"Can you show us a vibrator?” two of my roommate’s male friends chant outside my door. I wander away from my computer laughing. “Sure! Which?”
They gawk at me, but they aren’t completely surprised from what they have heard about me already. “As in you own more than one?” one of the friends asks.
I nod and I exit into my bedroom. I retrieve a hot-pink, plastic bag out from underneath my bed and pull out both a vibrator and a dildo for our company’s amusement. When I present them, the two boys can’t stop laughing. I turn on the vibrator and touch it to each of their legs, which only increases the volume of giggles filling the room. “Show us the big dildo!” my roommate cries out.
The large, light-pink dildo soon makes its entrance and our friends are astonished. “So . . . you’ve used all of these before, right?”
I nod affirmatively. “The large one only once though – it’s almost too big to be appealing.” I gather the toys and put them back in their bag, safe and sound. The conversation turns to masturbation using toys such as those displayed by me, and my roommate becomes a target.
“You’d never ever even try one?” I ask her. She’s always proclaimed that she doesn’t need vibrators or other sexual implements, nor would she like to experiment with them even once – with or without a partner.
“No,” she answers easily. “I really wouldn’t.”
I sigh. I have trouble wrapping my mind around close-mindedness – it would be different if she simply didn’t enjoy the sensation after an attempt. “Not once? Not just to see what it feels like?”
“Nope.”
My roommate (who also happens to be my best friend) and I butt heads on many topics of sexuality, but her unwillingness to try new things is what irks me the most. I suppose no one has to achieve a certain level of sexual curiosity, and each of us finds our minds concerned with sex to a greater or lesser extent than any other person – I just find it hard to believe that one can reject something that can be pleasurable so completely. On this topic I am most definitely biased because I like to try anything and everything that won’t cause severe, lingering damage to my body or psyche. However, I find it quite interesting how differently we each interpret our sexualities and the implements that one can use to further its exploration.
Vibrators and dildos tend to be categorized by solo pleasure – emphasis on the “solo.” When a female has a vibrator, it is often assumed that she is not being completely satisfied sexually at some particular moment, so she pleases herself using one of many different types of objects available for this purpose. In my own experience though, I’ve always regarded sexual toys as objects to be explored with a partner. The thought of fucking myself with a vibrator alone rarely gets me excited, and I haven’t done so in quite a while (achieving orgasm by rubbing my clit is a different story – I didn’t say I never masturbate). But, add a partner who is using the vibrator on me into the mix or a voyeuristic partner, and my libido skyrockets instantaneously.
It all comes down to how we interpret everything available to us differently – whether it’s because of socialization, culture, experience, anything. My roommate interprets the female use of a vibrator as the failure of a male sexual partner – why use a vibrator when a man has a perfectly functional penis? I interpret the use of a vibrator as an act that creates a greater sense of intimacy and adventure between two sexual partners – using such implements together is amazing foreplay, kicking things up a notch. Just because I believe my best friend is missing out on great sexual experiences by not exploring all of the options out there, doesn’t mean that she is. We’re all satisfied by different things, and it’s not as though she doesn’t know that sexual toys are available in the event that she changed her mind. I think sometimes I need to keep myself from becoming too large of a sexual advocate – I get much too frustrated when people don’t have the same sexual philosophies that I do, and I become just as hard-headed as I assume my audience is being.
Whether I find a person’s inability to try new things silly or not, it’s their opinion. Of course, I am ultimately glad that we all think about sex differently because it makes life interesting, it makes us unique. I definitely need to take a breather sometimes. Not every girl must be fucked by a vibrator in order to feel sexually fulfilled or adventurous. :)