Essay

"So in those days of curling up in my bedroom and watching the magic of Nina Hartley and Candida Royalle unfold before me, I developed a taste for the beauty and power of sex. I learnt how to masturbate most effectively, and stored a whole manifesto of sexual tips and techniques which I would unleash several years later when my sex life began as a young adult."

"I read somewhere that we learn instinctively to pleasure ourselves before we can talk and my earliest memory of the art of masturbation was at the tender age of four years old. I won't go into detail but I was aroused by the sight of two lions copulating to the voice of David Attenborough on a BBC Wildlife documentary which stirred something mysterious inside me. Clearly at such a young age I had no idea that what I was seeing, or my consequent response, was sexual. Still, it was an enjoyable sensation and subsequently I made sure I had regular practice."

"Life is rich for me as a devout feminist, bisexual swinger, and Switch with serious sub tendencies. Add to that a professional career in the hallowed halls of academia, marriage to a pro-feminist, Dom-leaning husband, and parenthood, and life is not only rich but full to overbrimming. And I love it that way."

"I turned over the package to take a gander at the other magazine when I realized she was now looking in my direction. I turned to give her a friendly smile, but I saw something that stopped me. In her eyes, there was a full-fledged look of hatred at me. She was actually staring at me as if I was a Miss Suzie Satan Whore Pants and I was betraying the entire female race."

“You don’t have a license to massage? Well, how ‘bout you just jerk me off instead then?” I stared at him, hoping to find an I’m just kidding look located somewhere on his face, but unfortunately it was nowhere to be seen. And so it began: my life as a rub and tug receptionist."

"A girl walks on her hands across the stage. Her legs are spread-eagled and bent at the knees. The bottoms of her heels graze her ass. This whole routine reeks of perfectionism, and indeed, if it weren’t for the crappy Missy Elliot song playing in the background, it would be perfect."

"This is Spa Excess, the largest, most luxurious gay bathhouse in Toronto and for one whole morning, I got to wander through the building and look into every nook and cranny."

"I was impressed that couples were willing to invest in a great deal of time, energy and money for their dungeon equipment, fitting whole cellars or spare bedrooms with accessories that The Marquis de Sade would be proud of. BDSM is a very lucrative business."

"I had the fantasy for years: mind blowing sex with two women over the course of hours that transcends the physical plane and opens doors that an LSD trip could only rattle. I reasoned that my fantasy was seared into my neural networks by the evolutionary imperative to procreate with as many women as possible and I could not ignore it any more than a salmon could resist the urge to spawn."

"This essay is a romance. It’s the story of one woman in search of her soul and the two books she loved, even though they were from opposite sides of the literary tracks."