Chapter 8
<< Intercourse >>
The Real Thing
“Coitus”, “copulation”, “fuck”, “fucking”, “screw”, “lay”, “sleep with”, “jel-lyroll”, “poontang”, “jazz”

My feeling is that whether a penis enters a vagina isn’t nearly as important as what sort of relationship the two people involved are able to develop, including the kind of sexual adjustment they can make. What is important is the relationship — how the two people feel about each other and about what they are doing. Unlike masturbation, it means interaction with another human being; consequently it’s a matter of learning how to live with people — something everyone has to do. If it is truly an act of love, in which no one is being exploited for any reason, it can be a happy learning experience for adolescents and an excellent preparation for marriage, whether that marriage involves these two participants or not. It’s important, consequently, that intercourse be a giving-and-receiving act.

There’s a difference in attitudes between boys and girls about intercourse itself and what it means. To many boys it’s a conquest. They’ve accomplished something, imposed their desires on a girl, and that gives them a feeling of great satisfaction. Most girls, however, don’t have any such feelings. Instead they think of intercourse as giving in, accepting, or permitting the male to become victorious. A girl may be expected to lie down and take whatever the male chose to give her. Not many at any early age are prepared to accept the belief that the sexes are equal in this respect.

If she chooses, a girl can be an equal partner in intercourse — enjoying it, taking part in it actively, being aggressive about it if she feels like it. But even with the new equality, it’s still true that intercourse has a somewhat different meaning for a girl. Maybe it’s because of the psychological feelings arising from the fact that she’s the one being penetrated and the male is doing the penetrating. Still a good many women have been brought up to believe that the man must make all the advances, that he is the one who knows all the techniques, and that they are only passive instruments to be aroused and conquered.

Meanwhile, no one is naive enough to think that if a boy is at the point of having intercourse, he’ll be considering the serious and long-range consequences or wondering whether it’s a good idea or not. At that moment you don't bother that if things go wrong — pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease — it becomes everybody’s business, no matter what our individual views may be. At that moment all you want is the exciting, stimulating pleasure of it. You might feel the same anticipation before doing something else — playing a sport or going to a party, for instance — but intercourse is different because its intimacy and its meanings result in much greater enjoyment than any other activity, it can give a big boost to your joy of living and your feelings of love and well-being. Even if you know that when neither partner is married and have sexual intercourse, it’s called fornication, while adultery is intercourse when one or both persons are married, but not to each other.

The chief reason for having intercourse (aside from the desire to have a baby) is that it’s one of the most delightful, exciting, and stimulating experiences a human being can know. It’s as natural to want to have intercourse as it is to play tennis, swim, dance, ride a horse, or do anything else that gives pleasure. Naturally, the best reason for wanting it is that it’s fun. Having intercourse is one of the most satisfying of human experiences, unless some hangup prevents it from being so, and adolescents are as capable of full enjoyment of it as their parents — more so, in some cases. Few parents seem to be capable of understanding that if two young people want to have intercourse, they can have it at eight o’clock and get home on time by ten, just as easily as they can have it late at night and arrive home at three o’clock in the morning.

It isn’t as simple and straightforward as all that, however. If you’re doing it for the first time, you may be surprised to find that it’s a disappointment — not quite what you thought it was going to be. You may have had higher expectations — unimaginable ecstasy — than the act provides, contrary to what you may have read or seen in movies. Everything you see on the big and little screens, everything you read about sex, or hear in rock lyrics, leads boys and girls to believe intercourse is the last word in human satisfaction, something almost indescribable. When you get around to having it, you’re often disappointed that the world doesn’t necessarily stop. Bells don’t necessarily ring and rockets shoot off. Having had some kind of vague anticipation involving much more than the experience is likely to give, you may be quite disillusioned and inquire, “Is this all there is to it? Is this what all the shouting is about?” It’s possible that intercourse won’t seem like anything more than a quick pleasure, the kind of feeling you get when you masturbate, heightened only by the presence of a partner. It is not a guaranteed rocket-launching experience for everybody. In these circumstances it wouldn’t be fair to pin everything on one experience.

Boys and girls with more reasonable expectations are likely to find intercourse enjoyable. They haven’t been misled by what they see and hear or by parents who have lectured them on the perils of premarital intercourse and so have given them the idea that intercourse must be incredibly wonderful if it’s so forbidden. Since this act is an important and permanent part of most people’s lives, it’s a good idea to get it into perspective from the beginning.

