Orgasms Part One: The Joys of Self-Abuse
or Let Your Fingers Do the Walking
by Beverly Fisher, Slut at Large and Woman of Easy Virtue

I had my first orgasm when I was seven years old. In gym class. On rope-climbing day.

Of course, I didn’t know what it was. I only knew that as I climbed that rope, pulling myself up hand over hand, that big thick rope sliding between my legs, about half-way up something marvelous happened.

It was this delicious feeling, beginning almost like a tickle, but a hot tickle, starting between my legs and spreading outward through my whole body. Afterwards, I felt weak and a curious satiated sensation, utterly peaceful and relaxed. I slid back down, falling onto my back in the thick black protective mat placed beneath the rope. It was wonderful.

Up until then, I’d always hated gym class. It involved doing sweaty, out-of-breath things that I just wasn’t terribly good at. Dodgeball was the worst, a kind of social torture made legitimate via the magic of sports. All the popular kids bombed the geek kids with those hard balls, under the gym teacher’s approving eye. I did get awfully good at dodging, though – although how being a good dodger serves me in my life today is completely beyond me. To me, gym class was a distraction from reading books, and I found it annoying.

Until rope-climbing day.

Now I looked forward to gym class with a heretofore unmatched fervor. Rope-climbing day was Friday, and I waited for Friday every week with increasing excitement. It was always the same: half-way up that rope, the exhilarating, luscious tingly feeling would overcome me, followed by that incredible relaxed peaceful response... and then to fall from the bottom of the rope into that thick mat, soft as a cloud. Heavenly.

I almost flunked gym, though. The idea of rope-climbing, you see, was to actually get to the TOP of the rope. The gym was two stories high, and the rope was affixed near the ceiling. When the gym teacher informed me I would not be passing rope-climbing, I grew worried. Good grades were important to me (at that time in my life, anyhow), but giving up what had to be one of the nicest things I’d ever encountered seemed a hard choice. Further, I had some concern that I couldn’t actually make it to the top of the rope. Every time that delightful feeling hit me, I went weak. I was helpless to prevent it. It just happened. How could I stop it from happening... and did I want to?

Driven to have my cake and eat it too, I learned to control it. I taught myself to hold the heat back, coiling between my legs, until I reached the rarified air of the ceiling, and touched the top of the rope as instructed. Then I’d release the hot, delectable sensation, letting it explode through my body. If anything, it was even more intense. Sliding down the rope from the top, however, gave me terrible rope burns on my hands and thighs. But it was worth it.

Riddle Me This, Diddle Me That

Looking back on the experience as an adult, it never occurred to me that there was anything odd about it. But the few people I’d told about my first orgasmic experiences were surprised by how young I was. I didn’t realize I was all that unusual.

According to the Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, I am in a very small minority of women, with regards to the onset of orgasm. In their study, only five percent of women achieved their first orgasm by the age of seven and eight. Over 80 percent of women have experienced orgasm by the age of 25, 90 percent by 30 years old.

Keep in mind, though, that these are figures for the average woman. And the Kinsey report is almost as old as my mother, pulling its statistics from women in the 50s, who wore shame and suppression of their desires every day with their pink wool cardigans. I wondered what a Slut Survey would reveal. In my usual highly unscientific and statistically suspect fashion, I emailed a gaggle (that is a scientific term, by the way) of my slut friends, male and female alike. I asked the simple question: “How old were you when you had your first orgasm?” The results – and even the lack thereof – were very interesting.

First and foremost, I had very few responses from women. I even posted my survey on a private, ladies-only internet discussion board, and still received only three additional responses. So, out of all of my female slut friends, only a handful had the cojones to respond to the survey... which I thought intriguing in and of itself. Why are women so reluctant to talk about orgasms? Does it have to do with cultural mores and taboos about masturbation, particularly for women? Is it based in fear, to share something so personal even with their slut friend, Bev? I just don’t know. My sample is too small to draw any real conclusions, other than to note that half of those surveyed, like myself, began masturbating and having orgasms before the age of 10. A small percentage began at the age of 12... and a couple of girls, while they lost their virginity in their mid-teens, didn’t have their first orgasms until they were 21 or so.

Mind Your Own Business

I think orgasms are deeply personal to women, and this may account for the lack of response to my excrutiatingly unscientific survey. Or maybe I’m just strongly disliked, as I keep sending out these slut surveys. It’s possible. I’ll concede that.

