Memoirs

The winter of '76, my friend Ruth, a feminist organizer who lived in San Francisco called to ask if her boyfriend Jack could stay with me while he was in New York. I gladly said yes. My apartment was always available to friends and friends of friends. While we talked, she casually mentioned they were into SM sex play. At first I assumed she was dominating him. The idea of her putting him into bondage was totally acceptable, but when she said she played the role of his slave, I couldn't believe it. How could this powerful feminist get off on a punk kid dominating her? Causally I asked when she'd gotten interested in S/M, hoping none of my moral judgments were showing.

"Actually Jack is the devotee of black leather and bondage," Ruth said, "But I find wearing it kind of sexy. There's not that much difference between putting on a leather bra that's studded with silver or a black satin one trimmed in lace."

The search for sexual pleasure in a puritanical society is a highly charged political act. Back In 1966, which I consider to be the beginning of my personal sexual revolution, I was 36 and had been divorced for a year. After about six months of enjoying orgasmic partnersex with Grant, my primary partner, we both agreed to explore an open relationship. Going beyond my romantic fixation of being sexual with one-man-at-time into this new kind of democratic sex changed my life dramatically.

"WANKER'S WORKSHOP" read the bold type in the Village Voice. The year was1983 just before AIDS was about to throw America into a sexual panic. Howard Smith, the editor of Scene's, was telling his readers about my men's workshops. Since the subject was masturbation, he was milking it for laughs like everyone else did. When he first called, I told him the men's workshops were due to popular demand.

"Betty, it sounds utterly crazy. I'm sorry, but I'm hard pressed to follow what you're up to. I can understand how women could benefit from learning about masturbation; it would teach them how to have orgasms. But most research shows men are regular masturbators and they start at an early age. So what's to teach?"

In 1980 when I became postmenopausal at fifty, the dreaded marker of old age seemed nothing to fear because I'd never felt better. My hot flashes were like mini-heat orgasms that I thoroughly enjoyed. During this time I was a committed single with no desire to form another serious relationship. My selfloving sessions along with sharing orgasms in the monthly masturbation workshops formed my sexual base. I'd also have the occasional date with a woman or man with or without partnersex. Close friends were my extended family and except for my usual problem, lack of money, life was good.

In the fifties long before Roe vs. Wade, abortions were illegal but available if you could raise the money. I had to make difficult phone calls using code names until I finally found a person who could help. With five one hundred dollar bills in my purse, half of it mine and the other half from my boyfriend, I met my contact at the Stage Delicatessen on Sixth Avenue.

Wednesday February 13, 2008 at 8:30 pm, the phone rang just after I'd finished a private sex coaching session. It was Grant's new wife Kenya crying hysterically. She had just returned home and found my old friend and webmaster still in bed. When she tried to wake him he was unresponsive so she immediately called an ambulance and then me. I tried to grasp what she was saying with her heavy Dominican accent between sobs. One of the EMS guys got on the phone and said they were rushing him to Lennox Hill Hospital. I figured the chances were good that he'd suffered another stroke.