Free Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age by Nancy Friday

of a turn- off than a turn-on, possibly because it made her feel unnecessary. Or was it her grudging certainty that a man is connected to his penis in a fond and intimate way that we women don’t share with regard to our vagina? In any case, the penis didn’t have the allure that the vagina had for straight men.
    There were certainly exceptions to this rule, but it seemed to me that women who couldn’t get enough of the penis—looking
    at it, watching it grow in our hands—tended to be fatherless girls who grew up in a home with no penis in residence. As women have now entered almost every exclusive “Boys’ Club,” perhaps we’re also garnering their fantasies.
    Someone once told me, “No one’s going to make a thriv- ing business out of peep shows for women that show guys masturbating.” But the Internet has opened new doors. How many more women, raised by both parents, now visit sites devoted to male masturbation, sites that advertise to both men and women?
    Over the years, more and more letters and emails, such as the one following by Susannah, show women raised by both parents increasingly turned on by male masturbation. We are no longer just the exhibitionists and males the voyeurs. More than ever, we are equals and can equally view men solely for our own pleasure as sexual objects. Perhaps there’s a good reason why the term “boy toy” didn’t appear until the late twentieth century.

    T h e B o y T o y h a s c o m e — h a l l e l u j a h !

    Susannah
    Susannah, from a conservative military family, has parents who never discussed sex. and any displays of nudity were looked on with embarrassment. in high school, with her first boyfriend, she discovered: “What a thrill it was to kiss, to have the boy touch my breasts, or to feel his erect penis through his clothes. The first time i felt that hard shaft against my stomach was wonderful because i knew i had done that to him.” Like so many people from sexually repressed parents, she experienced the duality, outwardly the “proper” good girl with the secret
    “hot-blooded” sexually insatiable side. “One time, with a special boy, i managed twelve orgasms in two nights…okay, he was very special.” after becoming preg- nant, she married at age twenty.

    Zach was a lousy lover, many sexual hang-ups, and after about eight years, I became attracted to Bob, a married coworker of Zach’s. We began a correspondence that was initially innocent, and I discovered he was also attracted to me. This was the state of my sexual fantasies. I used to fantasize about him every day and masturbate in the shower by letting the water pound my clitoris until I came. These fantasies were quite innocent in the beginning, kissing, etc. Later, as my confidence and my knowledge of reciprocated desire increased, I expanded my vision to include sex outdoors, on the dining room table, in front of the fireplace, etc. One was a particular favorite: Dressed only in a coat and high boots, I would go to Bob’s office just before he was about to leave, lock the door, and seduce him. I would end up seated in his lap, impaled on his shaft, with the coat open and his face buried in my breasts. I was very frustrated in those days and actually had a couple of group sessions with my best friend’s husband.
    This relationship didn’t go anywhere. Then, after another couple of years, I rediscovered sexual fantasies when I was on the verge of becoming totally non-orgasmic again. This is the fantasy that allowed me to cum almost every single time we had sex during the last seven years of our marriage. It is early on a beautiful spring Sunday morning, and I have just come out of the shower. The weather is warm, so I take the newspaper and sit in a lounge chair on my apartment balcony, wearing just my long floral cotton bathrobe. By the way, I am no different from my real self in any way. As I am reading, a motion caches my eye, and I look over to the next apartment building in this