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Wow, I had never seen that before, and it wasn’t just one slide of clitoris rising through the pubic hair, but twenty or thirty slides of buttons in every shape, size, skin color, pubic hair color and vaginal area. I must admit at first I was excited to see color slides of a woman’s erogenous zone, but after the eighth or ninth slide, the presentation was becoming a numb, clinical anatomy lesson.
When the room lights came back on, several men were standing by the hallway doors peering into the room. They had seen the slides of the giant vaginas from the hallway.
Mary Jewell asked them to come in and join the discussion or leave. The men quickly left allowing me to savor my honored role as the token male.
Once the women had become comfortable again, Candace opened the discussion on successful techniques for orgasm. I hoped she had a CliffNotes® version to hand out with the answers, pictures and drawings, but I was overly optimistic. She wanted suggestions from the audience.
A bashful silence filled the room for several minutes, until one brave soul, a woman who lived on the eighth floor with her lesbian lover said, “My partner and I like to use our tongues. It can be supersensitive, and she’s very sensitive down there.”
As I listened to this woman describe a private intimate detail between them, my mind wandered. I imagined her and her partner with their heads between each other's legs.
The discussion continued for several minutes until my fantasy was interrupted by a question directed at me. “Derek, what do you think?" Candace asked. "From the male perspective, because you are the only male here, and of course, we won’t stereotype your answer as being applicable to all the male species, do you have any special techniques that you find helpful for your partner?”
I could feel everyone staring at me. I couldn’t answer this question from experience. I had none. I wouldn’t admit it either, and I wasn’t going to let down the entire male species by not giving an answer. I blurted the first lines I remembered from the October 1976 Penthouse Magazine, the Forum section.
“I like to thrust deeply.”
Several of the men-haters in the group made audible comments. “Typical man!” “It’s always about the penis, isn’t it?” “Animalist!”
I said, “No wait, hear me out!
It appeared to me whatever I had to say would be meaningless to those close-minded women opposed to my presence because of my gender.
“Please go on,” Candace said. “We’re listening.”
“It’s not the penis that is doing the stimulation, but the man’s body rubbing against her repeatedly in rhythmic thrusts.”
I heard more anti-male murmurs and some allusions to rape and violence.
“Gently, at first,” I said. “Slowly building in intensity while looking for signals from her, like her breathing or her muscle spasms or the expressions on her face.”
What did I know about a woman’s muscle spasm or facial expression? Nothing. I was quoting verbatim from page 57 of The Sensuous Man by M 1], but it was working. "I like women who voice their pleasure. It tells me whether I'm doing something right or whether I should try something else."
Several women verbally endorsed the statement. “You tell ‘um, girl,” Keisha said, the only black woman living in the house. Keisha had Bo Derek cornrow braids and light-chocolate skin that made me think of brown sugar. Her show of support was followed by suppressed tittering and giggling from the rest of the room.
I looked around. The women would never think I had anything germane to say. Then it occurred to me that I had actually learned something from the slide show.
“Wasn't the whole point of the slides to show that every woman has the same body parts, but every woman is different? Different techniques for different women.2]”
I continued for a minute or two explaining in the most feminine erotica of terms, the sex scene from some Mitchell Brothers porn movie I had seen at my best friend, Jeannette’s older brother's friend's bachelor party, and attributing it to me. When I finished, the room fell silent. I felt like smoking a cigarette.
Keisha fanned herself in exaggeration. “Wow, I’m exhausted. You can roll over and fall asleep now.” Keisha was wearing a tight Danskin’s Camisole that clung to her dancer’s body. I couldn’t imagine falling asleep with her.
Several of the other heterosexual women in the room murmured in agreement. Carrie and her lesbian lover hugged each other tighter and glared at me in disgust while the other lesbians kept reassuring themselves by repeating their mantra, "A woman doesn’t need a man to satisfy themselves," to anyone that listened. I was proud of myself. I had upheld the benefits of the male penis in front of a legion of lesbians.
At the end of the discussion, Candace held up a reference book. It was the revised and updated version of Our Bodies, Ourselves. She said, “I recommend that your Co-op purchase several copies for your house library.”
“Let’s vote on it at tomorrow night’s house meeting,” Mary Jewell said.
“Can we get it on the agenda this quickly?” Jill asked.
“Not a problem,” Lisa said. “I’ll just show my bunkie the coital positions in chapter twelve. It’ll be on the agenda tomorrow.”
The meeting ended and several women, who I did not know but wanted to know, approached me.
“You were brave to attend this meeting,” said one. “Welcome to Cloyne Court.”
“Yeah, I wish my bunkie would have attended. He might have learned a lesson or two,” said another. “Glad there’s a sensitive man who understands women.”
I basked in the attention. I looked around the room. My mystery woman was leaving. She was cheerless and silent unlike the rest of the attendees, who seemed energized and empowered from the evening’s information. I wanted to introduce myself, but she disappeared up the stairs. I wondered why she looked so sad.
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This episode is based on a true story.
Although seventy-five percent of this memoir is factual, liberties were taken with the other twenty-five percent for plot purposes. That is where scenes were recreated from memory when they were not clearly defined in the journals written by the author from 1976 to 1980.
Individual characters are composites of several people and do not represent any one person, and the names have been changed to protect innocent people that may be guilty of indiscretions in their youth.
[1] Which I read sub rosa at the Briones Valley Public Library Reference section while hiding it in an oversized monograph on Pet Care.
[2] What I meant to say was ‘different strokes for different folks’ but stroking is a man thing. I didn’t think the lesbians would appreciate the phallic metaphors.
