How To
The Non-Expert: Sexual Firsts
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week the importance of sexual swashbuckling is called into question, and ROSECRANS BALDWIN looks back on a history of bad practices.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Boats We Missed (Of Recent Note)
- The Hot ______ of the Summer (Of Recent Note)
- Staycations (Of Recent Note)
Also by Rosecrans Baldwin
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- The Non-Expert: Term Paper (June 3, 2005)
- The Non-Expert: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (May 27, 2005)
- The Non-Expert: Gypsy Cabs (May 20, 2005)
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* * *
Question: I always thought I was sexually adventurous but my husband’s been whining and he says I’ve always been a prude in our relationship. Because I won’t stick my finger up his ass. Any ideas on what to do?—Ellen Hahn
Answer: Many people believe they’re the first to discover sex, and, a few weeks later, that they’re the first to try dressing up like their boyfriend’s sister as he poses with one leg in the toilet.
Been there, done that; fix me a scotch and let’s watch Seinfeld. There’s nothing in sex that wasn’t tried by the cavemen, and nothing so shocking or morally corruptible that it shouldn’t be tried at least once, with protection. ‘Sexually adventurous’ isn’t flicking the cat flap on your husband’s backdoor; ‘sexually adventurous’ is trying to fit a horse through it. But that’s not what he wants to hear, so on your drive home tonight, stop by your local nursing-supply store, pick up a box of latex gloves (they have plenty of other, more exciting items too—self-adhering catheters, dual-action knee straps—but you may want to wait a few weeks) and head home for a short evening of routing, scotch, and Seinfeld.
But it may interest you to know there’s a long history of sexual firsts that pre-dates anything in modern pornography. Not only has everything been done, it’s been done poorly. Bad sex—that is, most sex—is not only the tailbone of psychoanalysis; it’s also the pancreatic, gall bladder-ish, and lumen-lined history of the human animal. Our problems are nothing new, but we feel as though we’re the first to suffer them.
* * *
Africa, 40,000 B.C.
A Cro-Magnon explained his new discovery to a friend: how to grill animals on a spit. (Cooking being a fairly new thing to the Cro-Magnon community, many good meals were wasted after a rhinoceros was plopped on the fire.)
Unfortunately, the second Cro-Magnon wasn’t very good at reading cave drawings, and he missed a subtle point: Before running the wooden spit up the animal’s backside, it’s best to drain it first.
Gaul, 391 B.C.
A Roman soldier became detached from his century in a section of what is now north-western France, and, without a map of the local area, soon found himself lost in a giant forest.
When darkness fell he continued marching despite his fatigue, fearing attack by wolves if he slept. Late in the night he spotted a light through the trees. As he got closer, he could see a small house in a grove, with light from a fire shining brightly behind a door. He approached and knocked his sword against the doorframe. An elderly man opened the door, and, behind him, his attractive granddaughter blinked at their visitor, then winked. The soldier asked if he could stay the night.
‘Yes,’ the old man said, ‘you may spend the night. And you may have some of our stew and bread and wine. But one rule: you may not touch my granddaughter.’
‘I will honor your rule,’ the soldier answered. ‘And I thank you for your great generosity.’
The old man soon fell asleep on his pallet. The girl served the soldier a bowl of stew and a piece of bread and a mug of wine, and later humped him dry, screaming at the top of her lungs with artificial swoons of pleasure until her grandfather woke up and stabbed the soldier dead with his own sword.
Slain-by-fake-orgasm is now largely a subliminal feeling among males.
Rome, 69 A.D.
To celebrate the public execution of Emperor Servius Sulpicius Galba, a massacre was thrown for the noble classes.
The most popular event involved traitorous citizens separated into pairs, with one member of each pair required to stand on his or her hands. The pair was then strapped together, stomach-to-stomach, before being dipped into vats of hot oil, chopped into small pieces, and used as asphalt.
The asphalt, chopping, and hot oil were discarded before the technique truly caught on.
England, 1284
In the same year that Hamburg burned and Philip IV became King of France, a small boy named William was teased at school for not knowing the precise definition of a ‘blow job.’