After my revelation in gym class, I discovered that I could duplicate the sensation while lying on my belly in front of the TV set, rubbing myself against the rust-colored shag carpet. After that, I spent a lot of time in front of the TV, or lying on my belly in my room “reading a book.” I would do it over and over and over, until I couldn’t do it anymore. I’d lie there, exhausted, panting, feeling all soft and warm and profoundly relaxed and satisfied. It was great.

But I did have this knowledge, somehow, without anyone telling me so, that this was not something I should talk about. And I must never, ever let my parents catch me at it. Thus began a whole career of being dishonest with my parents, but that’s a story for another day.

Women, if they discover masturbation at all, seem to find it on their own, and are quite reluctant to talk about it. It’s an extremely personal and private thing, and I think masturbating for women has much more shame associated with it than for men. One of my dear slut friends wrote that after she had discovered masturbating, she “even shared the good news with a girlfriend, but she freaked...” I myself tried to tell a friend about it, and she was disgusted. Women are raised to believe that anything overtly sexual is “dirty” and “bad” and “disgusting.” And that’s the stuff we’re supposed to do, with our husbands. And ONLY our husbands, when and if we ever marry. So masturbation is particularly shameful and horrendous. They call it “self-abuse,” for chrissakes.

At one point, in my early teens, I decided that what I was doing was just dirty and wrong. I endeavored to stop. After about a week, I began having these graphic sexual dreams, in which I did things that horrified me, like kissing girls and having sex in groups. It was disgusting and perverted and wrong on every level, and I would awake with a profound sense of shame. At the time, it was the most sick and twisted thing I could ever imagine, and I was appalled that my mind could create such sexual atrocities. I discovered that if I masturbated just a little bit, I wouldn’t have those sweaty, hot, perverted dreams, awakening in a tangle of sheets and shame. So masturbation then became a necessity, a grim job which had to be done – for while masturbation itself was wrong and filthy, the dreams were exponentially worse. It’s funny, now, because I kiss girls and have sex in groups all the time. Hell, I’m proud of it.

Boys Will Be Boys

Men, on the other hand, are fairly open about masturbation. Those male sluts I surveyed, quite unlike the women, were more than delighted to share their first orgasmic experiences. I was deluged with male responses. On average, most of the men had their first orgasms between the ages of 10 to 14, with the majority being 13 or 14. Almost ALL of the men reported that another boy (or group of boys, as in the case with so-called “circle jerks”) showed them how to do it. I find this fascinating, given that these are all men who identify as heterosexual – and yet demonstrations of masturbating to orgasm were not considered homosexual at all, just one guy helping another guy to see the light.

Most of the male responses to my unofficial unscientific slut survey not only gave their age at the onset of orgasm, but detailed stories as to how it came about. Highly entertaining reading... for example, one gentleman described being at a private boys boarding school, sleeping in large rooms with about 40 other boys, and all of them in army surplus wooden bunks. Imagine the racket, if you will... 40 creaky bunk beds, held together with ancient groaning bolts and screws, and occupying these beds were 40 young boys just bursting with hormones. Wow. My friend wrote about having his first orgasm: “...my life was changed forever... what fun! What a great toy! And I had it with me wherever I went!”

There was little shame for these boys, all knowing exactly what the other boys were doing in their creaky beds. Others report a single friend showing them what to do; one gentleman experienced the aforementioned “circle jerk” at boy scout camp.

But even the boys discovered shame at some point, becoming aware that what they were doing was not something everyone should know about, especially girls (though it’s easy to tell a slut like myself, I won’t care). One nice man describes how the Boy Scout Manual at the time stated that masturbation is unhealthy because “it leads to the softening of the brain.” How this so-called softening manifests itself was not clear, but it did frighten my friend for a goodly while. In a very adult act of self-discipline, he endeavored to stop the practice until his fourteenth birthday, but then he threw caution to the wind and went back to his daily self-abuse. As far as I can tell, his brain doesn’t seem any softer than anyone else’s... but of course, almost all of us do it. My brain is probably too soft to be aware of any problems with my brain or anyone else’s.

Aside from brain softening, there are also the horror stories visited on young men regarding going blind, having hairy palms, etcetera ad infinitum. My guess is that these stories were invented by horrified mothers, uncomfortable in the extreme upon catching their sons doing such a filthy thing. Only a prudish, repressed woman could have invented “brain softening” and hairy palms.

