) Brodkey seems to be of a Pelagian or Protestant school of boudoir busy-beavering, to which, clearly, I don’t entirely subscribe. NB: The excerpt is from a short story that is certainly among the finest bits of sex writing ever penned, Harold Brodkey’s “Innocence.” The story consists exclusively of a man’s extended attempt to make a woman come (a scene played out again with the same characters in Brodkey’s later novel The Runaway Soul. Or better yet, to realize that there is no such thing as a failure, and that these stumbling moments of exploration are - as in parenting - just part of the process, elements of that larger motive (above ego or performance or altruism or feminism or tantra or égalité or even eros itself), which is to say, love. New-Agey though it may sound, the best way to ensure that is to just - be. Instead, it should be about the plural you: the vous with two backs, and two psyches merging into one. It’s hard to abandon the idea that what worked with one woman might work again - a belief that can get in the way of learning what it is that the new woman likes, and how even she herself can vary from one day to the next.īoth errors point back to the same source: making it (note to self) all about you. The first error is likely to put undue, distracting pressure on the recipient (and can either prevent her orgasm or encourage her to fake it) the second leads to inattentiveness and keeps you from responding to the idiosyncrasies of the woman at hand (so to speak).

The two cardinal traps of parenting are overtrying and thinking you know what you’re doing. In this, it is like parenting - one can kill as easily by smothering as by neglect. (Am I revealing too much?)įurthermore, trying to make women come is one of those rare situations where good intentions do not assure success, and, contrary to the American spirit, effort and confidence can actually work against you. It’s a noble, exquisite, maddening, often misguided mission, one we probably failed to take note of in our early years of sex and then spent many of the subsequent years overcompensating out of shame. Not all of us, not all the time, not necessarily with grace or effect - nor do the two seem particularly aligned - but we men try sometimes to make women come.

Innocence by harold brodkey online