So if you don’t expect too much, you won’t be disappointed. This doesn’t mean intercourse can’t be all the marvelous things you imagined, but that isn’t likely to happen until it’s done by two people who have a warm, caring, loving relationship that is built on a solid foundation of previous friendship. Intercourse is what two people put into it. It depends on your own feelings and the feelings of the girl. If either one thinks it’s wrong, all the arguments in favor won’t make you feel otherwise, doing this most intimate of acts can’t help changing the nature of a relationship. And if you and the girl think it isn’t wrong, all the arguments that might be advanced against it won’t make any difference.

In its best sense, intercourse isn’t something that just comes naturally, as so many people think. Perfect or nearly perfect intercourse the first time around may or may not be the case. Mutual adjustments may be needed. For a really satisfactory sexual relationship, techniques have to be learned, and that is where early intercourse can be a help in later life. It teaches what one of the most important aspects of living together is all about, so it’s a good thing if you learn how to do it well. In a fundamental way, it’s like learning to play a game. You have to learn the fundamentals first if you want to play it well. People learn more easily when they’re young. The important thing is to learn correctly and not fall into some casual pattern that becomes a set way of doing things.

«At the minimum extreme, an erect penis must be something over two and a half inches [6.5 cm] in length to penetrate far enough into an [adult] vagina for a man [and a woman] to begin to feel satisfied with what he can do for his partner. With a short penis a man can experience arousal, feeling, and climax, but not being able to reciprocate in coitus [with an adult woman] can inflict terrible wounds on his ego» (Money, 1972). The average size of erected penis most men usually achieve at the age of 8 years is about 6.5 cm.

An obvious disadvantage in early intercourse is not so much the act itself as where it takes place. If it happens in whatever space is available — a car’s rear seat, on a sofa in somebody’s house, where discovery might be imminent, or anywhere else it has to be done in a furtive, hurried way, it can be upsetting and probably won’t be a really satisfactory experience. Such circumstances ought to be avoided. It doesn’t have to be done that way, and it shouldn’t be. In any case, the first time should be under the same relaxed circumstances you would have if you were already married or committed to each other. The back seat of a car doesn’t provide that. If it’s done furtively, or with feelings of guilt, it isn’t a fair test.

For now, let’s assume the decision is made, and let’s assume further that you’re a boy who has never had intercourse with a girl, has never actually examined a girl’s sex organs, and isn’t too certain he knows as much about the subject as he pretends to.

If a girl may not know exactly what to expect or even what to do and has never seen an erect male penis, it may frighten her to think of such a large object penetrating her, and she may even wonder if it’s possible. Some boys and girls are actually surprised to discover that a penis can be inserted into a vagina, because the vaginal opening appears to be little more than a slit. They don’t seem to make the connection — or just possibly don’t know — that it can accommodate far more than a penis, since babies emerge from it. The vagina is actually an opening of amazing flexibility. Remembering that a baby is born through that same opening should dispose of any fear that the stretching by a penis might be painful. Think of the vagina as a collapsed balloon that has an astonishing ability to stretch. Inside, it tends to be more or less dry until a girl is aroused sexually. Boys sometimes say a girl in that condition “gets hot,” and that’s literally true. The walls of the vagina begin to sweat, by a process quite similar to what happens on your face when you exercise. When a woman is aroused, there’s an additional help in the lubrication of the vagina by secretions from the glands. The resulting moisture allows the penis to be inserted more easily. Sex play before insertion causes these secretions. That’s why sex play is necessary to make intercourse comfortable.

When it comes to penetration of the vagina by the penis, the girl may lie on her back with her legs apart. Then the boy lies on top of her, face to face, with his legs together. In one, the girl lies on top of the boy, with her legs together between his, or vice versa. Sometimes the girl helps the boy to insert his penis, although more often he’ll do it by himself. It’s best to make the insertion gradually and slowly, with small thrusts back and forth, rather than in big lunges. A boy can usually tell by the reactions of the female whether he’s going too fast for her.

