/ 25 May 2001

When the women come

Nona Cummings

Body Language

‘A fib,” granny taught me, “is never a good thing.” Especially those epics that require sustaining like boasting at a party that you once climbed Everest when it was a koppie near Ficksburg. But despite the risk of exposure involved, I, like many others, still lie, flatter, exaggerate and outright deceive. And there is always ego involved, either my own or somebody else’s. Though, on the barometer of clean living, practising neurosurgery with no degree may look grim few lies in life are more damaging for interpersonal relationships than being caught out faking the big-I: IT.

But not for the reasons people think. Hurting people’s feelings and other pieties aside, faking an orgasm has dire consequences, as the culprits by now well know. Going the honest route is okay, but timing is everything.

Cutting corners sometimes seems like a good idea, especially after a hard day with the kids, or if your boss has been a nag. But when the truth, in a moment of tender “sharing” or outright foolishness, comes out, it can turn nasty. Lying can sometimes be a better bet than coming clean.

It’s nothing new that women fake it. Though the “are you kidding, I’ve never had a complaint” brigade is still out there, men likely experience a measure of insecurity and confusion over knowing when or whether their partner has had an orgasm. One man’s response to a questionnaire put out by Sixties sex guru Shere Hite was telling, and explained why some women do it in the first place. “When I first read that women needed stimulation on their clitoris and didn’t usually orgasm with the penis, I thought, but what about all those women who had orgasms with me?” he bleated, rather pathetically I remember thinking. The distressed gentleman went on to add that he spent sleepless nights wondering: “Were they laughing behind my back?”

I lay the blame squarely at the door of sex doctors, who demystified the female orgasm, doing women something of a disservice in the process. All the palaver about volcanic G-spots and clitorises appears, on the surface, to have helped women control their destinies. I have been told that all healthy, well-adjusted women, like myself, should, and indeed are now expected, to have regular, frequent orgasms. All men have to do is follow the correct method, as the manual says, and whoops, thar she blows.

First Masters and Johnson said having an orgasm during sex is nothing for women to be ashamed of. Then women’s lib came along and added that we should freely express what we want and, particularly, what we don’t. But we fake on. For reasons of consideration, indeed. One man interviewed by Hite said finding out his partner faked it was “feeling like a doctor who loses a patient on the surgery table”.

Either way, waking up one morning and deciding you are no longer going to keep up pretences is not a good idea.

An episode of Sex and the City illustrated the point. Miranda, kind hearted that we know she is, had been merrily faking it until one particular post-coitus moment of tenderness and honesty, when she lets the truth slip. Far from offended, the revelation spurred the man into action, who, now more “in-tuned”, punctuated nearly every subsequent encounter with staccato bursts of, “Are you nearly there?”

Proving your emancipation and your right to sexual gratification is one thing, but becomes somewhat thorny when you declare it after years of faking. Either he doesn’t believe you (But what about that time on the beach?) or he declares, then and there, that he will henceforth devote his life to satisfying you which is worse.

Men just don’t get that it’s not as simple as pushing the right buttons and in order. That breeds boredom, a killer in any relationship. Who but Germaine Greer could deliver a better summary of this method, whereby “the man must dutifully do the rounds of the erogenous zones, spend an equal amount of time on each nipple, turn his attention to the clitoris, lead through the stages of digital or lingual stimulation, and then politely let himself into the vagina”. Which is precisely what will happen if you admit you have been faking it: once, twice, sometimes or all along.

Why admit it? After all, how can they really tell, biologically speaking? All of which begs a question and a nagging feeling at that. What if one day, soon, with all the strides in science, sexologists will announce that women ejaculate?

This is indeed an alarming prospect. It could ruin entire industries built on faking it, from the porn queen who is sent climbing the walls at a mere whisper in her ear, to the companies that sell us their ice-creams with advertising campaigns featuring women faking it over wafer cones.

And it will mean the end for the ladies who think they have been getting away with it. Though it is unlikely that men will be rushing out to buy petri dishes, or examining bed-sheets for proof, it could mean that the game will be up sooner than expected. As it stands, men are under pressure to make women come. This puts equal pressure on the woman to fake it. And each blames the other when expectations are not met. An untruth here and there made all the better because, like the purpose of the lie, only you know when its happening isn’t all that bad. Especially when the alternative resembles trying to operate the telly for the first time with the manual.