Vanilla Sex Redux: Why I May Never Be Fit for Spiritual Society

So, the other night I had the first fully vanilla sex I've had since my kinky awakening so many years ago. It was something I had hoped to avoid, and it was something I knew would be dissatisfying. But for some reason - fatigue? curiosity? - I went ahead with it anyway.

We were doing an exchange in her magnificent, not-up-to-code hippie style bungalow in the wilds of a Los Angeles canyon. I was consulting with her about something, and she gave me an (almost) full body massage. I sensed her desire to escalate the connection, but for a number of reasons - her close friendship with a dear friend of mine, her obvious vanillaness, and my above average but not fiery attraction to her - I let the afternoon go by without making a move.

As we hugged goodbye, she let out one of those hippie moans that can be interpreted either as, "I'm letting the light expand within me," or "please fuck me from behind, but spiritually." In a moment of weakness, I accepted the latter interpretation, and slid my hugging hands around to unhuggable places, and the bull was out of the gate.

We kissed hard, I pushed her back onto the massage table, pulled down her slinky shirt to reveal two glowing full-round breasts.

She came 4 times before we had any of our clothes off - did I mention she was tantric? - and I had to call a truce and rush off to a meeting I had on the other side of town.

It all happened very fast, and I had a lot of time to think about what I was wanting on the traffic-thick drive to Eastern Los Angeles. Yes, she was hot. Her body was fit and yogic, firm like a 20 year old (she was 36), and her shapes were all fetching - slender, but curved, supple, and delicately poised and lifted everywhere you could hope for. The airbrushers could take the day off. She was flawless.

During the course of our post-massage conversation, she mentioned that she was extremely confident in bed, knowing exactly what to do, and so forth. She even had "extra" massage clients that paid big bucks for her chops. This worried me, not least of all because of the omnipresent human failing of hubris, but also because it hinted at a surging control - mastery - element that was, to me, unfeminine.

My sexual preferences are to stay in the moment and let the tale of the experience weave itself through us, never predicting an outcome or a turn of events. "Technique" and its mastery, on the other hand, betray, to me, a certain discomfort with the ups and downs of sex. As in music, technical mastery is a necessity, but blunt execution is neither arousing nor moving, even if it has the desired mechanical effect.

I would soon live to feel my concerns realized in hyper-vanilla sexland, with my tantrica flooding herelf with orgasms every 30 seconds or so for over an hour.

I have met a lot of professional female sex workers (never, fwiw, as a customer), and there's almost always a weird backwards control thing happening, even in the gentler or more broken ones. It's as if the whole technical pursuit was a bulwark against being overwhelmed by male energy. That even in the "service" of the man, the way we kinky Tops like to be serviced, she was yet completely in control. Not in the way that people say "the sub has all the power," but in the way that the Top really has all the power - emotionally. And so there's a top in sheep's clothing vibe happening, not authentically, but merely as a magnificently constructed prophylaxis against being hurt.

Anyways, all of these thoughts flooded my mind as I drove, dined, and chatted over the next few hours, with the invitation to return for the evening dangling in front of me like a carrot with a question mark embedded in it.

I had been impressed by her fast and serial cumming during our first passionate embrace. But I was impressed the way a spectator at a sporting event is impressed. Not as a participant, but as an onlooker. While I may have been a catalyst for her salvos, they seemed to happen completely independently of my will for her to have them - to say nothing of my own techniques. They all fired off within the first 3 minutes, a pyrotechnical display of orgasm that asserted her independence from me - and perhaps men - in a way that is fashionable in elite circles but leaves the feminine, relatedness component cold and unmoved. It was weird.

I wasn't sure I'd return to finish up the night. My curiosity baited me, of course - maybe I would learn something about tantra? Why not see what comes of it (so to speak)?

But I was skeptical. I had brought up the subject of kink, as gently as I could earlier in the day, while I languorously arose from the bliss of her genuinely fine massage. We talked for an hour, she in her bed nook, and me wrapped in a sheet on her table.