Or the girl may prefer to lies on top of the boy, with her legs together between his, or vice versa. In this position, the boy may put his hands on her buttocks, pushing her pelvic area toward his. That will make it easier for her to do her own pelvic thrusts and so make the insertion gradually and build tension for her orgasm most effectively. The weight of her body also helps reduce the amount of movement he makes, which again helps him delay ejaculation.

If the girl hasn’t had her hymen broken, the breaking that comes with penetration may cause a brief twinge of pain and usually a little bleeding from the torn membrane. There was a time when girls feared all this, thinking of it as a painful experience they had to go through, but both pain and what little blood there is are usually lost in the feelings of the experience itself.

In any case, contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t always happen. An unbroken hymen may occasionally be tough and resist the pressure of the penis and cause so much pain and discomfort that a girl does not enjoy the experience on this first try. In rare cases, a doctor has to cut the hymen with an instrument before intercourse can take place. Most often, though, penetration is nearly painless and produces only a few drops of blood. As well as younger males may be chosen at the first place.

If a boy or girl encounters any difficulty in breaking the hymen as he begins to penetrate or she begins to thrust — and they should do it slowly and carefully if it hasn’t been broken — they should take extra care. If the experience is unpleasant for a girl, or if the boy enters her abruptly and without much preparation before she’s lubricated and ready for him, it may take her some time to get over it, and she may even feel that sex is distasteful. It’s better to have a good deal of fondling and sex play first, with fingers inserted in the vagina, before intercourse takes place for the first time.

Actual intercourse occurs through a series of pelvic thrusts, usually increasing in speed, frequency, and force as the act progresses. Mostly, the boy lies as far forward as possible or the girl lies as far backward as possible because that stimulates the area above the vagina, where the clitoris is, and gives the girl more pleasure.

If a male is multiorgasmic, milks little by little and is able to churn his milk dry,
a woman absorbs by vaginal walls all his revitalizing juices completely.

Far from being a smooth tube, the vagina contains many folds and ridges
which significantly increase its absorptive inner surface
and stimulate a penis to draw and yield seminal fluids to female.

If the man isn’t multiorgasmic, one of the most common problems in intercourse occurs when the male ejaculates too quickly, before the female has a chance to have orgasm. An adolescent boy is likely to do this if he hasn’t learned how to delay his orgasm during his masturbatory experiences. He comes rapidly anyway at that age and is usually so eager that he’s in a hurry.

There are several things you can do to slow up so the girl will have the longer time it usually takes her to come to orgasm, although that isn’t always the case, I might add. Some girls come rapidly, too, and may have several quick orgasms. There’s infinite variety in human sexual response. One way a boy can slow himself is to increase the frequency of his ejaculation — that is, ejaculate first by masturbating or through extended sex play, and then go on to intercourse as soon as he’s able to have an erection again. It will take him a little longer to get an erection the second time, and probably to ejaculate as well.

Another method is to vary positions. Many positions, or a sequence of several, will provide variety and make the female a much more active sexual partner. Women like to do all the things men do, and they’re often more inventive. Still another method is to do much more prolonged fondling before intercourse even begins, so that the girl will be nearer her climax by the time the boy finally enters her. Or a boy can think about something nonsexual while he’s having intercourse (if he’s able to) and delay himself. Not everyone can do that. As well as to learn fast how to become multiorgasmic.

Still another position to try is for the boy and girl to lie on their sides, facing each other. Often the girl’s leg is placed over the boy’s leg, allowing them to get closer together. Intercourse can also take place sitting down or standing up.In another not uncommon position, the girl’s bottom is toward the male as she takes a position on her hands and knees. A girl can also lie on her belly with the boy lying on top of her and entering her vagina from the rear. He’s then able to reach under and rub her clitoris, if she likes that. Or she can lie on her side with the boy behind her on his side, in which case he is able to stimulate both her clitoris and her breasts after inserting his penis. In yet another position, a boy lies on his back and the girl lies on her back on top of him. In all these positions, the clitoris and breasts are made much more accessible for stimulating.

Other cultures have some rather odd ways of intercourse judged by our ways of doing things. What seems strange to us may be commonplace, everyday behavior to someone else. For example, in the South Seas, a common method is the Trobriand position, employed by the people who live on those islands, in which the female lies on her back with her legs spread, but instead of lying on her, the male kneels or squats in front of her and makes his pelvic thrusts.

