How to Have Casual Sex

About thirteen years ago, some friends and I bought a former J.C. Penney's on the square in my town. We had in mind apartments, a coffee shop, maybe an art gallery. Keep in mind, this is in rural Indiana, so... long shot.

There was a print shop in the basement, the sort of place that made signs and business cards before you could do that stuff for about a nickel on the Internet. On one wall of the loading dock, someone had stenciled the word STRING with spray paint. Over that, someone had doctored the sign with sidewalk chalk so that it read NO STRINGS ATTACHED. I recall that when the realtor walked me through that part of the building, she looked at that sign and said, "Don't I wish!" I thought it was odd. I didn't know if she was referring to the real-estate deal or to the sexual convention of no-strings-attached relationships, the more common meaning. No one referred to it as an abbreviation then — there were no "NSA" advertisements on Craigslist. Back then, NSA brought to mind foreign intelligence. But even in those days, some people who considered no-strings-attached relationships to be the gold standard of sex. Men I knew nattered on about the possibility finding a hassle-free female pal who just wanted to get together, get it on, and get gone. These are the guys in romantic comedies who tend to populate the couch of the male protagonist's apartment. We're supposed to see them as poor, deluded dumbasses.

I didn't like the real-estate agent, who later got me into a bidding war on that worthless hulking edifice, and I didn't ponder it much longer. But I've always wondered if it was an offer on her part. I didn't pull the string. I didn't check to see if it was attached. Mostly because, for some reason that I can no longer fathom, I believed in a world where real estate, even semi-crumbling late-20th-century real estate in a perpetually depressed housing market, was the only really good bet to make with my money. I wanted the building. Not her.

Still, I have had this offer three times in my life. Once with a bank teller, when I was twenty-four. For three weeks, I'm telling you: No strings attached. She kept saying it, in fact. And I figured she knew something I didn't, because — well, because she was older, and she did. But in the fourth week, she lent me the key to her condominium in Gulf Shores, Alabama. I was too young to understand that when someone gives you a key, any key — a car, an apartment, a mailbox — they are, with that very gesture, attaching a string. This was the fourth week of NSA. Then she told me to make a copy, then she let me drive down there on weekends. String. String. More string. When the ex-husband opened the sliding glass door one evening, the room was positively strung from end to end.

The next time was when I was about to get a divorce. With me separated for three weeks, a female friend of mine sat on my porch and outlined a physical contract between us, using the very term "no strings attached." I'd known this woman for seven years, nothing untoward between us whatsoever until that moment. I liked the offer — it seemed ideal after the stresses of the last four loveless years with my ex-wife. I recall that I hadn't heard the term "no strings attached" from a woman since the bank teller. Again just three weeks later, when things began to go sour, I reminded her of the term: "I thought you said 'no strings attached,'" I whined, sitting in the front seat of her crappy Buick Regal. That's when I realized that the term itself, when used as a kind of contract, is a string, a point of connection, a mutuality and a bond. String! What she said then was the gassiest, most perplexing answer I've ever heard on the subject: "It's string! You can't control string! String goes where it wants to."

The other time was with a smart woman I knew long ago. She was a waitress at a bar where I worked, a woman whose father, she pointedly told me, was in the military. We always found each other standing outside the bar at three in the morning, me walking her to the car, or talking to her about tips, or drinks, or who was stringing whom. Eventually, it was game-on with the two of us. The very first night, we decided that we didn't want any commitment. Each of us said it. The very words. No strings attached. Again, three weeks passed, and one morning I woke up thinking about her. I rolled over in bed, and gave her a call. She didn't answer. I called again later that morning. I had in mind a trip to the dog track, some drinking, and some wild-ass stringing. But she didn't answer. Not that night, either. Or for the next four days, though I called her six, eight, twelve times. When I finally saw her again, it was on shift, and she smiled broadly, like nothing had changed.

"You get my messages?" I said.

She shrugged, and patted my hand. "Three whiskey sours," she told me. I did my thing, produced the drinks.

"Are you ignoring me?"

She looked sideways, like I was being silly. "Of course not," she said. Then she called me "silly," as if I didn't know her, as if I didn't get the message from her eyes the first time. She avoided me all night, the entire shift. Much later until I jogged up behind her after she left without me. I asked her what was wrong. And she looked at me, squinting, as if she could barely make me out. I knew what that meant, too: What was wrong was me? I got it right there and then: I was a piece of string, and god damn it if I wasn't attached.

I knew then what only the string knows: You're a string. If you don't get attached, you'll just end up in a tangle.

Read more: How to Have a Casual Sex Relationship - Casual Sex Stories - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/women-advice/how-to-have-casual-sex#ixzz2Lzx4Pbn7

The Observation: The Demise of the Blowjob

The blowjob has fallen on hard times. Or, to put it in the form of a crude question, who can really get it up for fellatio these days? Back in the 1960s and '70s, fellatio was all the rage. Its curative powers are powerfully conveyed by the moment in John Updike's Bech when the protagonist's mistress tries "to bring his weakling member to strength by wrapping it in the velvet bandages of her lips." Abandoning the protective modesty of fiction in the poem "Fellatio," Updike celebrated the way "that each of these clean secretaries / at night, to please her lover, takes / a fountain into her mouth."

