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"           I was a teenager the first time I faked an orgasm. It was during cybersex in an early-&amp;#039;90s AOL chat room and went something like this: &amp;quot;Omigosh, yes! Oh, oh, mmm, yesss!&amp;quot; Anonymous online sex was my pubescent rebellion, raised as I was by a pair of pot-smoking hippies who were the opposite of the parental stereotype: They jumped at any opportunity to talk about sex\u2014always as the most loving, spiritual act imaginable. And my dad routinely railed against excessive makeup, crippling high heels, or any other sacrifice for superficial, unnatural desirability. But contradictory messages abounded\u2014and I actively sought them out. Like HBO&amp;#039;s late-night series Real Sex; I vividly remember being wowed by a stripper shaking her big breasts in the face of a dumbfounded man. Their interaction was anything but &amp;quot;loving.&amp;quot; My suspicion that my parents weren&amp;#039;t telling me the whole truth about sex was further confirmed when I snooped on my dad&amp;#039;s computer and found photos of beautiful naked women who looked suspiciously like the corrupt ideal that he so often scorned. I didn&amp;#039;t know it then, but my chat-room performance was the beginning of what would be a rich and varied career of faked orgasms\u2014the live, in-person kind. Not right away, though. It never occurred to me to deceive my first boyfriend; we were on a mutual path of sexual self-discovery. Our explorations in my high school bedroom were genuine, tender, enthusiastic, and eventually we figured out a means by which I could orgasm during &amp;quot;sex sex.&amp;quot; It wasn&amp;#039;t quick or simple, but it did the trick. The other option was, of course, oral activity. One night, I let out an urgent &amp;quot;Oh my God&amp;quot;\u2014and then whispered it again and again, each time convinced that an orgasm was right around the corner. After a while, a muffled laugh emerged. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just, I started thinking about counting how many times you&amp;#039;d say &amp;#039;Oh my God,&amp;#039; and I couldn&amp;#039;t help but laugh.&amp;quot; Who could blame him? Even I was distracted by what sounded like my desperate prayer to some deity of female pleasure. I often struggled to clear my mind, and then to stop thinking so much about needing to clear my mind. If I wasn&amp;#039;t worrying about him having an orgasm too soon for my purposes, I was worrying that I wasn&amp;#039;t keeping him excited. Of course what I had to do was stop thinking and just feel; afterward, I&amp;#039;d collapse on top of my boyfriend, sweaty and laughing. It was a team effort, and he seemed to enjoy my orgasm as much as I did\u2014his jaw would go slack with amazement at my paroxysms\u2014so it would&amp;#039;ve felt cruel to fake. Besides, how could I pretend until I&amp;#039;d experienced the real thing? I was a method actor in that sense, I guess. It was after that relationship ended that my fakery really got going. While navigating the hookups of my early twenties, I didn&amp;#039;t dare risk the humiliation or vulnerability that might attend articulating to a new partner the nuances of my needs\u2014first you X, then a little Y, then some Z. Ugh. And that suggests I knew exactly what worked. I didn&amp;#039;t, despite my successes with my first boyfriend. I had no faith in my orgasmic acumen, yet I also believed that said acumen was essential to hot sex for my male partner. The first time I fabricated was with a beautiful, all-American frat boy I met in college; he looked as though he belonged in an Abercrombie &amp;amp;amp; Fitch catalog (or at least worked in one of the stores). We almost literally fell into his bed in the middle of a strained conversation about our creative writing class. Midway, I could feel him losing momentum, and I hurried myself to a phony climax hoping to arrest his, shall we say, deterioration. To no avail. When my pseudoecstasy was complete, he rolled off me. &amp;quot;Sorry, I don&amp;#039;t know what&amp;#039;s wrong with me,&amp;quot; he said. A tingle rose from my throat to behind my eyes, like I might burst into tears then and there. No, I didn&amp;#039;t feel sad for him. To the contrary. Here was a man who to me represented male power, privilege, and approval\u2014and he was recoiling from me, or at least that&amp;#039;s the way I interpreted it. Postcollege, I became a full-time reporter, blogger\u2014and orgasm faker. I had strong feminist political inclinations, but I was also deeply afraid of male rejection; my intellectual ideals clashed with my personal insecurities. What if I didn&amp;#039;t orgasm and was labeled as frigid or repressed? My instruction via Internet porn had taught me that sexy, desirable women orgasm at the drop of a thong, and I wanted to be a temptress\u2014aggressive, insatiable, and uninhibited. Ironically, in attempting to avoid the stereotype of passive female desire, I chose performed enthusiasm over more authentic sexual experience. (Hey, it&amp;#039;s true, even if I do sound like a women&amp;#039;s studies prof.) One time, a twentysomething writer touched me so avidly that it started to hurt. Instead of asking him to be more gentle, I moaned right through it, figuring that simulation was a quicker way to end the pain than asking him to ease up. Later, I noticed flecks of blood on his crisp white sheets\u2014but even this graphic representation of sexual miscommunication failed to convince me that I had to find another way. In fact, in the years that followed, I moved on to faking multiple orgasms. Around this time, I wrote an essay titled &amp;quot;In Defense of Casual Sex,&amp;quot; about how hookups had helped me explore my sexuality\u2014and they had. But it was exploration through the eyes of men: I was focused on how my