How do you feel about fisting?

Is this an appropriate question for a first date? Should I make a u-turn with my U-Haul and drive away? And is that shit even possible? What if a dyke has really big hands? Or a really small twat? And what about fingernails? Fisting is a term that people whip out at house parties when they want to seem daring or they want to shock straight women or freak out straight men. But what exactly is this phenomenon? My nerdy inclinations send me scurrying to the dictionary.

Fisting: Vulgar. To insert the fist into the rectum or vagina of (another) as a means of sexual stimulation.

This is the definition given by the American Heritage Dictionary. Note the opening label of vulgar and the parentheses around (another) i.e. one does not fist oneself. And I wasn’t even aware that the term included my asshole! A whole palm curled into a fist and shoved up my poopie-hole? Yikes! Now don’t get me wrong, I like pushing the boundaries. Tie me up, spank me, suspend me from a fully stacked bookshelf — I am no coward when it comes to attempting the ridiculous. But I worry about breaking things that won’t work the same ever again. Especially things that have multiple functions! Usually, when I hear the term uttered, I listen and nod supportively, but this comprehensive definition is forcing me to come out of the I-am-only-comfortable-with-slender-things-like-fingers-in-my-asshole-closet. Perhaps if I did not need that particular opening for getting rid of that icky stuff that would kill me if it remained inside of me, I would let you grease your elbows and work a bowling ball into my rectum. But as things stand, I am a little dubious.

But back to the vagina — which denotes the typical locale of the lesbian fisting that I have heard being discussed at most house parties. The details of vaginal fisting make me anxious and, pray tell, when exactly is it prudent to raise the subject? Should it wait until after we have had our sexual encounter? Or should we discuss it before to prevent any awkward moments during lesbo-coitus? I suppose we shouldn’t be discussing it for the first time with my dilated sphincter wrapped desperately around your wrist. The last woman who popped the fisting question to me did so over sushi. As I was stuffing my mouth with multiple pieces of dragon roll she asked me how I felt about double-fisting? Jesus fucking Christ! I wasn’t even sure what she was asking. Were we fisting each other at the same time? Are we both fisting a third person? Is one of us using two fists for one vagina? (I had already decided that she couldn’t possibly be talking about double-fisting with reference to my anus.) When I finally finished chewing and swallowing my mouthful, I mumbled that I was sorry, but I wasn’t yet up to that chapter in the Lesbian Sex Book.

Does this make me a prude?

Some may say so, but I feel that I do take randy risks in my everyday sex life. In my little black drawer, there are leather strappy things and handcuffs and satin ropes and ankle restraints and odd-shaped things that go buzz in the night. And I have (most recently) had sex on my kitchen floor, against the two different walls in my living room — years ago. I even bedded a Muslim woman, complete with a hijab and a devout husband, simply because my lover at the time called from work and instructed me to go downstairs and fuck the woman waiting there. But first dates and talk of breaking in cavities with mucous membranes knocks up against my grandmother’s voice warning me "not to touch myself down there." She always said it as if touching it could easily break it and damage it forever. And so, as an adult, I worry about doing things that will permanently break my poor, defenseless vagina. But then I remember that a baby’s head comes out of that canal! Have you seen the size of a baby’s head? So maybe the poor pussy is not as defenseless as I imagined…

So, now, the question is how much of how we have sex is informed by some whispered instruction infused with subliminal messages of fear and misinformation? I grew up thinking the genital area was awash with germs, only to discover in biology class that the mouth is far filthier than the average cunt or dick. If we greeted each other with blowjobs and coochie kisses, we would be less prone to getting sick than we are from shaking each other’s dirty hands. I wish I could drop these voices from my childhood. They make it impossible for me to just meet someone at a party and go fist them in the bathroom. This business of needing to first know what your cat’s name is, and how you take your tea, and what issues you have with your father before I can have a little orgasm gets in the way of the material I need to create the image of the wild, free poet girl, dipping into and drinking from the potent nectar of strangers on the A-train in New York City.

I want to be able to want someone to fist me. I want to want it so bad that I won’t stop to consider the impossible logistics of lube or location or how long this maybe-relationship might last. And is that something good to want? Should I be happy that I am a ‘stop to think if this is a good idea kind of girl?’ And here I go — stopping to think if it’s a good idea to want to NOT stop and think… If you are as wound up about the way you do or do not have sex as I am, I have one word for you.

Therapy.

I believe every woman, straight women included, needs to understand why she likes what she likes in the bedroom, or on the fire escape at night, or in your lover’s parents’ lilac-colored TV room. Therapy is a place to examine those contrary pleasures of “Yes, baby. Do me, do me hard. You in charge, baby. Spank me, hit me. Goddammit! Manhandle me, bruise me, but don’t you dare think those fucked-up heterosexual patriarchal dynamics are anything to be proud of.” I think it may be interesting to explore why you like playing little girl, or big daddy, angry mommy, or Hillary Clinton in the bedroom.

But if you are like most unemployed artists — meaning you don’t have health insurance — and you’ve used up all the free counseling available in your city, or if the free counselors are not open to discussing matters of this ilk, you need to write a confessional blog and/or start talking to other women. Like good lube, community confessionals make it easier to enter your tightest spaces. We all navigate the voices of mothers and fathers and grandmothers and pastors and teachers and old lovers in our bedrooms. Ask the bad-ass, sex-positive dykes and feminist women how they got mommy dearest out their own racy boudoirs. Ask your ex how she got to be so easy about sex. Have frank conversations with your friend who is able to allow her lover to beat her in the head with a bed slipper. And when you’ve heard enough stories to build your confidence, just make a list of freaky things you want to try. And just do it. Sometimes, if you just find the emotional muscle to attempt the things you were told you shouldn’t, those parental and pastoral personas get scared of being inside you and slip out unnoticed. After that, you can get on with the business of, um, fisting, and, ah, ferreting and scarf-choking and all the weird crazy things people tend to discuss at the Brooklyn house parties I attend.