Chapter 43: What Do Women Want?

It took me most of Sunday to recover. I wasn’t used to working that hard. But with frequent naps and a few donuts, I was okay.

Late Sunday afternoon, Jeff scratched at the door and my mother called me down from upstairs.

“Hey, Jeff. What’s happening? Keeping out of trouble?”

“What’s the fun in that? Let’s go sit in the sun.”

That meant he had something he wanted to talk about and didn’t want to be overheard by disapproving ears.

Out under the tree in the backyard, sitting in lawn chairs, he asked about my job, and I filled him in.

“Sounds really exciting, Carter. Translation? Of survey answers? Should I run to the drugstore and get your heart medication?”

“So it’s not your thing. Fine. I’m happy I get a chance to use something I learned. And get paid for it.

“What’s up with you? Kate let you off the leash for a few hours?”

“She’s off with her parents somewhere, family thing. Just as well. Carter, she’s running me ragged. I don’t know where she gets the energy for all this sex.

“It’s like, I dunno, it’s like she’s been compiling a list of all the ways and places people have ever had sex and she’s working her way through it, one by one.”

“Well, at least she’s well-read, if she’s been doing all that research.”

“It’s not a joke, Tom. She really wants to try everything, I think. Yesterday her mom and dad were out doing errands somewhere for a couple of hours, and she gets that look in her eye.

“She says, “Jeff, I want to try something and you’ve got to promise you’ll do just what I ask, okay?” So I ask what she wants to do, and she tells me that she’s been reading about bondage and people being forced to do things and how some people get off on it, and she wants to try it.”

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “She wanted to tie you up?”

“No! She wanted me to tie her up so she couldn’t get loose, and she wanted ... she wanted me to spank her and then fuck her in the ass until I came inside her, and not untie her, no matter what she said, until I finished.”

“Oh. I see. Had she done any of these things before? Was it something she liked and wanted to do again?”

“No. I mean, she hadn’t done them before, I asked her, not the tying up and not the anal. She’d just read about them and she wanted to experience them and see if she liked them or didn’t.

“It’s as if something’s not real until she’s actually done it herself, reading about it or watching it isn’t enough.”

“So? Did you?”

“I almost didn’t. But I really like sex with her, so I did it. I could almost see the tying up thing, feeling like you’re helpless, at someone else’s command.

“But the spanking part was really difficult, I hate hurting her, even if she says she wants it. But I did it. There was some nylon rope in the garage, and I tied her hands together and wrapped the rope around a bedpost. And we found some petroleum jelly, so I was able to grease up her butt so it didn’t hurt so much going in.

“I kinda liked doing her ass, it was really tight, but it looked really uncomfortable for her. I kept on pumping her ass and slapping it, and damned if she didn’t get off on it. I think she came, and then I did, too.”

“Did you talk to her about it afterwards? Did she say if she liked it or not?”

“I told her I didn’t like hurting her, even for pretend. Then I asked her if it was anything like she imagined, and she said she kinda got off on the tying up part. She said she didn’t care for the spanking, but she liked being fucked in the ass and she had thought she wouldn’t.”

He was quiet for a minute. “Tom, she’s testing the boundaries. Hers and mine. I mean, she’s got a right to do whatever she wants, but I don’t know about being a participant in this.

“What if she asks me to do something I don’t want to do, say she wants me to hit her with a stick, or maybe she wants me to humiliate her, treat her like a whore or something. I can’t do that. I’d hate doing that to her.”

“Those are good questions to ask, Jeff, and it’s better you’re asking them now. If it were me, I’d be figuring out what my limits are, what I’m willing to do for another person before I stop respecting myself. And her.

“Like you, I couldn’t hit someone, or whip them, or cause them any serious pain. And I don’t understand that whole humiliation-degradation thing, not the doing of it, nor the having it done to you.

“Then once I’d figured that out, I’d sit down with her and say basically the same thing you said to me. She can do whatever she wants with her body, but there are some things you’re not comfortable doing, here’s the list, what are your plans, is there anything you want to do that will conflict with my list?

“If there is, you two need to talk it out and see if there’s some room for compromise.

“Jeff, I wonder at her need to try everything for herself. I can see experimenting, we all do it until we find out what we hate and what we like, what turns us on.

“I’d ask her if she has imposed any limits on her experimentation, does she plan on trying everything? Some things are dangerous, even if they do have an element of sexual thrill.

