Looking, Part 3

Forbidden Flowers
by Nancy Friday

(Page 3 of 3)

Jackie

I've just finished My Secret Garden. Thank you very much for collecting these fantasies. Reading the book has made me feel much more at ease about the normalcy of my own fantasies.

(Incidentally, I am twenty-six years old, white, middle-class background, with three and a half years of college, and in training as a medical assistant at the moment.)

Although I am an imaginative person, I often take my fantasies whole from other sources, such as movies (not dirty movies, curiously enough, because I find them unimaginative and tasteless), novels (The Story of O, etc.), and other popular media.

But much more commonly, I make them up from experiences that I have had, embellished and elaborated to fantasy proportions. One of my favorites, incidentally, is about prostitution, an empty room in My Secret Garden.

Some years ago, I met a man who, I discovered shortly, was a bounding cad, but he was so egotistical, with very little reason for being so, incidentally, that I was fascinated by his conceit and was intimate with him for some months before my fascination turned to boredom at his boorish predictability, and I subsequently dropped him.

My prostitution fantasy about this man, whom I'll call Roger, goes more or less like this: I'm in the city on some important errand when I see Roger and, worse, he sees me. From his smile as he approaches, I know he means no good. Rather then create a scene, I allow him to take me into a sleazy-looking café. There he tells me he has discovered some awful thing about me, something that could ruin my personal and professional life, as well as those of my family. I think, in my fantasy, that he wants to blackmail me for money, but discover instead he intends to prostitute me for his own profit. I am helpless and must obey.

He has apparently had all this planned out, because when I follow him to his apartment, he gives me a see-through blouse, microminiskirt, black net stockings, and a black garter belt to exchange for my street clothes. But before I do this, he makes me shave my entire body, including pubic hair.

When I'm ready and dressed, we walk through downtown on our way to a party, where he has sold my services. We stop before a store with a facade that reads Novelties, but I can see by the equipment in the window that it's really a sex shop, one that sells pornographic books, and has the trappings of fetish-oriented sex. We go inside. Behind the counter is a handsome young Oriental (in real life several of my lovers have been Orientals, and I admit a preference for them over Caucasian men). He smiles at us and can tell at once by my costume and makeup what I am.

Roger ignores me and begins talking to the storekeeper about various of his goods, while I wander about and look at all the stuff hanging on the walls, such as leather harnesses, dildos, chains, whips, vibrators, etc., which makes me very hot and excited, as well as a big selection of dirty books. (This excitement, incidentally, is very odd, because I've tried some of the equipment mentioned above and was totally turned off by it, but in my fantasy, I'm so excited I bite my lips to keep from caressing myself while both men watch me.) Roger sees this and calls me over. There's a bunch of equipment on the counter that Roger wants to buy, but he doesn't have enough money. He suggests to the storekeeper that he can use me as he likes in exchange for the equipment. The storekeeper smiles again and pulls the shades to the store windows.

Roger lifts my skirt and opens my blouse, playing with me and showing me off to the storekeeper, who suggests we go upstairs. In a room upstairs, we find an enormous Newfoundland dog, and both men lay me back on the table and let the dog lick my naked mound, burrowing his big nose in as deep as he can. While the dog is doing this, Roger begins to do me anally. The mixture of pleasure and pain is so great I cry out noisily, which excites Roger even more and makes him go at it even more fiercely.

Quite suddenly, the Oriental pushes both the dog and Roger away from me and, taking his clothes off quickly, begins to make love to me. Roger becomes very angry and would interfere, but the storekeeper speaks in Chinese to the dog, who turns to Roger and keeps him at bay. Roger becomes furious as he helplessly watches me responding to the shopkeeper with my whole being, and not grudgingly as I did to him. I take great joy in fellating this gentle man and let him have anal intercourse, which in this case doesn't hurt as it usually does. I am aching with desire by the time he switches to plain, straight intercourse. During all this, my lover turns to Roger and says that if he (Roger) bothers or threatens me anymore, he'll suffer for it. Roger, coward that he is, believes it and slinks from the room with the growling dog at his heels. And it is this man's lovemaking and not Roger's cold-hearted fucking that swiftly brings me to one intolerably delicious orgasm on the heels of another.

And there's the basic form of one of my favorite fantasies, with true lust triumphant and the villain foiled again.

Again, with gratitude and wishes of success.

* * *

I believe sex is all pervasive in the human mind and body. While we are buying groceries, we notice how handsome the clerk in the supermarket may be; women write to me of sexual fantasies they have had about their dentist while he was drilling their teeth. But we need a focus, a concrete symbol, picture, or book to make us aware and comfortable about our free-flowing sexuality." Since I read your book, and also while reading it," writes Sally, "I began to think about my own fantasies. I always had these thoughts, since I was around twelve, but never told anyone...."

Marylou tells us that she herself denied ever having sexual fantasies until she read Garden. "No," she told her friends when the subject came up; she never had fantasies. "I just think about my lover." But little flashbacks were registering in her head, she says, even while she denied that erotic images danced in her imagination. "When I read [My Secret Garden], it dawned on me just like it did on Paula in the book — oh, 'a fantasy is something that makes you feel good.' In fact, most every scene in the book has run through my fantasies but with a different script."

Marylou is an illustration of the fact that we all know more than we consciously want to know. A great deal of sexual imagery, daydreaming, reveries, and fantasy are suspended somewhere in the back of our mind. It is all like some data bank, where specific bits of information can be quickly brought forward into consciousness when the right lever is pushed, and then so quickly wheeled back after use that it is difficult to remember the thought was ever there to begin with. In this way, we live with our mental fires banked, our sexuality turned down low. Perhaps this is necessary to get through the ordinary business of the ordinary day, a necessary sacrifice of our erotic selves on the altar of an industrial society. Still — aren't these days half-unlived? I believe any stimulation is a positive good; anything that makes us feel more alive is an absolute benefit. If an occasional glance at a photo in a magazine, an image on the television screen or a page in a book makes us feel more intensely, isn't that life itself?

