sexy), or magical (Brazilian women were reputedly told to pour coffee through their panties and then get their boyfriends to drink it). The Kama Sutra recommends spicy foods;Casanova relied on oysters; Aztecking Montezuma claimed it was the fifty cups of hot chocolate he drank a day that kept him capable of serving his harem.
It’s an understandable obsession.Desire is so vital and lack of desire so devastating that humankind desperately wants to know the secret of creating and controlling it. Until recently, however, it has been the stuff of dreams; the active ingredients in most reputed aphrodisiacs, including the aforementioned chocolate, are actually so small that they would have little effect, and the ones that work by overstimulation – such as traditionalSpanish fly and its modern counterpart,amyl nitrate – can be life-threatening.
In this respect, we have a lot to thank current pharmacology for.Testosterone for both,dopamine for her, an upcoming nasal spray that activates brain receptors; no point in being more specific – the landscape will have changed even before this book goes to press. Particularly intriguing is the idea of the antidepressant that caused research subjects to climax uncontrollably whenever they yawned, though it doesn’t sound altogether practical if one gets tired or bored on a regular basis.
Science is only just discovering that emotion can also be an aphrodisiac. While festering anger and real fear kill desire, mild versions of each can have the opposite effect. Hence couples who leap into bed after afight, hence the effect of edgy sex where uncertainty breeds passion, and “safe” anxiety breeds arousal.Grief, surprisingly, has an effect too; if you find yourselves making love after a recent bereavement, you are neither heartless nor unusual but affirming life in the most fundamental of ways.
In the end, for regular use, most lovers will simply takeEuripides’ advice and have just a little wine for lubrication and relaxation, along with their food of choice. Because here’s the real secret: aphrodisiacs work largely because you think they will. If caviar, champagne, and strawberries create the right mood for you, they will work; if a hamburger and fries are set in the context of “tonight’s the night,” they will work just as well. No aphrodisiac, it should be added, is a lifesaver or comes up to the combined effect of “the time and the place and the loved one together.”
fantasy
fantasy
as the mind dreams, the body responds
The reality is that most of us fantasize – 90 percent of women and almost 100 percent of men. Psychologists would call it a bridge between forbidden urges and the socialized and civilized part of us – the child gets to play, to love, to rebel, to hurt, and to be hurt, but safely and while staying “good.” Physiologists would say that it pump-primes: as the brain dreams, the body responds – the tendency to fantasize may be linked withtestosterone, which would probably explain the gender difference. But don’t take that difference too seriously – some men, particularly under stress, hardly fantasize at all, while in some women, fantasy on its own can trigger orgasm.
Let’s demolish some myths here and now; fantasy isn’t the refuge of the undersexed or those who aren’t getting it – the more arousable and experienced we are, the more we are likely to fantasize. We may sometimes get spooked, yet such dreams are nothing to be scared of and almost always we fantasize not as a step to doing something in real life but because we never will. (Nighttime dreams, which feel infinitely more alarming because they feel completely outside of our control, are equally safe.) What we do want is to direct our own movie, with ourselves in the starring role – being worshipped, being taken, having sex with someone unavailable, doing things that are forbidden, and all of these in the middle of the high street, at the top of the Empire State Building,
It’s an understandable obsession.Desire is so vital and lack of desire so devastating that humankind desperately wants to know the secret of creating and controlling it. Until recently, however, it has been the stuff of dreams; the active ingredients in most reputed aphrodisiacs, including the aforementioned chocolate, are actually so small that they would have little effect, and the ones that work by overstimulation – such as traditionalSpanish fly and its modern counterpart,amyl nitrate – can be life-threatening.
In this respect, we have a lot to thank current pharmacology for.Testosterone for both,dopamine for her, an upcoming nasal spray that activates brain receptors; no point in being more specific – the landscape will have changed even before this book goes to press. Particularly intriguing is the idea of the antidepressant that caused research subjects to climax uncontrollably whenever they yawned, though it doesn’t sound altogether practical if one gets tired or bored on a regular basis.
Science is only just discovering that emotion can also be an aphrodisiac. While festering anger and real fear kill desire, mild versions of each can have the opposite effect. Hence couples who leap into bed after afight, hence the effect of edgy sex where uncertainty breeds passion, and “safe” anxiety breeds arousal.Grief, surprisingly, has an effect too; if you find yourselves making love after a recent bereavement, you are neither heartless nor unusual but affirming life in the most fundamental of ways.
In the end, for regular use, most lovers will simply takeEuripides’ advice and have just a little wine for lubrication and relaxation, along with their food of choice. Because here’s the real secret: aphrodisiacs work largely because you think they will. If caviar, champagne, and strawberries create the right mood for you, they will work; if a hamburger and fries are set in the context of “tonight’s the night,” they will work just as well. No aphrodisiac, it should be added, is a lifesaver or comes up to the combined effect of “the time and the place and the loved one together.”
fantasy
fantasy
as the mind dreams, the body responds
The reality is that most of us fantasize – 90 percent of women and almost 100 percent of men. Psychologists would call it a bridge between forbidden urges and the socialized and civilized part of us – the child gets to play, to love, to rebel, to hurt, and to be hurt, but safely and while staying “good.” Physiologists would say that it pump-primes: as the brain dreams, the body responds – the tendency to fantasize may be linked withtestosterone, which would probably explain the gender difference. But don’t take that difference too seriously – some men, particularly under stress, hardly fantasize at all, while in some women, fantasy on its own can trigger orgasm.
Let’s demolish some myths here and now; fantasy isn’t the refuge of the undersexed or those who aren’t getting it – the more arousable and experienced we are, the more we are likely to fantasize. We may sometimes get spooked, yet such dreams are nothing to be scared of and almost always we fantasize not as a step to doing something in real life but because we never will. (Nighttime dreams, which feel infinitely more alarming because they feel completely outside of our control, are equally safe.) What we do want is to direct our own movie, with ourselves in the starring role – being worshipped, being taken, having sex with someone unavailable, doing things that are forbidden, and all of these in the middle of the high street, at the top of the Empire State Building,
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