The question of how female writers can ever market to men circled through my mind briefly as Rod told me what had happened at his job site.
“So,” I said, “you’re saying my obsession to save the trees is how I shocked the construction workers and found new readers?”
To step back for a moment, in my environmental frenzy, I have the habit of constantly reusing paper by printing on both sides. Little did I know that my partner, Rod, who is an architect, had printed out his floor plans of a house he was renovating on the back of my memoir draft. That, in and of itself, was not a cause for alarm, evidently. It wasn’t until Rod came back to the jobsite during lunchtime where things got dicey.
Rod saw four workers hunched over the foreman who was sitting on a cooler reading the backside of the floor plans. From the distance, Rod, who is from Chile and speaks Spanish, could hear the man mumbling something in English, then translating it out loud into Spanish as the others listened carefully to every word. Curious, Rod moved closer. Suddenly all five men jumped up at once, accidentally dropping the paper to the floor’s unfinished wood beams.
“I had to laugh,” Rod told me. “I surprised them when I picked up the paper. But at least they all were smiling. One even gave me the thumbs up. Another congratulated me for being engaged to such a ‘sexy gringita.’
“Now why would he say that?” I wondered if this was one of those cultural differences I was always learning about as our relationship progressed.
“Well, I was a little baffled too, so I turned the layout over to see what they had been reading.”
“I’m afraid to ask which page,” I said trying to envision the men’s reactions.
“It’s the scene in your memoir when you experience your first orgasm.” He waited, a big smirk pulling up the corners of one side of his mouth. “You know. The chapter called ‘Rocky Mountain High’ where you vow to spend your life seeking out the ‘high’ of sexual ecstasy?”
“Shoot. Is that the end of the chapter where I also vow to constantly seek out this pleasure throughout my life?”
He laughed, “They thought it was about me and gave me more credit than I deserve. You won over a few readers, though. Maybe I should translate the book into Spanish for you.”
That lone paragraph was only one of a few semi-erotic passages in the entire 270-page book. Most of the accounting of my sexual encounters were awkward, hurtful, or just plain comically stupid.
“How in the heck did you not notice what was printed on the back page of your layout?
“Are you kidding,” Rod said, “I’m thrilled. They think I’m the guy you’re talking about. They gave me full credit.” He lifted his hands in a shrug of victory. “I did not correct them. Besides, it kind of reminded me of the conversation we had last weekend.”
Puzzled, then I remembered. “Oh, the one about the big O at our dinner party?”
“Yeah, one guy asked how old everyone was when they had lost their virginity. You added the question – how old were you when you had your first orgasm?”
I shook my head remembering the intense engagement of men listening and woman shaking their heads. “Yeah, I remember now. He asked the women at the table how it was possible to lose your virginity at age 18 but not have an orgasm until age 24. I think all the women laughed at that.”
“Why do you think it takes so long to figure out?”
It’s a question I had pondered for decades. Scientists such as Helen Fisher and Mary Roach had written whole books about the subject of the origin of the female orgasm, countering decades of Freudian phallic theory. Other authors followed. Books with titles such as Becoming Cliterate by Laurie Mintz or She Comes First by Ian Kerner filled the shelves. But in fiction and memoirs, I couldn’t recall many sex scenes posed from the woman’s perspective. Most written stories were either squishy romances with vague wording or from a male perspective with hard rushed momentary thrusts focused only on penetration.
“Why?” I repeated. “How about a lifetime of movies, romances, TV shows, books, and song lyrics that have us all thinking orgasm’s a miracle that happens the same for women as it does for men.” I paused, unapologetic in my desperate need to understand why this would interest men. “The construction guys really liked the scene?”
“Are you kidding me? Your chapter solves the mystery. It should be required sex education reading. It might help a lot of people.”
“Hmmm, so you think I need to write a how-to for clueless hetero guys?”
“Well, I now know at least five guys who are eagerly waiting for that guidebook. I see a Netflix series in the making,” Rod added. “You got any more pages I can print on? I have another job site to go to later.”
“No way, but you’ve definitely helped me solve the mystery of how to market a feminist book to straight men.”
