Wrecked (2 page)

If it’s been a few days since we’ve had sex and I’ve done this secret scratching beneath the bedsheets, sometimes I get so horny it hurts. But I don’t want to admit that I’m horny, and think instead that I have a yeast infection or a bladder infection, or that I’ve contracted herpes, despite the fact that I’m totally
immune to it—otherwise I’d have gotten it long ago. They say that about herpes—either you get it or you don’t. And I appear to be immune. At least I’m immune to something. These thoughts about being ill stay in my head until I have sex—when my husband initiates it, of course. Then all my ailments are pleasantly fucked away.

But when my husband wants me to, I put on the best masturbation act of all time. When he’s watching and encouraging me, I really go for it. I rub and flick and finger. He doesn’t look at my face at all. I exist only as a vagina. I am my vagina. He keeps his head between my legs and watches closely as I go through all the masturbatory techniques I’ve seen online and on DVDs. His eyes, his nose, and his mouth are just a few centimeters from the inner lips of my vagina. I rub crossways on my clitoris, push the lips open and rub between them, and once in a while I shove a finger inside and fuck myself with it. Even if I find it more amusing than stimulating, when I see how it affects him, how much it turns him on, I get turned on, too.

He can’t take it anymore, and he wants to do with his cock what I’m doing with my finger. I lie in front of him, completely naked, and spread my legs as wide as I can. He shifts forward and smacks his hard cock a few times against my vagina. I think he must have seen that move in a porn film. But I like it when he does that. Even though I can’t explain why I like it. He smacks his cock against me a few times and then in he goes. I usually come very quickly. A few thrusts will do it. And then that’s it for me. My mother—and leading feminists—brought me up to think there was no such thing as a vaginal orgasm. They sit between me and Georg and whisper in my ear: “There’s no such thing as a vaginal orgasm!” Now, at thirty-three years old, I’ve had to find
out all on my own that that’s not true. I’ve always felt it during sex, but when I came I always dismissed it as a psychological effect. I figured tht it was just because I liked the idea of being fucked, that the thought—
fuck, fuck, oh fuck yes, he’s inside me, filling me
—was enough to make me come without touching my clit. Because I was convinced—for political reasons—that there was no other way to really come except through clitoral stimulation. No surprise that eventually I started to think I was crazy or, at the very least, had a powerful imagination. In bed, I realized that my feminist upbringing was miles away from reality. Secretly, behind my mother’s back, and behind prominent feminist activist Alice Schwarzer’s back, I began to think,
They’re wrong! I come that way almost every time—there is such a thing as a vaginal orgasm. Fuck it and fuck them
. And now, finally, I’ve gotten scientific confirmation, too. In
Geo Kompakt
magazine, number 20. It’s a science magazine—and it’s my favorite. The theme of issue number 20 was “Love and Sex.” I learned a lot from it, a lot more than from Alice Schwarzer’s journal
Emma
. And yet, Alice Schwarzer still sits between me and my husband during sex, whispering, whispering: “Yes, Elizabeth, you only think you’re having vaginal orgasms, you imagine that in order to subjugate yourself to your husband and his penis.” From that issue of
Geo Kompakt
I learned that women have two ways to have an orgasm—and can even come both ways at the same time. A vaginal orgasm is—speaking in layman’s terms—transmitted to the brain via the vagus nerve, whereas a clitoral orgasm is transmitted through nerves that run through the spine. Sometimes I come really hard, and that probably means it’s being sent to my brain both ways at the same time. I also feel I come quickest if I do it the way I need it. What I mean is that I actually do
the thrusting—I grind against his cock more than he actually shoves it into me. That way I can create the perfect rhythm for me. And then it’s just a matter of seconds before I come. I’m really loud. I flip out every time. And then I’m done. He has to be careful that he doesn’t come right away, too, because it turns him on when I just take what I want. He loves the way his cock gets me off. But that’s probably just something he’s convinced himself of—in reality, I’m pretty sure I get myself off. Anyway, he has to really concentrate—or think of his Catholic mother or whatever—until I finish. So that he doesn’t come before me, in which case it’s all over. I’m really thankful that he takes it so seriously—that he makes sure I come first. I’d guess that in the seven years of our relationship, he’s come first only three times, meaning there were only three times I didn’t come with his cock. But in all of those cases, he still made good with his fingers, his tongue, and his toes. In those instances I really benefited from his bad conscience.

