Touch Me, Feel Me, Spank Me

For some time now, we've been hearing about women's sexual fantasies. In several recently published books, women have admitted what they dream about. Now they're beginning to own up to what they're doing about those dreams. In "The Secret Fire: A New View of Women and Passion," to be published this month by Playboy Press, Rosemarie Santini adds yet another dimension to our understanding of female eroticism. The author interviewed hundreds of women from all walks of life--the arts, the professions, homemaking, prostitution--on the subject of what they want from life and love and how they're going about getting it. The candor of their answers is astonishing. Here we present a handful of Santini's "Secret Fire" sexual case histories of a variety of women, from dedicated S/M practitioners to a motorcycle-gang member's "old lady."

Nanci

Her Boston apartment is a mess; memorabilia of her father's career--he was a well-known playwright--cover the walls. Tiny and 20, looking like a French sex kitten, she is dressed in unchic hotpants with black-lace tights underneath and sequined, ankle-strap platforms. Her long, reddish locks are casual and she speaks softly of her favorite kind of sex--sadomasochism--which for her is as much whipping as she can possibly handle without fainting.

"I get turned on by pain. My former husband used to spank me, and when he saw I liked it, we started to play S/M with bondage. He used to spread-eagle me and tie me to the furniture. Then we got scared, because the S/M play got heavier and heavier.

"I'm amazed at how much pain I can take," Nanci whispers. "Even the next day, there's an afterglow from the bruises on my body." She unwraps her blouse and reveals her purple, bruised shoulders and the marks of the lash on her back.

How does pain become pleasure?

"I don't know how to explain it. There's a lot of sex talk, suggesting things. Once it starts, I feel very calm and a very rosy, warm feeling envelops me. I let the person know what I like and that I can take more. Then I start having spontaneous orgasms from whipping, even without having intercourse. I lose consciousness after I've been whipped for a while. I actually faint with orgasm.

"My ex-husband liked me to wear garter belts and stockings and a corset of leather. The whippings got harder and harder and he began to draw blood with the riding crop. When it started to take more and more pain to reach the same level of pleasures and we began talking about piercing my labia with a ring, I called a halt. I didn't want any permanent mutilation."

Occasionally, Nanci plays the dominant partner. "Recently, I took on the S role. I put this guy in bondage so he couldn't get loose and I used clothespins on his nipples. Then I began whipping him and drew blood. I got hysterical then. It's much harder to act out the dominant role, because I'm afraid of losing control."

Doris

Doris is a shy, voluptuous Southern woman in beads and denims.

"I've been married to Harold since I was 19," she begins, her eyes glowing. "That was six years ago. This year, I met a madam at a party and really got turned on to her. I started working for her during the day while Harold took care of the children. I loved it. The madam and I were about the same size, and when I'd arrive in my jeans, she'd take me to the closet and let me pick out anything to wear. But the job didn't last long, because the madam told me I took too long when I gave a guy a blow job," she giggles. "Most of those guys never had a blow job like that, because nobody had ever taken the time to play with their cocks. Also, one of the guys I last blew was a policeman," she confides, "and that really freaked me out."

How did her husband feel about her working as a prostitute?

"Well, when I got home, I was always very horny and I would throw the money all over the bed and say to Harold, 'Well, look at this!' And he'd be there with a grin on his face, and then we'd ball and ball. That's how I got the idea of going into business for myself.

"Working with customers can be very satisfying sexually, but it leaves me at a peak. I go home really turned on and really wanting to fuck Harold. He likes to hear what I've been doing. I turn him on. Last week was great! In one day, I fucked seven times, four of those times with my husband and the other three with customers.

"I masturbate a lot, too, especially before I go to sleep. I never used to masturbate in front of Harold or my customers, but I do now. It turns some of them on. I don't have orgasms with penetration ... never have. My orgasms are from finger-fucking."

Doris then explains her favorite kind of finger-fucking. "A gynecologist showed me a way men can do it to me. The man puts his fingers in behind the clitoris and he spreads them out. You can't do it to yourself. Anyway, the man opens his fingers and rubs really fast inside the vagina, pressing up against the pubic bone. There are two little bulbs that come down on either side of the small lips from the clitoris, and he can only get to them from the inside. Oh, that's a fantastic orgasm. That's what I consider my vaginal orgasm. I always dream that I'm going to find a certain-size penis that can fit into that place. I'm married to a guy with a big cock and I get off better with a guy with a smaller cock."

