Macho Sluts, page 39
But you make sure that does not happen. Your thighs cross, my neck in between them, and you roll to the left, pinning me. You are incredibly strong during orgasm. I cannot pry myself loose or escape from you. And I don’t want to. I’m too busy struggling to keep my tongue tucked into the top of your slit, pushing my face up between your convulsing thighs which keep trying to shut me out, push me away from my food, my possession, my cunt.
You come for a long time, longer if I can keep on licking you or shove my fingers into you, past your locked thighs, just as you begin to come. After the shouting, you lie very still, like someone who has fainted. I am terribly excited. As soon as your thighs relax a little, I push my hand between them, put my fingers up to feel how wet you are, and slide them in. You always say, “No. No, lover, don’t.”
And I say, “Why? Why not? I want it. You can’t stop me. Give it to me.” Then I fuck you. You don’t like it, but it makes you come anyway, you can’t help it, you jerk and throb around my hand and lock me between your thighs once more, and come until you’re screaming obscenities at me, it feels so good to you. If I can, I fuck you yet again, and this time you really protest. It’s too much, you’re too tired, you’re sore. But I am adamant. I’ve worked so hard to get you to this place, thrown open to me, responding with these free and easy, quick and intense orgasms, that I have to use your pussy as often as you will let me take it. It’s what I want myself, for you to pin me down and fuck me, but coming has left you too enervated to struggle with me, so I fuck you instead and like it just as much as coming myself. Besides, this is the only time you can come when I fuck you, right after you’ve been eaten into an orgasm. You love to get fucked and will take literally hours of it, but never give in and come completely around me, come until you are satisfied.
It’s almost like a feeding frenzy, this letch to fuck you again and again while pleasure has made you helpless. I once scared myself by fucking you until you passed out, and continuing without noticing you were unconscious. I didn’t stop until I simply could not move my arm any more. Since then, I’ve tried to restrict myself to doing it once or twice.
Yes, it’s difficult to make you come. You are difficult in other ways, too. You expect me to do things for you that I think people should do for themselves. I try anyway, and in return you hurt my feelings by complaining that I don’t take good enough care of you. My desire for you is desperate, as if making you respond in bed could make up for all the things that go wrong elsewhere and give me back what I lose when you make a contemptuous remark about something I love or tell a story that is supposed to prove you will always be better than me at everything I care about doing well. I take it because I love you. But making love to you barely salvages my self-esteem, and keeps me addicted to you. Anybody could do this for you.
I will know I don’t love you any more, that the anger has outweighed the lust, when I stop myself from taking that first puppy-lick, ice-cream-cone-lick, you-are-the-most-desirable-woman-inthe-world-lick that leads to two hours of being muzzled by your cunt, my tongue chasing itself around your clit, aching to have your wet and coming cunt plastered across my nose and mouth, my neck in the scissors of your thighs, hurting for those few seconds when I don’t need to breathe or think or remember my name or my pride.
It’s so difficult to make you come that only three of your lovers have been able to do it. Did any of them have the stamina to eat you twice in one night? How would you like to come again?
A Note on Lesbians, AIDS, and Safer Sex
The lesbian community has a relatively low rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), in part because we also have a relatively low number of different sex partners per lesbian. The way that most lesbians have sex may also be a factor. However, any lesbian who deviates from this pattern by having more female partners, male partners, or exposing her bloodstream or mucous membranes to her partners’ sexual fluids, piss, shit, or blood, is at higher risk. So are lesbian IV drug users.
Many lesbians believe that diseases are only brought into our community by bisexual women. Sadly, the AIDS epidemic has reinforced an attitude in some quarters that lesbians are somehow inherently cleaner or more healthy than gay men. Most of us don’t think of vaginal infections as STDs, and few of us take precautions to prevent the spread of vaginitis or herpes. But women can give each other these diseases as well as chlamydia, hepatitis, intestinal parasites, syphilis, and others. You can try to protect yourself against disease by segregating your sex life so that you have no intimate contact with bisexual women, IV drug users, recently-reformed heterosexual women who are now exclusively lesbian, and any other “high risk” group. This has the potential to polarize us, and make some women scapegoats. The lesbian community is too small to survive excommunicating or quarantining some of its members. And the lesbian leather community is even smaller.
Besides, discriminating against certain groups of women who are potential sex partners is much less effective than simply having safer sex. It is difficult to know for sure if someone is giving you accurate information about their sex history and pattern of recreational drug use. Since sex with men is stigmatized in the lesbian community, and shooting up is stigmatized everywhere, you are likely to get false information about these crucial factors. Anyway, there is no guarantee that a woman who has only had sex with other women can’t get exposed to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus thought to cause AIDS.
