Day Seventythree

So last night I was chatting to my friend, let's call him Muffy, and somehow sex came up. I was a bit horrified because Muffy was nowhere close enough a friend to be open about something this personal. But he was desperate, and decided to ask for my advice possibly because we have just about zero mutual friends with whom I could gossip about his embarrassing predicament, or because we nearly never meet in person and it was entirely possible for him to hide behind his computer for the rest of the friendship, however long that might be.

In a separate window I was talking to another friend who will be known from this point as Buffy. Buffy is quite sexual, and was happy to give pointers.

I was initially going to brush Muffy off in case my imagination starts imagining things I don't want imagined. But he begins by telling me that his situation is "embarrassing", and I was too curious to cut him off. Then he said that while his girlfriend has had other sexual partners before him, she, wait for it, had never orgasmed. I hurriedly type "OMG ME TOO" and hurriedly delete it and substitute with "oh serious?".

It's a scary statistic, but I've read in an old issue of Cosmo that 90% of Chinese women do not orgasm, ever. I'm hoping that this ridiculous figure is as false as it sounds, but unfortunately I'm quite sure that it's not, because I remember out of incredulity I re-read the passage five times and then cried. No, not really. I didn't cry. But I was scared, somewhat.

I assumed that Muffy's girlfriend is only unable to come during sex, but can probably climax orally or digitally (and Muffy has informed me that he looked up the definition of "digitally" and found it to mean "relating to the hand" and not electronics). I only assumed so because that was my own predicament about a year ago. And then through the conversation I figured out that she had never orgasmed. From anything. Poor girl.

I threw Muffy a series of tips I've accumulated from various magazines over the years that I've never really consciously tested myself. Just the standard importance of foreplay, breathing techniques, experimenting with positions, etc etc. Drone drone. Yada yada. Muffy has heard it all and tried it all and still failed and is becoming increasingly frustrated.

"She's ticklish everywhere." He said.

I thought of a few days ago, when Jez and I were petting his neighbour's cat. I picked her up by placing my hands under her front legs. Then for some reason or other we went inside and Jez decided to mimic the picking-upping with me. When I'm expectant or afraid or caught off guard of tickling, I'm unbearably ticklish. But that time when I was lifted into the air by the armpits I was fine, because as dumb as it sounds I told myself to relax and that it wasn't going to tickle. So it didn't.

I told Muffy all of this, and that his girlfriend should follow my example and tell herself it won't tickle and when you talk to her please don't mention me or my boyfriend or the cat because she will be FREAKED OUT.

He was still doubtful, and everything Buffy suggested turned out to have been tried and failed, too. Buffy ended up saying something useless like "all girls are different". I went offline in pretense of being disconnected and then realised I haven't used dial-up in 6 years.

I don't think it's going to work out. Muffy is worrying himself stupid over it and thought of giving up the relationship just to avoid further embarrassment. I exasperated myself in telling him that if his girlfriend doesn't have a problem with it, he should chill. I also said something dumb along the lines of "if she has never tasted chocolate, she won't crave for it". Despite the "yeah" and "mmhmm" and "okay" I have a feeling he was having none of it. A boy's ego is the biggest thing in the world.

In any case, he reminded me of the old-times Jez, except less persistent and more whiny. And much more worried over what me and that Cosmo article think is no biggie. I wonder what he might have done had his girlfriend lay on her back and mindlessly gazed at a poster of Edward Norton instead. I'm sorry :)

I was reading an article on Times Online about "can an affair save your relationship?". I had a mouthful of water and nearly spat it onto the keyboard. What what? Despite its conclusion that no, affairs cannot save relationships and in fact generally do exactly the opposite, it featured three kooky couples whose relationships were revived after fucking other people.

The first woman was Catholic and only 19 when she married and equally Catholic man who knew as little about sex as she did. As a result, their sex was "rushed, unsatisfactory and occasionally even painful". Unhappy, she started an affair with the delivery man, who being more skilled in the bedroom, taught her a trick or two that she passed onto her husband. With these new techniques, their sex life improved and eventually she stopped sleeping with the delivery man. Now she describes her marriage as "very happy".

I'm a firm believer that if you cheat on your partner under any circumstance, you're an unforgivable slut. So what this woman did doesn't sit well with me. What kind of Catholic are you anyway, first abstaining from sex until after marriage but then realising you haven't got a clue how to do it and find out through adultery? GG. Porn is educational. Possibly more educational than her delivery boy. She should have known. I used to be starfish and Jez used to be very instructional and sometimes I'd be thinking "what the fuck, this is odd" and then go online later to find a couple of pornstars doing the exact same thing and realise where he had gotten all those ideas from.

Back to the article, the second couple consists of a woman who "was never that interested in sex", and after having kids "seemed to go right off the idea". The man, sexually frustrated, slept with any women he could get on business trips and followed his personal motto of "find 'em, bed 'em, leave 'em". He loves his kids and his wife, and refers to sex as "like a bodily function, it doesn't mean much".

How stupid. Despite the fact that his wife is naturally celibate, she doesn't think sex unimportant and "like a bodily function", and was devastated when she found out about his affairs, which he treated like the glue that held his family together. Sex is a significant part of the relationship for him, but isn't for her, so they should decide whether they value the marriage enough to make sacrifices - him by giving up sex, and her by having sex. It might have been another story if she was okay with it. But she wasn't. And he shouldn't be buying a cake and eating the icing off the ones he didn't pay for. Me and my food analogies. I think it's time for lunch.

The husband of the third couple cheated on his wife with the mother of one of his children's friends. He cheated for no apparent reason. It was something of a wake-up call to the couple to examine their relationship issues and problems they've been hiding under happy happyn nuclear family.

Except the thing is, when there are already problems, an affair is more likely to seal the divorce than make the couple go "oh, I guess it's time we work things out". The wake-up call concept is true, but is such overkill. I suppose if the only way to make his wife listen to him was to have his pickle tickled by someone else, then whatever. But some severe, well-directed threats should work for most, right? Like, "I'm confiscating your Hermès scarves".