The 30-Year-Old Orgasm Virgin

A new book chronicles one woman's 26-year quest to bring herself to sexual climax. I did her four better.

Despite having worked at Glamour magazine and coming of age in the Sex and the City era, I was 30 years old before I made up my mind to give masturbation a try. Thirty before I ever used a vibrator. Thirty before I had my first orgasm.

Sex has always made intuitive sense to me—the human connection, the intimacy—even if I didn’t actually have sex till my late 20s. (Blame Catholic repression.) But the idea of anyone, male or female, masturbating? That grossed me out for a long time. It seemed tawdry, seedy, shameful—in a category with sex shops, colored condoms, and porn videos. On top of that, I’ve never been someone who pursues pleasure for pleasure’s sake. I eat what’s healthy, always refuse dessert, and even when I go to the movies, it’s in the hopes of learning something that will help me develop as a storyteller. A typical type-A over-achiever.

Guys don’t need electronic devices purchased at stores with names like Good Vibrations, books with names like Sex for One, or DVDs called Viva la Vulva.

Like me, Mara Altman, the author of a new memoir called Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm—a 377-page exercise in what might be termed “vagina-gazing”—wasn’t that interested in making time for orgasm either. (Not until she landed the Coming book deal, that is, at age 26, which more or less required that she give it a whirl.) Her shrink’s diagnosis: that she couldn’t allow herself enjoyment unless involved in the accomplishment of a task.

Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm. By Mara Altman. Other than that, though, Altman and I don’t have much in common. She was raised by two hippie-ish parents, Berkeley dropouts who were so open about sex and sexuality it could be embarrassing; her theory is that she rebelled by never touching herself. Sounds feasible, at first. But she never quite squares that hypothesis with the fact that she lost her virginity at an unremarkable age, when she was a high-school senior, at her parents’ house, in her very own bedroom—and the next day, after “proudly” telling them what went down, they gave her their copy of The Kama Sutra—none of which seems to have bothered her much.

Still, she did have masturbation-block. Altman, a former Village Voice staff writer, had “always hoped some man would hit a bull’s eye and save me the trouble of exploring myself.” I know plenty of women who have felt the same way. Perhaps this expectation is another iteration of traditional gender roles; maybe it comes of the belief that men are more sexually experienced. But that’s not because they’re particularly sexually talented as a gender, but rather because the mechanics of male masturbation are so much simpler. Dudes don’t need electronic devices purchased at stores with names like Good Vibrations, books with names like Sex for One, or DVDs called Viva la Vulva.

Once women ask around, however, it’s no big secret that a vibe—not a man—is the best route to getting off. That’s what all my lady friends told me, anyway. Altman gets the same advice, and on page six of her me-moir, admits she could “just shove one of those rabbit vibrators ... down there and probably get it over with.” Yet she doesn’t actually use one till page 240. And almost immediately after she finally does—no surprise—she has that elusive orgasm. It’s a moment that’s, ironically, anticlimatic for the exasperated reader, who long ago figured out that the main reason Altman procrastinates so long is because she wouldn’t have a book otherwise. Were she a particularly funny or talented writer, she might have pulled off being a tease for so long, but I lost my readerly erection by about page four. Despite the energy she brings to her task, Altman doesn’t have the chops to make a Don Quixote-length book about her quest worth reading, particularly because her personal story isn’t especially compelling—she doesn’t delve in a meaningful way into the existing literature, scientific or otherwise, nor does she have very interesting insights.

Without insight or self-reflection, discussing this path to orgasm is, well, just masturbation. My own self-analysis goes like this: I was raised by a construction-working Irish immigrant father, a widower who never discussed the birds and the bees with me and was angered by the vaguest reference to sexuality. Thirteen years of Catholic school only intensified all the shame and fear I associate with sex.

It seemed to take almost as long to de-program myself, with therapy, as it had to get inculcated. I was in my 20s before I finally lost my virginity, and it was even longer before I made it across the masturbatory threshold. Though all my boyfriends encouraged me to give it a go, saying it was the only way I’d ever have an orgasm, I held out, not understanding what all the fuss was about—till an ex suggested that learning how to climax might help alleviate my chronic back pain. That sounded promising. (After all, as Altman notes, orgasms are natural analgesics.) Though sexual realization didn’t seem particularly exigent, physical relief did. And because I already had a vibrator—snagged years earlier off the Glamour giveaway shelf (still in its packaging, I assure you)—what did I have to lose?