From local data collected in New York City and elsewhere, we know that most of the lesbians who have AIDS are also IV drug users. The Center for Disease Control, which is in charge of compiling national statistics on AIDS, has taken an official position that lesbians are not a “risk group,” so they don’t bother to keep track of the sexual orientation of women who are diagnosed as having this disease. However, there is no way to tell exactly how somebody got AIDS. Contaminated needles, which can put the virus directly into your bloodstream, do appear to transmit the disease more efficiently than lesbian sex. Recently, a purported case of AIDS transmitted sexually from one woman to another appeared in the medical literature (M. Marmor, L.R. Weiss, M. Lyden, S.H. Weiss, W.C. Saxinger, T.J. Spira, D. and P.M. Feorino, “Possible Female-to-Female Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus,” Letters and Corrections, “Annals of Internal Medicine,” vol. 105, page 969). This case is controversial because one of these women also had male sex partners, and the “traumatic sexual activities” which allegedly exposed them on one another’s blood are not described. However, the epidemiology of AIDS in Africa makes it clear that women can give men AIDS. HIV has been found to exist in vaginal secretions. It is there in much lower concentration than it is in semen or blood. No one has tested menstrual blood to see if it also contains high levels of HIV, but you should assume it does. There is no reason to believe that women can’t give other women AIDS. This is an incurable, fatal disease, and the potential consequences of an erroneous assumption are enormous.
Everybody should know what safer sex is, and most of us should be practicing it. Any lesbian who is sexually active with multiple partners (male or female)—especially if she does not know their histories; who has used semen for alternative conception which may have come from a high-risk donor; who has a history of IV drug use; who has had sex with gay or bisexual men, IV drug users, hemophiliacs, or someone who had a blood transfusion between 1979 and 1985, or who had a blood transfusion herself, ought to observe the following guidelines:
1. If you have cuts or abrasions on your hands, use a rubber or latex glove to keep your partner’s blood and vaginal fluids out of your bloodstream. Be aware that the kind of manicure that you should give yourself before fisting or heavy fucking will inevitably create breaks in the skin around your fingernails and cuticles. If you are in doubt, use the gloves. Use only water-based lubricants (like KY Jelly) with them, since oil-based lubricants like Crisco or Vaseline may weaken rubber or latex. When you buy a lubricant, read the label. If it says it is “water-soluble,” but the ingredients include petroleum, shortening, vegetable oil, or any kind of grease, this is not a water-based lubricant, and it is not safe to use with latex barriers. Some lubricants (like Foreplay) contain nonoxynol-9, a spermicide that kills HIV. Generally, this is a plus; however, some women have an allergic reaction to this chemical. When you are done having sex, take off the gloves by turning them inside out, and throw them away. Then go wash your hands. From the time that you touch your partner until after washing your hands, keep your fingers out of your mouth.
2. During oral sex (especially during the woman’s period) or rimming (putting your mouth on her asshole), use latex dental dams. They can be ordered (whether you are a doctor or not) from dental surgical supply houses. You can increase the sensation by putting a dab of lubricant on the side of the dam that touches your partner’s body. If you take a break, throw the dam away. Do not reuse it, since there is a chance that you will lick the wrong side.
3. Sex toys that have been in somebody’s ass should not go into the vagina without first being thoroughly cleaned. Ideally, sex toys should not be shared by two or more people. If this is not possible, de-germ them before you play. You can keep your dildoes and assplugs cleaner if you put a condom on them, then remove it and clean the toy after use. Leather dildoes cannot be cleaned; they should always be used with a condom, and never shared. HIV can be killed by several sterilizing solutions. Your options include rubbing alcohol in seventy percent solution, hydrogen peroxide, Betadine, a solution of one part household bleach in ten parts of water, or boiling water. Bedding and trick towels can be laundered in hot water with Hexol, a detergent that kills hepatitis and other viruses, and probably kills HIV as well.
4. Needles that are used for tattooing, piercing, or acupuncture can spread disease as easily as needles used for doing recreational drugs, and should not be shared. If you want to keep a set of works exclusively for your own use, you’d better conceal them to prevent anyone from borrowing them. Always clean your rig with boiling water or a solution of one part household bleach in ten parts water before you use it. Draw the solution into the syringe several times. Take it apart and let it soak for fifteen minutes. If you’ve used bleach, when you put it back together, rinse it with water you’ve boiled and allowed to cool. Draw the water into the syringe and squirt it out several times. You don’t want to inject bleach!
5. Women who have a high risk of having been exposed to HIV should consider taking a test for the antibody to the virus before becoming pregnant, since AIDS can be passed on to the fetus. Be sure to get the test at a place where you do not have to give your name. A positive test result that is not kept anonymous could cause you to lose health insurance, make it difficult for you to travel abroad, or suffer other kinds of discrimination. Other women should probably not take the test. It was invented to screen donated blood to make sure it is safe to use for transfusions. A positive test does not mean anything other than the fact that you have been exposed to HIV, and your body is making antibodies to it. There is no way to tell if you will eventually develop AIDS or an AIDS-related condition (ARC). However, most people with a positive test have a very hard time dealing with it, and need some counseling to cope. Some people have committed suicide after getting a positive test. Remember that a negative test result could be wrong, or you might have been tested too soon after being exposed to HIV for your immune system to have started making antibodies that the test can detect. You can still be exposed to the virus any time you have unsafe sex or share needles.
