Some time ago, after a particularly intense and satisfying session with a regular client, we laid quietly under the covers, my head resting on his chest, his fingers running through my hair. He broke the silence first. “You’re purring,” he said. When I responded by telling him that he was amazing, he said, “I’ve never been that good before.” The sincerity of this response made me giggle. He’s in his 60s, I’m certainly not the first person he’s had good sex with.
His response was intended to make me laugh, and it did. But it also pointed to something profound. Being “good at sex” is not a matter of technique or physical prowess, it’s a matter of connection — of being present with and for another person. He wasn’t amazing in abstraction, it was the dynamic between the two of us that made it possible.
In the 10 years that I have worked in the sex industry, I have had many men (I’m not saying that women or gender non-conforming folks don’t do this, but I haven’t seen it) tell me in one way or another — with pride! — that they are good at sex.
They tell me they are good at sex, in some misplaced attempt at masculine bravado, before they know anything about me or my desires and interests, and before we have established our level of chemistry. They say it, in other words, like being good at sex is akin to being good at golf or playing the guitar: a skill you learn through practice that has an objective measure of success — a sub-par score or a well-played song. But being a good sexual partner isn’t the same as being a good athlete or musician.
To say that it is not the same is certainly not to say that sexual experience, skill, and technique don’t matter. I am no stranger to the horrors of objectively bad sex (or, at least objectively bad to me!). I have had clients try to jackhammer me in a way I only imagine they learned from porn; move through positions or activities so quickly that it's impossible to feel any one sensation long enough to register it as pleasure; paw at me in a very unsexy or uncomfortable way; use their tongue sloppily (please, for the love of all things holy, don’t plunge your tongue deep into my ear canal); and shove their fingers inside of me with so little knowledge of what they are doing that they’ve given me a UTI. If you ever wonder why sex workers command high rates, go back over this list, please.
Certainly, these things can all be improved upon with practice in the same way that golfers improve their swing and musicians memorize chords so that they can move through them fluidly. Indeed, my job often involves a subtle retraining of bad habits or ineffective techniques, especially with younger or less experienced people. This is to be expected given the tragically bad sex education in our country. Sex workers often serve this role in our culture, whether we want to collectively recognize it or not.
Yet, the things that make these techniques better often have much more to do with soft skills, not hard ones (pun intended). What makes all of these examples “objectively bad” is that I don’t like them. Indeed, there is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to sex! To this end, what makes someone a good sexual partner (to me) is their willingness to recognize when I am not enjoying or connecting with what they are doing, and adjusting accordingly. What makes the experience good is their interest in listening to my verbal and non-verbal attempts at redirection and responding with curiosity about what we can enjoy together. If there are any skills here, they aren’t necessarily the proper angle for the perfect finger bang session — though if you want to know what it is, I will tell you — they are empathy, active listening, and openness.
Sex is too diverse for a claim as broad as being “good at sex” to be meaningful. Since I have written my last Pillow Talk column, I have had sessions that have all looked radically different: one with a loving couple who was having their first-ever threesome, one with a fetishist who wanted to suck my toes, one with a person who had tremendous social anxiety, one with a regular who wanted to engage as if we are in the middle of a torrid love affair, and one with an older gentleman who craved touch.
No singular technique would have given all of those people what they were looking for. I hope that I was able to give them what they wanted and needed and that they left thinking, “Man, that was good!” But I am not arrogant enough to think that what I have to offer is good on the face of it. If someone came in wanting to be elaborately tied, they would have to turn to the people I interviewed in my recent City Paper cover story. What made all of these experiences good was the openness that we entered the sessions with, and the desire to give and receive pleasure in a way that felt good to the other person. These are the most important things, and the basis upon which everything else can be learned.
Perhaps I did make that client in his 60s feel better than he’s ever been, but that is not because I’m good at sex. We both had that kind of experience because we showed up for each other, we were present, we wanted to connect, and we cared about the pleasure and needs of the other person. We can all be that good at sex, it just requires that we open ourselves up to our partners with vulnerability and care. Everything else is just details.
You can find Jessie on Twitter @sapiotextual & Instagram @curvaceous_sage. You can follow her new podcast on Twitter & Instagram @NotHustlingPod. You can also visit her website jessiesage.com.