Patricia

At 40, Patricia is a well-proportioned brunette who lives in a luxurious apartment in Baltimore. She swings back and forth on an old rocker in an antique-filled parlor. "When I see a Nazi film, I really get excited," Patricia explains, picking at her low T-shirt, which reveals her full breasts. "That's because, as an American diplomat's daughter, I grew up in Paris and was very susceptible to those gorgeous six-foot, blue-eyed blonds when they took over the city. Wow! They were really impressive!"

A mattress lies near a window alcove. "That's for sex," she explains. "It's a foam-rubber mat about five inches thick. I've covered it with heavy cotton. It's good for sex, because it's harder than a mattress. It doesn't give. Beds are usually too mushy. Also, I hate to redo my bed every time I have sex. So I just throw a towel over this and it's whoopee!

"I've got five or six regular boyfriends who come up and have lunch, dinner, drinks or to go to a concert. I don't date men who come here just for sex.

"I sun-bathe on the terrace, topless. Yesterday, there was somebody waving to me from the roof of the next building. I waved back. He signaled about having a drink. We met downstairs, he turned out to be quite charming and we made love that evening.

"When I'm waiting for a traffic light to change, I'll stand there and often there's a man crossing from the opposite side of the street. I'll look straight into his eyes as he's approaching me and I'll smile. Then I'll say good morning. It's really a great opener."

Is she bisexual?

"Sex with women is an appetizer," she replies. "Men are entrees. I like the meat and potatoes of a man. I'm really a liberated person, the most liberated person on this globe. But I do have one rule: I only fuck married men who commute, so I don't have to meet their wives.

Vicki

Vicki, pretty, vivacious and blonde, is seated on a sofa in a green-satin robe that opens as she moves to reveal her breasts, and then again to reveal her contrasting dark pubic hair.

"I like my boyfriend to put shackles on me and use a leather paddle. I have to say thank you after I get stroked. If I forget to say thank you, I keep on getting hit until I do. Then I may have to kiss the paddle or his hand and call him master and show my respect and devotion. While I'm being stroked, he also sexually excites me. He kisses me and fondles me. He plays with my vagina to see if I am getting wet. The more he plays with me, the more excited I get. I can take a large dose of being hit; it doesn't hurt. I like being blindfolded and not knowing where the stroke is coming from. Then I get receptive and very, very sexy. Then I begin worshiping him because he's controlling me.

"It all makes me feel very feminine and protected, like a little girl but still a woman. I have a very strong character and I want to be forced to give that up."

Vicki is a sales manager for a magazine, earning $20,000 a year at the age of 29. As she waits for a husband, she is leading what she calls a decadent and promiscuous life. One night recently, she went to a party wearing her bondage jewelry. One young man came up to her and asked her to go out onto the landing. He took her up near the roof, pushed her flat onto the floor and attacked her. "At first, I resisted and he slapped my face hard. Then he raped me right there. He pulled my pants off and started fucking me hard. I came and came. Then we left the party with a friend of his and went to my house. First, he fucked me again and again, then he gave me to his friend. They tied my hands up and I was pretty excited. Then he told his friend, 'Slap her around a little, she likes it.' He was right, I really loved it.

"Last night, he called me and I was very, very horny. He said he couldn't come over and I told him to send another friend. It was great, a stranger coming into my house and fucking me. I really got off.

"Another thing I love about being submissive is that you're definitely not being ignored. If somebody's going through all this work to tie me up and paddle me and make love to me, obviously, he must care a lot. When I was a child, I got a lot of attention by having temper tantrums, getting into trouble. I used that as a manipulative force."

Jennifer

Jennifer and Tommy lead a very private life, although both are part of Hollywood's film world and Tommy is famous. "We've been all over the world. In Paris, I bought special underwear, a G string and a white marabou boa. I love to tease Tommy. I wear a simple dress and when we're alone in an elevator, I pull my skirt up and say, 'Look what I have to show you!'

"I fantasize a lot. I fantasize on the subway, in taxicabs, even in the middle of conversations. People know something unusual is happening, because I can see from their expressions that they're getting turned on. I have a lot of fantasies. One is about an older Italian man, like a Godfather. He's in good physical shape and treats me like a little girl. I really love it. I sit on his lap, and kissing him is so incredible I get very excited. I come just from kissing. For some reason, in the fantasy, we have to wait until the next day to make love, so we have this entire day and night of intense excitement. And the next day, we make love and it's wonderful. I have this other fantasy about sleeping with two or three men at the same time. One is fucking me in the ass and I'm sucking the other off. That's one of my favorites. I don't tell Tommy about my fantasies, because he's very jealous."

Natasha

Her sculptor's studio in San Francisco, with its coal-black walls and ornate art-deco chandeliers, is a fantasy world: Its sensuous, imaginative creator is Natasha, a Polish Catholic from the Bronx who traded her sturdy black pigtails for a multicolored Afro, her blue-and-white, Catholic school uniform for a ruby-red silken robe embroidered in gold.