On the advice of his so-called friends, William went home and fetched the bellows from the kitchen, locked himself in his room, fixed the apparatus to the head of his penis, and blew up.
The same trick is apparently still played on young men, substituting Hoovers for bellows, but the Non-Expert would know nothing about that.
Boston, 1640
On a hot day in summer, Boston was visited by a renowned touring group of minstrels and acrobats. A sign on the side of their wagon promised, ‘Delights, Amazements, and Thrilles,’ and most of the town’s citizens who could afford a ticket were planning to attend that evening’s performance.
Boston’s Mayor even invited a visiting nobleman from England, Lord Richard Comfortinn, to join him in the front row, with Lord Comfortinn’s daughter, Florence, to be escorted by the mayor’s nephew.
The show started off with a bang: a frowning dwarf shot from a cannon. A parade of jugglers took the stage, followed by a woman with a bear on a leash. A small group of actors performed a short comedy, and afterwards, a lithe young woman perched herself on a stool and folded up her legs behind her head.
At this the Englishman’s daughter smiled and squeezed the Mayor’s nephew’s hand. The nephew, named Richard Trout, pinched her bottom.
Her face remained a glaze of vacancy.
The ringleader invited the audience to walk behind the wagon, where, he explained, his troupe had set up a tent of curiosities. Inside the citizens would see monsters and rare beasts—but in order not to frighten the monsters into hiding, each audience member would have to wear a mask of an animal’s face, so the monsters would think they were in friendly company.
Florence chose a raccoon mask. Richard Trout insisted he didn’t need one—couldn’t she see what an animal he was? She could, she said, and invited him to show her more behind the tent.
The audience filed into the darkness and donned their masks. The air was suffused with a green glow, from what little moonlight made it through the canopy overhead. With his hat in his hand, the ringleader stood by the curtains, and, with a bow, pulled them apart.
The first scream from the crowd had a cockney ring to it.
The city was abuzz for months about the half-raccoon/half-man that kept coming apart in the middle. Lord Comfortinn and his daughter departed Boston the next day. Against his wishes, she later married a young man from London’s most despised gang, the dreaded Flagstreet Boys.
Russia, 1796
The frequently told story of Catherine the Great having sex with a horse, and dying as a result, is baseless and untrue. She actually died from a stroke on the toilet.
What’s little known are her last-recorded words, ‘Size does matter,’ and that they were followed by a fond whinny.
Question: I always thought I was sexually adventurous but my husband’s been whining and he says I’ve always been a prude in our relationship. Because I won’t stick my finger up his ass. Any ideas on what to do?—Ellen Hahn
Answer: Many people believe they’re the first to discover sex, and, a few weeks later, that they’re the first to try dressing up like their boyfriend’s sister as he poses with one leg in the toilet.
Been there, done that; fix me a scotch and let’s watch Seinfeld. There’s nothing in sex that wasn’t tried by the cavemen, and nothing so shocking or morally corruptible that it shouldn’t be tried at least once, with protection. ‘Sexually adventurous’ isn’t flicking the cat flap on your husband’s backdoor; ‘sexually adventurous’ is trying to fit a horse through it. But that’s not what he wants to hear, so on your drive home tonight, stop by your local nursing-supply store, pick up a box of latex gloves (they have plenty of other, more exciting items too—self-adhering catheters, dual-action knee straps—but you may want to wait a few weeks) and head home for a short evening of routing, scotch, and Seinfeld.
But it may interest you to know there’s a long history of sexual firsts that pre-dates anything in modern pornography. Not only has everything been done, it’s been done poorly. Bad sex—that is, most sex—is not only the tailbone of psychoanalysis; it’s also the pancreatic, gall bladder-ish, and lumen-lined history of the human animal. Our problems are nothing new, but we feel as though we’re the first to suffer them.
Africa, 40,000 B.C.
A Cro-Magnon explained his new discovery to a friend: how to grill animals on a spit. (Cooking being a fairly new thing to the Cro-Magnon community, many good meals were wasted after a rhinoceros was plopped on the fire.)
Unfortunately, the second Cro-Magnon wasn’t very good at reading cave drawings, and he missed a subtle point: Before running the wooden spit up the animal’s backside, it’s best to drain it first.