6. Women who work in the sex industry or who have male partners for other reasons should always use condoms and either spermicide that is at least ten percent nonoxynol-9, a contraceptive sponge, or a lubricant containing this chemical. If a man cannot see what you are doing with his cock, he often will not be able to tell if a rubber is being used, especially if you put a dab of water-based lubricant in the tip of the condom before rolling it on. Remember to leave room in the condom for ejaculation by pinching the air out of the tip when you put it on. This leaves an empty flap of rubber. Condoms can be applied with your mouth. If you work with a group of other women, and everyone agrees to make their clients use condoms, you can develop a clientele that will not hassle you about them. A friend of mine who is a sex worker told me that her business dropped off because of fear of AIDS, but many of her clients returned when she publicized the fact that she would only do safer sex.
If you are in a situation (for example, rape) where you cannot make a man use a condom, you should know that Betadine kills HIV, and douching with a Betadine-and-water solution may prevent infection. However, douching will also remove evidence that the police will need to prosecute a rape.
AIDS is a new disease. There is a lot that we don’t know about it. It’s likely that portions of this brief summary will be rendered inaccurate by further developments. So make sure you supplement this information by keeping up with new medical research and safer sex recommendations.
This book isn’t a sex manual. It can’t be used as a guideline for how to have safer sex. It can’t be used as a manual for how to do safe S/M either. Some of the things that go on in these stories are in fact risky to do. Unfortunately, there isn’t much “how-to” information about S/M in print. There are articles about lesbian S/M in my book Sapphistry (Naiad Press, revised edition, 1983) and Samois’ Coming to Power (Alyson Publications, third edition, 1987). And there is a lesbian S/M magazine, Outrageous Women, Box 23, Somerville, MA 02143 ($13 for 4 issues). You can also glean a lot of useful information from DungeonMaster, a gay men’s S/M newsletter put out by Desmodus Publications, Box 11314, San Francisco, CA 94101-1314 ($15 for 4 issues, sample $4).
Appendices
Review of Macho Sluts from On Our Backs, Fall 1988 issue
Maryhope Tobin and Sue O’Sullivan
Power is the main ingredient of Macho Sluts, the new collection of stories Pat Califia’s fans have been eagerly awaiting. As a founding member of Samois, the first lesbian s/m support group, a columnist for the Advocate, and probably the best known sado-masochist in the world, Califia is known for being on the leading edge of lesbian erotica, and this book lives up to her reputation as a sex pioneer.
Macho Sluts will undoubtably shock some and mesmerize others. As Califia says in her introduction, “When you are dealing with an area as permeated with ignorance and superstition as sexuality, it is more important to be honest than it is to be correct.”
The eight stories in the book date from “Jessie,” 1977, to the newest, “The Spoiler,” from 1985. The latter is one of two stories which introduce male sexual actors. Califia argues well that lesbians should be able to write about and use men, gay or straight, in their erotic writing.
“Jessie,” the notorious first chapter, has been a dyke j/o favorite since it first appeared in Coming to Power. The story is as hot as ever, and only adds to the unpredictability of the book as a whole.
Aficionados of classic, old-fashioned B&D will swoon over “Finishing School,” an elegant tale of training, torture, and reward. The ending is a shocker: the first, but not the last, point in Macho Sluts where the reader gasps, “Oh my god, I can’t get turned on by this!”
“The Calyx of Isis,” the book’s only major disappointment, is a dense story of tag-team s/m set in a mythical San Francisco women’s bathhouse. The story trots the reader through a varied s/m repertoire which leaves one exhausted rather than aroused by the end. Perhaps in smaller doses, divided into chapters, one for each set of the story’s dominatrices, “Calyx” would be a little easier to swallow. However, there is something for just about everyone: whipping, fisting, (genital and anal), piercing, heavy bondage, dyke cocksucking, and lots of sensimilla, sushi, and sake.
Throughout Macho Sluts, Califia challenges dykes who write pornography, dykes who hate pornography, and everyone in between. “The Hustler” is a profoundly cynical but funny tale of a woman-dominated future in which expressions of sex are piously regulated. The outlawed individual (the Hustler) is oppressed by the “cud-chewing” (boring) majority. This is Califia’s revenge on the Dworkinite forces in the women’s movement. “The Hustler” will definitely piss off a lot of radical feminists, but then, they probably wouldn’t have gotten this far in the book anyhow.
If any radical feminist were to read this far, she’d run screaming for the nearest copy of Gyn/Ecology by the time she got two pages into “The Surprise Party.” Califia lets fly with a right-on-target challenge to the idea that lesbian sexual fantasies should only have women characters. This story is not easy to read, and whatever a reader feels at the end, she will not be bored. Disgusted, maybe, turned-on, maybe—or fascinated, horrified, angry, or amused. Read this story. Push yourself. Read all the way to the end and before your mind tells you how you should feel, slip a finger between your labia and let your cunt tell you how you do feel.
Finally, “A Dash of Vanilla” underscores Califia’s introductory remarks that power is not exclusive to s/m. The story is vanilla, but Califia makes obvious something we’ve all experienced at some point in our sexual lives. Where there is an orgasm, or the promise of one, or the lack of one, there is power, and it comes from all sides, whether top or bottom or right or left. This story didn’t so much pass a wet test as made my jaws ache, but that’s just as much a part of lesbian sex as getting off.