There’s no right or wrong way to have intercourse. It’s simply a matter of what people want to do and what they think works best for them.

As we’ve seen, there are differences in male and female behavior during intercourse, and there are also differences between them when it’s over. After the male has had his ejaculation, he usually (if he is not multiorgasmic) feels relaxed and wants to withdraw his penis at once and go to sleep. But the female wants and appreciates continuing penetration and continuing love play. If you can learn how to go on with this fondling — the same thing you were doing before intercourse — a girl will usually be very appreciative and the experience will be that much more pleasurable for both of you.

If a boy or a girl wants to get out of bed immediately and wash or take a shower, that may reflect an attitude about sex built in since childhood — the feeling that sex is something dirty. A boy should never feel that there’s anything unclean about the secretions from his body or hers. When he is multiorgasmic, all secretions are absorbed by his and her genitals during their intercourse.

All sorts of sexual pleasure are possible without intercourse, but people have it because once the sexual machine is set in motion, it goes roaring on to its logical conclusion. When people want to get close to each other, intercourse is the closest they can get.

The most important thing about intercourse is not to have any negative feelings about it and the physical fact of the penis entering the vagina. Positive feelings produce the great satisfactions it can give. Even more, it’s not the only reason for a relationship with a girl or with a woman. If it happens, it should be part of a larger relationship based on trust, friendship, responsibility, and respect: the enjoyment of each other’s company in other ways besides sex.

I’m thinking now of a fifteen-year-old girl — warm, open, affectionate, who hasn’t developed any guilt feelings about sex. In the course of a long relationship with a boyfriend, there’s been a steadily increasing emotional development with each other. Along with that, there’s been intense and protracted fondling, but without intercourse. Inevitably, in such a relationship, intercourse is going to occur at some point.

In her mind, this girl hasn’t made any sudden or dramatic change in her virgin status. Having intercourse has been only another expression of her deep fondness for the boy. Probably she thinks she loves him, and it may be she does. But if the relationship is broken off later, and she begins a new relationship with another boy, she won’t enter into it, as a result of her previous behavior, with any different feelings toward herself than those she had in her earlier relationship.

While intercourse isn’t the big deal it’s often made out to be, it does provide a certain completeness in a relationship. If people feel open and loving toward each other, they may still erect certain barriers between them by mutual consent — no fondling below the waist, for instance, or doing everything but having intercourse. A certain restraint is bound to develop in those circumstances. I’m not suggesting that barriers should be tossed aside. I’m only saying it’s better to face those barriers consciously, understanding the pros and cons of erecting them. In sex, as in every other aspect of human relationships, understanding is the glue that holds everything together.

In discussing premarital intercourse, it is natural to put most of the emphasis on the girl, as I have done here, because she is the more vulnerable. Boys, however, also face two of the major problems: getting a girl pregnant is not a casual circumstance in their lives, and they too confront the possibility of venereal disease.

For both boys and girls the overriding problem involved with premarital intercourse is the morality of it, although they may not acknowledge that fact. The physical factors are very often overwhelmed by the psychological ones. Far more than pregnancy, the most common result of such intercourse is guilt, which can be just as damaging in its own way, and more often than not is disproportionate to the act itself. Indeed, the discomfort can be so great that the boy (or girl) would do better to abstain from intercourse until he is married, because the quality of the act is so affected by guilt that it will doubtless lead to later marital troubles.

At this late date, I think I should confess that when I first encountered the outward appearance of the counterculture — that is, long hair, blue jeans, miniskirts, and all the other gear characteristic of the Sixties’ protest — I was, as they would put it, turned off. Looking at my young patients dressed in garb that, when I was their age, would have been considered evidence of extreme poverty, I was offended, as so many of my contemporaries were, by the spectacle of middle-class children trying to look poor.

Fortunately for my usefulness as a therapist, this initial aversion did not last long. The more I talked with the new generation, the more I was able to disregard how they dressed, and in time I could even adjust to the real poverty of their vocabularies. Behind the dress and the jargon, I could see, they were really the same people: confused, full of anxieties and uncertainties, often insecure — in brief, afflicted with essentially the same troubles that have always brought young and old into therapists’ offices. There were shifting emphases induced by the pressures of contemporary society, but in essence matters were relatively unchanged.