"So you're into that S and M stuff," told me everything I needed to know about how ready she would be for it. Usually if I mention something about kink, a girl will get very silent, perhaps feeling that she may finally be near to an experience she has been dreaming about her whole life. Or, if she has some experience, she will escalate and tell me all the daring things she's tried, often accompanied by smiles, playful moans, and the far off look of deep reminiscence.

But this reaction was the reaction of the unready. The, "I could never do that. Why would anyone do that?" Having spent most of my life in that dark state of non-understanding, I bring no judgment to the conceit, just pre-disappointment.

In the end, I came back, at least to verify my suspicions, at most to be pleasantly surprised and even enlightened. Unfortunately, I'm as intuitive as I think I am, and the experience was every bit as uninspiring as I had feared. It reminded me of all the pointless, fumbling sex I'd had in my youth, only with a little more technical sophistication on both our parts.

There wasn't much "play," the gestures towards roughness did not "land," and the process was mainly involved with the ins and outs of prolonged intercourse. There even didn't seem any room for dirty talk, so uncomfortable was she with the baser side of sex. But there were an uncountable number of orgasms, again, apparently irrespective of my being in the room. In the end, it felt like some sort of service "topping," and I went to bed a little closer to trusting my gut, with plans for a hard no should this kind of thing ever come up again.

I awoke in the middle of the night to fuck her again, as my orgasm count was love to her several matches and sets (after an hour or two of fucking I usually don't want to come anyway). We did it again in the morning, but I quickly lost interest. My dick is not a robot, it turns out, and if there's not a titillation to be had, he'd prefer to hang out in the green room.

We talked a bit about it all that morning - quite candidly. She was surprised that I'd used the term "vanilla" (for which she needed a definition) to describe the kind of sex I hadn't had in years. She declared that since she'd had this kundalini awakening that she sort of didn't really need a man anymore to get her off, although she said it helped.

We talked about connection and vulnerability, about control and surrender, and by the end she was very interested, but clearly not past her queasiness. "

How could anybody want that? I just can't imagine someone doing that to me. Wouldn't it hurt? I don't like pain."

It was a conversation I've had over and over again with vanilla people over the years. She seemed perfectly content to suggest that I wasn't attracted to her because she wasn't submissive enough for me. And while I protested a bit, I had to admit it was more true than false. The dynamic is more important than the package, it turns out, and I was glad to have a test case confirmation of this kinky truth.

For what it's worth I was also exhausted that evening. It occurred to both of us that a truly aggressive, overpowering experience might have brought out the sub in her. This seems definitely possible. But for me, the baseline attraction wasn't enough to make such a Herculean effort, and the force required would have been more a real-rape force than a play-rape force. And for a first time encounter with a friend of a friend, that wasn't going to happen.

So what did happen was skillful but very, very vanilla sex. And I must say, it was awful. Thank the stars that life brought me around to this place, where I can appreciate more the fullness of what is possible in the sexual experience. The bewilderment of my misfucked vanilla youth is no more, although I caught a glimpse of it mid-coitus the other night, as I thought to myself, "I'd really rather be reading the paper right now." Good times.

My underlying feeling is that most girls, most people, are genuinely kinky. That is, D/s is fundamental to the animal experience of sex, and the more we engage our authentic sex, the more the power discrepancy emerges into real life and real sex. I have played with many girls that I met at vanilla events, and almost all of them have displayed a natural kink-affinity with almost no prodding. One can easily screen out the girls whose conditioning and cultural affiliations won't let them "go there" with a few basic questions. I did that the other night, but went ahead with it anyway. Lesson learned.

As a happy postscript, I should say that as I left that morning, she requested that when I got back to town that I take her to "one of those sub events." I imagine it will take more than that to calm her giggling and trepidation with bondage, to say nothing of the cheesy props one finds at many dungeons. But I applaud the intrepidity, and I agreed to take her, should something pop up next visit - and if she promises not to embarrass me in front of my people with too much obvious discomfort.

As I packed up my van to start the day, we had one last hippie-moan-filled hug and a gentle fit of grabbing and squeezing. Normally something I enjoy, and probably still the hottest part of our encounter. But the vanilla embrace is mostly an empty one for me these days, and I don't suspect I'll encounter it again. Looks like I'm stuck here with the freaks and weirdos. I may as well make myself comfortable.