The Velvet Fist
When women talk about sex together
0h, sodomy. . . It doesn't come as naturally as the puritans would like to fear. We stumble and fumble and watch dirty movies for tips, but there's a lot to the details that doesn't get talked about.
For example: I once had the pleasure of hosting the first hands-on lesbian fisting workshop in Seattle, during the inaugural Living In Leather conference.
Curling up inside your lover’s body doesn’t really have anything to do with leather, but they were the ones who understood, and in Seattle, that was many many women who saw the light.
Such an outrageous subject required a little extra preparation.
My friend, Lamar Van Dyke, promised me a real doctor's exam table for the big day, so we could arrange a comfortable viewing platform. I took out a classified ad in the Seattle Gay News, to recruit "vaginally-able volunteers" for participants.
I got a couple of crank calls, but one jewel. A woman named Donna said that she and her lover were fisting “gourmets,” and that she would be happy to be my guinea pig.
I was nervous about meeting Donna in person. I wanted to do a brief, private rehearsal with her before the main event, but how was I to ask?
"Excuse me, but can we do this in private one time to make sure I can get in and out of you?"
I put on my best manners and suggested we talk about all the details first, which proved to be invaluable. Unlike some women whose favorite fisting movement is a slow clenching and unclenching, Donna preferred circular, massage motions.
She showed me where to put extra lubrication around my gloved hand. When we got closer to our trial run, I suggested she bring her lover, Carrie, for bedside reassurance. Our rehearsal went smooth as silk.
The next afternoon, sixty women crammed into an airless hotel meeting room for the “Vaginal Fisting Workshop.” The tension was so thick you could have wired your home with it. I passed out my rubber gloves, condoms and dental dams, with a few words on safe sex techniques. Rubber or vinyl gloves are superior for fisting, over naked hands. They lube up better and give a smoother surface going in. Callused hands from gardening, working, et al, are rough!
I started my workshop by saying that I wanted to hear about others' fisting experiences with all the details: Why do we like it? Does it ever hurt, and why? What are the effects of drugs, surgery, childbirth? Is there such a thing as fisting performance anxiety? Does fisting always lead to orgasm?
A couple women spoke up that a few lovers they had fisted wanted to be fucked too hard, and they were worried that they were going to hurt them.
Just as there seemed to be a consensus against rough fucks, a brave soul spoke up. "I like getting fisted hard; I like my cervix getting bumped. Sometimes I spot (menstrual blood) the next day, and I used to worry whether I was hurting myself, but I don't experience any other symptoms."
That drew a pause. This is simply something you can't ask your doctor, not only because you're embarrassed, but because the doctor doesn't know anything about it!
We discussed what we know about the sensitivity of the cervix. Bruising or pressure isn't necessarily harmful, but prodding or piercing the cervical opening (the os) is dangerous, and obviously not the intent. Thank god for all the midwives there.
Another woman brought up that the peril isn't necessarily for the fistee, it’s for the fister. She once had a lover who orgasmed while her hand was curled up inside her vagina, and the contractions broke a small bone in her hand.
Her experience prompted a lot of handy hints on how to get out of a woman's vagina in a hurry when your hand is caught in a vacuum.
Methods include: pressing ever-so-gently on her lower abdomen, or using a finger on your free hand to release a little on the vaginal opening.
Simply relaxing, until one’s lovers muscles loosen from orgasm, is the simplest method. Don't panic, or you'll have a funny time telling people why your hand is in a splint.
We moved onto orgasm.
Some said they were, quite frankly, premature ejaculators — the orgasm came so quick and strong. Fisting is a lot a pressure on the internal body of the clitoris. Others described a long dreamy ride, which produces a meditative feeling, but not the high pitch that would lead toward orgasm. We discovered that just because you're not orgasm-oriented doesn't mean that you aren't hungry for other feelings.
There were lots of other stories: women who can't get fisted reliably and felt humiliated when they couldn’t relax to “open up,” and lovers who said that their girlfriends complained that they weren’t trying hard enough to fist them— but who feel like they would injure their partner or do something stupid if they forced it. (True).
It’s awful when fisting becomes a “tribute” that you have to prove to someone, just as many of us have felt compelled to “orgasm" in the right way, at the right time in order to prove our prowess. Those kind of attitudes are paralyzing!
Finally one woman said, "I'm tiny and proud. I've never been fisted, but I do enjoy fucking, and if it ever happens, that's fine. I'm not losing sleep over it. I also enjoy fisting my lovers, which is why I'm here today."
It was time to slide out the examination table. Donna climbed on top, sans hospital sheet, and Carrie cosied up on her left.
I squirted the last of my lube into my gloved palm. I was so nervous that I waved my hand and splattered half of it on the audience.
I started massaging Donna's vulva, telling everyone what we had discussed the night before, and how helpful it was to have her and her lover’s reassurance before getting it on. Soon I had all my hand inside her.
I abruptly stopped my lecture and realized how hot the the room was: the red faces, the stillness where there had been constant chatter before, all eyes intent on watching my hand move in and out. I think if I had kept it up any longer we might have had an orgy, but more likely we'd have run out of oxygen.
"I'm going to come out now, okay? Will somebody open up that door before we all pass out?"
Donnastood up, and we bowed, to each other. I started packing up my latex gloves. It was hard to leave. Women kept coming up, telling me it was the best lesbian event they'd ever been to. It’s hard to go back to NGLTF meetings after this.
"What exactly did you like so much about it?" I asked them.
The answer came from Lenore, another facilitator at the conference. We had talked before how women and lovemaking are so often seen in the public eye as dewy-eyed milkmaids, fawning over each other. "What I liked the best, she said, “was having an actual lesbian perform an actual act of penetration."
It’s hard to believe now that that was startling, but she was absolutely right.
Thank you for supporting me to publish stories like this. I’m sure you realize I can’t publish them anywhere else. And thanks for your comments too, always such a pleasure for me to continue the conversation.