Normal Gets You Nowhere Read online

  And please, don’t ever show up in fur to an interview at People’s Revolution, because I will hang you upside down by Gravity Boots.

  Chapter Two

  The Kella-Sutra:

  If You’re Not Getting Fucked by Midnight, Go Home

  One must shock the bourgeois.

  —Baudelaire

  Over the July 4th weekend last year, I stayed in New York to work. All my friends and frankly the whole city had skipped town, so on Saturday night I said to my daughter, Ava, “Grab your sweater and let’s go out to dinner!”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” she replied. “I have other plans.”

  “You’re eight! What plans could you possibly have?”

  “I have to watch the new episode of Hannah Montana, followed by The Suite Life.”

  Bam—here it was, the downside to raising an independent child. Ava was literally the only person I knew in New York who was potentially available to grab a bite to eat that night, so once she blew me off, I was left to spend the evening by myself. Can you say “pathetic”?

  I grabbed a few spiritual pamphlets, one called “Surrender” and one called “Grace,” by my guru, The Mother, and walked to one of my favorite restaurants, on Mulberry Street. Unfortunately, while New Yorkers skip town on holiday weekends, the rest of the country—actually, many countries, including England, Italy, and France, the Navy, and the suburbs—descend. Little Italy was jam-packed. I settled into a corner table, the only New Yorker in the restaurant. I thought back to the first time I went to the movies alone, in the late 1980s. For about ten minutes I felt slightly odd and isolated, but then I realized I’m my own best company.

  On this night, though, I was not allowed to enjoy my own company for long. Before even taking my drink order, my usual waiter approached to tell me that his teenage daughter had just gotten off work nearby and would love to meet me. Since I was alone, he wondered, could she sit at my table? “No” is actually one of my favorite words in the English language, but I couldn’t manage to spit it out, since her father had always treated me well. With a sigh, I put down “Surrender.”

  She sat. She was a superfun, bubbly Italian American high-school girl, and she was on a mission. Her father was barely out of earshot when she launched an arsenal of questions.

  “Can I ask you a few things?” she began.

  “Sure,” I replied, preparing to be grilled on whether she should wear an asymmetrical shoulder dress to prom or when she’d be too old to wear silly bands. Unfortunately, this wasn’t what was on her mind.

  “How do you give the perfect hand job?” she inquired.

  Oh, Jesus.

  OMFL.

  I have to admit, my first instinct was to be flattered. Here I was, thirty years older than this girl and dining alone on a national holiday, yet she thought that I was still in the game—that I had frontline information for her! Surely she wouldn’t ask a seventy-five-year-old woman how to give a hand job. But I also knew I had to handle this carefully. I was in Little Italy, after all, and I didn’t want to upset the girl’s father, my waiter, since I’m sure he was “connected” (if you know what I mean). I’d come for pasta, and now I was just hoping to live through the night.

  Still, I was intrigued. I started by asking the girl where she and her friends got their information about sex.

  “We watch porn on the Internet,” she replied.

  “The Internet—puh-leeeze!” I gasped.

  There MUST be something better!

  I started to think about this. How tragic that we lavish money on our daughters’ educations and on after-school activities from cheerleading and Chinese brush painting to field hockey and dance; we encourage them to excel academically and to find fulfilling careers; we send them to Paris and Israel to study culture; yet we spend no time or money teaching them how to have great, healthy adult sex lives. Instead, we merely mention menstruation and throw bras on them when they’re thirteen. Or maybe we talk about the importance of birth control and tell them not to have sex. And then we never talk to them about it again.

  There’s just one problem: no one else is talking to them, either. Some girls will get lucky and have a sexually advanced classmate who can give them the information they’re craving. But most others, like my new friend, are left foraging around in the dark.