And only a man could have invented g-strings, t-bars, and spike heeled shoes, so I guess we’re even. Maybe.

And Girls Will Have Toys

When I was around eight or nine, I discovered masturbatory reading material under my parents’ bed – Playboy on my dad’s side, “Delta of Venus” by Anais Nin on my mom’s side. Mind you, “Delta of Venus” is pretty hardcore stuff for an eight-year-old. I was a very advanced reader in school. The book explored every fetish imaginable, including taboo fetishes like necrophelia. Perhaps this might begin to explain my warped sexuality. Just as a start.

I first learned about sex toys in my early teens. The neighbor girl’s mother had a drawer in her nightstand where she kept interesting objects. We didn’t know what they were for, exactly, except that they had something to do with sex and were therefore extremely naughty indeed. I still remember looking at a rubber-nubbed cock-ring, trying to figure out what it was for, and knowing it was really, really dirty. It was kind of scary, this thing. I knew it was for a man to wear, and that was part of what made it a bit frightening. Fear of penises is something ingrained into women on some level, too. The idea of inserting anything inside the vagina was terrifying. Even my mother’s tampons looked forbidding and dangerous.

In that drawer was also a vibrator, and I could imagine what it was for. It was just as scary as a real penis, and more perverted and naughtier by far.

My friend and I slammed that drawer shut and went running out of the house, pursued by our mental sexual demons, steeped with guilt brought on by subconscious fears and desires.

Interestingly, for me, masturbating (like sex), became acceptable rather than shameful as I grew older. I know this isn’t true for all women, not by a long shot. But I have somehow, through contact with free-thinking people, or through natural slutty inclination, managed to develop a rather open manner of viewing most things sexual.

By the time I was 17, I’d lost my fear of penises, and in fact had developed a great fondness for them. Honestly, it’s a good thing I wasn’t born a boy, or I’d sit around playing with my penis all day and never get anything done. Penises are fun, and at the time I was only just beginning to really explore all that they could do.

I was over at an older girl’s house and somehow the subject came around to masturbating – which I had never discussed with anyone previously – and she started expounding on the virtues of vibrators. She pulled one out from under the bed and showed it to me. It was pink and shiny, a hard plastic self-love rocket.

It was a moment no less important than that first orgasm, so many years before. Here was a person who masturbated without shame. She talked openly about it. She had an object (deliciously intriguing!) to help her do it.

I knew at that moment that I had to have one of my own.

My first vibrator was a purple rocket, hard plastic, and two speeds: on and off. I kept it under my bed.

Today, I have so many vibrators and dildos, that I literally can’t keep track of them all. I was unpacking after my last move and found a garbage bag one-third full of dildos and vibrators. I had to laugh. Only I could lose that many sex toys and not notice they were gone... other than the occasional thought “hmmm, I wonder what ever happened to that big silver rocket vibrator? Must be around here somewhere...”

I have vibrators with 20 speeds, dildos made of glass that light up, purple jelly vibes that are waterproof (hot tubbing made perfect!), external clit vibes, internal egg vibes, double-headed dildos, wireless remote-controlled vibrators, big dildos, little dildos, black ones, fleshy ones... although viewing my current collection as a whole, it would seem that I am still partial to purple.

I do wonder why I am the way I am, why I insist on exploring and expanding my horizons, trying new things, fighting shame and guilt. I know that I am still a product of my society, that the disgrace and degradation spoon-fed to me by my culture continues to affect me.

Fetishes are born of the society. In a culture where something is socially acceptable, there are no fetishes surrounding that act. While I enjoy masturbation today, I also tend to be a bit of an exhibitionist, and enjoy masturbating for others and watching them, as well. This is, of course, due in part to the “naughtiness” of the acts themselves, imparted by my social upbringing. There is something delicious in doing what one is not supposed to be doing – and for an audience? Even naughtier!

I can’t say that this is necessarily a fetish, per se, because I enjoy so many, many other things. Most people with fetishes, I’ve noticed, tend to stick very closely to their fantasy of choice. I’m diverse, and always trying and doing different things.

But in the end, the orgasm is the thing (Shakespeare would hate me).

Just as heavenly as it was the first time, though now infused with adult desires, control, fantasies, and knowledge. I still hate going to the gym, though. 24-Hour Fitness doesn’t have rope-climbing day.

 

-30-