Letting Go: Fantasy and Orgasm

by Sanguis Bella
 

The author, Sanguis Bella, introduces herself as follows:  "I'm an interesting mix — loving, polyamorous, bisexual, and spiritually directed.  I'm also a kinky switch with real life experience in the BDSM scene, and I teach workshops as part of Flirts Incorporated  (email me at sanguis_bella@yahoo.com  for the latest workshop schedule)."

I first discovered fantasy at the ripe old age of 23.  By that point I'd been having sex for 10 years or so, mind you, but I'd never fantasized before (unless you count "Please God, let me come!"  or "I wish that guy would like me!" as fantasies — but no, those were prayers). 

I had glanced at internal images before, but never wanted to look at them directly — I wasn't comfortable acknowledging them to my conscious mind.  My only masturbatory experience had been occasionally to stimulate myself during a dream under the influence of intense desire, until I woke up and the sensation fled back into the locked vault of my dream state. 

I had tons of sex, though.  I liked sex, and did it whenever I could manage, but unfortunately I never actually experienced what I could identify as an orgasm.  I enjoyed myself, and probably got close to what I now know is a G-spot-stimulated orgasm a lot of times, but I couldn't get past that point where my brain would let go enough to let me come.  This was frustrating to say the least! 

It also proved frustrating to many boys who tried very hard to make me come.  I remember one lovely young man, when I was in my mid-teens, diligently rubbing my clit and talking me through what I should be feeling and what was required for me to come.  He was very focused on my pleasure and I liked the sensation, but I could only get so far along into arousal before everything would kind of shut off or plateau out.  I felt badly that I couldn't perform. 

I kept having a great time during sex, but found that my inability to orgasm often caused my partners to feel inadequate too, so eventually I started pretending to come.  I didn't feel great about lying, but it seemed like my best option at the time.  I certainly liked what I was doing but I had no idea at all how to get past my own internal blocks and let go. 

I wish now that I'd had more information — I wish I'd known about vibrators, I wish I had had a manual!  It makes me feel very adamant that this kind of sexual information should be available to young people. 

So here I was, a very sexual young woman, operating pretty much just on biology and hormones, but feeling there must be something to this thing people called "orgasm."  Then something happened in me, something in the form of a "hot tub" fortuitously located in a private room that you could rent for yourself by the hour. 

I often say that hot tubs changed my life, but really it was the combination of a room with privacy, a place I could relax (for me that would be in hot water), with those fabulous jets, and where I could just let my mind wander without having to consider how someone else might react. 

Sitting there that first time, I just had to see what those jets would feel like on my clit — the act in itself was clandestine and thrilling for me.  As I relaxed into the sensation, I let my thoughts stray, and of course found them drifting towards sex.  Instead of stopping them and judging them as I'd usually done in the past, I was able just to let them run like a movie in my head. 

I can still remember the feeling of breathless anticipation, mixed with the realization that no one was going to stop me, or was waiting for me to come.  It was completely freeing. 

I did feel a little fear, as if there was some psychic big brother who would know what I was thinking, or that the people who ran the place might have a camera and could see what I was doing.  Then I decided I didn't care.  In fact I found the thought added some spice.  I let the fantasies go on. 

I was surprised to find I was getting turned on remembering scenes from movies that had originally pissed me off or made me uncomfortable when I'd seen them.  All of a sudden there were these illicit images that brought blood to my crotch, and made my breath come in shorter and faster gasps. 

In that room, all alone, I finally gave myself permission to explore what I found erotic, and much to my surprise it turned out to be kind of kinky.  I was watching people being spanked, or being forced to have sex, or being taunted.  I found myself in the role of aggressor, trapping someone in the back room of the library after everyone had gone home.  That made me really hot (as did the water), even though a little voice inside me kept trying to interrupt and point out, Wait a minute, you're a feminist, what the fuck is going on here?  But my arousal was enough that I ignored the voice and made no effort to filter what I was seeing — at last, I was willing just to watch and explore. 

Something began to happen, a feeling that was new, it started way way down in someplace I didn't know existed.  The feeling started to rise, not unlike hot water getting ready to boil up over a cooking pot.  It began to feel like something thin, viscous and lava hot coming up through a narrow opening that ran through the core of my body and up through the top of my head and out the tips of my nipples.  I heard myself cry out over the sound of the bubbling water.  I had finally had my first orgasm. 

