You Asked for ItI can still remember when I realized how frustrated men were about sex. The turning point was one particular night about four years ago. It was a Saturday in late May, and I had just arrived at a friend's house for a dinner party. I had been tied up in traffic on the freeway and was the last guest to arrive. I was already tired and had lost my enthusiasm for the party, making an effort to be polite, charming, and upbeat. I sat down next to a gentleman who looked to be in his early forties and introduced myself. We got to talking and he told me that he was a television producer. He then asked what I did. For a moment, I felt myself begin to blush, and then I went for it. I should not have felt embarassed or hesitant to say what I do after having done it for three years at that point, but I had found myself already feeling a bit shy. I then said to him, as demurely as possible, "Well, I give sex seminars to women." Without skipping a beat, he looked straight at me and asked, "Well, do you give them to men, too? We need them!"
In an instant it dawned on me that men, like women, are not only curious about sex, but feel confined or restricted by what they know and do not know. The more I began to listen and talk to men, the more I realized that most men seem to think and feel that they are expected to
already know everything there is to know about sex, as if the information is tied to their Y chromosome, which neatly and completely surfaces with the first hair on their chin. The more I thought about it, I realized that men are actually acculturated to know
all about sex--what works, feels the best--both for themselves and for the women they're with. Whereas it's all right for women not to know, many men feel enormous pressure to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of all things sexual. This is not only an enormous falsehood but also an unfair burden for men.
The solution to this problem is simple. First, men need to be granted the permission to ask questions about what they don't know or are not comfortable with regarding sex. Second, and perhaps more important, men need to realize that all women are different and therefore require different treatment. There is no possible way to know what works best for a woman without asking her. Finally, men need to realize that the onus of sex does not fall solely on men. Both men and women should be responsible for learning and then knowing about how to please one another. If these factors are in place, any man can beome an expert lover.
Copyright © 2000 by Lou Paget. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
