Bursting The Fantasy Bubble

by Hillary Louise Johnson

I am a closet exhibitionist. Very few people know this about me because I’m a bookish introvert who has seldom been the life of a phone call, let alone a party. However, the vast majority of my masturbation fantasies involve me having sex with one or several partners, while one or several other people look on. Planes, trains, automobiles, construction sites, fishing boats—any public venue works in my dirty mind’s eye.

My partner knows this about me, and while he’s squeamish about public sex in the “real world,” he did agree to take me to a sex club where we could get it on in a room full of other couples doing the same. Neither of us was a stranger to the idea of sexual adventure, but this particular kink was new to us both, so it was a shared initiation.

I loved the club environment: open eroticism all around me, combined with the surprisingly warm, safe feeling of being in a walled garden of sexual delights. The freedom to be sexual in a public place was liberating and titillating, and I immediately found myself wanting to join in. The sex we had was really no different from the sex we have at home, only the venue and context were different.

But as we got busy, I discovered something surprising: for me, partnered sex and masturbation alike are ultimately inward journeys. I struggled to stay present, to savor the novelty of our surroundings, but ultimately I succumbed to the undertow of my imagination. In order to plumb my initial arousal and reach orgasm, I needed to go deep inside myself, and when I came, it was with my eyes closed—and I was far away somewhere, fantasizing about being watched by an entirely different group of people.

According to Amy Alkon, who writes a syndicated newspaper column as The Advice Goddess, this sense of deflation is entirely to be expected.