Isadora Alman - Doing It: Real People Having Really Good Sex

Isadora Alman tells it like it really isno nastiness, just the truth. Her sense of humor, her clarity, and her wisdom cut through today's sexual confusion. If you want to be sure you know what you're doing, read this book!

TINA TESSINA, PH.D., author of The 10 Smartest Decisions A Woman Can Make After 40

I recommend this valuable book for many reasons, especially its emphasis on the importance of personal sharing, clear communication, and on making nonjudgmental sex information more widely available.

MAGGI RUBENSTEIN, PH.D., Dean of Students Emeritus, Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality; co-founder, San Francisco Sex Information

Copyright 2001 by Isadora Alman

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact: Conari Press, 2550 Ninth Street, Suite 101, Berkeley, CA 94710-2551.

The information and suggestions from the anonymous contributors in this book are in no way to be considered advice from sex or medical experts. Any use of the recommendations in the following pages is at the reader's discretion and sole risk.

The Five Freedoms by Virginia M. Satir used with permission of Avanta The Virginia Satir Network, 2104 SW 152nd Street #2, Burien, WA 98166. All rights reserved.

Conari Press books are distributed by Publishers Group West.

ISBN: 1-57324-520-8

Cover and Book Design: Suzanne Albertson

Author Photo: Lori Eanes

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alman, Isadora, 1940

Doing it : real people having really good sex / Isadora Alman.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 1-57324-520-8

1. Sex. 2. Sex customs. I. Title.

HQ21 .A4524 2001

306.7dc21

00-011385

Printed in the United States of America on recycled paper.

00 01 02 03 TC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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S ince 1984 I have been writing a sex and relationship column called Ask Isadora. Through the years I have been deluged, inundated, and often overwhelmed by mail, some typed on office stationary, some written in pencil on raggedly torn school paper. Some letters give me absolutely no clue as to the age, circumstances, or even the sex of the letter writer, and I answer as if sexual happiness questions and their answers can cross most lines of age, gender, and orientation, which, of course, they do. Some letter writers do identify themselvesa thirty-four-year-old straight woman, married, in good shapeeven down to eye color, as if they supposed I'd have a different response for someone with brown eyes than I would for someone with blue. Those who sign their names rather than something like Desperate in Detroit invariably ask me not to print it, as if I might say, This letter about her secret extramarital lesbian affair is from Betty Bumpety in Hartford.

The Ask Isadora column has appeared in several dozen alternative newspapers and magazines over the years, in many cities in three countries. There is no pattern to all the mail I have received, nothing that distinguishes the worries of readers in Toronto from those in Baltimore, nor, really, those of men from those of women. (Feel free to add to the load by writing me care of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, 520 Hampshire Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.) The letters just keep on coming in, and the woes occasioned by sex seem never-ending and remarkably repetitive.

Obviously I don't have all the answers, and often a different slant or more information could have enhanced the response I supplied in my brief column. So I receive a smaller, but still significant, amount of mail whose purpose is to continue the conversation, with me or with other letter writers: Tell that lonely guy that he should take dance classes. It worked for me or, She might try smearing on unflavored yogurt and see if that helps. Because an individual's experience can include things mine doesn't, professionally or personally (like the recent how and where of purchasing and fitting a male chastity belt), I have frequently run Readers' Responses columns that contain the good (What a great column!), the bad (Tell that guy to see a doctor ASAP), and the ugly (You Jezebel, you'll burn in hell!). This kind of reader-to-reader exchange inspired the idea behind this book, which is not about my advice to readers but their advice to each other.

In 1996, eLine, a Web design firm, and I put online a version of the Ask Isadora column that was created to facilitate discussion among those interested in sex without requiring me in the middle. The website is www.askisadora.com. In the more than four years my Sexuality Forum (originally Advanced Birds & Bees) has been online in various formats, it alone has occasioned more than a million postsquestions, commentary, and/or responses.

The immediacy of the questions and answers in the Sexuality Forum is wonderful. (Not at all like the frequent months that elapse between the time someone mails me a letter and the time I might get to it in my washtub-sized mail basket; many never get answered.) At 9 P.M., after I have turned off my computer for the evening, someone might post a question about how to approach an attractive stranger. By 9 A.M. the next morning, when I again check into the site, there may be twenty or thirty suggestions from various people, plus an offshoot discussion or two on the trials and tribulations of being single... and perhaps a few flirtatious comments aimed at other posters as well.

The tips in this book are gathered from both the column readers who wrote to their newspapers to carry on the conversation and posters to the Sexuality Forum who continue to create and maintain so many fascinating dialogues. In this book you will not be reading the opinions of one sex expert with whom you can agree or not or whose life experience you may or may not share. Instead, men and women of all ages and persuasions let you in on what they think are important details about sexual happiness. Often these details are secrets, in that there isn't anyone else in the writer's real life to whom they are willing to risk revealing these discoveries; so you will be the first to know, for instance, that twiddling nipples at a particular pace and direction will drive a woman wild... or at least one woman, the writer or one in the writer's life.

I am often asked if a particular letter or post might be a put-on, or even if a large percentage might be. Sure, they might be. Occasional letters sound as if they were composed by a bunch of stoned college kids amusing themselves by stretching their imaginations and pulling my leg. I think you'll agree, though, that most of these responses have the ring of truth. I don't doubt that they are written by real people having real sex, and, often, really good sex.

In the responses printed here, you'll often notice that there is no indication of the writer's sex or that of the partner in question. Sometimes I can deduce the sex by the writer's Sexuality Forum previous postings. Often I can't. I have presented all comments here without my guesses, so you can play too. I think it's fascinatingly educational to read, for instance, a wonderful treatise of how to do oral sex on a man and not know if it is written by the man himself or by his partner, female or male.

It's also fascinating to read an array of sometimes contradictory hints and tips displayed here and realize that everything shared is the result of an individual's (often two individuals') personal experience. Sometimes several people have discovered the same thing and we might be able to generalize. For instance, responses from a wide variety of people indicate that anal sex is greatly facilitated by lots of communication and lots of lubrication. On the other hand, a very particular and personal predilection might work for you or a specific partner or it might not.