Chapter Seven
Marcus
“You’re so arrogant,” Wren snaps through her tears. “You can’t just snap your fingers and expect me to marry you. Or to have sex with you. Or to love you.” She glares at me.
I stay calm. “I like to think I’m confident, not arrogant. And you’re right. I can’t make you do anything. In fact, I don’t want to make you do anything. I’m hoping all those things will happen voluntarily.”
She wipes beneath her eyes. I’m not sure what she’s most upset about—the memory of her breakups, or the thought of being married to me.
“Babe,” I say, puzzled. “Tell me why you think you’re bad in bed.”
“I’m just a primary school teacher.”
“Okay. Well, as far as I know, even primary school teachers can have good sex.”
“Don’t make fun of me. I mean that I’m just… me. An ordinary woman.”
“Again, ordinary women can enjoy sex, too. I don’t understand why you think they can’t? Why do you think you’re no good at it?”
“Because I’ve been told.”
“What!” It’s my turn to glare. “Who told you that?”
“Mars, nobody had to tell me. They all cheated on me. What more proof do you need?”
“They cheated on you because they were a bunch of wankers who wouldn’t have known a good thing if it had jumped up and down in front of them waving a sign saying ‘Look at me, I’m a good thing’ with a big red arrow above it.”
She gives an involuntary snort. “Don’t make me laugh. I’m too upset.”
“Their loss,” I say. “My gain.”
She wipes beneath her eyes again and sends me a sad look. “Please, don’t.” Her bottom lip trembles.
She’s genuinely upset. And I’m genuinely angry, although I’d never let on.
Men often joke about women being ‘pillow princesses’ and ‘starfish’ because they’re not as active as they want them to be in bed.
But in my experience, and I’ve had a fair bit, if girls are reticent it’s usually because they’re nervous or inexperienced.
Both of these things can be remedied with a bit of patience, tons of foreplay, and some TLC.
The sea washes up the sand and retreats with a gentle whoosh.
Seagulls swoop and cry overhead. Somebody’s eating strawberries with their picnic, and the air smells sweet and salty.
Music filters up from someone’s phone—Taylor Swift’s Love Story—and despite Wren’s obvious emotion, she still hums a couple of lines. It makes me smile.
I want to pull her into my arms and tell her everything’s going to be all right. But while she sniffles and snuffles, I make myself sit still and give her some space.
“Okay, talk to me,” I say when she’s calmed down a little. “Come on, we’ve known each other a long time.”
She pulls her legs up, wraps her arms around them, and rests her cheek on her knees. Then she sighs. “I don’t want you to be disappointed with me.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. Of course you will, when I tell you.”
“Well, there’s no point in us getting married with secrets. So come on, tell me what the problem is.”
“I don’t like sex,” she says.
“Okay.”
She rubs her nose. “Why aren’t you running away at a million miles an hour?”
“Because I’m interested in learning more. Why don’t you like sex? Is it painful?”
“No…”
“Do you get… embarrassed?”
“Not really. It’s just… a mystery.”
“In what way? Do you understand what happens?”
She gives me a wry look. “Yes, Mars. I understand the physics of it. I know that Tab A goes into Slot B. I even understand it goes into other slots at times. That’s not the issue.
I just don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
It’s nice, and intimate, and I enjoy being close to my partner.
But there are all these… expectations surrounding it. ”
“You mean about what you expect? Or what the guy expects?”
“What the guy expects.”
“Regarding… experience?”
“No.”
“So you don’t mean, like, techniques? Positions, that kind of thing?”
“No.”
I try to read between the lines. “Are you talking about orgasms?”
She shrugs.
I lift my feet onto the rock below and rest my elbows on my knees. Now we’re getting somewhere.
“They want you to come?” I ask. “And you don’t?”
Another shrug.
“Okay. Have you ever had an orgasm?”
“Um… I’m not sure.”
Oh, God, Wren. You poor girl.
“It takes such a long time,” she admits. “That’s the problem.”
Ahhh… I think I’m beginning to understand.
“It takes most women longer than most men,” I tell her. “That’s not uncommon at all.”
She just frowns.
“Have you spoken to a doctor about it?” I ask.
“No. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
“I’m ninety-nine percent sure there isn’t. I am, however, ninety-nine percent sure your boyfriends were idiots.”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay, let’s break this down a bit. Do you have any medical issues?”
“No.”
“Do you take antidepressants?”
“No.”
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me? Anything to do with your childhood, for example?”