* * *

Sally

At a suggestion from my sister, I have just finished reading your book. I truly thought it was fantastic. I just couldn't put it down.

First, let me tell you about myself. I am nineteen, just married last December, and I love sex. My husband is twenty-four and very healthy.

Since I read your book, and also while I was reading it, I began to think about my own fantasies. I always had these thoughts, since I was around twelve, but never told anyone or acted them out. I guess I never really thought about them until I read that other women had the same sort of thoughts.

My husband says the kind of sex we have now is fine for him, and he won't discuss his fantasies. I would like to discuss mine and several of the others I read about in your book — just talk about them, that's all — but he doesn't seem to get into it.

I don't masturbate, but often think about it. Perhaps if I read a really good book on masturbation, or someone discussed it openly with me, I would try it. When I think of another woman fingering me and eating me, it excites me intensely. It has never happened, but it sure sounds good. I also think about big masculine men, like the kind you see in Playgirl and Viva; I like to think of them stepping right out of the pages, forcefully tearing my clothes off and tying me, spread-eagle, arms apart, to the bedposts. As I look at those photos, I imagine him teasing me, fingering me to get me going, and then teasing me with just the head of his cock. I don't know where I get these ideas, as these are not things my husband does to me — I mean, teasing me with his cock. I am sure I have read about it somewhere. In my fantasy, this man from the pages of Playgirl then lick my tits and belly button until I plead with him to fuck me, and at last he does. I don't think of these things when my husband and I are making love, or doing sixty-nine, but when I am alone reading porno books, then it really turns me on. I can really throw myself into the pages of a good book. It sets my imagination going and allows me to imagine myself involved in a sexual world I am sure I will never know. All the men and women in my fantasies are faceless. They are always strangers. And even I am not recognizable; the things I allow myself to do are so unlike me. But how I would love to enjoy the thrills of the things I have read and seen on the printed page!

It's great to read how other women think, and it's stupid of me to think we aren't entitled to all the sexual excitement we can feel in our imaginations. The men that think we aren't capable of this kind of excitement must know some pretty dumb chicks.

Thanks so much.

* * *

Marylou

I just finished your book and I wanted to tell you that I enjoyed it, and it helped me out.

My girl friend brought the book to me at a picnic. The women who were there — average mid-twenties, early thirties, public schoolteachers like myself — denied having fantasies. I denied it too — "No, I just think about my lover — I've never had fantasies," but little flashbacks were registering in my head that I just couldn't put my finger on. When I read My Secret Garden, it dawned on me just like it did on Paula in the book — oh, "a fantasy is something that makes you feel good." In fact, most every scene in the book has run through my fantasies but with a different script. It amused me to even read in the Quickie section that two different women get their kicks from Tarzan. He was my earliest fantasy man. Every time I read Tarzan comics, I'd get a tingle; then I'd make up my own stories before I fell asleep at night. I guess I was about twelve. I later changed to some fantasy boys — Spin and Marty. I suppose because I could then be included in the story. I daydreamed a lot at school too, but I can't remember if they were sexual types of things. I would imagine, because this pattern continued — nighttime stories and daydreaming — until I got married. I remember riding the bus to work, in my early twenties, fantasizing. My scripts were not very spicy, I don't believe. They were repressed, and I was sexually frustrated. I had engaged in every form of foreplay with boyfriends since I was fifteen, but didn't actually have intercourse till I was twenty-three. It all made me feel guilty, but the fantasies didn't.

I thought my fantasies stopped when I got married seven years ago, until I read your book. But I have them more than ever. For almost three years, I've had a real lover, and he is my fantasy husband. When I go to parties at his house, I always feel and act as the hostess. And when I go home with my real husband, I go to bed with my fantasy husband. When he dances with his wife at these parties, we, look at each other in the mirror over the bar, and we are really in each other's arms. He is a great fantasizer himself. On our once-a-week sessions in bed together, my lover and I sometimes fantasize together. Sometimes our motel room has two double beds in it, and we talk about the other couple making love in the other bed. Sometimes we pretend we're making a porno film. I really don't know why I said I don't have sexual fantasies.

When I masturbate, I sometimes dress in sexy clothes and watch myself in the mirror. Sometimes I use different garden vegetables. I go outside and pick a nicely proportioned zuccini squash.

I'm going to make more use of my fantasies now, instead of repressing them. It seems to me that without fantasies sex is mechanical and less fun. My husband and I rarely make love since I've started my affair. I don't want to leave him. We have a lot in common, but we can't talk like my lover and I do. I think it's unrealistic to expect one man to be Mr. Right. It takes many people to fulfill one person's needs. That sounds so exploitive. I like to think of myself as fulfilling my own needs, but I need love, someone to understand, and I need money so I can have my beautiful house in the country and my stable of horses. I'd have to live in an apartment on my teaching salary.

Best wishes on writing your new book. I'm sorry I couldn't write specific details of fantasies. They are too repressed at this point, and besides I am an artist. Words have never been my thing.

My lover should be calling soon. We have a great adventure ahead with my new viewpoint on fantasies.

Copyright © 1975 by Nancy Friday

About the Author

Nancy Friday is the bestselling author of My Secret Garden, Jealousy, Men in Love, My Mother/My Self, Women on Top, The Power of Beauty and, most recently, Our Looks, Our Lives. She lives in Key West, Florida, and in Connecticut.