You might be surprised by what the three have in common
By Erin Aislinn

     Being a woman and a member of a statistical minority means you're either very special or have a tough road ahead. According to Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, author of the book The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, 30 percent of women rarely or never have orgasm in intercourse, and among those, 10 percent say they never have orgasm under any circumstances.

     In my early 20s, after a few years of indulging in my newly discovered sex life, I considered it might be best if I just accepted the fact that I was one of those 10 percent. I mean if I couldnít climax with a lover whoíd turned sex into an art form and applied every trick in his vast bag of experience to make it happen for me, then under what miraculous circumstances could I ever have the Big O?

     Don't get me wrong. I loved every second of the many hours my lover plied his craft. Sex without orgasm felt great and I had no idea what I was missing anyway. The thing that bothered me more than not having an orgasm was the fact that the man made such a fuss about it. Why couldn't he just do his part and let me enjoy myself? We weren't climbing Mt. Everest here.

     Maybe something was wrong with me. But how would I know? The facts of science were against me. Who should I ask and what exactly would I say? I mentioned it in passing to my best friend, a year older than I and sexually far more experienced. "I've never had one either!" she exclaimed, almost jumping off the chair from the relief someone else shared her problem. Now, something definitely didn't fit here. I could believe that I might be among the 10 percent, but what were the odds that my best friend was as well? Both of us were passionate and open to exploration. Both of us had willing and caring partners more than ready to accommodate in just about every way.

     I made a confession to another close friend in her 40s. She laughed and said Iíd never have an orgasm with a man until I gave one to myself first. You mean masturbate? Me? Come on. If it wasnít meant to happen the old-fashioned way, maybe it wasn't meant to be. It just didn't feel natural, poking down there on my own, not because I had trouble touching myself, but because, in my mind, masturbation had become synonymous with vibrators. In the pursuit of this elusive climax, was I expected to put this thing down there and vibrate myself into oblivion at a million rpms a minute? It might be easier to just stick my finger in the socket.

     Years passed. Age 30 came and went as did a handful of other partners. They all seemed to care about my not having orgasms more than I did, and they all suggested I start masturbating. The guy I ended up marrying actually gave me a vibrator for Valentine's Day. The thing was silver, long, smooth and had a pointed tip. It looked more like a surgical instrument than an object for self-pleasuring. How the heck was I supposed to fantasize about the real thing while pumping myself with this cold and clinical object? I tried it, though. The lowest vibration setting sounded and felt like a dentistís drill. The highest just about propelled me and my soft vaginal tissue into another orbit. If women enjoyed this, something was definitely wrong with me.

     By this point, though, Iíd begun to believe that without the Big O, I'd never really be a woman in the full sense of the word. Even my girlfriend had since found and married a guy with whom she experienced multiple vaginal orgasms without having ever masturbated.

     I read books, examined every fold and crease of my female parts in the mirror just to be sure I understood what the books were talking about. I learned all about the PC muscles, clenched and held them to the count of 10 over and over again to strengthen them, then read a few more books. I even went to a local sex shop and found one of those anatomically shaped vibrators with a natural skin feel. The vibration sound still bothered me, so I used it in silent mode, exploring how it felt at different angles and different pressure levels.

     Zip. Nothing. Not even a wisp of the earth shaking unless I happened to be masturbating during one of those southern California's four-point earthquakes. Surely, I might as well give up and find more satisfying avenues for pleasure.

     Somewhere along the way, sexy novels became popular and a publisher had asked me to add some sex scenes to a book I'd submitted. I sat down and started writing. Before I knew it, I was so turned on that the urge to play with myself became excruciating. I got Wilbur (yes, I named my vibrator) and began, the scene from my book playing out in my mind in Technicolor. It didnít really matter what I was doing with my hand as long as the brain provided the background imagery.

      Shazam! The surge, the energy, the stars, the whole deal. Yes, it actually felt like an earthquake only this one left my body floating on air forever. Like they say, when you have one, you'll know.

     Wait a minute. But I knew this feeling. I'd had it before. More than once!

     The first time, I was about 12 and had started teaching myself yoga from a book. One of the poses, the locust pose, required me to lie face down with arms at my sides and lift both my legs up as high as I could and hold them there to the count of 100. By 20, my butt muscles lodged a serious complaint. By 30, they began to vibrate. Soon, every muscle in my legs joined in until all of a sudden, they snapped into a wave of energy, which washed all over me and dissolved all discomfort. It was so awesome that I wanted to keep holding my legs up forever. I had no idea what had happened to me except that it felt great and made me want to keep doing yoga.

     The second time, years later, I was in a college calisthenics class. Our teacher emphasized the need to keep up upper body muscle strength, especially for women, so I eagerly grabbed onto the pull-up bar with the knuckles facing me and began to lift myself up. This was way harder than it looked when the teacher did it, but I managed to reach over the bar with my chin. One. I'd just met the national average. Surely, I could do better. I grunted and panted to get halfway the second time. I started kicking my legs just to get myself another inch higher. Almost there. Almost!

     Wham! The quickening, the flow, the sweet all-over. Yes! Now I had what it took to make it all the way to the top.

     What was going on? How could I be having the same orgasm while doing yoga and pull-ups and masturbating? Those who say once you have one, you'll know also say once you have one, youíll want more and more. Pull-ups werenít my thing because I'd never again beat the nation average, but I gave myself quite a few more locust pose orgasms then compared them with those during masturbation.

    Turns out the mechanics of orgasm are so simple, itís hard to believe they amount to so much and leave us desperate for more. As I had read in Women's Orgasm: A Guide to Sexual Satisfaction by Georgia and Benjamin Kline-Graber (1983), it's all about the muscle. Here's how they explain it: "The pubococcygeus muscle [PC for short], a strong band of muscle about three-fourths to one inch wide when fully developed and healthy, is located three to five centimeters beyond the entrance of the unstimulated vagina and runs around it, in the manner of something encircling a tube. It is attached to the pubic bone in the front and the coccyx (tailbone) in the back. It runs like a thick rubber band from the pubic bone to either side of the urethra and part of the bladder, to either side of the middle of the vagina, and to either side of the large intestine, to the coccyx. Each time you hold back urinating, it is the pubococcygeus muscle you are contracting. And each time you squeeze your vagina together, you contract the same pubococcygeus muscle."

     An orgasm is nothing more than a series of muscular contractions brought on by rhythmic sexual stimulation which might come from intercourse, vibrators, fingering, oral sex, anal sex, whatever does the trick. The muscle, however, canít necessarily tell the difference between one kind of rhythmic stimulation and another. In my locust pose, for example, when the leg and butt muscles were flexed for an extended period of time, they all began to vibrate in unison. As the vibrations intensified, they caused a ripple effect in the nearby PC muscle, which ìsnappedî into a series of contractions in order to relieve tension and flooded the body with much needed relief.

     Although I wouldnít necessarily advertise this in a yoga studio, the experience added another nuance to the concept of mind-body-spirit coordination yoga is intended to foster. As for statistics, it appears that not only am I not a statistical minority any longer, but as it turns out, I never was.

Erin Aislinn grew up in Croatia and now lives in southern California. She is the author of two Ellora's Cave books. Learn more about her and her books at erinaislinn.com