I was thrilled!  I was also kind of uncomfortable with the imagery that had gotten me there.  I wondered if I was bad, or if this was wrong, and whether or not I should be ashamed.  I decided not to do it again, and determined to keep all this to myself. 

As luck would have it though, I had to pass by that hot tub place every time I made the drive to visit my parents from where I went to college, 90 miles away.  It wasn't long before stopping there became a regular part of my life.  I don't remember if I made up excuses to go see my parents so as to do it more often, but I do know it made the trip back to school something to look forward to. 

For a while I was afraid that being in a hot tub was going to be the only way I'd ever be able to have an orgasm.  It was certainly better than not coming at all, but it was also kind of limiting. 

What I found, though, was that knowing I could achieve orgasm and knowing what kind of sensation I was going for, changed things.  After my best friend gave me a vibrator, I found I could make myself come in the privacy of my own home.  What a Godsend!  I subsequently found that my fingers also worked really well if I fantasized at the same time. 

I decided that I wanted to finally come with a partner, but that turned out to be hard.  I had to have my partner give me oral sex (so very similar to that warm soothing water of the hot tub)  and then I had to really concentrate and fantasize my little heart out.  In order to focus enough to climax, I had to block all distractions out of my overactive mind.  It was a lot of work! 

I found that really frustrating, especially since I was having sex, which I thought was supposed to be easy.  It also felt wrong that I needed to fantasize at all — I felt guilty, because I could feel myself kind of moving out of my body like a mental observer.  It wasn't that I wanted to be somewhere else, or that I was thinking about being with someone else, I was just trying desperately to run through some scenario that would push me over the edge. 

At this point I should mention that somewhere along the line my fantasies changed a little.  I found that what worked for me was to watch (again like a movie) other people doing sexual and kinky things.  These were people I didn't know, and things I hadn't seen in real life.  I wasn't comfortable putting myself in the picture — I just wanted to watch others. 

Occasionally I'd also throw in a good movie moment and take it farther than the director had intended.  It's funny, because now I sometimes run across a scene from an older movie and realize, "Hey, that's one that I used to play in my head!" 

I often used to feel guilty about these kinky fantasies, though.  I used to worry that I was putting out violent energy into the ether that might harm some unsuspecting person or come back to haunt me.  My mental pictures, you see, didn't involve things like flowing curtains and lovers hugging in the flowers so much as things like a head-master or mistress with a paddle.

So I shifted my fantasies again.  I started having my imaginary "people" do their intense scene, but then at the end (after I had come)  I'd picture them all breaking character and laughing and having a smoke, putting out there that it was all pretend.  It was like putting in a disclaimer at the end: "No real or imagined people were harmed in the making of this fantasy."  Perhaps that was overly responsible on my part, but it allowed me to do whatever I wanted in my head with less guilt, so it worked. 

Interestingly, this was years before I got involved with the leather community, who do exactly the kinds of intense things I was imagining, but in the context of negotiation, consent and "play." 

I found some fantasies that worked for me, stuck with them, and never talked about them.  I got married to a really nice man, who was very into oral sex, and didn't mind that I didn't want to fuck for very long afterwards.  I remember how hard intimacy was for me, on all different levels, and I'm so grateful now to my ex-husband.  He created a safe enough space for me to be this oddly sexual person, just fumbling around in the dark.  I do wish I'd known at that time what I know about myself now — I often feel it might have saved the relationship.  Who knows, though, whether I'd be writing this if that were the case. 

One of the aspects of my sexuality that I was aware of, but felt ashamed of, was that in the throes of passion (and the middle of the fantasy people playing out my kinks) I would yell out some profanity, and tell him something like, "Fuck me hard with your fingers now!"  This all made sense in the moment, but as soon as I was done with my orgasm, I'd find myself terribly embarrassed!  I couldn't make the connection yet between my day-to-day persona and the person I was sexually.  I didn't know how to bridge that gap, so we had quick sex after I'd come, and I always pretended I'd never yelled anything. 

I'm amazed at how much sexual experience I'd had by then (many men and women by the time I got married), and yet how little I still knew about any of it, how out of touch I still was with my own responses. 

