Why I’m the Jonah Lehrer of Fucking (And So Are You) — Matter — Medium →

I’ve lain on my back as a boyfriend poured maple syrup across my breasts, down my abdomen, and over my genitals, and then licked it off (it was in Vermont, so it was topical). I have given fellatio with grapes in my mouth. In a bed and breakfast on Cape Cod, a young man made real his fantasy of eating ice cream off of my ass — it was, if memory serves, chocolate. Both ginger and ice have seen the inside of my ass.

I have had sex on the beach, on a bus, on the tarmac, and in a Macy’s dressing room, and I have pulled from my intimate recesses grains of sand, bits of asphalt, and fuzz of indeterminate origin. Once, on a train, I reenacted a scene from Fear of Flying. It involved orange segments and genitalia; the young man I finger-fed was confused.

I have shaved, waxed, grown, and dyed my pubic hairs. I have answered the door wearing nothing but Saran Wrap. I have reenacted Ravel’s Boléro scene from 10 (with a girlfriend) and the refrigerator scene from 9 1/2 Weeks (with a boyfriend). Once during a lunch hour, I was the second girl in the world’s fastest threesome; were it scored, it would’ve been to Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” This threesome occurred in one of the seedier midtown hotels, and over time, my memory has layered this hotel with an uncanny sheen. Today, I remember it more or less like a set from Supernatural, minus the demons.

None of these supposedly erotic acts, not one, arose from my own fecund imagination. Every one is entirely lifted from something my partner or I had seen, read, or heard about. I can claim no originality. I am the Jonah Lehrer of sex, a serial plagiarist of stunning bravado and insouciance. So are you. (Read more)