Often, in talking to them I wished I could convey some of my understanding to their parents. I wished I could say to the fathers and mothers who were making a major issue out of the length of a boy’s hair that they were needlessly pushing themselves outside their children’s lives. I wanted to tell mothers that miniskirts were not the prelude to moral ruin. I longed to tell both fathers and mothers that no matter what wrappings were on the package, inside were their troubled children.

The key to understanding them, then and now, is to realize that these children are fighting every day of their lives for psychological status in their peer group, which insists on codes of dress and behavior as a price for belonging. These codes are just as rigid as they are at any other level of society. Blue jeans are as obligatory to them as a business suit is on Wall Street, and the penalty for nonconformity can be severe.

The change in adolescents from the last generation to this one is more apparent than real, because the largest problem, as any psychologist who deals with them can attest, is the same as it was decades before, namely, premarital intercourse, pro or con. Parents should not be deceived by the assumption, which teenagers would have us believe, that this issue is now old hat. Of course, there is greater freedom for sex (meaning primarily a broad enlargement of opportunities for it), but when it comes right down to the physical act, the old fears, anxieties, and uncertainties are alive and well and presenting the same old difficulties.
«Prohibiting sex play doesn’t stop it, but does drive it underground, leaving children to grope at each other guiltily in the dark. Prohibiting sex play also leaves parents in the dark about their children’s sexual development. Since the mistakes that are made don’t usually show up clearly until puberty, and since by then it’s hard to trace the errors back to their source in childhood, little has been learned about how to diagnose these problems while there is still time to correct them...

If a young man and woman get past those hurdles, there was until recently the terrible fear of unsanctioned pregnancy to keep them from exploring their sexual compatibility before the die was cast. The fear of pregnancy has so permeated premarital relations between the sexes in American society as to constitute a form of aversion therapy. The wonder is not that sexual apathy, impotence and difficulty with orgasm afflict so many American men, or that apathy, frigidity, and anorgasmia became practically endemic among American women, but that anybody escaped such distortions. Society, for its own protection, now grudgingly grants youth the Pill, but does little else to help young people learn how the sexes behave together sexually. Youth, perforce, must seek its own answers. Hollywood and the novelists may have given modern youngsters a better idea of where to start their sex lives than on the back seat of a car or in a sleazy motel, but not much idea about how, and most of that misleading. The following excerpt from the files of John Early III (personal communication), who is preparing a book on the subject, shows what can be expected at one level of society when the blind are left to lead the blind into the mysteries of sexual intercourse.

At the age of seventeen, the desire to lose my virginity became an obsession. I left for a vacation at Cape Cod, accompanied by my best friend who was almost as intent at losing his virginity as I was. I came back and my virginity did also, for I had met the most beautiful, sexy, intelligent girl in the world, fell sickly in love for two days, and that was it, for she went home. During the time I was with that girl I don’t think I had a sexual thought. The cause? It was the old double standard of the girl I’ll screw versus the girl I’ll marry, or put another way, “There won’t be many virgins left when I get done, but my wife damn well better be.”

I entered a latency period for ten months, pining away over this girl, but spring came and I was tired of masturbating and once again I decided that I should go out and get the real thing. So I ventured forth and tangled horns with Linda, a good-looking, first-generation Italian girl, kept in the house and not allowed to date by an overprotective mother who was just off the boat. She allowed Linda to date me, for I was Italian — half-Italian at least — and what’s more I was going to be a doctor, so her mother guessed it would be all right. So after saying one Our Father and two Hail Marys, she consented to us going out. Well, the first time we went to a movie, and the second time we went to the woods, and the third time we went to the woods. It turned out that Linda was a very aggressive girl, a quality which I’ve since grown to appreciate. At the time, I didn’t.

When we went to the woods it was a warm spring night. I brought a blanket, a bottle of wine, and we had a cozy campfire, just like in the movies. Everything was set. I guess I’ll have to admit that her breasts were the first I’d ever touched, excluding my mother’s when I was a baby. I feel embarrassed giving details like this, but in the interest of science and letting you know where I was in the sex game, I guess you could say that I made it to second base and was rounding toward third when I was sent back to second by a moral code which caused her to grab the reins of her runaway hormonal horse.

