by Jaie Helier

You're male or female; bi or straight; lesbian, hetero, gay. You're a soft romantic sort, or hard and horny. You want sex -- we all want sex. You like it. You go looking for someone to have it with. You woo or let yourself be wooed, in a manner which pleases you both. You do the things; you say the words. You circle 'till you both get naked. Then you apply your body to theirs, skin to skin, finding the way to the appropriate place, in the appropriate way. Then as long, as safe, as satisfying, and as often as you possibly can, you both get your rocks off and that's all there is to it.

Or is it?

Do you ever wake up in the early hours of the morning and find yourself imagining having sex in ways you would never talk about to anyone -- not even the person whose genitals you have just sucked; to whom you have opened every orifice of your body; who has heard you moaning and crying as you came?

Do you dream of seeing pee dribbling through a girl's knickers and down her leg? Do you dream of being bent over the knee of somebody strong and whipped with a television cord? Do you fantasize about being made to stand on your office chair with your pants down as a punishment for masturbating? Do you think of having sex with animals? Do you long to be tied up with your legs wide apart, so anyone in the room could do anything to you and you'd be helpless to stop them? Do you imagine yourself naked but for a plastic raincoat, fucking with someone in tight black rubber?

Okay, I don't know this for certain, but I suspect that if you don't ever think of anything like this, you must be dead.

Sex is not simple. Think of it as a river. You see it and you say "this river flows west," or, "this river flows east." You think that's all there is to say about it, but look a little further back and you realize that all rivers are made of tributaries and streams. Some are big, some small, some are straight and obvious, some snaky and hidden. One of the great delights of spending time at the river is discovering those odd and sometimes delightful little streams that feed the main flow and make it the unique, individual thing it is.

Our society has the tendency to say that all sex is straight hetero sex and anything else is dirty. More recently, we have begun to agree that maybe gay and lesbian sex is okay, sort of, but anything more diverse than that, my dear, and you're a pervert. So we keep our little desires in our hearts and we tell no one, not even our dearest loves who give us such pleasure and with whom we share everything else in life. We don't explore, we just dream of exploring; and we don't even let ourselves really admit that these things, these unspeakable perverted fantasies we just can't shake off, are part of what we are. It's a shame, isn't it? Yes, it is -- and perhaps that's the shame that's killing us.

You would like to reveal your inner longings because you think that it would be good for you. Perhaps it would reduce your stress, enrich your relationship, enhance even further the sex you both enjoy. You would like to reveal it to your partner because somewhere in your heart you feel that, surely, that is exactly with whom you should be sharing this. You even hope it will be good for you both, good for the partnership. Something you can enjoy secretly together, another part of the marvelous conspiracy you are as a couple.

You hope all that, and perhaps you're right. Perhaps, but be prepared -- take care. Each person who enters a relationship brings with them a lot of baggage. Sexual diversity challenges our most ingrained sexual fears. Your partner, with whom you laugh and cry, who knows you like no one else, may also have hidden depths. These may be hidden depths of fear and loathing you wouldn't have thought possible.

In every enterprise of any worth, there is a risk. This enterprise is worthwhile. Treated carefully, it could bring you both the richest, most fulfilling sex you've ever had, but it is important to minimize the risk. Unless you're impossibly driven by your particular fetish (in which case it isn't fun anymore and you may need help), the purpose of the exercise must be to discover to what extent the streams and bywaters of your sexuality match those of your partner.

When you have discovered that, go no further. And be very careful to ensure that your partner knows, right from the start, that this is all you want to do. To try to force your partner to join with you in a kind of sex that repels them is not only wrong but it may well kill their feelings for you. Sexual attraction is a delicate balance of the real and the illusionary -- resilient enough under most circumstances but it can be damaged if jerked out of its comfort zone.

So how do you reveal these strange and wonderful needs of yours without damaging the relationship you are trying to nourish?

A woman with whom I corresponded for a while very much wanted to be spanked by her husband. They had a good sexual relationship and she knew him as a gentle and considerate man. Somehow she knew that the thought of hurting her, even in fun, would be shocking to him, against all his instincts and upbringing. For a while she suppressed the impulse to explore, but the desire stayed with her. She believed that if she could find just the right way to introduce it, their relationship would be able to encompass a little spanking.

