Breena Kerr is the creator of the truthspeakproject , a website dedicated to true stories of female desire, intimacy, and sexual experience.  We met at the reading of Best Women’s Erotica this past January. After hearing that my story, “Two Doms for Dinner” was memoir based, as were most of my erotic stories — and that I was still sexually active at age seventy-one — she requested an interview about my fifty-five year-long sexual history, and I agreed to talk with her.

I suppose the sexual angst I experienced during my twelve-year first marriage, from 1962, through 1974, followed by my sexual quest in the 1970s in search of vaginal orgasm, could be laid at the doorstep of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s ideas on female sexual response are laughable today in light of a growing body of evidence that some seventy-five  percent of women don’t orgasm through penile thrusting alone.

But as a young wife more than a half-century ago, it was no laughing matter to me — because in spite of some knock-your-socks-off orgasms via mouth, or fingers, or vibrator — I believed myself frigid because I was never able to come with my husbands cock inside me. Repeatedly, I’d get close and even closer, but sadly the prize eluded me. My ex-husband, a well-read man and familiar with Freudian theory, was quite bitter about this alleged defect in my sexual makeup. So much so that he put tremendous pressure on me to orgasm in the correct and Freud sanctioned way. 

Being a thinking person from early on, I knew that what was being demanded of me belied the truth of my personal experience about what aroused me enough to come. I wondered if a female psychologist might support my point of view. Big mistake here.

Unfortunately the only female shrink whose writings I could find was Freudian disciple, Marie Bonaparte, who consulted with the good doctor for her own sexual dysfunction of frigidity in the 1920s —  and shared his view in her own writings that in order to achieve a satisfying sex life, adult women must learn to transfer their erotic feeling from their clits to their vaginas. She also claimed that only immature, childish women continued to cling to clitoral orgasms as their primary source of pleasure.  Bonaparte  formed a theory, based on a study of over two-hundred women, that the closer a woman’s clit was to her vaginal opening, the better her chances of coming via penile penetration In the interest of achieving this male sanctioned feat, she had her clit surgically moved closer to her vaginal  opening, twice — and for the record, without success. (Got agony, anyone?)

Although I didn’t resort to such extreme measures, Bonaparte did me some damage by reinforcing my belief in my alleged frigidity. After reading her writings, I gave in to the power of the masculine mystique and began faking orgasms for all I was worth. This lie served the dual purpose of stroking my husband’s ego, and making me hate both of us a whole lot.

My marriage ended when I discovered him in bed with a female friend  and divorced him — leaving me single in an era of unprecedented personal freedom. After relocating with my sons, to the Land of Oz — otherwise known as 1970s San Francisco — my entrance into a rampantly promiscuous lifestyle and the quest for the penis that would make me come, began in earnest.

Fortunately I met Jake, a self-proclaimed sexual liberator of sexually frustrated women.  He became the first lover who inspired me to stop faking vaginal orgasms — in favor of discovering what aroused me most in bed. For the remainder of the decade, Jake functioned as my sexual main man choreographing erotic scenes designed to delight and amaze. He was the only one of all my lovers to know about all the rest.  

Over time and multiple lovers,  I came to realize that my quest for vaginal  orgasm was misguided.  The closest I came to coming via penis-in-vagina sex was with a cock inside me, while using a vibrator on my clit. Was this a clitoral or a vaginal orgasm? I wondered briefly, when it happened — before deciding once and for all, Who the hell cared? 

Not long after this insightful realization I took a giant step back from my casual sex lifestyle and began focusing my energy  on developing  the art career I’d longed for — and thinking that one day, when the right man came along, I’d take a chance on love again.

Read about my thirty-two year-long relationship with my with my Sir, my husband and BDSM top — and what it’s like to be 71 and still sexual, in TruthSpeakProject’s next post.