"My sexuality is the same energy I paint with, that I make sculptures with, that I write poetry with, that I fuck with. It comes from the same place. But I'm too much for one man," she says sadly, touching a wild sculpture of a piratelike male figure with a huge penis ornately decorated in gold leaf. "In fact, I'll never forget one night when I was really getting into it and this guy stopped me and said furiously, 'Please control yourself.' I was really wounded. But after a few minutes, I began screaming and yelling my head off. I know it was cruel, but there are men out there who just don't care very much about women and what they do to them."

What kind of men are suitable for Natasha?

"The imaginative ones. One time, I put this scuba-diving equipment on and my lover put on the mask and fins; we had sex for hours with that stuff on. Another lover invited me to a Halloween party. I put on boots, a coat and jewelry. I rubbed baby oil all over my naked body. I was all shiny and had little golden chains on my stomach. When I arrived at the door, I took him into the kitchen and opened up my coat. Well, he was so turned on that he went into the other room and announced that the party was over. We fucked for two days.

"You know, a lot of men don't understand the nature of a creative woman. If I let myself, I'd fuck my whole life away. But I don't, because I need and use that energy for my work. When I work, I get sexually high. In fact, one time I was so high I took five clean paintbrushes, got under the quilt and masturbated with them. OOOoooooh, it was great! Now I use them all the time. Especially the really fine ones. They're just like the most sensitive tongue I have ever felt."

Liz

Liz's studio in SoHo, in New York City, is part of a large loft apartment, where she lives with her husband. The walls are painted red, decorated with a dozen or so black-leather accessories: hats, garter belts, a black bra and panties. Liz is wearing a black-lace, see-through blouse, a tight satin skirt and a large black hat. Her upturned nose, her wide, brown eyes dominate her face. She is wearing small golden earrings and many golden rings on her long, slim fingers. Black-leather belt and high-heeled shoes complete this costume, which she calls her "business outfit," apparently oblivious of the fact that the rosy-red nipples of her breasts are visible. Tall, slim, with long, sinewy legs, 28-year-old Liz pouts her sensuous lips as she tells about an experience that vicariously turns her on.

"A friend of mine and her boyfriend go out to Plum Beach. She lies in the front seat of the car, totally exposed. It's usually early evening; men walk up and down the beach and any one of them who cares to can partake of her sexually. Her boyfriend sits over on a bench and oversees the situation, so she won't get into any physical danger. She says she loves it because it is anonymous sex. I've never done that bit, but I find the idea exciting.

"I can put my head into certain fantasies and get really super rushes. I have a favorite called The Cage. It takes place in a low-lit private club, where all the men who attend are black. In the center of the club is a golden cage about three feet wide with wide bars. It is the only illuminated thing in the place. Every night it's a different person's responsibility to bring a nude white woman to the cage, blindfolded. She's put into the cage, where she can sit or stand, as she chooses. If she sits, she's accessible to everyone. During the evening, there'll be big black hands all over her. If she wants to, she can turn and give someone a blow job. She's a captive, but she's in control, because if she wishes, she can stand up in the cage and no one can reach her. Usually, in the course of the evening she's handled by about 15 men--30 hands on her. When you have a lot of hands on you, it really feels incredible.

"I have another favorite, where a girl is brought to a room where everyone is costumed. She's tied down to a Plexiglas form in doggy position, with a large mirror in front of her, so she can see what's happening behind her. Costumed pages bring her a chalice of oil. Everyone is following the directions of a very tall (concluded on page 178) Touch Me Feel Me ... (continued from puge 146) woman in white clothes. She has two while Afghan hounds beside her. Then behind her is another woman in white leather and two other Afghans. And another. Still others. There is a long line of women and dogs fading into the shadows, and the girl cannot see where it ends. The women start getting the dogs excited. Meanwhile, the page boys anoint the girl's torso with oil and the dogs begin to mount her, one after the other. When it is over, she is released."

Patti

Patti, who lives with a member of a famous motorcycle gang, has agreed to an interview about her sexual life as his "old lady"--on terms that she can never be identified. So the interview is conducted in darkness.

It's not that she's worried, she says in a low, husky voice. "I'm not going to say anything bad about them. I think they're the only real men left in this world, and I 'm proud of them.

"In the gang, there are the old ladies and the mamas. Now, the old lady is her old man's property. She can't screw around with anyone else. She has to take care of her old man and his kids, if he has any.

