FOREWORD (71 page)

E
. My wife and I enjoy an extremely satisfactory missionary sexual relationship. Unfortunately, she does not fantasize, and cannot be comfortable humoring me with my fun and games. For this reason, I seldom star her in them. The enclosed fantasy is an exception, but is still indicative of the type of tale that turns me on.

What actually happened:

We were having almost two dozen people for Thanksgiving dinner at six PM. We had been preparing since Sunday, when I shopped for the nonperishables, and my wife (who worked full time) began baking. My son got me up at seven A.M. on Thursday to set the two tables, as a surprise to my lovely wife. He and I both helped her throughout the day.

I grated two quarts of carrots, loaded and ran the dishwasher at least five times before and after dinner, and helped serve and clean up afterwards. I love my wife; I enjoy helping her Men In Love

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whenever r can. Pleasing her makes me feel good. She loves me too. My favorite benediction to newlyweds is, “May your lives together be as beautiful as ours.” Along about eleven P.M., however, with still a sixth load of dishes to be washed, my back began to ache so badly that I decided to go to bed.

Just at that time, my wife suggested that she could help me move the tables back and fold them up, and put away the chairs. I really did not feel up to it and grumbled a bit, but we did it. My back was better in the morning; I got up before my wife and loaded the last batch of dishes into the dishwasher.

When I climbed into bed Thursday night, my wife said to me, “Thanks, honey, you were a terrific help today. Lie flat on your back like I do when mine aches, and I hope it will be all better in the morning.” We hugged and kissed awhile, and went to sleep.

What I invented in my mind:
She says, “You didn’t finish the dishes yet, and you sure were grouchy about putting the tables back! And I’ll bet that bit about your back was just a hoax! In fact, I’ll know it was if it is better in the morning.

I’m afraid I’ll have to give you another lesson in discipline when I wake up. You haven’t had one in quite some time, and you’re beginning to slip !”

Returning to the bedroom after loading the dishwasher in the morning, I find her smoothing on her long black kid gloves with a determined look on her face. She says, “I gather your back is okay now, so it really couldn’t have been so bad last night! I’m sorry that I have to do this to you, but you know you have it coming. Now, are you going to walk over here and accept your punishment gracefully, or must I drag you over here?” I slowly approach her and allow her to position me on the bed face up so that she can straddle me.

The sentence is sixty slaps, to be firmly delivered, yet with compassion, in the following manner: With my left cheek cradled in her warm right palm to prevent my head from rolling with the slaps, she slaps my right cheek thirty times and then reverses hands. After each solid, deliberate slap, her hand remains on my cheek for about ten seconds, as if to Nancy Friday

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reabsorb some of the sting. At the conclusion of the lesson, she asks if I will now behave as I should. I agree. We embrace.

PLEASE NOTE: Believe it or not, this is a tale of LOVE.

It is imperative my wife knows that I know that she is, in fact, more than pleased with my help for the day. I could not enjoy the beating if she were unhappy. I would have left her long ago if she were actually of this nature, and treated me as depicted above outside of love games.

BOYD

I’ll tell you a little about myself and then tell you one of the fantasies I have when I’m bummed out by something. I’m twenty-three, five-eleven, one hundred sixty-five pounds. I

“lost it” at the age of sixteen. I now am forced to live at home because I was laid off about a year ago and no longer get unemployment payments. I like to read “men’s magazines” but mostly for the stories; the girls in most of them look too unreal to turn me on. I like women with some kind of imperfections, especially young ones. My favorite music is David Bowie which might have something to do with my fantasy. I am completely heterosexual.

My fantasy starts with me standing underneath a streetlight on a dark corner. I am wearing makeup, white face powder, green eye shadow, mascara, and red lipstick. My hair is cut in a rooster cut and is dyed blue. I am dressed in very tight black leathers and knee-high red boots.

A plump blond lady steps out of the shadows and walks up to me. She has a very worn looking face, and looks like life has kicked her around a lot. She silently looks me over and then takes twenty-five dollars out of a tattered purse and hands it to me. I take the money and follow her to her dumpy apartment.

