Monday 9 February, 2009Tongue in cheek: A brief guide to aural sex

Sooner or later in any long-distance relationship of the dating kind, sex is bound to come up. Whether you're well-established steadies separated by circumstance, or newlymets in cyberspace who've not yet shaken hands, at least one of you is going to get (a) horny, (b) curious, and possibly (c) pushy.

So the time may come when somebody suggests phone sex.

Oooh. Umm . . .

What's the matter? You know there's absolutely no danger of STDs or pregnancy. Heck, you don't even have to shave or change your underwear. And if your new partner happens to be a lousy kisser, you won't even know about it. So why not?

It must be a pretty popular way to do it. According to the most recent statistics (reported by TopTenREVIEWS), phone sex is a $4.5-billion industry. Paying customers are overwhelmingly male, though, and the reasons for this are as many and diverse as they are for any other pay-per-kick sex.

But here we're talking only about getting it on with your honey-maybe a new honey you haven't tasted before-when you can't get together.

This can be a problem. Sex, by definition, is a physical act. Everything else is enhancement and complication, motivation and inhibition. Take away the physical part, and you have a bunch of four-syllable words and an inanimate object in your ear.

You must resort to creative wordplay. No problem there, unless you're shy, feel awkward making love to a plastic gadget that doesn't vibrate, or don't enjoy talking a lot during sex. Hmm-those could be problems after all.

Actually, knowing the problems ahead of time could make the difference between a tense stretch of embarrassed silence or, worse, sweaty frustration, and an interlude of sweet, shared intensity. So let's scope out those sticky pitfalls first.

The biggie is fantasy. As in: your fantasy isn't my fantasy. As in: your ménage à trois is my worst paranoid nightmare. As in: my taste for bondage makes you slightly queasy. Even if the worst thing about your fantasy is that it simply doesn't ring your lover's bell, you can make it worse still by switching rapidly from one scenario to another, all the while asking breathlessly, How about this? Do you feel it, too? Are you getting hot?

Like fingernails on a chalkboard. Also, this technique practically guarantees that at least one of you will fall into the next booby trap: the lair of the dreaded deception. That would be where you fake the Big O (of course), as well as arousal (if it's just not working), or even pleasure (if it's a downright turnoff), so you can get this over with and get out without sustaining (or inflicting) any more damage than absolutely necessary.

In the end, you may find that phone sex works in one direction only. Successful aural sex will probably cause at least one of you to stop talking and get intensely busy. Alone.

Those are some pretty deep pitfalls. Professional phone-sex operators avoid them because they have no personal stake in the proceedings. Good, bad, or boring, they're completely anonymous. It doesn't matter that they fake it. They get paid anyway.

Is it worth the risk? After all, you're trying to nurture a relationship-with luck, an intimate one. Aural sex, despite the distance between you, is still sex. With all its unique potential for screwing up (so to speak), can you make it work?

You can. For one thing, you can take turns. Don't insist on simultaneous intensity. Imagine that you're giving—or receiving—a gift.

But if a lot of palaver puts you off your orgasm—if talking dirty makes you yearn for a toothbrush—if the right words just won't come—you have another option: read a book.

This is not a joke. Check the local library, the corner bookstore, or Amazon.com for a collection of erotic stories. You can find all kinds, from semiliterate raunch to wickedly elegant fantasies. Pick one. Then read it aloud to your lover.

Presto! No pressure to perform. No embarrassment over anyone's lack of sexual eloquence or failure to respond. If the story doesn't work, you can blame it on the author. Laugh at it together, critique it, pick it apart. Heck, retell it the way it should have been told . . .

Give it a chance—you might be surprised. It might sneak up on you. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that aural sex isn't real because it isn't physical. It is physical.

That voice—your honey's voice—is in your ear. That's physical. The honeyed words are in your mind, your brain—don't they call that the largest sex organ in the body? And when those sweet words start to work, and you feel a little frisson of anticipation, a tiny bloom of heat down there . . .

Oh yeah. That's physical.