I didn’t experience ‘The big O’ until I was twenty-six years of age. How on earth does someone who began their sexual exploration at such a young age bypass the joys of orgasm completely? Even I don’t know the answer to this question. It’s truly baffling. I think it must have been partly to do with my ignorance and partly because of the lack of experience of the men in my life up to that point. At an early age, I had learned the science of orgasms and how they worked, thanks to ‘Just Seventeen’ and ‘More!’ magazines. I also knew that they were a wonderful thing and supposed to feel fabulous. I can’t remember what I age I began masturbating, but it never became a regular thing because I didn’t find it all that enjoyable. I could go years without touching my lady bits.

I had been with my ex-husband for six years; and married for five of them. I had never really enjoyed sex to its full potential with him. I had always assumed that the reason for that was because he was a bully, but I think the fact that I derived no serious physical pleasure from it must have been a big factor. Before Tim, I had only ever been with teenage boys, so maybe that explained a lot. Also, I can’t remember anyone who had concentrated on my clitoris for over three seconds at a time; so, I wasn’t aware that it functioned at all. I didn’t even know that I hadn’t been experiencing orgasms – I thought the tingly feeling I got before I stopped a masturbation session was, in fact, an orgasm. I thought maybe I just didn’t enjoy them as much as most people.

Since the age of fifteen, I had watched a heck of a lot of pornography; but the problem was that it was all very theatrical, Americanised and directed solely from a male perspective. You know the sort – male porn stars doing that awful looking, painful flicky tongue thing. Oh; and loud, screaming fake orgasms; from loud, fake-looking pumped up mouths.

Regarding vibrators, I had owned one; but I had rarely used it had. Again, I blame porn and the fact that anything remotely phallic-looking was usually as being used for insertion – in and out and out and in, at high speed and with often with quite a bit of vigor. When I attempted to imitate this action; the feeling of the initial insertion was nice enough, but after that, I gained little or no pleasure; eventually losing interest. I had tried masturbating with my fingers; but again, I would just mimic what I had seen on porn films; which again, was insertion or some bloke flicking away clumsily with his fingers until the lady in question looked ‘wet’ enough for full-on sex.

I had no knowledge of the function of the clitoral hood, and that it should be pulled back sufficiently enough to expose the clitoris; rather than blindly attacking the poor thing. I also hadn’t figured out that to make the clitoris swell, the surrounding area of the vulva needed stimulation beforehand. On porn films, I had only ever witnessed a female having an orgasm via penetration with a penis. That had never happened to me either. On my own, I could get to a point where it felt great, then I would become too sensitive. It would end up being painful, and I would have to stop. I didn’t know of a way around this; but it was probably for lack of lube, besides my poor technique. In short, I knew bugger all. Sad times!

***

So, back to my life after Tim’s exit……. this was around the time when I saw amateur porn for the first time. The video was of a woman masturbating, and there was no man with her, for a change. She looked like an ordinary woman – familiar curves, pretty, with naturally blonde, bobbed hair. She was kind of sitting upright but leaning back on a sofa. The sofa looked ordinary, too. It wasn’t a velvet chaise lounge scattered with leopard print cushions. Everything about this was real. She took a bottle of lubricant; and squirted it onto her palm, rubbing it between her hands to warm it up; before smearing it over her vulva. As I watched, I felt quite aroused; and this was because I was viewing it from a woman’s perspective – as though I was that woman. I watched with interest at what she was doing with her fingers; and saw that it differed greatly from what I had seen before, or practised on myself. She seemed to reach that all too familiar stage where the sensitivity took over; but instead of stopping as I did, she carried on regardless.

As she climaxed, the camera zoomed in on her vagina; and I noticed that it was pulsating rhythmically, and secreting a small amount of creamy coloured, almost translucent liquid. I had never in my life seen that happen in the porn films I was used to. There was no screaming or thrashing about; just breathless moans and the woman tensing her whole body, then relaxing. Then it hit me – what this woman was experiencing looked a little like what happened to me when I was asleep sometimes. (My body probably needed to regulate itself, due to the lack of orgasms; and wet dreams were a manifestation of their absence); so I recognised that pulsating action, and the mysterious, jelly-like substance that I had discovered between my thighs upon waking. I wanted to experience what she had, and I decided there and then to make it my mission.

That night, whilst in bed; I decided that it was now or never. I made myself comfortable, grabbed a dusty bottle of lube from the back of the wardrobe; and got busy. It’s funny – nowadays I don’t take notice of all the physical changes that happen during orgasm, but that night I noticed everything. Everything was amplified – the tingly feelings creeping up from my toes to my thighs, the little twitches in my eyelids and the racing of my heart. No magazine had ever described these things. This was life-changing s**t! I felt enlightened, and I felt excited about my discovery. I had experienced my first orgasm at twenty-six, and I had a lot of catching up to do.

I later discovered that on average, around seventy-five percent of women have never orgasmed through penetration alone, and fifteen percent have never experienced an orgasm at all. I felt cheated for never having being taught about female pleasure in sex education class at school.

Finding out how my nether region should be operated at such a ripe old age had a strange effect on me. I reacted like a fourteen-year-old boy would. I wanted to do it again and again, and I wondered what it would feel like to be brought to orgasm by a man. I had two options – I could either masturbate myself into an early grave, or make it my mission to find out!

Reprinted with permission from How Much for a Happy Ending? From domestic abuse survivor, to dominatrix, to sex therapist and everything in between! by S.E. Winters. Available from Amazon.