Don’t Slap My Pussy
The first slap was a quick sharp bop. Like those assholes who bop their dog on the snout. The kind of swat you’d expect with a disciplinary “NO!”
Getting naked with a new man was not my Tuesday-night plan that evening. But he was interesting. I liked talking with him. The night before we’d stayed up drinking and talking until 3 am. He held my hand at the dining room table. The closer we got the closer I wanted to be.
After dinner, he assured me that he didn’t want me to drive back to the city so late. That I could spend the night with no pressure for anything sexual. So I wore a comfortable old t-shirt of his and we curled up to watch TV in his bed. He seemed too young to have matching nightstands, a full bedroom set. He was a tidy bachelor. That made me smile. He offered me wine but obliged without hesitating when I asked for water instead. I sat behind him and rubbed his back, his dark flawless skin, stroked his long black hair. It curled at the ends, big soft corkscrew curls I twirled around my fingers. It was nice. I hadn’t shaved, having not planned on nudity, but he reassured me with a calm and casual tone that it was fine. He put me at ease. My jeans came off first.
He asked me what makes me come. He seemed like he genuinely wanted to know.
Eventually my panties came off too.
Damn, girl. I heard his seashell voice low and deep in my ear as he slipped his fingers inside me.
You make me wet, I moaned back.
He went in and out of me — deep, like he knew exactly what my body needed, how my body needed it. I completely relaxed into it and rode this unexpected wave of perfect slowly building intensity.
But before I realized he had stopped exactly I felt a sudden thwap, some kind of sharp smack I’d never felt before.
I couldn’t believe it but my mind started to register that he had pulled that strong beautiful hand of his out, I have absolutely no idea why, and slapped my pussy with it. I was in shock.
It sounded like he had slapped my face or a table. It surprised me more than I think it actually hurt. But it damn sure didn’t feel good. I yelped but was too stunned to actually ask in words, What the fuck was that?!
He had undoubtedly seen it in porn and, porn conditioning viewers to get off on gruesome falsehoods, fabricating female pleasure out of pain the way it too often does, perhaps he mistook that yelp for pleasure. It was not. It was pain that stung with an echo of consternation. Perhaps it turned him on.
He slapped it again.
“WHOA! NO.” Two syllables burst out of my mouth this time and I jumped back a little. I sat up against the headboard and sputtered something along the lines of, Yeah, I’m not into that.
One of the many problems in acting out porn scenes without letting your partner know that’s what you’re doing, without asking if that turns them on too, is that you are making unilateral decisions.
This gentlemen and I had only discussed whether or not to order chips and salsa with our dinner, (I insisted on separate tabs), and which comedians to watch on Netflix. He asked me to choose which t-shirt I wanted to wear, didn’t he think I’d want to decide whether I got smacked in the fucking genitals? Every man who’s ever smacked my ass asked first. Sometimes I’ve asked for it myself. One man said no. But it was always discussed. This affront? Unbelievable.
This nice guy slapped my pussy without so much as a word. I felt gross. And degraded. And I didn’t want to be turned off. I didn’t want the fun to stop. Yet suddenly there I was with my legs spread open in a new man’s bed feeling demoralized and degraded instead of excited. He broke the spell.
Besides this breach of etiquette and consent, he was gentlemanly. Kind even. I felt safe and comfortable.
But the porn slap was unacceptable, reductive. And rather than yell at him and storm out at whatever deep blue hour of the morning it was I tried to maintain my own arousal.
It didn’t have to be like that.
Gentlemen. Ladies too. Ask first. Never assume that your partner or any person you’re with is into every single thing that you are.
And if you can’t find a way to incorporate exploration AND consent into your conversations, your foreplay, and ongoing consent during sex itself — you’re not ready to be intimate.