Sex became gradually less appealing to me.  I wasn't ready (and didn't have a clue how) to address my inner conflicts.  My husband, bless his heart, bought books to try to figure out how to make things better.  He was always a little ahead of me in some ways, and those books, which I never picked up at the time, turned out to have things in them that were hugely useful to me years later. 

The thing is, I was just too afraid at that time.  He and I eventually parted amicably, and we're still good friends.  I think I've turned out to be more into kinky sexual exploration than he would be, but I'll never really know now.  Certainly a lot of our problems had to do with where each of us was at that point in our lives and what we happened to be going through, not about fundamental differences between who we really are.

After I got divorced, I completely turned my sexual life around.  I got involved with someone who had read everything there was to read on the subject, and what he lacked in actual experience he more than made up for in application of mental knowledge.  I started to experience some of the things that I'd only ever fantasized about.  My fantasy life grew and shifted as I started to come to accept what really turned me on.  I found out that I'm not nearly as unusual as I'd feared.  It was really a sexual renaissance for me. 

Masturbation and fantasy were still a part of my life.  I felt less weird about it finally, but I still felt odd that I needed it for my orgasms, and sometimes I just couldn't get the images right and would be left frustrated with myself.  Now you might ask yourself, why didn't I just use porn?  I asked myself this as well, and to be honest I did try a bunch, but rarely found things that worked for me. 

Much of my internal erotic energy over the years became focused less on the act of sex (which is lovely, don't get me wrong), and more on the energy right before the act.  Something about the place of inevitability was so hot for me, about the energy between people — that erotic spark, that intense palpable connection. 

I would masturbate to that kind of expression on people's faces, that subtle intensity, and funny as it sounds I would come long before the people in my head would be fucking!  There was just no porn that captured that, it was all cocks and tits and close-up penetration.  I would get pieces of it sometimes in mainstream movies that had great actors, because they could capture that elusive moment, but then since the movie wasn't "porn" it would fade to some other scene, and get shunted off to my own inner movie theater for later manipulation. 

Ever hopeful, I did continue to watch porn, and occasionally found something that worked for me to some extent, but I could never understand why it worked much better in my head later.  It took me years to figure that one out. 

I laugh now to think about it, but the whole thing probably took me so long because I'm a girl and no one ever told me how porn is typically intended to be used.  I discovered the answer when I was living with a partner who had a great collection.  One day, when he didn't happen to be home, I decided to watch one of the movies anyway.  It was really boring.  Then I thought, well why not bring out my vibrator (my so very magickal Magic Wand).  I positioned myself in front of the VCR and started to masturbate, and once I began to get turned on, all of a sudden the video became much more interesting!  This I realize is not rocket science, but for all those years I'd been watching porn without getting into the right frame of mind. 

I still would prefer a form of erotica that could take me from ground zero to being aroused, but at least after my revelation, I could make better use of some of what's out there. 

My head is still the best movie theater around, though.  I've noticed lately that I don't fantasize in the same way as I used to when I masturbate — I often don't visualize anything at all, now.  Instead, I just tune into the feeling in my body and let it take the lead, or if I use an image, it is just that, a still shot, or a brief visual. 

It takes me a lot less work to come than it used to and I've gotten much better at getting out of my own way.  Now when I have an elaborate mental movie, it's because I want to, not because I have to.  I even put myself into them these days!  I generally feel a lot more freedom to have my fantasies be however I want them to be. 

My exploration is still an ongoing process.  In all honesty, it sometimes still takes me longer than I'd like to come with a partner just by clitoral stimulation.  I've accepted that this is simply how my body works for now.  On the other hand, I love G-spot stimulated orgasms, and they're something I can only do well with a partner (too much like yoga to get into a position where I can do it for myself).  Also, I'm multi-orgasmic now, both internally and clitorally, which is just a miracle! 

I will say that as I got more and more information about sex, and how my body works, and realized that there were a number of different types of orgasms, it changed sex completely for me.  It gave me permission to find out what I was actually experiencing rather than trying to fit into a rigid mold. 

I'll be interested to see how my sexuality continues to shift over time.  It's taken me years of personal work to finally let myself really be okay with fantasizing and to accept who I am sexually, but every second of that work has been worth it.