| Dirty Talk |
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The first few months of any relationship are always the most exciting and sexually charged. Because even if you've slept with a thousand women before her, you've never slept with her. (Well sure, her little sister, but you were drunk.) Your bodies are new to each other. At this stage you want to lick whipped cream off her fingers. But soon, you'll want her to use those very same fingers to hand you the remote and another slice of pizza. So what happens when the passion cools a little? When the blood is actually flowing to your brain and not just your dick? When you know you care about each other but things just aren't as hot as they used to be? Does sex have to turn boring just as things start getting interesting? The answer may be that you're just a dirty little manslut and you need your hairy ass whipped, but good. Yes, we're talking dirty. Dirty talk. It's what you hear when you take porn off mute. And there just might be something to it. "Do you talk dirty to your wife?" I asked my friend, Nick. Celeste and Nick have been married for four years. They have a toddler. "Oh yeah," he says. "All the time. I say, 'there's peanut butter caught in my thick, hot chest hair. Lick it off, slut." "Does she?" I ask. He rolls his eyes. "No. She hands me a paper towel. But before we had Jason…" He lets the thought fade. "Before Jason" is now his distant past. I ask another friend, Ed, who resembles an ape. "Do you talk dirty with Ellen?" Ed and Ellen have been married for twelve years, so I know the answer will be a laugh in my face. But here, I am surprised. Ed blushes slightly. "Well, sometimes," he admits. I'm good at getting people to tell me things, so Ed continues. "It was hard at first," he says. "Because you feel, you know, like a moron. But then after a while, it's like you're playing a role and you sort of get into it." I asked other friends and those who talked dirty said the same thing: after you play the role for a while and you get the nervous laughter out of your system, it can be hot. "I think I would have had an affair," Leonard tells me. "Things were just so flat between us. Something had to give." I ask him, "So what gave?" He's on a roll now. "Well, one day, just out of the blue, my wife opens up the drawer on the bedside table and she pulls out this thing." I know exactly what he means, but I want to hear him say the word out loud. "What thing?" I ask innocently. "You know. A dildo. The kind that straps on." Ed is the last person in the world you expect to say the word dildo. He's a tax attorney. "Wow," I say, impressed. I will never look at Ellen in quite the same way again. From now on, whenever I see Ellen in her little Account Executive suit, I will imagine a strap-on dildo underneath. "But that's not what got me. To be honest, it sort of freaked me out. I was like, 'you aint putting that thing in me.' " But she stands up and she puts the thing on and she says, "Get on all fours and get banged like a bitch." "And that did it for you?" Ed smiles and closes his eyes. "That did it." The fact is, after you've tried all the positions, there's just not a whole lot left to try. But for many couples, getting a little raunchy can be a great alternative to hiring a hooker or getting drunk and visiting a rest stop. "Enriching your sexuality is a good thing," a therapist tells me. "Many people are very quiet in the bedroom. And when you bring vocalizations into the picture, it can make a very ordinary scene suddenly seem exciting." So how do you learn the language? One way is to watch porn and take notes. Another way is to use your factory-equipped imagination. Be yourself, but just be a little more. If you're Amish, "May I see your pale stomach?" could be pretty racy. What if one partner is into it and the other isn't? Compromise by starting small. Groan a little louder. Give a direction or two, but in a loving tone of voice. Let your partner know that you're the same person. You're just wearing your new trash mouth. But don't just use your mouth. Use your brain. Too much dirty talk out of the blue can backfire. For example, if you're a nice, quiet Mormon man and you suddenly tell your wife, "Stick your finger up my nasty manpussy" and she's never heard you so much as swear before, she's likely to look at you and ask, "Who taught you that?" And you better not say, "Your mother, whore." |
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