by MADAME MADELEINE DE LA OOVRATURA-COLUMBINE, Alternate Reality News Service Sex Writer
Fabrice Farracat (pronounced: “pwa-son” – he’s Moroccan) sobbed uncontrollably. When he was finally able to catch a breath, he said, “I…I never knew. How could I know? Never. I…never.”
Eduoardo de la Frontenac (pronounced “in-yer-face” – he prefers the ancient Greek) put on a stoic front, but you could tell by the trembling of his lips and the way his forehead creases made a relief map of Morocco that the experience had hit him hard. “I had always suspected, of course,” he stated, “but I never knew. Really knew knew. You know?”
They were among the male participants in a trial of The Other Side – Now!, a new technology that is implanted in a person’s genitals that allows them to experience the pleasure their sexual partner experiences. The Other Side – Now! collects the impulses from nerve endings in a person’s genitals that give them sexual pleasure. Then, it sends this information to a paired unit on another person and stimulates comparable nerve endings on their body to simulate the first person’s orgasm for them.
Of course, since most men’s knowledge of pleasing female partners was of the “Insert Tab A into Flap A, wiggle around and hope for the best” variety, the revelation that their partners could have orgasms that lasted several minutes did not come from actual intercourse; it came when the women masturbated. Still, when they discovered that pleasing their partners required more than an Ikea manual’s amount of effort, many men felt remorse that they hadn’t put in more of it.
“Their response has to be at least partially performative,” commented sex therapist and ceramic Cat Stevens enthusiast Anastasia Moosemeat (pronounced “fair-a-moan” – there is no possible nationality that could explain it, so let’s just take it as given and move on). “There are a lot of men who are grateful to have experienced a woman’s orgasm – I mean, who wouldn’t be? – and who dedicate themselves to making it easier for woman to have them without all this…drama. But there are others…”
“No, no,” Farracat protested through sobs. “I really do feel bad about not knowing. I -“
“Aww, ya got me,” de la Frontenac, whose face broke out into a grin mid-grimace, admitted. “I was just using sympathy to try to get laid. It’s kind of my thing.”
“Bastard!” Farracat, whose countenance became furious in mid-sob, muttered.
Women who participated in the trials have a different experience of their male partners’ sexual satisfaction. “That’s it?” asked Mercurial Greyson (pronounced “grey-son” – she’s Canadian). “All that thrusting and moaning and grunting and and and…effort for a second and a half of pleasure? Hunh. Now I understand why men are angry all the time – I would be, too, if I got so little return on my investment!”
“Yeah, it really sucks being a man,” Eladeonor Birgitta (pronounced “burr-giss-a” – it’s her Falasha accent). “Oh, sure, they control most major corporations, and make more money than women for the same work, and don’t have complete strangers wanting to control their reproductive rights, and don’t have to worry about violence all the time – but they cum for, like, half a second. I don’t know that anything can compensate for that!”
Moosemeat pointed out that the length of orgasm was evolutionarily determined. Men have short orgasms to encourage them to have frequent amounts of sex in order to spread their seed/genes as widely as possible. Women have longer orgasms in order to encourage them to accept men’s seed/genes. What is the evolutionary advantage of men having difficulty pleasing women?
“There is none,” Moosemeat pronounced. “Men are just jerks!”
No gay men or lesbians signed up for the trials, although orientation was not a factor named in the request for subjects. “Of course not,” scoffed Michael Moriarty (pronounced “homes” – the world has a funny sense of humour), a gay man who dropped out of the trial when he found out what it was for. “Oh, girl, I already know what it feels like to have the orgasm of my partner. And anyway, if I thought Francolino’s orgasms were three tenths of a second longer than mine, I would have a jealous freak-out! Who needs that?”
“My hope for The Other Side – Now! was that it would help bring lovers closer together,” commented Inigo Montoya (pronounced…exactly the way it looks, because names don’t always have to be complicated), one of the lead designers of the technology. “If I had known that it would cause so much…introspection, I would have gone with my first inspiration and created a digital toaster that never burned bread!”