ANNA F.: OK, I HAVE A THING THAT I DON’T EVEN KNOW 100 PERCENT HOW TO VOCALIZE BECAUSE I FEEL WEIRD ABOUT IT. As I have discussed literally everywhere else, I am an anxious person, especially w/r/t being physically intimate. I was an old lady by the time I lost my virginity. Seriously, we had to pause Antiques Roadshow to do it and refuel with Mueslix after. No, haha, I wasn’t that old. But still. I had always been sex-positive in theory. Like, “Rah rah, slutwalks and rights for sex workers and any wild things consenting adults want to do to one another,” and that gave me these weird feelings of shame about my inexperience. Like, I knew in theory how wonky that line of thinking was, but I would still feel it in my gut, like, Who are you to talk SO MUCH about slut shaming, you prudy prude prudella? It’s easy for me now to look back at Past Anna and think, Aw, girl, you were being so hard on yourself! and recognize the word “prude” as damaging and nonsense, but I am sympathetic to the fact that I had internalized a lot of messed up approaches to sexuality.

FLASH FORWARD. I can do the sex now. I still have some anxieties, ’specially when it comes to the “taking it all off” phase, but that has gotten way better by being with people I trust and can joke and be frank with about my insecurities. My problem is…I don’t know how to have the sex I want to be having? That is so ambiguous. OK…*clears throat* The sex I’m having is fine. But sometimes I will be watching a Grown-Up Movie (not like, the BBC Pride and Prejudice which wasn’t technically a movie but in fact a miniseries—I’m talking about porn) or reading a smutty story, and I will think, That totally weird freaky thing those characters are doing…actually seems like something I’d be into. Or, I’d like to have more casual one night stands. For a while, I was strongly considering joining in a threesome. These are things my friends have done, and talked frankly about, and I applaud them!! But every time I approach a position where such a thing is feasible, I feel either goofy, like a little kid trying to imitate what she saw in a movie, or I feel…sleazy, in a really self-conscious way, as if I can’t get lost in the moment without wondering what my conservative coworkers or the parents of the kids I volunteer with or my late grandmother would think of me if they knew what I was up to. (I know: sexy!!!!)

Again, I recognize that is a loaded thought and if one of my friends told me they were feeling this way, I would slap their beautiful face and say, “THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU, YOU GLORIOUS PERVERT.” It’s like…do you have that girl in high school who can pull off wearing six clashing prints and purple lipstick and look like she came off the runway at Prada, and then, one day, you try, and you feel like a freak? Like, how do I tell the dude I’m with what I want without giggling?

TOVA: Can we talk about anxieties re: feeling like you are being too freaky, and how to understand that what you’re into is cool and not “non-feminist” or whatever?

LOLA: There’s a great Just Wondering about “un-feminist” fantasies!

ANNA F.: It’s one of those things that I know in theory is fine. I just feel silly when I try to employ it in practice. How does one make the transition from vanilla sex to rocky road?

ANNIE: I’m fairly experienced with light kink stuff, which I’ve done as a lowercase-d domme for a few years now, and it’s totally OK to feel silly about these kind of things. That’s super personal, though—I need kink to feel grounded in the idea of, This is play and we’re joking around and having fun, and I like to laugh a lot during sex and makeouts, and that can turn some people off.

I’ve gotten nervous and triggered at least once during every sexual encounter I’ve had since dealing with abuse stuff, and sometimes the solution is to make things feel very tossed-off and casual. I once walked into this girl’s crummy basement room and she said, “Did nobody warn you that I’m, like, annoyingly into pro wrestling?” I cracked up. We watched WWE on her laptop and made out. It quelled the nervousness that I usually have that goes, Everything Has to Feel Magic and Perfect. Sometimes it’s nice to let makeouts and sex feel marginal and not central in my life.

ROSE: Laughter is my #1 most important tool in dealing with sex stress. I tend to think that making out is pretty funny, with all that wrassling and part-palpitating and fluid-exchanging. I giggle a lot when things are just getting going, and I’ve noticed that the best sex I’ve had is with people who are either (a) charmed and/or bewildered by my silliness or (b) laugh along with me. If someone insists that There Is Very Serious Business Afoot and dislikes my making light of things, I have a harder time opening up about what makes me feel good.