The next part of my fantasy is always different, depending on my moods. Sometimes the lady wants me to whip her and Men In Love

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piss on her. Other times she wants me to eat her. This fantasy always ends with me driving her up the wall with pleasure and then fucking her so hard and long that she screams for mercy. She then tells me how great I was and gives me another twenty-five dollars. I laugh at her and go out to find someone else.

I don’t know why I always fantasize about being a male whore, but I know that if I ever had the chance I’d do it. I’ve always satisfied all my women, mostly because I take their feelings into account as well as mine. I think I’d make a good whore.

BENJAMIN

I am a thirty-three-year-old, white construction worker.

I’ve never been married, though I’ve considered it. I have lived and worked in more than twenty states extending from New York to California.

I have about two years of college which I acquired mostly in night school. Though college has helped me earn higher wages, my work is still very physical. I’m also very athletic and still participate in contact sports such as football. I stand six foot two, and weigh over two hundred pounds. I’m elaborating on the physical thing because of my fantasies. I have a very wide assortment, but these are my favorites: My first fantasy starts in an office building where I’m doing remodelling work. The office workers are having a party. One of the bosses invites me to join them and I accept.

I meet a girl who tells me she doesn’t know what she is going to do on the long weekend coming up. Since I don’t have anything planned, I invite her to my place for drinks and dinner later. She accepts. When we arrive, I take her sweater, and put it on a chair. I then start taking all her clothes off.

She is startled and I tell her she might as well be comfortable.

When she is completely naked, I tell her to fix the drinks while I hang her clothes up. When I return, I put on some Nancy Friday

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music and take her on my lap. I’m still fully clothed. We finish our drinks, and she dances on the coffee table. The music stops and I examine her body, feeling her all over. I pick her up fireman style and carry her to the bedroom. I tell her to kneel. She does. I tell her to take my penis out and put it in her mouth. I tell her then to undress me without losing my erection. If she loses it, she gets spanked. I then put her on the bed and make love to her.

This fantasy occurs sometimes when I am making love to a girl who is slow to climax, or needs excessive foreplay. It also occurs, of course, when I’m working near pretty office girls.

Fantasy number two starts at home. I am home with my lover. She is pissed off at me about something. I want to kiss and make up, but she calls me a bastard and slaps my face. I get mad. I grab her, strip her, and tie her to the bed. She is spread to the point of being uncomfortable, but not really hurting. I then tickle her with a feather. This makes her furious, which is what I want. I then masturbate her until she begs me to enter her. I tease for a while longer, and then take her rather roughly. She climaxes several times. When I have climaxed, I dress her, and take her on my lap. She is very quiet, but no longer angry.

This fantasy occurs when my lover is feisty or cocky. It occurs, too, when a girl such as a waitress or grocery clerk is unnecessarily sarcastic.

Fantasy number three: I am shopping in a slave market.

The girls are naked and tied to posts, which form several rows. I have a reputation of being a kind master, so they all try to get me to buy them. I do buy five or six of them, and take them to my domain. They are bathed, fed, and given medical treatment. I select one to sleep with me for the night.

The others are locked in comfortable rooms. I will use them later.

This fantasy occurs when a waitress, office girl, or any working girl is very pleasant and is trying hard to serve me, Men In Love

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as efficiently as possible. It may be a hidden desire to take her away from all this.

This last fantasy usually occurs when I am alone and feeling lonely. (Men
do
get lonely sometimes.) It started when I was in the army on field exercises. There were many nights I had to sleep rolled up in a poncho, while it rained like hell.

The fantasy goes like this: I am walking through the woods on my way back to my weekend cabin. It’s pouring rain even though the weather report didn’t call for it. I come to a small clearing where I find a girl naked, gagged, and tied in a spread-eagled position. I untie her and carry her to my cabin. I have all the conveniences of home. I let her shower, while I get dry clothes for both of us. (I have no women’s clothing, so she must wear mine.) When she finishes her shower, I fix her hot soup and coffee. When she eats, I give first aid to her. (She has insect bites and rope burns.) She tells me she doesn’t know who did this to her, or why. I show her to her bed and tell her to call me if she needs anything. In about two hours, she calls. I go to her bedside. She pulls me into the bed. She tells me that I am extremely kind. We make love. It’s raining harder than ever. Listening to it makes both of us appreciate the warm, dry bed and each other even more.