  Porn was the best we could do? I mean, don’t get me wrong; is there anyone on the planet who hasn’t watched it? I understand the curiosity, but I also believe there must be a higher way for young people to learn about sex. To be honest, porn can be more brutal than beatific. I’m not saying I think Ava is going to want to come to me for information on sex, even though I’d welcome any conversation with her. But I also don’t want her to have to resort to watching a meth-addicted chick getting banged by some grandpa online. Where is the Vuitton bag of sexual teaching? Where is the elegance? Our sexuality is one of the most intimate and expressive aspects of ourselves; I’d never want my daughter to learn about it from someone I don’t know and trust. What I want for my daughter is what I want for you: to have a safe, progressive, and expansive sexual life.

  But before I gave this young woman in Little Italy any advice, I had to stop for a minute.

  “Are you asking me this question because you want to extend your own sexual pleasure, or do you want to give your boyfriend a hand job to avoid having sex?” I asked.

  She admitted it was “the last one.” She didn’t actually want to have sex until she was married—she just wanted to keep her boyfriend happy.

  It saddened me that even at her age, trickery was taking precedence over technique. Although we hadn’t taught this girl anything about sex, we had taught her how to be demure, coy, and shy—instead of just being honest. Maybe she did need to learn how to give the perfect hand job, but that was not what she was asking me. Lucky for her, I’m a good listener.

  “I think you should put your own happiness first,” I told her. “You should tell him you’re not ready for this, and if he can’t hang out with you through that, then you shouldn’t be with him.

  “The task at hand,” I said, “is not learning how to give the perfect hand job. It’s learning to speak up for yourself.*

  “And as far as this part about saving yourself for marriage,” I continued, “that is preposterous! You’re not a bond or a stock. You must have sex before you get married, and lots of it.”

  Think about it. Would you ever buy a Bentley before taking it for a drive? Would you ever fly all the way to the Maldives without seeing a picture of your hotel? Then why would you marry a guy without being fucked by him? Sex is a superimportant part of a partnership, especially when the partners insist on monogamy by getting married. In an all or nothing world, you better dig the all, y’all!

  Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I was younger. We shouldn’t just try to get by, in life or in sex. It’s not enough. There’s nothing worse than stroking a dick you don’t care about. Nor should you ever go down on someone just because it’s expected or to get him off your back. (Here’s a tip: getting on your back doesn’t get him off your back!) Sex is about much more than coming, even if most people do just fuck to come. It’s not the end-all, be-all as porn and the movies might make you think. It’s a beginning—a gateway to even greater things beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe you’ve already learned how to achieve an orgasm, a ten-second or ten-minute undulation of consciousness during which you’re rippling and vibrating like the waves made by a stone thrown into a pond. But I hope you’ll also learn that you can extend that and make your love life a constant offering to the Divine—a state of ultraconsciousness.

  When it comes to sex and making love, many women do not know how to express who they really are, or maybe they’re just too intimidated to. Instead, they worry about whether they’re giving a hand job the right way or having sex the right number of times per week. But the truth is,

  Normal gets you nowhere, not even in sex!

  The normal love life that most people a
re having in this country barely scratches the surface. We as women are accepting crumbs, when we should be feasting at the buffet.

  That night in Little Italy, I had to apologize to my teenage friend, because my generation had failed her. I couldn’t even think of a cool animated website to send her to to find the information she was looking for. In a flash, the marketer in me sprang into action, and I suggested she look into starting a new sex website with her friends. She’d surely make millions of dollars! Unfortunately, she didn’t think that would fly so well with her family.

  The Only Missile I Want to See on TV Is Gold and Fits in My Makeup Bag

  It’s beyond obvious that we need to start teaching our daughters sexual education and exploration in the same way and with the same tone that we teach them to read books or shop at luxury-brand stores. Unfortunately, we’re still so uptight about sex in this country that when I recently arrived for an appearance on Chelsea Lately bearing a vibrator for Chelsea Handler, a totally modern chick, her producers informed me I was not allowed to show a vibrator on television. Oh, really? How interesting that we can show our children news footage of thousands of people being blown out of the windows of the World Trade Center in a mass murder over and over and over again or grainy footage from home-invasion videos, but we can’t show them a missile-shaped gold object that exists purely to provide pleasure in the privacy of one’s home (and that comes recommended by a slew of power chicks!). I believe our sexual repression is not just causing us to abandon our youth; it’s helping make America the most dangerous place in the West to be a woman.

