“Oh yeah, I have to turn the rest of my clitoris on.”
That’s the thought I had right before my most intense, self-induced orgasm in memory. I focused inward, behind the lips of my vulva, and consciously connected the pleasure receiver in my brain to the long legs of my clitoris, called the corpus cavernosum, and deeper, to the vestibular bulbs, which surround my vaginal opening. I shivered as I recognized pleasure messages from my whole clitoris at once, and pressure started building. Once I tuned in to the right body parts, I could tell I was already quite swollen. As I felt electricity tumbling into my clitoral organ, the sensations spiraled up, each moment heightened by the last in a positive feedback loop. I eased into my release, an empowering moment for me as I gently reassured myself that it was OK to feel so good.
Intense orgasms have not always come so easily for me.
A few weeks ago, before sex, I had some high-CBD cannabis (14% CBD, 6% THC) through my vaporizer. I spent a few stony minutes lazily, nakedly musing, waiting for Beard Man to get back from the bathroom. I visualized the full shape of the clit, and focused on feeling it within my body. Zing! It was like electricity sparkled through the clitoral legs and vestibular bulbs. Not an orgasm, but an energetic flow, a crackle of firework tentacles curling through my soft tissues. Something had ignited. My orgasm tangibly emanated from from my full clitoris that night, and not just the little bud, or glans. For a deeper understanding of the whole clitoris, check out this post.
Why couldn’t I feel my full clitoris before? For one thing, I was ignorant of its existence. “Vagina” was used frequently in my childhood home, and while I am grateful my parents avoided euphemisms and pet names for genitalia, “clitoris” and its pleasurable possibilities were a talking taboo. At the age of eight, my mother told us we’d have a new sibling, baby number four. Dad had always said we kids were “Eeny, Meeny, Miny, and no Mo’!” Get it? So when we found out about “Moe” I was confused. “I thought you were just going to have three kids,” I told my mom at bedtime one night. She told me the new baby had been an accident. “An accident? What do you mean, did Dad roll over on you in the middle of the night, in his sleep?” I understood the mechanics, kind of. Mom explained that people had sex because they are married, and married people like to do that. Sex wasn’t just for making babies.
Ohhh.
Secondly, my body was not mine to touch, anyway. It was for my future husband. My parents’ prohibition on body self-exploration stifled my burgeoning sexuality in ways I’m not sure they could have understood, unless that was the intended effect. I touched myself in shame through my pre-teen years, discovering varied sensations and eventually had an orgasm from the glans of my clitoris. That was as far as my hidden shame would let me go – rub hard, fast, and surreptitiously, to come with a quick burst that hopefully even God wouldn’t notice.
Fast forward to early marriage. Beard Man and I were married in our evangelical church, where we served with deep dedication and conviction. We’d gone through premarital counseling at church and read Christian books with sex tips like: female orgasm is not required, and women are often satisfied with the sensation of fullness. So when we had sex on our wedding night, I was fully prepared to expect…nothing. Beard Man was always savvy enough to rub my clitoris glans, but when tiny pinches twinged deeper within me, I subconsciously had to choose whether I would accept what my body could do. Wading through a quicksand of social morays and conditioned fears, I believe I shut off the possibility of more pleasure because my internal conflict was too great.
A few years past our awakening out of religion, Beard Man and I had let go of most of the trappings of that life, but I still carried the shame. Things changed when I brought cannabis to our bedroom. While high, I can remove the mental filters that separate me from my body, and consciously experience orgasms from my whole clitoris, the G-spot, the A-spot, and my cervix, provided I remember to turn them on and connect.
Still a bit breathless, I explained to Beard Man that I’d felt a new sensation, a rhythmic pulsing, almost orgasmic, but way up high, by my cervix. What was this dark sexual magic? I’ve long been acquainted with my clitoris, and more recently the G-spot and the A-spot, but what in the ME was this? In our post-coital stony conversation I described it this way:
Before I accepted cannabis into my bedroom, my sex life was dependably orgasmic, but nothing that would inspire an entire blog post. I remember those nights a little bit like this: Sitting cross-legged on my squashy kid-snack sofa, my eyelids drooped a bit as I glanced at the time. Harry Potter whizzed over the Quidditch field across the room, and political news droned in my left earbud. It was Saturday night, so when the kids were finally asleep, we turned the TV off. With any luck, we’d get a quick romp before we were both too tired.