“And what if it’s something that’s not degrading or painful that you’re not totally on board with? Like a threesome, you and her and another guy? Is that something you’d do? What if it were you and her and another girl? But if you do that, can you deny her trying the first one? You two really need to sit down and talk.”

“That’s going to be an awkward conversation.”

“It’ll be a hell of a lot more awkward if you wind up resenting each other because of something you did to her, or something she made you do to her.”

“Life was easier when we just talked about having sex.”

“Tell me about it.”

Monday I was back in the project workroom. I worked for about ninety minutes, then came to a French questionnaire where one of the responses was ambiguous because of the way it was phrased. I couldn’t determine how to quantify the response so I went off to ask Professor Grigio.

He was working on a publication in his office. We made some small talk, then I presented my conundrum. We went through previous answers to see if what made sense in the context, then he was interrupted by a colleague with a question. They stepped out into the hall to discuss it.

I looked through the questionnaire again, then glanced around the office. I picked up an Italian book from the bookshelf and started trying to read it. There were some parallels to Spanish, some words were similar, sentence structure, and I was almost able to get the gist of the paragraph I was reading.

I didn’t hear him come back in behind me. “Teaching yourself Italian now, Tom?”

“I was surprised to see the similarities to Spanish. Not so surprising, I guess, since they probably derived from the same linguistic source. I am almost able to guess the meaning of this paragraph.”

“Tell me what you think it says.”

Now that I had to actually put it into words, I wasn’t so sure I had understood it correctly, but I attempted to give a précis in English.

He thought about my reply for a moment. “Not half bad,” he said. “There’s one word there, fiume, which means in this context a flow of words rather than an odor, but good guess. You’re right, there are a lot of similarities between the languages, enough that it can be confusing. Here.”

He got up and rummaged on his bookshelf for a minute, then returned with a book. “This is a beginning Italian grammar book, with some vocabulary in the back. Skim this and it may help explain some of the differences. Get it back to me before the end of the summer.”

We finished with the survey question I’d brought in and decided on the appropriate numerical response, and I went back to my work area.

The rest of the surveys were pretty straightforward, and I plodded through them. A little more than half were in French. A little after noon, I decided to call it a day.

I decided to eat at home, but I’d get coffee and a snack to fortify me for the trip home. Who was I kidding, I liked snacks. I got pie.

I sat down and opened the Italian grammar book while I drank my coffee, so I didn’t see them approach me until they sat down.

“Nancy. Greta. This has the look of an intervention. It’s just pie, I can stop anytime I want!”

“No, Tom,” said Nancy. “We’re not here to call you out on your pie addiction. We just have a question or two.”

“Okay, take out your textbook.”

“Not about calculus, either. We were talking yesterday, while we recovered from the party, actually mostly from the after-party party. Greta was saying that she hadn’t thought it was possible to cum so many times. And so hard.

“Me, I only had the one but it was a doozy. So, here’s the thing. Neither of us has had a lot of guys, but a reasonably wide sampling. Some are okay, some are really good lovers, plus a few duds, y’know, bell curve.”

She leaned in closer, lowering her voice. “But none of them has made either of us cum so hard, and in Greta’s case, so many times. None of them! What makes you so special? How do you do that? You can’t keep that to yourself, it’s not fair. Tell us.”

I really needed to be more careful. I sometimes forget that not everyone can do this. Someday I’m going to get called out on it and I won’t be able to talk my way out of it. But maybe the stock answer will work again this time.

“There isn’t any secret. Anybody can do this, I think. But there’s a couple of things that guys don’t do that they should. And if they did, they could get you off just like I did.

“First thing is, you gotta really like the person you’re with, and by that I mean you want them to feel good, take care of them, be aware of what they’re feeling, and so on. I do that in normal life, finding out the things people enjoy, the stuff that makes them happy, the stuff they don’t like, so it’s not just sex, but it works there, too.

“And because I was interested in people, I kind of learned early on to read their body language and verbal cues, so I could see how they were responding.

“And that’s what I do with sex. I listen to the words you say, even the sounds you make, and see how your body responds to whatever I’m doing, and react to that. It’s a feedback mechanism, nothing more.

“For example, Nancy, even before we started making love I reached up and tweaked one of your nipples, and I could hear your breath catch. That told me you liked it, even if only a little.

“So I tried slapping your ass, not very hard, and you responded right away, telling me to -- what did you say? -- Oh, yeah. “Spank it.” That was pretty clear.

“So I grabbed your nipples even harder and pulled, and you said you liked it. If you had said “Don’t”, or “Ow”, I would have stopped and tried something else.

