What Makes Women Happy. Fay Weldon
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that it’s only sensible to fake it?
Genuine orgasm experienced, acknowledged and stored away as one of the uncompromisingly good things in life, you will then no doubt leap out of bed and make breakfast, or squeeze orange juice or pour champagne or whatever your lifestyle, with the words ‘You are so clever’, or however you express enthusiasm, ringing in his – or her, of course, should you be a lesbian – ears.
If you are sensible you will do exactly the same if you’ve faked it, because half the pleasure of sex is being nice to the other person, and half is better than none, on the half-full, half-empty cup principle. Clever, judgemental, honourable people who feel deception is unworthy of them, who say, ‘But relationships must be based upon truth,’ are likely to be of the half-empty sort.
Remember you are not in pursuit of justice, you are seeking what makes women happy. You must catch it as it flies, and if it flies just out of reach, well, it was a nice sight while it lasted, wasn’t it?
Faking is kind to male partners of the new man kind, who like to think they have done their duty by you. Otherwise they too may become anxious and so less able to perform. The more the woman rates ‘performance’, the more likely the man is to wilt and fail. Do yourself and him a favour, sister: fake it. Then, who knows, as a reward for your kindness, sublime pleasure may creep up on you unawares.
There is a great confusion here between the pleasures of love and the pleasures of sex. Both can carry on along parallel tracks, never touching, to the end of time. Or one day, who’s to say, they may meet.
My friend Olivia, now 69, had an orgasm for the first time when she was 54 and nine years into her second marriage. It took her by surprise. But she said it was like learning to ride a bicycle: once you knew how to do it, you could do it all the time. She’s been clocking them up ever since. Life does not begin at 20. She was doing well enough without them, was earning a salary at that time as CEO of a media communications firm and had seemed to me to be living a full, even over-full, love life since I first met her when she was 18.
Her first marriage ended in scandal and divorce – her husband, a writer, naming seven co-respondents. (In those days of guilty and innocent, sexual infidelity had to be proved. Illicit couples had to be discovered in flagrante, stained sheets produced and so on, before the judge would grant a divorce.) The press went to town. Oddly enough, the naming and shaming did Olivia no harm in the business world. Even then, everyone liked anyone who had their name in the papers. And then the sixties were upon us and a great deal of random sexual activity went on as a matter of course, and after that divorce was not a matter of right or wrong but about the division of property. Meanwhile Olivia rose rocket-like through the corporate world and who is to say, if she had had more orgasms, she would have bothered to reach such heights? A touch of discontent in the night may be good for all of us. Sexual satisfaction, sensual repletion and the irrational sense of gratitude which tends to go with them, may be the last thing a career woman needs.
Most women, I suspect, are after true love, rather than orgasm, though they will put up with many stages on the way, from pure lust to pride assuaged to boredom endured. And even if true love is not on your agenda, it is always gratifying to stir it in others. If faking it helps, do it.
The Naturalness of the Hen Night
Girls together is good, girls together is fun and usually noisy. But notice how bitterness against men seems to be hardwired, as if nature had bred us to be suspicious of the male, on the lookout for bad behaviour. There’s something in us of the female cat, not letting the tom near the kittens in case he eats them. Put us together and there’s no stopping us. Listen in to the talk and laughter at a girls’ night out: anecdotes about the follies of men, jokes about the minimal size of their parts, tales of male vanity and self-delusion – their stumbling mumbleness, their crazy driving.
We egg each other on to disloyalty. We are the women; we close ranks in opposition to men. The food gets cold on the plate in our excitement. The wine is quickly drunk, and more wine, and vodka shorts. We are the Maenads just before Orpheus comes on the scene to get torn to bits.
And then the mirth gets bitter. It isn’t really funny, it’s real. Someone begins to cry.
Men who leave, men who won’t leave, men who fail to provide, men who don’t love you after all, men who are a sexual disappointment. Past husbands, vanished partners, the ones who never washed, the ones who had the au-pair girl. Men: ridiculous, pathetic, sad.
The noise diminishes and fades away. Silence falls. Time to count heads and divide the bill. Those who have partners slip away, feeling guilty and grateful. Those who haven’t go home on their own, or walk each other to the bus, and tell themselves all they need is their friends.
I have in my time enjoyed such gatherings immensely. They are a great pleasure. Life is good. The trick is to pay and leave just before the silence falls. And try not to be the one collecting the money and tipping the waiter.
Go to Norway and Sweden and notice how the restaurants are full of men. Few women eat out. Yet in theory these are super-equal societies. The women, one supposes, can only prefer to stay at home. These all-male meals – tables for four, six, eight, ten, more – tend to be silent, grim affairs. Men like to sit side by side, silently, metaphorically locking horns, and don’t seem to have nearly such a good time as women do. But they do seem to get happier as the evening progresses, not the other way round. Life gets better, not worse. It isn’t fair.
Nothing’s fair.
It’s unfair that some people like sex a lot, some very little, some not at all. The capacity for pleasure is not doled out equally or fairly.
(It is probably a good idea that people with equivalent levels of sexual energy partner one another, if they want the union to last. People need to wear each other out in bed. Three times a day, three times a week (the norm) or once a year – so long as both are suited, what’s the worry?)
Mind you, the easy-orgasmers, the lucky 20 per cent, are not always popular with others. The papers this morning were in a state of outrage about Sandy, a feckless girl of 19 who went on holiday to Spain leaving her three children in the care of a 15-year-old. When summonsed home by the police and the media, she refused to go. She was having too good a time, she said. She had her photo taken burying her head into the bare chest of a semi-naked waiter. I bet she had orgasms at the drop of a hat. She knew how to enjoy herself. She was not anxious. She did not feel guilt. She well and truly broke the ten-minute rule. She stretched it to a whole week of drink, drugs, sex and ecstasy before guilt set in and she flew home. That’s one way of doing it.
It Isn’t Fair But It’s a Fact
The fight for gender equality is bad for the looks. It makes no one happy, unless you find some reward in struggling for a justice that evolution failed to deliver. It will just develop your jaw, wrinkle your brow beyond the capacity of Botox to unravel, muddy your complexion so much that no amount of Beauty Flash will clear it, and in general do you no good.
Fight for political justice by all means – join the party, reform and re-educate. Fight for domestic justice – ‘Your turn to clean the loo’ – if you must, though personally I don’t recommend too much of it, it’s too exhausting. But do not fight for physiological equality because it does not exist.
If you have a period pain, you have one. Accept it. Don’t fight it. Sit down. Take a pill. A male voice raised is impressive; a female voice raised creates antipathy. Accept it. You are not trying to be a man. You are proud to be a woman.