Squirting was not a happy discovery for me.

Even the name sucks. “Female ejaculation” is no better: it’s clinical and derivative (we don’t say male ejaculation, do we?). Whoever named it didn’t have a poetic bone in their body.

I can remember exactly when it happened, too. I was 20, and I had just dyed my hair its customary color of screaming orange the day before. I was on the set of my very first bondage video, having my very first encounter with the Hitachi Magic Wand.

“Did you squirt?” said the top, pointing to a small puddle on the floor.

“Nnmm!” I said, which meant roughly, “I’m wearing a ballgag and I can’t feel my hands, but hell if I know what you mean.”

It was my first time alone in California, and a friend of mine was sharing his makeshift accomodations, in the spare room where he slept on the floor. During the week I stayed there we became much better acquainted. When a couple days after that shoot he produced a similar vibrator from his closet, I came promptly, soaking his sleeping bag to the carpet. I was shocked and mortified.

“I adore you, and all your various fluids,” he assured me.

I don’t! I wanted to wail.

In my mind, what had heretofore been a neat and tidy affair was now a hazard. I stopped masturbating with vibrators entirely, and protested whenever my boyfriend would bring the Hitachi out. Any appeal it might hold was offset by the idea of squelching around in a cold, wet bed. I would hold back during sex for fear that a tide might be forthcoming.

Apparently most women need G-spot stimulation to squirt. That’s never done it for me yet, for which I give thanks. I need a strong vibrator to squirt, directly on my clit.

Even given a towel or a plastic sheet, I was annoyed with the affair. Squirting was messy and effusive and, in my opinion, utterly unnecessary. I’m not polite about my orgasms: being quiet usually means I need a pillow to bite. What was wrong with the way things had been?

Mostly I dreaded being one of *those* girls. I’m already one of the mythical women who can come, quickly and reliably, from penetration. I can come from vibrators; I can come from fingers; I can even come from certain types of pain. (Caning, or chest punching, for example.) In a couple of years I’ll probably discover more: orgasm by chocolate, Martian rays, or something equally preposterous. I don’t really need to get on film and demonstrate how easy it is for a woman to come. Even before learning to squirt, I was the exception to the rule.

And then there’s the question I’m always asked: Is it pee? Scientifically no one has convinced me either way, but when it happens for me it’s either clear or milky, and neither smells nor tastes like urine. (Nor can I prevent it by going to the bathroom beforehand, more’s the pity.) Is it inconceivable that sometimes, I pee by accident, and neither of us realizes? I don’t think so, but I suppose anything’s possible, including the undignified.

I should be at peace with it, I know. Everything else in sex is messy and wet and undignified. I might as well welcome one more thing.

But first, we need a better name.

Posted in personal history, vibrator, female ejaculation