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

The normal love life that most people are having in this country barely scratches the surface. We as women are accepting crumbs, when we should be feasting at the buffet.

That night in Little Italy, I had to apologize to my teenage friend, because my generation had failed her. I couldn’t even think of a cool animated website to send her to to find the information she was looking for. In a flash, the marketer in me sprang into action, and I suggested she look into starting a new sex website with her friends. She’d surely make millions of dollars! Unfortunately, she didn’t think that would fly so well with her family.

The Only Missile I Want to See on TV Is Gold and Fits in My Makeup Bag

It’s beyond obvious that we need to start teaching our daughters sexual education and exploration in the same way and with the same tone that we teach them to read books or shop at luxury-brand stores. Unfortunately, we’re still so uptight about sex in this country that when I recently arrived for an appearance on Chelsea Lately bearing a vibrator for Chelsea Handler, a totally modern chick, her producers informed me I was not allowed to show a vibrator on television. Oh, really? How interesting that we can show our children news footage of thousands of people being blown out of the windows of the World Trade Center in a mass murder over and over and over again or grainy footage from home-invasion videos, but we can’t show them a missile-shaped gold object that exists purely to provide pleasure in the privacy of one’s home (and that comes recommended by a slew of power chicks!). I believe our sexual repression is not just causing us to abandon our youth; it’s helping make America the most dangerous place in the West to be a woman.

After that night in Little Italy, I started thinking about where I got my information about sex when I was growing up. Hmmm. From my dad’s Playboys. My friends and I would steal magazines like Playboy and Penthouse from our parents and take them into our makeshift forts to pore over. We read Xaviera Hollander’s “Call Me Madam” column in Penthouse, a soft-core section where “readers” would relay their sex fantasies. The best thing about stealing your parents’ porn was that they couldn’t come out and ask you for it. (I mean, really, “Did you steal our porn?”) My dad probably went upstairs several times over the years to grab his Playboy for some private time, only to be foiled by my tribe of middle-schoolers sitting up in a fort in the backyard. One thing I remember about reading those columns was that they made sex seem fun, like this magical thing awaiting me in the future that was going to be really, really great. (I also remember that pearls were the hot accessory back then.)

Other than those Playboys, I rarely had the privilege of seeing anything that incited my fantasies when I was growing up. I definitely could have handled it if my mom had pulled out a few nipple clamps, an anal dilator, or even an electric vibrator, saying, “Listen, a lot of people believe that if you use an electric one, you’ll burn out the nerves in your clitoris.” Good to know! But she never did; nor did she advise me to read the great texts on lovemaking. Luckily, I’ve learned through experience. The journey of my life has been a continuous sexual education, from my first husband, a very accomplished lover seventeen years older than me (warning: once you have your first really great lover, it becomes as much a curse as a blessing, since successive lovers may not cut it) to my work with lingerie brands like Agent Provocateur, which, trust me, gave me in eight years an education in itself.

I hope your life will offer these lessons too. But I also encourage you to seek out information on sex, whether that means talking to a tribal council member or reading the Kama Sutra, an ancient Hindu text that is possibly the most famous book ever written about lovemaking. (One of the reasons I love India is that its culture makes room for everything in life to be included in the Divine—yes, even sex holds a sacred place! Contrast this to Mother Teresa, who ran around India for years telling people not to use condoms in the name of her religion, so that they could contract and die of AIDS instead.)

Or hey, how about this. Let’s all write out our sexual fantasies. Most guys I’ve dated would have been beyond happy if I’d come up with a list of all the things I wanted to do and try with them. I mean, this is great third-date conversation material! I guarantee it’ll get you a fourth date! Think about it. What guy wouldn’t be happy if you said, “Hey, I really want to be tied up and blindfolded”? Obviously as you begin to explore, there will be certain things your partner wants that you’ll object to, and if it’s not your thing, feel free to speak up and say, “No, I will not pee on you!” But it’s important to be carnivorous, spiritual, honest, and open.

When I was younger and just starting to have sexual experiences, I had thoughts and feelings I wanted to act on, but didn’t. I was a Sicilian and a Scorpio, after all; I didn’t want to scare anyone! It was only when I let go of society’s and religion’s ideas of what is right for me that I started to have better sexual relationships—and a much better time. Over the years I’ve had the great advantage of having certain lovers ask me, “What do you want?” And more often than not, they’ve wanted the same things. Guys are stumbling around in the dark too, so why not be each other’s instructors? Everyone has a secret fantasy