My Vaginal Vision Quest

So many women who cum from intercourse make it seem like you have to go on some kind of vagina vision quest to have an orgasm. Men don’t have to have a fucking spiritual awakening to get off, so why should I have to meditate my way into an orgasm? -Emily McCombs, xojane.com

My mother is a scientist, and though I think she meant well, her repeated assurances to me when I was a child that masturbation was healthy and nothing to be ashamed of seemed to have a reverse effect on me, where I never developed a childhood or adolescent masturbation practice. I don’t know why this is—it’s possible that I associated masturbation with being alone, or lonely, and that association was  associated with my parents’ divorce when I was five.

I can’t remember exactly when I had my first bona fide orgasm, but it was definitely during sex—around age 17, and in the throes of first love. It was undoubtedly a clitoral orgasm, one that resulted from the repeated friction of our pubic mounds. I found I could come relatively easily this way, in girl-on-top or missionary position, even two or three times in one session. I happily had orgasms in this fashion for the next several years.

When I started dating Johnny at age 23, I already knew he was on a sexual vision quest, and we quested together for seven years. Johnny is notoriously upfront about his prolific masturbation, his fantasies and so on. It was he who suggested I get some sex toys and start masturbating, so that I might explore my full genitalia and pleasure potential. So, that’s how I came to give myself an orgasm for the first time at age 24— which led eventually to my being able to have powerful, shuddering, eyeballs-rolling-into-the-skull, female ejaculating, g-spot-centered orgasms, one after the other after the other.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Like, ten years ahead of myself. Because this is what I said recently to a whip-smart, sex-positive young woman of 21 who asked me how she could have g-spot orgasms: “Fuck yourself with a vibrating dildo and Hitachi Magic Wand on the clit for ten years, and maybe eventually you’ll have one.” To me, sex is kind of like a martial art, and you don’t become Mr Miyagi overnight. Maybe one can meditate their way to an orgasm, but not this gal. For me it took a certain amount of discipline and dedication, a decade of doing the do with self and others. But dang it, those were fun times with a pretty good payout! It’s not like I was training for the Olympics. It wasn’t even what I was doing with most of my time—I had a job or was in grad school, friends, hobbies, illnesses, vacations, etc.

Like many things, the path to a different feeling orgasm was gradual, and then sudden. I believe a few anatomical realities have played their part. For one, my g-spot seems to be quite deep. In fact, I found out the last time I went to the gynecologist that I have a deep pussy, period. She busted out the “extra long” speculum on me! So this means two 100% absolutely true things:

1) Most of my lovers hadn’t, and can’t, reach my g-spot with their penises

2) I AM A DEEP PERSON IN SOOOOOO MANY WAYS

But check this out: the more I ‘bated over the years (my preferred method involves a vibrator on the clit and a vibing dildo in the chacha—so pretty plugged-in I do admit), the more the epicenter of the ‘gasms migrated from the clitoris to this “interior area” that seems to exist—whaddya know—just inches inside the anterior wall of my vagina. When I was single, starting around age 31 (I’m 34 now), the more I concentrated on pleasuring this “spot”—which for me can require fairly intense ramming of the dildo, a contrast to the much softer, less direct way I would stimulate my clitoris—the more powerful and numerous the orgasms seemed to be. At times during these wank sessions I’d feel some liquid being released down there that I suspected could be ejaculate, but I wasn’t sure. Then, one night after reading a bunch of bad and good articles about squirting, I realized that the very worst that could happen at this stage of my vagina quest was I would pee my own bed like a toddler. I already was risking carpal tunnel. So I laid down some towels, got to work, got worked up and after having a long, powerful cum radiating like concentric pond circles from the interior spot through the whole of my entire being, I pulled out my dildo, took a breath and let go. And, I ejaculated! Not crazy power-hose streams like you see in porn, but a proud, honorary gush. It made a decent sized wet spot on the towel that smelled subtle and not like urine—sort of like seawater?

I now gush almost every time I orgasm with myself—the amount of fluid seems to depend on how hydrated and/or turned on I am. Also, I’m probably imagining this part—but I perceive with my solipsistic vagina vision quest goggles an ever-so-slight transition that occurs right after the moment I decide to give in to the hallmark “I have to pee sensation” that precedes both the need to urinate and ejaculate. I imagine a vascular railyard switch somewhere up there which causes the release of liquid to have a softer flow, as opposed to the more controlled stream of my urine. I wonder, do men feel a railyard switch between urine and ejaculate in a similar way? Do any ladies that squirt feel the railyard switch? And after I’ve nutted, I am completely exhausted, literally drained in a way that is different from my orgasms of yore. All I want to do is roll over and saw logs like some male chauvie pig.

At this stage of my vagina vision quest, I haven’t had a g-spot orgasm with a partner nearly as powerful as I can give myself, and the few scant times I’ve ejaculated with guys was technically given by my trusty dildo, and not a penis—though no one complained about this technicality in the slightest. Maybe I won’t ever have the same kind of orgasm with a guy’s penis that I do with myself. But that’s okay. Because when it comes to me, I may see my OWN sexual pleasure as a vagina vision quest, but I see sex with someone else as a different kind of vision quest: a feeling of body differences, tactile exploration, chemistry experiments, a body-mind-soul love quest, ya dig? Orgasms are a nice byproduct to that (ideally) holistic experience. Not to knock the orgasms I have from PIV— I would describe them as a mad decent blend of clit and vag, made infinitely more pleasurable by seeing the bright smile on a bed buddy’s face.

This is one thing I wish the xoJane readership, which I believe is mostly in its 20s, to remember: Life changes. People change. Orgasms change. And of course ideas change, become adapted, rejected and resurrected. I think men like Freud, Kinsey and Hefner made important contributions to human sexuality, and I also think it is important that women have and continue to reject, redefine and reclaim male-centered notions of sexuality. The oft-cited 75% figure of women who don’t have an orgasm from vaginal intercourse is mandate enough to revisit the whole enchilada of male-female relations. In fact, I have to admit I take a (perverse?) glee in the implication given (mainly by men) that if 75% of women can’t even be pleasured by penises, that 75% of women have no use for men. If only that were really true! Because 75% of women deciding they don’t need men at all, for anything, is a revolution more powerful than any old nut, any old day.

More of Jessica Trueblood Riddle’s writing can be found on her blog Pride and Provenance