With the exception of those three incidents, it’s always his turn after I come. At that point, I’m his servant, like at the start. This is the only moment during sex that I say anything. I’m no good at talking dirty. Probably for the same reason I don’t masturbate. It’s all my mother’s fault. As always. I ask Georg: “How do you want to come?” There aren’t
that
many ways. He gets to choose from the following menu: in my hand, my mouth, my vagina—I get on top and fuck him, because of his back—or, on rare occasions, because it is always pretty painful for me, in my ass. When I get on top of him, to fuck him so he can come in my vagina, he usually wants me to sit backward. That way he can grab my ass and see everything. He pulls my cheeks apart so he can watch his cock going in and out of my vagina.

He tells me exactly what he sees. Unlike me, he can talk dirty very well. He feels bad that I can’t see the way the skin of my vagina wraps around his cock as I lift my body. He says it looks as if the skin of my vagina forms a hat for his cock—the skin clings to it and is pulled slightly downward, getting dragged along the entire length of his shaft. A few times in our seven years together he’s pulled my cheeks apart so far that it’s slightly torn the tissue around my asshole, leaving me feeling slightly wounded. I tell him the next day, after I go to the bathroom: “Please don’t pull my ass cheeks so far apart next time, you broke something, thanks.” He immediately feels bad and promises to do better next time. I guess it just happens in the heat of the moment.

I often feel as if intense sex makes you overlook injuries. It’s the same with the way he pulls apart my vagina so he can really examine it. Sometimes the sensitive skin tears a little. Up to a point, a little pain turns me on even more because I think to myself that he is so horny that he can’t control himself anymore, that he no longer knows his own strength. It sounds as if I’m talking about a man with Down syndrome. But that’s what goes through my head during sex. If I can bear it, I wait until we’re finished before complaining—in a friendly tone. Often he squeezes my hard, stimulated nipples, and that can really hurt. Very carefully, I try to let him know that he hurt me—I don’t want him to feel too bad and then be tentative the next time we have sex. I don’t want that. And I also don’t want him to feel as though he’s some kind of brute.

But now it’s time for him to come. Over the years I’ve developed a trick. I first saw it in the documentary
Chicken Ranch
, by Nick Broomfield. In the movie, prostitutes use the
trick on drunk clients so the fuck is over more quickly and they are able to raise their hourly earnings. As soon as a client has blown his load and his hard-on is deflated, the prostitute is done. So she earns the same money in a shorter time and can move on to another client. I use the same trick on my husband at the end of our sessions. Once I’ve come, I don’t really see any reason things should go on for an eternity. Over the years I’ve developed extremely good control over my Kegel muscles. I can make myself much tighter inside than I normally am. I have no idea whether having a baby slightly widens you—my gynecologist says that it doesn’t, that everything goes back to the way it was beforehand. Anyway, it’s also perhaps less than ideal for the feeling of tightness that my body produces so much fluid during sex. During foreplay it’s great, but later, when I want to make him come by rubbing his cock with my vagina, it’s more of a hindrance. If he puts his cock in before I’m really wet, I can tell from his reaction that it turns him on—because the friction is more intense. But anyway, after I’ve already come, I don’t have any great desire to prolong things. Unless it’s Christmas or our anniversary or something—in that case I let myself get carried away and will take a long time to get him off even after I come. So now I squeeze my Kegel muscles with everything I’ve got and he comes immediately. I mean
immediately
. There’s just nothing he can do. It always makes me feel good—the fact that I have his cock in a vise grip inside me and can pull the trigger whenever I’m ready. Cool. He moans and groans a lot when he comes, and usually I then ask him, as a joke, “Did you come yet?”

I think that being loud increases the intensity of sexual sensations. It highlights the rush, the animalism. Earlier, at the
beginning of our relationship, I was the only one who always screamed. I would scream until his ears rang. But these days he screams right back at me. It’s great fun.