So she wrote him a story. She had never written before, and it wasn't a brilliant piece of fiction, but she wrote it about characters who were recognizably like them and she left it in his pocket with a lipstick kiss on it. It took three stories before he began to understand that it wasn't just literature for literature's sake. One day he made the connection between her occasional irrational bouts of bratty behavior and the stories she gave him, and he put her over his knee. It seems he never really took to the idea entirely -- it always remained her initiative -- but she got some memorable spankings out of it and their sex life didn't suffer a bit.

The beauty of her patient approach was that it allowed him to understand her need and to fulfill it as completely as was comfortable for him. She would have loved to have been spanked harder, longer and more often but she was happy with what they had been able to achieve and didn't push him beyond where he wanted to go. That's the best way.

In this example, of course, the pain and indignity is all suffered by the partner who initiated the exploration. On the face of it, that is a lot simpler than the other way round. Suppose, for instance, she had wanted to spank him, or dress him in baby clothes, or tie him to the bedpost by his genitals with a ballgag in his mouth. Suppose he had been the initiator, wanting to do similar things to her.

One's natural and immediate assumption is that normal people don't want those things. We see each others "street" faces, self-possessed, cool, well-dressed. We assume that these personas are who each of us really wants to be. Of course, to some degree they are; but then we are a lot of things and it is a mistake to take too simplified a view of human desire. Nobody is inclined in just one direction.

The straight, heterosexual person whose only sexual desire is to procreate is a myth. Lots of people would like to believe they are that, and all of us tend to think everyone else is. Maybe that's why we so easily deride and condemn when we find someone who clearly isn't.

The truth is that everyone -- no matter how respectable, clean, fashionable, intelligent they may be outside -- has desires and secret longings. When we want to explore the potential for sexual diversity in our relationships, we must start from the assumption that there is always a chance, just a chance, that our sexual quirks and those of our partners may be compatible -- however strange they may be.

Be very gentle with your partner's sensibilities. Never lose sight of the way back. Remember that what you already have together is precious and, if it isn't, you shouldn't even be considering this. Nevertheless, don't be afraid. Introduce the subject in conversation. If your partner reacts violently against the idea then probe gently to find out why this reaction is as it is. Sometimes, but not always, immediate condemnation can conceal an unexplored, or perhaps guilty, fascination. Find pictures, stories, newspaper articles, internet sites -- whatever fits the usual way you and your partner communicate about common interests. Over a prolonged period, this will allow you to get a picture of how they really feel, and even if they're not immediately interested, perhaps they might become interested. Take lots of time so your partner doesn't start getting the feeling that all you think about these days is this particular interest.

Feed the feelings and interest between you with the idea that this might be shared. Experiment in loveplay to see if things similar to your interest are acceptable. Be prepared and willing to laugh with them about it -- that may be their way of testing whether this is something you have under control. Laughter is also a good way back if it turns out not to be acceptable.

Suppose your dream comes true. Suppose you long to pee on your partner, and this is what they would like too. Or to stand on them with six inch heels, or make them your sex slave or dress them up as a pony. What then?

Well, the first thing is to understand that you've still got to live with each other. Nothing that passes between you in sexplay must be allowed, even for a moment, to change the behaviors and respect you need to survive the rest of the time.

Secondly, the fact that you and your partner now, for instance, share of a love of exhibitionism doesn't mean that public sex is all they want to do. In fact, maybe it means the opposite. It may mean putting more effort into the other times, so they know for certain that nothing has changed and that the relationship doesn't just depend on their willingness to do the exotic stuff.

Thirdly, never lose sight of how precious it is to find someone whom you can not only love and live with, but who also shares with you the little tributary desires. To have found this must make your relationship stronger and more loving, more interdependent. If it doesn't then either you or your partner could be making a bad mistake.

Sometimes one partner will agree to something they're not really comfortable with to please the other person. Don't press them into this position. Talk frequently about their comfort level. It will come out in the end and if they begin to feel trapped and unhappy the relationship will suffer.