In every other relationship Dan had been in, however, there had been a consistent factor, among others. Dan found that every woman he had ever loved was at least capable of having an orgasm. Even if in some cases this could be quite challenging to achieve, Dan had always found that eventually he was always able to make every woman cum. With some women that meant a fairly exhausting, 30-minute cunnilingus session, whereas with other women, just touching them in the right place seemed to provoke explosive orgasmic reactions. Most women were somewhere in between, Dan found.
Eventually, Dan resorted to verbal communication.
“What makes you have an orgasm?” he asked her one night, while he was on top of her, casually moving in and out of her wet pussy, with her legs open to each side, knees up slightly, just where Dan had placed them.
“I don’t know,” came Mona’s unexpected reply.
“No one has ever made you have an orgasm?” Dan asked, somewhat incredulously.
“No,” she replied.
“How do you make yourself cum?” he asked.
“I don’t,” came her reply.
Dan wasn’t sure if she meant she just rarely masturbates, or that she had actually never masturbated in her life.
“You’ve never even tried to make yourself cum?” he asked.
“I never really think about it. I’ve never had an orgasm,” she said, without seeming to feel devastated by the notion.
Dan knew that lots of people were uncomfortable with talking about masturbation. He knew that some people liked to pretend they never did such things, because of course it has been and still is taboo in many circles — to do, to discuss, etc. But having achieved this level of intimacy with someone, Dan thought it seemed unlikely Mona was being disingenuous.
He had on several occasions been responsible for providing young women with the first clitoral orgasm they had ever had that wasn’t self-induced. On many other occasions, Dan had succeeded in introducing young women to their capacity to have vaginal orgasms, who only knew themselves to be capable of having clitoral ones. But he had never been lovers with someone who had never had an orgasm, even from touching themselves.
And here they were, him on top of her, moving in and out of her inviting pussy, feeling the smooth surfaces of her hairless labia, looking at her gentle smile beneath him.
Dan had once been lovers with a woman who couldn’t cum from him eating her or fingering her, and also didn’t cum from the vast majority of sexual positions. But if he fucked her hard for an extended period, with her legs up in the air, as fast and deep as he was capable of, she would eventually cum this way — and only this way. She of course praised Dan’s sexual prowess to no end, as a result of their mutual discovery.
This aggressive approach was a bit of a last resort on Dan’s part. It just seemed so unlikely. But with no opposition from Mona whatsoever, he moved her into the completely prone position he wanted her in, and proceeded to thrust into her with such force that he had to pause to adjust pillows around her head, so she wouldn’t hit it against the wall every two seconds.
As always, no matter how hard Dan thrust inside her, regardless of which angles, there was not only no hint of an orgasm anywhere, but also no change in Mona’s contented expression.
Dan had found that there were women whose bodies seemed to be designed in such a way that they were just completely compatible with his, and regardless of what he did with them in bed, it all felt good. For the vast majority of women Dan had been lovers with, however, there were some angles that felt better than others, some that felt downright painful and others that induced screaming orgasms, and so on. With Mona, he wondered if it was just that everything felt good, as she always said, or if there was anything else going on that he couldn’t perceive. If so, he couldn’t perceive it.
Eventually, Dan collapsed in a pool of his own sweat, which he had already drenched Mona and her bed with. The next morning, Mona had an extra load of laundry to wash, and this seemed to make her just a little bit happier that day, though it could have been something else.
* * *
Dan was enjoying sex with Mona immensely, and the phenomenon of sex with Mona also making him think.
When he did discover what made one of his lovers have an orgasm, or what positions made her feel really good, and which ones maybe hurt a bit, Dan enjoyed playing with all of that in the course of love-making sessions.
To use the water-kettle analogy popular among the Taoist-oriented books about sexuality he read as a teenager, he liked to play with bringing the pot of water to boil slowly — and keeping it from boiling until he wanted to make it boil, too.
But Mona never came to a boil, in any sense. She was a shy person when Dan met her, and she continued to be. A reserved woman who never lost her cool, either out in the world, or in bed with Dan.
Unable to bring Mona to a boil, unable to either make her have an orgasm, or even make her wish for one, unable to find a sexual position that she liked more or less than any of the other sexual positions he put her in, Dan gradually stopped trying.
Dan stopped trying to turn her on, to make her cum, to make her want to beg for more, or any of the things he was accustomed to doing.
He realized he felt conflicted about it, but most of the time, he enjoyed putting women in a position where they wanted something enough to ask for it. He enjoyed teasing them with his tongue until they begged him to go faster and make them cum. With others, he enjoyed fucking them gently, until they beg for him to fuck them hard and make them cum. Or he enjoyed fucking them in a position in which they couldn’t cum, or a position that might hurt a bit, until they requested a change in position, or until they indicated through a wince or a whimper that he was going at it too hard.
He enjoyed all of those games, but he was never sure how they should go, what the rules should be, how much he should make a woman beg before what was joyful could turn into something more dark, potentially. How much a little pain could be a turn-on, before it became a real turn-off, potentially. He loved pushing envelopes and playing with that water kettle, but loathed the idea of crossing lines and really hurting someone. Wherever he went, though, if it was naked in bed with a woman, it seemed to Dan, those lines were always there to contend with.
But now they were all gone, it seemed, no matter where he looked for them to be. When he began to realize this, at first he worried he might become bored. Maybe, he thought, he needed all of this sexual drama in order to be turned on. But those worries didn’t last long. Instead, he found Mona’s mysterious mix of total dedication mixed with this kind of asexuality completely intoxicating.
“What would you like?”
Dan grew fond of asking this question, knowing that the answer was always going to be the same.
“Whatever you’d like.”
When Dan requested Mona eat him, she would rise off the bed and quickly move towards his penis, always ready to fulfill this request on a moment’s notice. This was the only initiative Mona would really take in bed, and Dan found this worked fine for him.