Today I’m talking masturbation in particular, because this stuff is the stuff happening before your teenager is getting busy in the back of your SUV (it’s happening, sorry). We are laying groundwork for healthy, happy sexual behavior. In the next two installments, we’ll talk porn and then finish it off with actual partner sex stuff.

It was like how you might feel if you thought you were the only person who liked apples. Maybe everyone else just thought apples were for decoration, but you liked to eat them. And then one day you found someone else who also ate apples, and you got really excited about that! And then suddenly, it hit you… What if everybody secretly ate and enjoyed apples, only we were all too afraid to mention it?

It was like how you might feel if you thought you were the only person who liked apples. Maybe everyone else just thought apples were for decoration, but you liked to eat them. And then one day you found someone else who also ate apples, and you got really excited about that! And then suddenly, it hit you… What if everybody secretly ate and enjoyed apples, only we were all too afraid to mention it?

My husband and I are absolutely, madly in love. Yes. We have sex. We have it a lot. It is good. I am bigger than him but that doesn't matter.