The real secret to being good in bed
You might think that the bestselling erotic author would be a champion of wild, chandelier-swinging passion. But, she reveals, the best sex is often the simplest
The key? Keep it simple, says bestselling erotic author LS Hilton
Iused to think that I knew quite a lot about sex. I have had many lovers, both male and female, I have been married and single, and have experienced various complicated permutations in between. I have written about sex, sometimes more candidly than I might have wished, sometimes with an attempt at honesty that has been judged shocking. I have learned that men can fake it, too, that honeymoons are invariably an erotic bore, and that if you make love while breast-feeding, your boobs go off like the fountains at Versailles (this is a useful tip not mentioned in any pregnancy manual). I have had burningly urgent sex in unsuitable places, and loving sex and quite a lot of crap sex. My conclusion? I don’t know anything about sex at all, except that without desire one might as well not bother.
Like most fun leisure pursuits, lust is listed amongst the seven deadly sins, but somehow I don’t think we hear a great deal about it any more. Just as we measure our public lives in comparison with the filtered perfections of social media, so our private lives have also become a status contest. Who hasn’t worried about whether they’re having enough sex, or enough of the right kind of sex? Whether we’re ‘owning’ our sexuality enough, whether our bodies are desirable enough, whether our orgasms match up to the chandelier-swinging choreography of the screen? Our sex lives have been co-opted and commodified into the grinding cycle of self-perfection – just as we think we need juicers and spiralisers in the kitchen, or Lululemon leggings for yoga, we think that perhaps we ought to be signing up for a tantra workshop in between book club and restyling the spare room. When did it all become such a chore?
UNDOUBTEDLY, THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION HAS BROUGHT US MANY BENEFITS. As social prejudices and religious taboos have been eroded, people have been freed to choose sexual partners without fear of punishment or discrimination. We are far more sexually tolerant, which can only be a good thing. But we also live in a world where porn is available 24/7. It’s one of the biggest industries in the world and, whether or not we engage with it directly, it has permeated many aspects of our
“Whether it involves TRUST, tenderness and intimacy or a quickie with a stranger, SEX without LUST is a simulacrum”
lives. Young people learn about sex online, and porn is a world where desire is endlessly, repetitiously faked. Consequently, desire has been stifled by performance anxiety. Gradually, insidiously, we are conforming to the choreography of porn; young women are being taught that the ‘right’ way to have sex is the way that works for the camera – screaming, spanking, hair-pulling, pounding sex. Fine if that’s really what floats your boat, but what about if the sex you fancy is 10 minutes in the missionary position under the duvet with someone you actually, well, fancy?
Admittedly, the sex in my two recent novels, Maestra and Domina, is seldom the missionary kind, but my fictional heroine, Judith Rashleigh, is precisely that – fictional. The sex scenes in my books vary from orgiastic to horrific, but they take place in an imaginative world that is both exaggerated and playful. Drawing the distinction between the reality of our lives and the fictions of entertainment is a capacity we seem to have lost, and recovering it – that is, reducing the pressure – takes courage. If we’re all comparing ourselves to porn stars, the fear of seeming unimaginative or boring lovers might prompt us to go through the motions of sexiness rather than share our real needs with our partners. Perhaps the first place to start is being honest with ourselves. We might have bought into the role, but perhaps debunking the porn myth means rejecting the imaginary standard of being ‘good in bed’.
One of the best descriptions of sexual desire I’ve ever read is from a six-word story competition for erotic magazine The Amorist – ‘the exquisite moment when choice evaporates’. What I like is the simplicity, the acknowledgement that sometimes it’s just impossible to do anything other than surrender to desire. Sex is ‘good’ when it gives pleasure, not when it scores imaginary likes. Whether it involves trust, tenderness and intimacy or a quickie with a stranger, sex without lust is a simulacrum. We’re no longer scandalised by sex toys or athletic positions or even a bit of BDSM, but none of those things compensate for an absence of desire. And maybe all the noise about sex is a means of disguising the fact that we’re still a bit frightened of it.
Lust is dangerous. Lust is anarchic. Lust can tear families apart, it can bring down governments. So if we spend all our time worrying about whether we’re doing it right, we can avoid the issue of whether we want to do it at all. Or whether we want to do it with the person we’re supposed to want to do it with. Maybe the endless advice columns and surveys, which allow us to compare our intimate lives, all the tips and tricks, are a conformist distraction? Because I think what I’ve learned about sex is that maybe we need more conversation and less action.
AND BY THAT, I DON’T MEAN TALKING DIRTY. Lately, when someone whispers, “Tell me what you want me to do to you?” I feel like asking them to have a look at the washing machine. I no longer feel I have to put on a command performance in bed, and I no longer wish to. I want snogging, silence and secrets, the slow unwinding of bodies as well as minds. I like the idea of sex as a place for contemplation, not competition. I want to listen to my body, rather than feeling I have to wear a nurse’s uniform or give a textbook blow job.
We have turned sex into biological aerobics, to the extent that it’s just not sexy any more. Eroticism needs secrecy and privacy, it is predicated on a defiance of the norm – so if the ‘norm’ has become up for it anytime, anywhere, eroticism cannot flourish.
Supposing we tried to stop thinking, then, about how we have sex, stopped with the pointscoring and the tensions? We could even think about turning off the lights, banishing the invisible cameraman from the corner of the bedroom. Maybe – whisper – we could admit to ourselves that we don’t have to be honed and waxed and swiping right all the bloody time. Dating apps can be a fantastic way of seeking relationships or hook-ups, but their ubiquity means we can flick between our Ocado order and a potential partner on the Tube, reducing the erotic to the mundane. The reason lust is so exciting is because it doesn’t behave, it can come upon us at the oddest moments, in relation to the oddest of partners. It doesn’t need matching lingerie or scented candles or a sodding complimentary fruit basket any more than it needs 15 changes of angle and a money shot. Instead of experiencing sex as an obligation, why don’t we see it as a marvellous, exuberant, transitory gift? A very grown-up treat, not a permanent duty. How many of us have sex when we want to, rather than when we feel we ought to, because a newspaper says that unless we’re at it 3.2 times a week, our relationships will fall apart? We’re people, not blow-up dolls, and sometimes it might just be okay to admit we’re not always In The Mood.
Maestra and Domina by Lisa Hilton (Zaffre; £7.99 and £12.99 respectively)