Normal Gets You Nowhere by Kelly Cutrone (ereader for android .txt) 📕

“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