  After that night in Little Italy, I started thinking about where I got my information about sex when I was growing up. Hmmm. From my dad’s Playboys. My friends and I would steal magazines like Playboy and Penthouse from our parents and take them into our makeshift forts to pore over. We read Xaviera Hollander’s “Call Me Madam” column in Penthouse, a soft-core section where “readers” would relay their sex fantasies. The best thing about stealing your parents’ porn was that they couldn’t come out and ask you for it. (I mean, really, “Did you steal our porn?”) My dad probably went upstairs several times over the years to grab his Playboy for some private time, only to be foiled by my tribe of middle-schoolers sitting up in a fort in the backyard. One thing I remember about reading those columns was that they made sex seem fun, like this magical thing awaiting me in the future that was going to be really, really great. (I also remember that pearls were the hot accessory back then.)

  Other than those Playboys, I rarely had the privilege of seeing anything that incited my fantasies when I was growing up. I definitely could have handled it if my mom had pulled out a few nipple clamps, an anal dilator, or even an electric vibrator, saying, “Listen, a lot of people believe that if you use an electric one, you’ll burn out the nerves in your clitoris.” Good to know! But she never did; nor did she advise me to read the great texts on lovemaking. Luckily, I’ve learned through experience. The journey of my life has been a continuous sexual education, from my first husband, a very accomplished lover seventeen years older than me (warning: once you have your first really great lover, it becomes as much a curse as a blessing, since successive lovers may not cut it) to my work with lingerie brands like Agent Provocateur, which, trust me, gave me in eight years an education in itself.

  I hope your life will offer these lessons too. But I also encourage you to seek out information on sex, whether that means talking to a tribal council member or reading the Kama Sutra, an ancient Hindu text that is possibly the most famous book ever written about lovemaking. (One of the reasons I love India is that its culture makes room for everything in life to be included in the Divine—yes, even sex holds a sacred place! Contrast this to Mother Teresa, who ran around India for years telling people not to use condoms in the name of her religion, so that they could contract and die of AIDS instead.)

  Or hey, how about this. Let’s all write out our sexual fantasies. Most guys I’ve dated would have been beyond happy if I’d come up with a list of all the things I wanted to do and try with them. I mean, this is great third-date conversation material! I guarantee it’ll get you a fourth date! Think about it. What guy wouldn’t be happy if you said, “Hey, I really want to be tied up and blindfolded”? Obviously as you begin to explore, there will be certain things your partner wants that you’ll object to, and if it’s not your thing, feel free to speak up and say, “No, I will not pee on you!” But it’s important to be carnivorous, spiritual, honest, and open.

  When I was younger and just starting to have sexual experiences, I had thoughts and feelings I wanted to act on, but didn’t. I was a Sicilian and a Scorpio, after all; I didn’t want to scare anyone! It was only when I let go of society’s and religion’s ideas of what is right for me that I started to have better sexual relationships—and a much better time. Over the years I’ve had the great advantage of having certain lovers ask me, “What do you want?” And more often than not, they’ve wanted the same things. Guys are stumbling around in the dark too, so why not be each other’s instructors? Everyone has a secret fantasy sex life. You might as well cop to it, find someone to share it with, and get it started.

  As long as were on the subject of the Kama Sutra, well here’s the Kella-Sutra: A Guide to Stabbing Sexual Taboos.

  1. If you don’t know yourself and what you want, then you have no business being in bed with someone else. Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true.” If you aren’t ready for it, don’t do it. Learn to speak up for yourself no matter who you’re with or how old you are.