I’m totally against any kind of postplay. I get really jittery from sex and always want to get up and do something afterward—like take a shower. Not because I feel dirty or anything. It’s just that I am prone to the number one female ailment: urinary tract infections. And I can never get rid of the impression that I usually get UTIs after sex. So in my mind—with no scientific basis—I can’t help thinking male bacteria are responsible. So I wash them away and leave my husband lying there at the scene of the crime. He always falls into a state of complete relaxation after sex and then falls fast asleep—sometimes for hours. How does a cliché become a cliché? I’ve read that it’s totally normal for men and women to behave completely differently after sex. Having that scientifically confirmed makes me feel much better—for years before that I had to hear how unromantic I was for hopping right up afterward and starting to clean up or whatever. In the article it said that the clichés that form the basis of the jokes everyone makes—about the hyperactivity of women after sex and the “little death” of men—are the result of different hormones. I love science because it absolves you of your bad conscience about things like that. Now that we know, I can get out of bed immediately and do something without being given the evil eye. He’s already deep asleep, and I switch off the electric blankets so he doesn’t get broiled in his sleep. I grab one of my daughter’s stuffed animals that’s lying on the floor of our room. It’s an orangutan. I hold it against my vagina so none of the sperm drips out on my way to the bathroom. You never see that in the movies after a sex
scene—the soupy fluid running back out of the woman at some point. Probably wouldn’t go over so well. I smile. My head is never clouded with problems after sex. It always seems to me that I can’t possibly get more relaxed or free. And then I feel even more relaxed and free the next time. He outdoes himself. We outdo ourselves.

Right in front of the bathroom is our rattan laundry basket. We like old, dark brown things—prepares us for our eventual death. I toss the orangutan into the basket and head into the bathroom. If my daughter finds the stuffed animal in there, the sperm will have dried. And anyway, a child would probably just think it was snot. Definitely. I sit backward on the bidet and wash myself—the way I saw it done in
The Tin Drum
as a kid. My mother often showed us movies with adult-only ratings. She was of the opinion that art films couldn’t be rated that way. But ever since, that image has stuck in my head: the working girl from
The Tin Drum
, played by Katharina Thalbach, trying to perform retroactive contraception by washing out the sperm of her client. I don’t think that image will ever leave my head. After washing myself first with soap, I rinse again with clear water.

I grab a towel—which, for the sake of the environment, is air dried, and as a result is brittle and scratchy—and dry myself off a little too roughly. I want to finish quickly. My daughter will be home from school any minute, and then we’ll want to have dinner. I haven’t prepared anything.

I look at myself in the mirror, nude. I always look best after sex because my facial features are so relaxed. My breasts are slightly larger because they’re engrossed with blood, the nipples are hard, the pupils of my eyes are dilated as if I’m high, my clitoris and the inner lips of my vagina are thick and
swollen from the stimulation and friction and hang out of my outer lips. On my throat and chest I have the telltale red flecks I always get when I come. You can’t fake those. My husband is always happy when he sees those red flecks on my white skin. He’s always worried that I might be faking it. But I don’t—and I don’t have to. I brush my hair so I don’t look too deranged when Liza gets home. With makeup remover and Q-tips I clean up the smearing beneath my eyes that could be a giveaway. And I fold two squares of toilet paper into my underwear before I pull them on. But no more than two. I teach my daughter not to waste paper when she goes to the bathroom, too—for the sake of the environment.

As quietly as possible, I slip into the walk-in closet off our bedroom and rummage around for some comfortable clothes to wear for the rest of the evening. Before dinner, I have to briefly stop by to see my therapist, Frau Drescher. I can wear anything to her office. That’s the beauty of it. I can go there regardless of how I look, how I smell. I can go there in any state. Isn’t that what religious nuts say about their gods? Maybe so, but they aren’t so confident that they don’t wash up for him—just in case he’s not quite as magnanimous as they pretend.

Frau Drescher even wants me to go to the bathroom at her place—number two, no less. But so far I haven’t been able to get up the nerve. We’re working on it.

Once I’m dressed, I go upstairs to the kitchen. I close all the doors along the way so I can make as much noise as I want with my daughter without waking up Georg. I know he’ll sleep for at least an hour. I like to tell myself that I’ve worn him out. That makes it easier for me to let him sleep—because I’m proud of myself. During the hour I have while he’s asleep, I’ll
cook something healthy and, by breathing deeply, get rid of the red flecks on my throat. Don’t want my daughter to see those. Kids don’t want to know that adults have sex. From our stack of cutting boards I pull out the one with the words
garlic and onions
branded onto it. And from the magnetic strip that holds our knives I grab the knife I’ve written
garlic
on with a Sharpie. Ever since I quit smoking, my senses of taste and smell are so sensitive that when I eat a piece of fruit I can taste whatever was cut with the same knife beforehand—and if it’s onions or garlic it nearly makes me puke. When things that are supposed to be sweet taste somehow savory, it drives me crazy. It’s something that has started to bother me only as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger, I was more easygoing. A lot more easygoing!