I wish you luck on this book. It may be more difficult since men are shyer about sex than women. In looking back over this letter, I find that I’ve used very little profanity. I assure you even though it may not sound like what you would expect from a construction man, it is quite authentic.

22

Virgins

VERNON

I’m a boy, fifteen years old, soon to be sixteen. I, unfortunately, am a virgin, though not by choice. I’m too shy to approach girls, but I am trying to overcome this.

I like nice girls, but I still want to get laid. I doubt that any of the better-class girls I know would make love to me, but I bought condoms just in case. I’ve read
Cosmo’s Love Book
and
The Joy of Sex
, so I think I could satisfy most females.

Well, on to fantasies. I’ve been skinny-dipping a few times at a motel, and I really wish I could make love nude in a pool with a girl sometime. All my fantasies I would like to act out.

Especially screwing in a pool or on a beach, and maybe in a forest or outdoors someplace in a wooded area. I prefer fair-skinned blondes, but right now I’ve got a crush on a brunette in my summer school class. (I didn’t flunk, I’m picking up extra credits so I can graduate early.) The thing is, I don’t
know
her, and I don’t know how to introduce myself.

I often masturbate while thinking of certain girls I like, and dream of performing on them. I would also enjoy rear entry and breast sucking. I have a special passion for the female rear end, and I go wild watching them in bikinis at my apartment’s pool. Big breasts don’t impress me much. I like them, of course, but they don’t really matter when I see a girl I like. Maybe you could drop me a note and advise me how to approach a girl I like. I know what to do in bed, but I don’t know how to get there. Before I read
My Secret Garden
, I didn’t think nice girls (or women) ever thought about sex.

“People ask me if I can briefly define what Freud has done,” psychoanalyst Dr. Helene Deutsch told an Men In Love

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interviewer,* “and I say, ‘Oh! only very little. He only found that children are not saints, and [discovered] the meaning of the unconscious.”‘ Just as children resist seeing their parents as sexual, so do parents refuse to accept that their darlings of five or fifteen touch themselves and dream of even more.

The young men in this chapter speak to me with enormous resonance. I groan, I sigh, I die a little over their laments.

Women understand virginity. All that adolescent romance when everything seemed possible in the sweet confusion of love and sex. Deciding how far to let a man go, how far to go herself, weighing the pros and cons of every centimeter of maidenhood lost along the way.

All that power.

For how many women, I wonder, were the adolescent virgin years their best?

Sex is supposed to be power for men, but it is (ironically and logically) their very powerlessness at this time that stings teenagers to shame and fury. Studies at major universities are beginning to show how much has changed in our sexual values ... and how much has not. In an era in which we think

“Everything is different for young people now,” it is essential to understand that there are at least three ways to measure change. A change in
attitude
can happen quickly – an influential book, a conversation with a powerful speaker. Our behavior changes more slowly. You may approve of the new freedom, but somehow are reluctant to put it into practice.

Slowest of all to change are
notions of right and wrong
, which we get from our parents. You act on your new liberal attitudes, but deep inside you feel anxious, guilty. These feelings can take generations to change.

For instance, young people today seem to be unanimous in their public professions of belief in a single standard for both men and women. This is an enormously important change in attitude. And if it were genuinely integrated, it would be a radical, evolutionary step toward sexual equality. But like

* “Helene Deutsch and the Legacy of Freud,” by Suzanne Gordon, The New York Times
Magazine, July 30, 1978.

Nancy Friday

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people who tell sociologists that what they like best on television are the documentaries on noncommercial stations, but turn on
The Love Boat
when home alone, men like Vernon (above) are evidence, in my research at least, that in their secret hearts, men haven’t changed all that much.