Gaul, 391 B.C.
A Roman soldier became detached from his century in a section of what is now north-western France, and, without a map of the local area, soon found himself lost in a giant forest.
When darkness fell he continued marching despite his fatigue, fearing attack by wolves if he slept. Late in the night he spotted a light through the trees. As he got closer, he could see a small house in a grove, with light from a fire shining brightly behind a door. He approached and knocked his sword against the doorframe. An elderly man opened the door, and, behind him, his attractive granddaughter blinked at their visitor, then winked. The soldier asked if he could stay the night.
‘Yes,’ the old man said, ‘you may spend the night. And you may have some of our stew and bread and wine. But one rule: you may not touch my granddaughter.’
‘I will honor your rule,’ the soldier answered. ‘And I thank you for your great generosity.’
The old man soon fell asleep on his pallet. The girl served the soldier a bowl of stew and a piece of bread and a mug of wine, and later humped him dry, screaming at the top of her lungs with artificial swoons of pleasure until her grandfather woke up and stabbed the soldier dead with his own sword.
Slain-by-fake-orgasm is now largely a subliminal feeling among males.
Rome, 69 A.D.
To celebrate the public execution of Emperor Servius Sulpicius Galba, a massacre was thrown for the noble classes.
The most popular event involved traitorous citizens separated into pairs, with one member of each pair required to stand on his or her hands. The pair was then strapped together, stomach-to-stomach, before being dipped into vats of hot oil, chopped into small pieces, and used as asphalt.
The asphalt, chopping, and hot oil were discarded before the technique truly caught on.
England, 1284
In the same year that Hamburg burned and Philip IV became King of France, a small boy named William was teased at school for not knowing the precise definition of a ‘blow job.’
On the advice of his so-called friends, William went home and fetched the bellows from the kitchen, locked himself in his room, fixed the apparatus to the head of his penis, and blew up.
The same trick is apparently still played on young men, substituting Hoovers for bellows, but the Non-Expert would know nothing about that.
Boston, 1640
On a hot day in summer, Boston was visited by a renowned touring group of minstrels and acrobats. A sign on the side of their wagon promised, ‘Delights, Amazements, and Thrilles,’ and most of the town’s citizens who could afford a ticket were planning to attend that evening’s performance.
Boston’s Mayor even invited a visiting nobleman from England, Lord Richard Comfortinn, to join him in the front row, with Lord Comfortinn’s daughter, Florence, to be escorted by the mayor’s nephew.
The show started off with a bang: a frowning dwarf shot from a cannon. A parade of jugglers took the stage, followed by a woman with a bear on a leash. A small group of actors performed a short comedy, and afterwards, a lithe young woman perched herself on a stool and folded up her legs behind her head.
At this the Englishman’s daughter smiled and squeezed the Mayor’s nephew’s hand. The nephew, named Richard Trout, pinched her bottom.
Her face remained a glaze of vacancy.
The ringleader invited the audience to walk behind the wagon, where, he explained, his troupe had set up a tent of curiosities. Inside the citizens would see monsters and rare beasts—but in order not to frighten the monsters into hiding, each audience member would have to wear a mask of an animal’s face, so the monsters would think they were in friendly company.
Florence chose a raccoon mask. Richard Trout insisted he didn’t need one—couldn’t she see what an animal he was? She could, she said, and invited him to show her more behind the tent.
The audience filed into the darkness and donned their masks. The air was suffused with a green glow, from what little moonlight made it through the canopy overhead. With his hat in his hand, the ringleader stood by the curtains, and, with a bow, pulled them apart.
The first scream from the crowd had a cockney ring to it.
The city was abuzz for months about the half-raccoon/half-man that kept coming apart in the middle. Lord Comfortinn and his daughter departed Boston the next day. Against his wishes, she later married a young man from London’s most despised gang, the dreaded Flagstreet Boys.
Russia, 1796
The frequently told story of Catherine the Great having sex with a horse, and dying as a result, is baseless and untrue. She actually died from a stroke on the toilet.
What’s little known are her last-recorded words, ‘Size does matter,’ and that they were followed by a fond whinny.
—Published February 6, 2004