"The mamas are different. Very often they are prostitutes. Now, say I'm an old lady and I'm not in the mood to be eaten, well, my old man can go to the mama. She's there for the sexual satisfaction of the entire group. Even the women," she adds quickly. "If a dude is out of town on business and his old lady gets hung up, she can have sex with the mama, and there won't be any repercussions. But it's always the mama who makes love to the old lady: The mama satisfies her."

Sometimes a member of a rival motorcycle gang rapes someone's old lady and then there's a real kickoff. One time, some local thugs grabbed one old lady in a supermarket and threw her into their car, took her home and had her. The motorcycle dudes eventually found out who these thugs were and tore their houses apart.

For all this old-fashioned protection of old ladies, the mamas get none. "A mama is usually initiated by the men, with the rest of the group watching. My old man found a mama who was a Berkeley prostitute and brought her back to the club. I immediately read him the riot act for doing it, because he was mine. But he reminded me it wasn't for him. We were short of women at the time; of the 21 guys in our group, there were eight without old ladies.

"So we all got together and all of the guys screwed her in every way they felt like, and they made her perform all different types of sexual acts to prove that she was worthy of becoming a mama. Obedient performance makes her worthy. Like, if an old lady isn't into giving her old man a blow job or eating out his asshole, the mama is made to do it. Also, she does all the cooking and cleaning, and if we need a baby sitter, she has to do that. She is literally a slave."

When the clubs have to raise some money, they often sell their mamas for a night, for a month or forever. "She literally has no say in the matter. She has to, whether she wants to or not. Also, in one group, there was a bust for dope and the mama had to take the blame. She went to jail for the club."

Female mamas are most common, but there are some male mamas, too. "A lot of gay guys really get off on the toughness of the men. The men call them every degrading name a homosexual can be called and those gays love every minute of it."

Couples live in a big house with the single men. Most of the couples sleep in a large room, with blankets separating them.

"There is no such thing as privacy. When the guys are in the mood, they just drag their women down. Sometimes they perform specifically for the purpose of exhibiting their skill. Sometimes an old lady nearby will say to her old man, 'Why can't you do things like that?' Everybody screws at once, but there is no switching, not ever!"

Although in public Patti never argues with her old man. whenever they have the privacy of a bedroom, she power-plays head games with him.

"The standard old lady is quite content to lie in bed and let her old man screw her, usually in the old missionary position. When it is all over, she sighs a sigh of relief. I was never satisfied with this. I spoil my old man rotten, but when we are alone, I get him so high on me that he usually begs me to make him climax. I give him this super back rub--there are a lot of nerve endings in a man's back--and he begs me to go down on him. I say I'll do it later, when I'm ready. The first time I did this, he really thought I was going to let him hang like that and he got really supermad. But when he realized that he could screw the life out of me when I was ready, he liked it. I like him to beg for it, especially because he is such a big man. He's over six feet, six."

The obvious power play to this activity delights her old man in private only. In public, everything is different. "Sometimes I tease him when we are eating dinner. We all eat together, and I say, "Gee, I wonder whether he's going to come tonight, to do it. He's been so lenient lately I think he's getting old or something.' Everybody knows I'm teasing him. But he has to show them that he's top man. so he grabs me and rapes me right then and there. And I love it, every moment of it."

Often, the old ladies fight for their men. "In a bar once, we were all sitting and drinking, and a local gang decided to hassle us. So I went over to their leader and said, 'Look, man, I don't want my old man should dirty his fingers ... I'll take you down.' I was big and the other girls were very small, and the guy laughed and said, 'We're not going to fight ladies.' And I said, 'Yes, you'll fight us, because we won't let our old men dirty their hands.' So we started to take the motorcycle chains from our waists. The old ladies usually wear these when the bikes are parked," she explains, "and if you get those swung at you, I don't care how strong you are, you're going to go down. Well, they gave us the respect. Then they walked out, and all of our dudes really broke up laughing at what I'd done."

Although chains are a normal weapon in gang fights, the men do not use them on the women. "They don't want to mar the merchandise." Patti explains. "The only time I've seen motorcycle chains used on women has been by other women in a rival gang fight."

Patti explains some other gang customs. Besides the embroidered insignia of the club, the men can earn all sorts of added medals.

"It's like the boy scouts or girl scouts earning certain badges. During the times when a girl has her period, it's a sign of courage to eat her, and a guy can earn a medal that way."

Patti feels her gang represents the all-American male. "These men are supermen and their women are very, very female. "There's something about the restlessness and the recklessness of these men that brings something out in the women. It's like the women who used to fall for the gladiators back in the days of ancient Rome. The same type of superman with the brutality aura which turns most women on. And the macho image. Like, when ihe club walks into a room wearing its colors, the entire room stands at attention, not knowing whether they're going to fight or smile. That kind of power is thrilling."