partners saw me. I didn&amp;#039;t mention that I&amp;#039;d faked it during nearly all of my dalliances. It seemed embarrassing to admit, and personally inconsequential. I just figured that I was one of those women for whom orgasms are extremely difficult, but even without them sex was a physical rush. Which is not to mention what a blast it was to date or become otherwise involved with a rainbow array of men\u2014from a Muay Thai kickboxer to a big-deal lawyer. It also felt powerful to become, quite frankly, a master of the symphony of la &amp;quot;faux&amp;quot; petite mort. Like a skilled conductor, I&amp;#039;d raise the volume and drama of my erotic operatics to an explosive climax, followed by a sweet whimper of a resolution that left my audience of one awestruck. &amp;quot;You come so hard, I love it,&amp;quot; one guy raved. Another gushed, &amp;quot;With you, I feel like I&amp;#039;m a teenager discovering Playboy for the first time\u2014no, make that Penthouse!&amp;quot; Most of my partners had been raised on online porn just like I had, and as I endeavored to fulfill their (and my) every smutty expectation, not one seemed dubious about the intensity and efficiency of my reactions. Certainly, no man ever asked whether I might be gilding the proverbial lily. Once, in a fit of anger, I e-mailed a guy castigating him for his womanizing and, as the ultimate insult, revealed: &amp;quot;I faked all but one orgasm with you.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;d slept together for a year, which added up to a whole lot of manufactured bliss. It was news to him, but not entirely a surprise. When he wrote back, &amp;quot;I know I&amp;#039;m not a magical orgasm machine or anything,&amp;quot; I could picture the dejection on his face\u2014and I felt like the cad. I&amp;#039;d enabled the very behavior I was condemning by not only faking but pretending to be fine with our casual arrangement when I really wanted more. When I confessed to my friends what I&amp;#039;d done, they looked at me, puzzled: Why did you keep sleeping with him if you didn&amp;#039;t like it? I was puzzled by their puzzlement: Because it still felt good! And, because I believed orgasms were only rarely possible for me, making the guy think he&amp;#039;d taken me to the moon didn&amp;#039;t seem so bad; maybe I even deserved props for generosity. I&amp;#039;d become a sexual codependent of sorts, a martyr for male pleasure. I vowed to my indignant, sex-positive friends to cease my fraudulent behavior\u2014but always with an impish smile, because deep down I knew I wouldn&amp;#039;t, couldn&amp;#039;t stop putting on a show. It had just become too automatic, and I was too afraid of failing. My roommate even developed an ingenious system of punishment: Every time I faked it, I would, on the honor system, have to buy her a piece of fancy cheese. This worked out very well for her but not so much for me. At 27, I was years into this routine when I first slept with Steve, and I certainly made no exception for him. When we hooked up a second time, I felt as if I had to live up to my previous exploits. Ditto the third, fourth, and fifth times\u2014and so on. Before I knew it, I was falling in love, and I wanted to experience honest intimacy with him\u2014not to mention a freakin&amp;#039; orgasm\u2014but I&amp;#039;d set a fantastical standard for myself. One night, Steve whispered admiringly, &amp;quot;Babe, you come so easily,&amp;quot; and I startled. &amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot; Then I caught myself: &amp;quot;I mean, yeah, I guess I do.&amp;quot; My stomach turned. In any other context, I could barely let a half-truth pass my lips\u2014why was a feigned moan any different? The hypocrisy didn&amp;#039;t stop there. I&amp;#039;d become a full-time sex reporter for the online publication Salon, writing about the importance of female pleasure by day and faking orgasms by night. I&amp;#039;d like to say that I came clean to Steve and stopped the orgasmic act cold turkey\u2014but that would be another lie. Instead, I borrowed some language from tantra and started plying him with the idea that orgasms could be even better when couples slowed things down. &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;ll be a fun experiment,&amp;quot; I told him while in bed, providing cover for what I knew would be my dilatory responsiveness. &amp;quot;Awesome,&amp;quot; Steve said, and went in for a kiss. Right around the time I first told him I loved him, I started having real orgasms with Steve. It was like my climactic circuitry had been plugged in and electrified: The peak experience could be mine, though still not easily. That familiar voice would nag: &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re taking too long! He&amp;#039;s getting bored!&amp;quot; But instead of falling back on my crescendo of rapture, I took myself out of my head by actually saying what was in it. &amp;quot;It feels so good when you\u2026,&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d venture. Or I&amp;#039;d suggest a different position. Contrary to my fears, Steve wasn&amp;#039;t repulsed by my taking the initiative. He told me, he showed me\u2014he was thrilled. As my legit-orgasm count rose, I gained confidence in my abilities, and with the anxiety subsiding, having orgasms became less arduous. An obvious result, perhaps, in retrospect\u2014but a happy outcome never felt preordained; the path to it never felt straightforward. That I now climax reliably, sometimes even effortlessly, with Steve seems nothing short of a miracle. &amp;quot;Good sex,&amp;quot; my father once said, &amp;quot;is like two star systems colliding in outer space.&amp;quot; Yes, yes, yes! I finally know what he was talking about. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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