Forbidden Flowers Read Free

because you see it as an opportunity at last to make things better for both of you? Sex never was the simple piece of cake Hugh Hefner sells to men; women's questioning of a sexual status quo that was questionable to begin with must be disquieting if not threatening to men. I'm not saying that a lot of men – the machos , for instance – don't deserve their discomfort. But a lot don't. I suppose what it comes down to is that if you're a woman who wants men in your life, you've got to take your responsibility along with your liberation.
    The as-yet-unplotted possibilities of women's sexuality, given almost surrealistically vivid form and image in fantasy, not only frightens men but women too. Think of all that desire unleashed, desire he may not be interested in or able to satisfy, appetites mother would never have approved of, sexual- power she doesn't know what to do with. (How many women know how to make the first move? Should she pick up the telephone, reach for his hand, his cock? Should she say, “Please, I want you to go down on me?” And how many men would reject her if she did? Oral sex may be “intellectually” accepted today, but as you will see from the women in this book – if you have not already discovered it for yourself – there are a great number of men who are unskilled, unpracticed, or unwilling to do what they say.)
    We are not yet ready to accept the simple proposition that female sexual power added to male sexual power equals better sex for both. And yet the truth is that the foundation of our myth of male sexual superiority is riddled with deception and fakeroo. Worse, it gives the poor man who believes it an awful superman's burden to carry. Dominance and superiority are words you use when you go to war, not to bed.
    7

    Henry Miller wrote me a letter about My Secret Garden :
    “I've always suspected that women had richer, wilder, fantasies than men. From my limited experience with women I must also add that I have found them more capable of abandoning themselves completely in intercourse than men. In a good healthy sense I would say, to use an old-fashioned word, that they are morèshameless' than men … . Men are only beginning to perceive the true nature of women's being. They have created a false image of her. She is neither an angel nor a bitch in heat. If she is no longer an enigma, she is certainly an everlasting source of wonder and rich in unexplored possibilities in every domain of life.”
    If I prefer Henry Miller's approach to women's fantasies to that of many psychiatrists, it is because his view of life is large enough to see fantasy as enriching human experience, and not the mark of pathology.
    Far from being a perversion of our deepest and most intimate moments together, sexual fantasies answer the need for variety that exists in the best of relationships. To those who think it is a crime to consciously retreat into the secret garden of your mind while in the arms of your beloved, let me quote Dr. Ray Birdwhistle of the University of Pennsylvania. An overly closed idea of marriage, he says, leads to pathology.
    “Privacy is disallowed as being disloyal. But if the couple wants intimacy, both partners need to refresh themselves with privacy. That implies also being allowed to withdraw without guilt. It is only in the private kingdom of the mind that one can enjoy fantasies. And what held together romantic love in the first place? A rich, lusty, sweet and sad, vengeful and even violent fantasy life” [ New York magazine, February 1973].
    On the last page of My Secret Garden , I asked readers to contribute their own sexual fantasies and comments for the book you now hold. It is from the shape these letters took that I have devised the form of this book. Part One deals with the very frequent question of readers, “Where Do Sexual Fantasies Come From?” Part Two, “The Uses of Sexual Fantasy” concerns the role these imaginary, erotic scenarios play in the lives of many