Sexy Saturdays: A Dam Shame

 

Kiddos, I couldn't be more excited for the guest poster today! I have known Deb (TheBadassMuppet) since college, since one fateful film class actually, where we talked politics and race and gender theory and not so secretly bemoaned the several Neanderthal men on our campus... Ahh good times. I'm so glad she and I have stayed friends since. She's a fellow bookworm, an incredible woman, strong and opinionated, and a voice in the queer community. I just love her to my toes.

Plus? She's an awesome writer. I mean it. She's so talented. I'd like to say we were taught by the same professors, but I suspect she just has loads of innate talent. You can find her on Twitter and make sure to check out her work at Bitch Magazine. Enjoy!
                   
 “That was ‘C.’ Any better?”

“I – I think so,” I managed, stalling from saying At least I could almost feel that, a little.

Lesbianism was harder than I’d expected.

In high school, my secret girlfriend and I had never had to navigate the slippery waters (har, har) of cunnilingus. Both of us lived with watchful, less-than-gay-friendly parents, and I had barely started to accept that maybe watching bad movies with junior college guys wasn’t as good as it could get. Secretive hand-holding and furtive kisses were as far as we’d dared to go.

Many angst-filled journals later, I was essentially “out” (except for, you know, the family thing) and feeling free and great and blah blah blah, but sex continued to baffle me. In a way, it was like puberty all over again, and, like any adolescent with middling confidence, I hadn’t yet learned to be picky. I dated the first ladies who came my way, regardless of chemistry or how little they had in common with Veronica Mars. The woman in my bed at that moment, for instance, was spacey and appeared to have no other friends or interests. I could not honestly say that I liked her – yet there we were, reinventing the wheel with her head between my thighs. Playing around with boys and men may have been boring as all get-out, but at least I had known what was expected of me. I had always wished sex was like in the movies, in a more literal sense than people tend to say that: sensual kisses that cut directly to post-coital satisfaction.

Years later, as a proud, happy dyke with a rockin’ sex life, I would have a different view. But there was one factor, dear readers, which I’m afraid doomed my first proper Sapphic encounter before it began.

I am referring, of course, to the dental dam.

I was promised Novocaine! (via Flickr)

Lesbian advice gurus Lipstick & Dipstick have asked if the dam might be sexy if it were called something else, something that doesn’t so strongly suggest vagina dentata. Hoo hoo hoody, cum curtain? Funny but, um, no. It wouldn’t. Erecting a rubber wall between your eager mouth and your partner’s treasures, or vice versa, is about as sexy as a root canal, which is probably where the name came from in the first place. Mint flavor is especially bad at taking your psyche out of the dentist’s chair.

If you’ve never had the displeasure, a dental dam is a square of latex big enough to serve as a floatation device. It’s meant to block labia from tongue so that no sexyfluids pass on anything unseemly. If the device sounds, well, unpractical for territory full of nooks and crannies, it is, to the point where most packages’ official instructions (never had to look at those for a condom, did you?) advise to cover the genital-side of the block with lubricant.

Did that kill any sex-buzz you might have had going before checking out this entry? Yeah. That’s the point.

Let’s recap:

1. Lube is no longer an aid for when things get extra-adventurous. It’s an adhesive. And while I’ve read a lot of sexy stories, not a-one has included the word “glue.”
2. You think that strawberryish-if-you-close-your-eyes glove is unappealing on a phallus? There’s a reason the pussy gets infected after contact with sweet food: THE TWAIN WERE NEVER MEANT TO MEET.
3. You have no contact with the other person’s ladyparts, 
4. or more importantly (to me, at that particular point in time) the opposite is true, which leads us to the crucial minus in this equation: 
5. you can’t feel shit.

So there I was, lying on a snakeskin-print sheet feeling all safe and responsible, and I had plenty of time for that because I wasn’t feeling anything else, except a growing sense of anticlimax.

“There, I finished the alphabet!” Her face popped back up, looking triumphant. Now I know my ABCs… I bemoaned the recent demise of my vibrator, Ruby the rabbit.

The second half of my first time confirmed what I already knew: the dam is a damn shame. It seemed less like sex and more like licking a banister. But hey, I thought, at least I’ve officially Been With A Woman now. The knowledge was enough to make me shake, though not in the way one would hope. As Laura M. Carpenter argued, the first time exists so that there can be more. Still, before we stopped, something genuinely exciting occurred: rogue wetness found my tongue when the dam crumpled a bit. (Like I said, they’re unwieldy, which spoils even the official “point.”) She tasted like honey, which was much more arousing than grape eraser. Next time, we’ll both get checked at a clinic beforehand, I vowed to myself. It might take some extra planning, but I knew it’d be worth it.