“Do you mean was I sexually assaulted or something? No, nothing like that, either as a child or an adult.”
Relief washes over me. That means it’s less likely to be a deep-rooted psychological issue. “So your partners have tried to make you come, but have been unsuccessful?”
She nods, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her spine is stiff. “It’s just… embarrassing. I lie there staring at the ceiling, trying not to wince, and after a while I get anxious because it hasn’t happened, and I tense up, and then I know it’s not going to happen.”
The ‘trying not to wince’ tells me more than everything else put together. No doubt they’ve seen it on porn videos and were too heavy handed. Some girls need a light touch.
I tip my head to the side. “What about when you’re alone? Can you make yourself come?”
She blushes. “Jeez, Mars…”
“It’s a natural thing, honey. You didn’t masturbate as a girl?”
“No, I shared a bedroom with Clare.”
“And you don’t do it now you live alone?”
She shakes her head.
“So when you didn’t come with your partners, did they get frustrated? Angry even?”
She looks down. Then eventually, she nods.
I grit my teeth and do my best to hide my fury. “Then they were doing it wrong,” I say quietly. “Sex isn’t something you perform for a man. It’s something you’re supposed to enjoy.”
I can see her confusion. She genuinely hadn’t thought about it like that before.
I stifle a sigh. “One more important question, honey. When you had sex with your previous partners… did they expect you to come from penetration alone?”
She blinks. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, did they stimulate you in other ways? Take time to arouse you before they penetrated you?”
She blinks again and looks ever-so-slightly puzzled.
“Foreplay,” I summarize. “Did you have plenty of foreplay?”
“Like, kissing?” She shrugs. “I guess.”
Oh, good Lord.
I sigh. “Did your mother never talk to you about sex when you were young?”
“God no.”
“Ever talk to your girlfriends about sex?”
“No!” She looks horrified.
“Have you ever watched any porn?”
“No.”
“Used a vibrator?”
Her eyes widen. “No.”
I bet her situation is more common than most people realize.
A mother who brings her girls up to believe sex is a taboo subject is already making it hard for them to have pleasure in bed.
Orgasms can only happen when the individual is relaxed and able to let go.
And I know that the percentage of women who’ve never had an orgasm, or only come infrequently, is alarmingly high.
If you’re told it’s sinful to touch yourself, or you’re discouraged from learning how to pleasure yourself, it’s always going to be a problem.
“Would you like to come with a man?” I ask.
She studies my face. She looks embarrassed, but also curious. “I don’t know that I’d ever be able to relax enough to do it,” she admits.
“What about if there were no time limits? If the guy had no expectations? If he was prepared to kiss you, make out with you, touch you, arouse you, for as long as you needed, without getting frustrated? Would that help?”
She snorts. “I suppose you think you’re an expert.”
“No, not at all, but equally I like to think I don’t expect a girl to come after two minutes of penetration. It doesn’t work like that.”
She glowers.
“Do you like oral sex?” I ask.
Wren goes scarlet.
This time, I’m speechless for a full thirty seconds. Eventually I say, “Please, please don’t tell me a guy has never gone down on you.”
“You talk as if it’s a normal thing.”
“Oh. My. God. Wren!”
“What?”
“I just… I have no words.”
Her lips slowly curve up. “You are rather cute when you’re indignant.”
“I don’t believe it. I honestly do not believe you’ve got to the age of thirty-three and you’ve never had a guy give you head.
” Actually, I do believe it because I’ve read threads on Reddit to that end, and it makes me sad and furious at the same time.
“I mean… you lived with Cory for, what? Three years?”
“Three and a half.”
“And he never offered?”
“No. He said he’d heard it could give a guy throat cancer, so he didn’t want to do it.”
“Jesus. I mean, you can get throat cancer from HPV, but that’s rare. And your other partners wouldn’t do it, either? Why?”
“I don’t know. I assumed guys don’t enjoy it.”
“Fuuuuuuck.”
The two of us stare at each other for a long time. Eventually she says, “You mean, you do enjoy it?”
“Yes, Wren. If we had sex, I would happily go down on you.”
Her jaw drops.
“I’m relatively confident I could give you regular orgasms,” I tell her. “In fact, I’d lay money on it.”
“You’re incredibly sure of yourself.” I can see that she’s half-exasperated, half-intrigued. “You see me as a puzzle you need to solve. A sexual Sudoku, that’s all.”
“You can think whatever you like. But is it beyond the realms of possibility that I might genuinely want to make you happy?”
Her gaze lingers on mine, so hesitant, and yet filled with longing.