  2. Do not be in places where you don’t want to be, especially in states of intoxication.

  3. The whole wait-two-days-before-you-call thing is a bunch of bullshit. Waiting in general is stupid; you have to be willing to reveal yourself, be vulnerable, and go for it, especially when the energy is there. They say that love is blind—this is true. Take advantage of that blindness, get on your cosmic rocket and fly into the violet outer space of your love! If there were really something to figure out, someone would have written a book called The Rules, and it would have worked. Love and relationships are as different as the two people who come together; each forms a combination the universe has never seen before. I’m not down with books like He’s Just Not That into You, which teach chicks how to score a guy. Trust me, if a guy wants to put his dick in you, he will. There is nothing to figure out here!

  4. If it’s happening at the zoo, it could or should be happening for you. We can learn a lot about natural sexual behaviors by looking at our friends in the animal kingdom. Up to 75 percent of bonobos’ sexual behavior is nonreproductive (these are the power girls of the animal kingdom). Male sea horses, long upheld as monogamous pillars of ocean society and thought to mate for life, were found in 2007 to be promiscuous, flighty, and more than a little bit gay (they also give birth to the babies). Two male lions have been observed fucking each other. Dolphins are known to pleasure themselves by rubbing against the ocean floor. To me, this says that things like homosexuality and masturbation are totally natural.

  5. Do not pretend things are happening for you if they are not. Women are big orgasm fakers. I would venture a guess that 95 percent of the women reading this book don’t even have real orgasms! We’re programmed to tell a guy we’re getting off even if we’re not. You need to figure out your own body. If your hand didn’t work, you’d go to a doctor for help in making it work, right? Well, your sexual health is no different. Experiment with vibrators and eroticism. Make appointments with yourself, so that you can start to get to know your body, since it’s complicated. Seek out information from varied and trusted sources.

  If you love someone enough, you can occasionally choose to offer up a shag without getting any result for yourself, but I don’t recommend this as a ritual occurrence. The one thing you can’t do is lie. You can’t tell a guy he rocked you out or fake an orgasm to make him feel good. We don’t tell people who can’t carry a tune that they’re great singe
rs, so why would we encourage bad habits and abilities in bed? The good news, I can report, is that your body awakens even more after you have a baby; after I had Ava, I felt like a pinball machine that had only just been turned on. (But don’t forget to ask for some extra stitches on your way out of the hospital to tighten your vagina and make future sex more pleasurable. Yeah, that’s right, your mom’s probably not going to tell you that either.)

  6. Take no prisoners; and if you do, make sure you untie them in the morning, so they can go to work and make money. (And vice versa. I mean, let’s face it; there’s nothing worse than having to call in with the truth: “I’m late today because I’m all tied up here at home!”)

  7. Lovemaking does not always have to involve a penis and a vagina (or two penises or two vaginas). Perhaps it means you rub my feet for two hours, and we feed each other. A four-hour lovemaking session isn’t necessarily what I want when I’ve worked around the clock in three cities all week. Learn to be sensual, not just sexual. It’s said that Mary Magdalene washed Jesus’s feet with her hair. Imagine waking up and loving a man so much that you literally express your love and adoration by patiently braiding his hair in floral essences. Alternatively, you could try wearing matching pajamas and eating Orville Redenbacher popcorn on the couch under a blanket while you watch your favorite TV show. These types of offerings can be beautiful and should be booked in your love calendar. (Yes, I believe we need to book our sex rituals with each other the same way we book meetings.)

  Bathing, combing each other’s hair, reading favorite childhood stories to each other—there are plenty of ways to be sexy. A lot of married people I know don’t even know about tantra, a practice in which the male doesn’t come, because he wants to hold the sexual energy in his body rather than let it flow out of him. (Translation: if you’re involved in a tantric relationship, you’ll have sex for at least ten hours, but in those ten hours you might stop to have some sherbet or check your e-mail. This is a proper day of lovemaking.)