Susan Crain Bakos - Best Sex Ever: The Ultimate Guide to Positions, Techniques, Toys, and Games

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO POSITIONS,
TECHNIQUES, TOYS, AND GAMES

SUSAN CRAIN BAKOS

INTRODUCTION
What I Learned From The Sex Bible

PART 1
SeductionThe Artful Path to the Bedroom

PART 2
The Play Once Known as Foreplay

PART 3
The Orals

PART 4
Intercourse

PART 5
Orgasms

PART 6
Ancient Sex for Modern Lovers

PART 7
Sex Toys and Sex Games

PART 8
How to Make the Sex Better and More Intimate

EDITORS NOTE:Best Sex Ever was originally published as The Sex Bible.

WHEN I WROTE THE INTRODUCTION to the first edition of The Sex Bible in 2006, I asked the question: What do we really know to be true about sex? Too often we accept truths without checking their validity. The Internet has only exacerbated the situation. What the readers of my blog, SexyPrime ( www.sexyprime.typepad.com ) believe to be true sometimes surprises me.

As a journalist, Ive discovered that the facts repeated over and over again in magazine articles and books are sometimes not quite trueand occasionally blatantly false. For more than two decades, sex has been my area of journalistic expertise. When the subject is sex, the information presented as true is often slanted to satisfy editorial bias and presumptions about reader expectations. The importance of orgasm to women continues to be downplayed. You can get advice on how to have anal intercoursebut probably not how to masturbate!in a mainstream womans magazine. The most important message we should be giving young women is: Masturbate.

If a woman has never masturbated, how likely is it that she knows how she reaches orgasm? Not very. Shes depending on her partner and serendipity to get her therewhen the truth would set her free.

What I know to be true sexually:

Women like sex better when they reach orgasm oftenand thats not going to happen for most women without direct clitoral stimulation.

Both men and women are more confident sexually if they have good technique.

Men are more intimateclosely connectedin their relationships with women when the sex is good.

And good sex smoothes our personal rough edges so that man and woman can live together in some kind of harmony. We need sex.

Ive been test-driving the techniques I write about for twenty years. I have also asked hundreds of women (and men) to test techniques and report back to me for magazine articles and books. As a research sexologist, I have created and adapted sex techniques from sources including the Kama Sutra and Masters and Johnson. I am the author of sixteen books, mostly sex advice, including Sexational Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Erotic Know-How, and five gorgeous books for Quiver: The Sex Bible, The Orgasm Bible, The Orgasm Loop, The Sex Bible for Women, and The New Tantra: Simple and Sexy.

I approach sex writing with a spirit of scientific inquiry. In researching those books, I have studied sex technique with Tantric and Taoist masters, porn stars and directors, great therapists such as Dr. Ruth Westheimer and the late Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan, sexual innovators such as Annie Sprinkle, and many others.

The problematic nature of female orgasm is the big engine driving every sex philosophy, therapy, and theory.

Many women experience difficulty in reaching orgasmwith a partner, during intercourse, or simply as often as they would like. Their problem: getting distracted from arousal by body or performance anxiety, guilt over work/chores/children, anger or resentment against their partnerand getting so distracted that reaching orgasm takes too long and consequently doesnt always happen. In other words, most women just dont focus on sex in the single-minded way that men do.

Male sexuality is awesome in its single-minded power. How can women be more like men? With that question in mind, I began tinkering with orgasm techniques based on my own research and that of others, especially the cognitive feedback studies of Dr. Eileen Palace in New Orleans. Using my love of art, I developed the concept of a sensual and beautiful arousal image, an image that a woman will always associate with her arousal, such as a Georgia OKeefe flower print or even a color or a sunset over the ocean. I simplified and refined the breathing techniques I learned from Tantra teachers and applied the one basic trick every woman should have in her erotic kit: flexing the pubococcygeus muscle. But something was still missing. I did not yet have the works-every-time, absolutely-fail-safe-once-youve-learned-it orgasm method for every woman.

An old friend in Illinois who has five black belts in karate taught me energy focusthe way he does it when he moves all the energy in his body, for example, into his throat to prevent an arrow from piercing his skin.

And that was the missing piece, the completing step of the Orgasm Loop. Arousal image, energy focus, physical techniques. It takes a little practice, like riding a bike, but once youve learned it, you do it automatically. Andwow!does it work.

When I was offered the opportunity to write The Sex Bible, I was thrilled; it was the chance to bring together what I have learned in twenty years of researching sex and interviewing men and women about their sex lives and to incorporate my own Orgasm Loop. In this book I tell you the best of what I know to be true and give you what you need to know to be a good, even great, lover. The beautiful erotic photographsthe best I have seen in a sex bookwill inspire you. They are alive with erotic energy and infused with romance.

The Sex Bible is truly a beautiful book about the most intimate part of life. I am proud of this book and the other Quiver titles, but I havent created them alone. The Sex Bible is a team effort of three people, Allan Penn, the photographer; Wendy Gardner, the editor; and me. The team changed and now Will Keister and Jill Alexander are the guiding lights.

I speak for all of us when I say, may it bring you pleasure.

Susan Crain Bakos,
Harlem, New York City,
September 2009

Seduction is always more singular and sublime than sex.

Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher

IN OTHER WORDS, THE THRILL OF THE SEXUAL CHASE can be even more exciting than the lovemaking for some people. (If these people are men, we call them Casanovas or Don Juans.) For others, seduction is an intrinsic part of the sexual process, not more important than, but equal to, the joy of sex. Camille Paglia, an American philosopher, author, and critic known for her controversial essays on popular culture, takes this view. She says, Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. Its part of the sizzle.