On our second woods date, we modified the rules in the interest of alleviating horniness. This time we could reach third base (in her pants for all you nonsports fans) but while attempting to steal home, the ball game was rained out. The next pitch was in the form of fellatio. Impotence struck. There I was being fellatioed, or filleted, I should say, as the bone was removed. Yessiree, the ills of mankind struck. It didn’t happen all at once; rather, it was a gradual deactivation. First I wondered why I was not coming, as this was purportedly one of the most erotic acts one could engage in. I thought about the sexiest pornography I’d ever viewed, I relived the greatest sexual fantasies I’d ever masturbated to. Then I really began to worry, and then — limp dick! What it all came down to — no pun intended — was that I simply turned off. I ended up with a badly bruised ego and a badly bruised glans penis, as Linda had no idea of the sensitive nature of that part of the anatomy. Linda and I packed up and drove home and that was the last date we ever had. It was a strange ride, for while I didn’t want her to think I was impotent, I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to risk making her feel like a failure as a woman. It turns out that each of us was thinking, There’s something wrong with me, but we didn’t say a word.

That summer enter Anne, a wonderful girl and also a virgin. One night we got involved to the point of having sexual intercourse. Picture the situation. I’m with a person I love and am ridding myself of my albatross of virginity, and thoroughly enjoying it. It was a supreme experience; in fact, it was too good to be true. After ejaculating post coitus interruptus to protect her, I was told that there had been no coitus to be interrupted. She was still a virgin and the whole process turned out to have been a spillage of seed, for I had never been inside her. You must realize that having never been in a vagina before, I was not in much of a position to judge what one felt like. I went downstairs and had a can of grape soda to settle my nerves. We can laugh today, in fact it has become a standing joke between us that I don’t even know when I’m screwing someone.

Now for the climax you’ve been waiting for: boy meets girl and loses virginity. Shelley and I developed a relationship of two people equally intent upon losing their virginities. This time things were different. She went to Planned Parenthood and got the Pill, so that was all right. When we attempted to have intercourse, I was so ready to go that I engaged in about twenty seconds of foreplay before attempting intromission, at which she exclaimed, “Gene, you can’t just screw me!” Those words stung. I sort of knew that foreplay was important, but really hadn’t much idea of how long. All sorts of complications then developed, and you must realize that I was standing on a very thin piece of the ice of confidence, ready to crash through at any moment.

The first complication was her lack of vaginal lubrication. I didn’t know how to deal with it, so she suggested Vaseline. This wasn’t too smart, for as I now know, petroleum jelly not only dissolves the rubber of a condom, which wasn’t a consideration then, but also gums up female plumbing. Then I engaged in manual stimulation, whereupon she gasped that I was rubbing her raw. I attempted intromission again, but she was so tight it was impossible. I thought I was doing something wrong, and she thought she was doing something wrong. We both lay back in disgust, silent. But then I summoned up the courage to say that, in case she hadn’t already noticed, I didn’t know what I was doing. She admitted that she didn’t either. It was a big revelation to us both, and from then on things went better.

The key point to these disasters was ignorance. Linda didn’t know that stabbing me in the penis with pencilpoint fingernails was not, for me, an erotic experience, or that her ungentle oral attentions were more like a nightmare. How could she know that a penis is not a ceramic? No one had ever told her. With Linda, I didn’t know much about impotence or what can cause it, all I knew was that you were less of a man if it happened to you. The major problem with Anne was general ignorance of the mechanics of the act. Another problem was my complete ignorance of the aspects of contraception. Coitus interruptus, good God! I didn’t know that simple intromission can be enough to cause a pregnancy, and I certainly didn’t know that you have to have the reflexes of a log-rolling champion to pull out at the right time.

With Shelley, I didn’t know why foreplay was necessary, knew nothing of the components leading to orgasm or how to get someone there, and I practically wore out her clitoris, for its sensitivity was unknown to me. In fact, what I and my partners knew about sex was incomplete, from watching the great studs perform as lovers, on the movie screen. We were never told that sexual proficiency is a learned thing, not an innate reflex.

The depressing thing about these reminiscences is that all the grief was so totally unnecessary. Our hero won through, but think how easily he could have been stuck forever in the ranks of men whose sex lives are so drab that they and — their wives — can't understand what all the excitement is about.»

      (John Money and Patricia Tucker, Sexual Signatures: On being a Man or a Woman)
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