“There’s no magic to this. You pay attention to what your partner is saying and doing, the verbal and non-verbal cues. Are their eyes open or closed? How are they breathing? Fast, slow, heavy, shallow? Does their skin look flushed? Is their pussy really wet?

“There are a thousand little clues, and the secret is learning to read and interpret them. And most guys don’t have the patience for it. They want to fuck and be done.

“Sorry to put it so bluntly. Most guys are dicks when it comes to sex, and they don’t care much about their partners, only themselves.”

I sat back and looked at them. They actually looked a little depressed. Nancy turned and looked at Greta, then back at me.

“So that’s the best we’re ever going to get? Because most guys don’t know how to read us?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I said I was able to do it because I could read the cues that told me what you liked, what you wanted.

“But sex is a two-way street. You need to learn what your partner likes and do that, because you like your partner.

“Guys learn that if you tell them. Then they know that you like getting your butt slapped, or your earlobe nibbled, or whatever it is that you like done to you. You have to tell them, just like they have to tell you what turns them on. Then we can get our partners off.”

She was silent for a while. Finally she said, “You’re sure there isn’t a pill or something? That sounds like a lot of work.”

“It’s only the learning part that takes some time and effort, but you know that the learning process is fun, and at the end the sex can be great.”

“Still, I was hoping for a pill.”

I turned to Greta. “You were looking pretty out of it when I left you. I felt a little bad that I had to leave you alone, and also that it left you so enervated.”

“It’s okay, Tom. I really just needed some rest, and Nancy checked in on me every so often. I was fine in the morning. And don’t get me wrong. Like Nancy said, I came so hard, it was wonderful, I was floating, just carried away.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay and back to normal.”

“Feeling pretty good, actually,” she said as they got up. “Maybe we could try that again sometime when we have some more time.”

I smiled at her.

I finished my pie and I rode my bike home and got some lunch.

I always liked the homily, “You never know when the world will end, so eat dessert first.”

I took Grigio’s Italian textbook out back to the lawn chair under the tree and read for awhile, then fell asleep. When I awoke I was surprised to find that my mind was on this afternoon’s conversation with Nancy and Greta.

Once again, I had been a little cavalier in how I dispensed orgasms, going for the showy finish rather than the one that would leave them feeling satisfied and happy and at peace.

I thought I really needed to let the orgasms be of their own initiation, maybe tweaked a little in intensity. But fewer of those Volcano and Avalanche and Fireworks extravaganzas. They were impressive, but they were exhausting, draining. They might serve as the finale of a session, but not during it.

And because I had been so cavalier, it raised questions with my partners. That probably wouldn’t have happened if there had been only a single big orgasm at the end.

I needed to think more about the process of building -- no, that’s not the right word -- of layering the various pleasure levels, raising them slowly until they reach the finale.

And that meant I still needed to learn just what it was women really wanted to get out of sex. I had no idea where or how I would find that out.

In a few minutes I heard my mother calling me in for dinner. After dinner I read for awhile, then fell asleep, still dressed, and slept through till morning.

There was no urgency about when I went in to work, since I was ahead of schedule, so I finally go to my desk around ten and worked for a couple of hours, getting up every so often to stretch.

I was finding all this sitting in one position really hard on my back. I couldn’t imagine having a desk job that required me to do that eight hours a day.

Around one, a little before, I took a break to get a sandwich and some -- you thought I was going to say pie, didn’t you? -- chocolate pudding, and a cup of coffee.

I looked around but didn’t see anyone I knew, so I grabbed an empty table and concentrated on my sandwich. I had just finished the last bite, when the two of them dropped their trays to either side of me.

Nancy said to Greta, “See? The intervention worked. No pie.”

“Just goes to show how little you know me. I had pie for breakfast. Aren’t you two a little late today? You usually get here earlier.”

“Yeah, we had a pop quiz today. I hate those. But I think we did okay. Thanks again, by the way. We’re both feeling a bit more on top of things now.”

We talked about various things while they ate, math, other classes they were going to take, trips they had planned, until they finished.

I had been thinking about whether I should ask them, or maybe do some more research first. In the end, I thought it couldn’t hurt to at least ask.

“I was wondering if I could ask the two of you a rather personal question. If either of you feel at all uncomfortable about it, just say so and that will be the end of it.”

“What’s the question?” Greta asked.

“Let’s go outside and find someplace to sit. This is maybe not the right place to talk about it.”

We cleaned our trays and went out and found a bench in the shade under a tree.