When I first came across these lines, in 1972, aged fourteen, they seemed excitingly rude — if a little yucky. Now, a harmless poem can't be expected to support a zeitgeisty theory, but something, evidently, was in the air: 1972 was the year of Deep Throat, about a woman with a clitoris in her throat, so that she achieves orgasm by performing oral sex. In retrospect, this seems like a premise dreamed up by feminists as a way of showing, in ludicrously exaggerated fashion, the underlying misogyny of male fantasies. Or maybe not so exaggerated after all. At roughly the same time, a joke made the rounds about the ideal woman being three feet tall with a flat head — so you'd have someplace to rest your beer while she gave you head. One way or another, the early '70s were a time when the culture was bigging up the blowjob. Tellingly, Bech's mistress was "following less her own instincts than the exemplary drift of certain contemporary novels."

Some of this enthusiasm lived on into the late twentieth century. In 1995's To Die For, Nicole Kidman reacts with disingenuous astonishment to the story of how a famous broadcaster got her big break because a self-penned reference commended her ability to "suck your cock till your eyes pop out!" (Shouldn't that read "cave in" or "implode"?) In the same year, there's a fun exchange in Martin Amis's The Information in which a male character proposes to a lady friend that they "do 68." What's that? she asks. "You do me and I owe you 1," he shoots back. Later in the novel, the humiliation of failed writer Richard Tull is complete when his wife fellates his rival, the successful Gwyn Barry.

If this all seems rather quaint, then Susan Minot's 2002 novella, Rapture — about a single blowjob — was perhaps a last, jaw-aching hurrah. A genuinely twenty-first-century spokesman can be found in Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, in the form of young Joey Berglund, whose sexual maturity — compared with the guys he's at college with — is conveyed simply and vehemently. Their yearnings center on the blowjob, which Joey considers "little more than a glorified jerkoff."

I recently undertook a small survey of some more mature male friends, and the results, while not unanimous, were overwhelming. To speak plainly, given the choice, eight of the ten men surveyed preferred eating pussy to having their dicks sucked. Or, to put it in entirely numerical terms, 80 percent of males would opt for a 70 rather than a 68. And what about the other two men? Yes, you guessed it: They're gay! To be strictly accurate, the heterosexual respondents were partial to this kind of thing — but only in the mathematically blissful reciprocity of 70 minus 1. The gob-job continues to thrive in hetero pornography, of course, for the simple — literally obvious — reason that it lends itself to being filmed in a way that cunnilingus cannot.

I'm not claiming that the latter did not exist back in the 1970s, but it was regarded in much the same way as paying for a round at the bar: You had to do it, but if you could avoid it, you did. It would be a mistake, though, to see this change as meaning that men have gone from being selfish recipients to selfless givers of pleasure; it's just that what constitutes pleasure has shifted. As the Michael Fassbender character in Shame says to a woman he's seducing in a bar by telling her how badly he wants to go down on her (before getting beaten up by her boyfriend): "That's what I like to do."

The scale of the sea change can be observed at the Great Canadian Beaver-Eating Contest, at Burning Man, an event so popular that participants line up as if for a half-off sale. In the more discreet context of my survey, this enthusiasm was endorsed by the respondent who claimed that the only time he experienced "absolute contentment" was when his face was between his wife's legs. He wished to make clear that he was not talking just about sex; he meant in life generally.

Common Techniques Used to Last Longer During Sex/Last Longer in Bed

 For most people especially men, their ability to sexually satisfy ones sexual partner raises their self esteem, which is reflected on their day to day lives. Subsequently studies show that the problem of not being able to last long enough in bed is more of a male phenomenon due to the associated issues such as premature ejaculation. Research has shown that over 30% of men are unable properly fulfill their conjugal duties because they are not aware of how to last longer during sex. But all hope is not lost as this situation is correctable by applying some simpler and effective tips from the experts.

 The first thing that each sex partner should be aware of is their cycle of arousal. Different people will be aroused at different points during the sexual intercourse, thus the need to understand ones cycle as well as the partner’s.

 Sex is more of a mental activity than it is a physical one as the mind controls all that pertains to arousal and satisfaction. The diverting of thoughts away from sex during the intercourse helps delay the approach of an orgasm. It’s advisable to think of a topic that is engaging but non-sexual e.g. a favorite TV show or just letting the eyes wander around the room.

Physical techniques on how to last longer in bed include trying out different sex positions. Using the same position for long makes the body to get used to that and will therefore end up finishing sooner than one may wish. Monotony and predictability in bed is actually a killer of excitement which results in hurried sexual intercourse and thus the partners may not be able to reach their climax. Using multiple styles poses a challenge for the body and provides a new sensation that delays the orgasm.

Another tip applicable by men on how to last longer during sex is focusing on the partner’s pleasure. It best achieved by getting the mind off ones own climax and ensuring the partner also reaches her climax. This is a sure way of boosting ones confidence in bed regardless of the actual sexual prowess.

Use of climaxagen creams is another way on how to last longer in bed. This cream which is actually applied directly on the penis is suitable for more men as compared to taking pills or supplements which is not very appealing to men. The cream has been tested and found to positively help men last longer before reaching their orgasm with no known side effects.

Other ways on how to last longer during sex is doing adequate preparation way before the sex occurs. Masturbating has been is an effective way to reduce the urgency of arousal. It puts both the partners in the sexual mood and actually increases the pace in which the woman approaches her orgasm. Wearing a condom can also delay orgasm by reducing the sensation during intercourse. Actually there are condoms that are specifically made to make the penis numb and desensitize it to reduce ejaculation.