“This is a little awkward, and I’m not quite sure how to pose it. It arose from that talk we had the other day about orgasms and body language, and it got me to thinking.

“I believe guys, including me, tend to think about sex as something pleasurable leading up to a big orgasm, then a collapse into exhaustion. That’s a typical guy’s reaction, because that’s the way it happens to us, and by extension we think that’s the way it happens with women.

“But I don’t think it’s like that for women at all. Sure, you can have big orgasms that leave you breathless and limp, but I don’t think that’s what women really want out of sex.

“So that’s my question, what is the feeling women want to take away from sex? And if you don’t want to answer, that’s perfectly okay, I understand.”

They looked at me for a few moments, then at each other. Greta said, “You never ask easy questions, do you, Tom?”

Nancy looked off into the distance, saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that particular question before, I mean, not in such a way that I’d ever have to describe it.

“It’s always been kind of general, we want to feel good, get a rush, feel relaxed afterwards, but I think you’re asking for something more specific, right?”

I nodded.

She went on, “I may have to think about this for awhile to get it right. I can maybe give you some first impressions.

“And be careful about extrapolating what I say to what all women want, ‘cause I don’t know for sure what they want.

“For me, I think, I get turned on if I think a guy finds me hot, really hot, like the only woman in the room he wants to get into bed. I want to know that he wants me.

“And I think he’s gotta have some subtlety in his approach, none of that caveman “me want sex” stuff. I have to think that he wants to get to know me and understand me. He’s got to make me feel special, find the things that I like.”

Greta nodded. “Yeah, that’s kinda like the way I think about it. For me, I want to feel close, emotionally close, to the guy while we’re making love.

“I want him to take my focus away from all the things that are stressing me out, worrying me, and put the focus onto his touch and his words and making my body feel nice.

“I mean, the orgasms are great, but what I like is the feeling afterwards that I’m loved and cared for and desired and safe. That’s what it means to me.”

“That’s kinda what I’m looking for,” I said. “I want to know what women feel like after really good, satisfying sex, and that’s a start, certainly better than anything I could come up with on my own.

“I’m not sure if this is too personal or not, if it is just tell me to go away. Here’s the question, the follow-up question, that is: How often do you actually encounter that ideal response, to any degree, when you have sex?

“And before you answer, take me out of the sample, so your answers aren’t skewed because you’re trying to make me feel better.”

Nancy laughed. “You just don’t want any criticism, Carter, I know your type.”

“To answer your question,” she continued, “not all that often. You’re right, most guys are clueless about getting women off, and a lot of them can’t wait to be on their way afterwards. It’s like they’re afraid to have a conversation after the sex is over because we’re going to ask for a commitment or something.”

Greta said, “It’s like I told you, at best I get to cum once, and not even every time I have sex. I can maybe recall one time it happened, where the guy wanted to stay and talk and laugh and hug. That’s a pretty poor track record.”

“On behalf of men everywhere,” I said, “mea culpa. We are dolts and unworthy.”

Nancy said, “I can’t argue.”

“Thanks, ladies. I won’t keep you, and I have to get back to work anyway, but I really appreciate the insight.

“I’m not even sure why I’m asking, I just thought it was important for me to understand it.”

They wandered off together, talking intently, and I headed back to the survey mines for another couple of hours.

I got home a little before four, had some orange juice and glanced at the newspaper. Yes, I confirmed, the world was still there and still just as screwed up.

I started outside with a book to read, but the phone rang. I hollered, “I’ve got it!” to no one in particular and picked up. Karen, a pleasant surprise.

“Hi,” I said, “I was just wondering what you were doing. I was torn between you writing up the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem, and working on your first symphony.”

“I took care of Fermat last week, and I’ll have you know I’m working on my third symphony.”

“My bad. I should be better informed. What’s up?”

“I took a chance that you’d be home early. You want to have dinner with us? My dad’s barbecuing again and he always buys way too much food for three people.”

“I’d like that. He does good barbecue. What time? I’ll let my mother know that I won’t be here for dinner.”

We worked out the details, and she told me again not to bring anything, they already had too much food.

Around six I biked over there. Her parents greeted me, very relaxed, which I took as a good sign. We hadn’t spoken since the company picnic, so it was nice to feel they still remembered me.

Karen looked gorgeous, quelle surprise! She was wearing shorts, a tee shirt and sandals, not surprising, given the weather. We sat in a couple of lawn chairs in the back yard, while her father grilled.

“You look nice. I can see that the stress of working the register in the bookstore hasn’t affected you much.”