Nothing compares

POOR old Sinead O'Connor recently blogged that she's desperate for a man - and, more specifically, sex.

POOR old Sinead. Madame O'Connor, of that hauntingly beautiful face, recently blogged that she's desperate for a man - and, more specifically, sex.

At the grand old age of 44. Oh, the ironies of womanhood! Just as we enter the age of invisibility, many of us are approaching our sexual prime. We’re finally finding a voice.

Example. The misspent youth - late teens, early 20s - involving various ill-matched men whose names I no longer remember. From my side: all about wanting to please. Giving in. Doing things I didn’t, actually, want to do. Never having an orgasm. Developing a great line in faking – not only in the understanding of what was meant to be so great about this process; but the fudging at that endless little question, “So how was it for you?”

Er, not great. But I could never bring myself to say it. It was often bleak and ugly and searingly lonely. Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes I got the feeling that the guys doing things to me didn’t like women very much; that they were afraid of them, wanted to chip away at them. “Only connect,” E.M. Forster wrote, but it seemed that with this fundamental human experience there was often a profound, bewildering lack of connection.

This could have been the sum total of my sexual perception. There were huge periods when I just couldn’t be bothered. What was all the fuss about? The less sex I had the less I wanted and it was easier that way. Then I found a man who unlocked me, who was determined to find the key to the other side. Reader, I married him.

As I grew older I realised I was far from alone in feeling bewildered during the early years of adulthood; in feeling there must be more to it. I believe now that every woman can be unlocked. That we all have the capacity to be transported into another realm by a sexual experience, to be combusted into light. Catherine Hakim’s book, Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital, states that women’s sexual desire is lower than men’s. If that’s so, I wonder if it’s because a lot of us are living in ignorance. If we’ve never had a fabulous sexual experience we have no idea what’s on the other side. Many men are unaware how to bring a woman truly alive – and many women aren’t bold enough to tell them what they really want, and don’t.

A recently divorced friend, mid-40s, has just had her first orgasm – with a new boyfriend. Her husband never gave her one (not that he’d know). She’s glowing. It reminds me that great sex can flood us with beauty and vividness and spark. “If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy,” P.D. James said. Well, here’s to persistence then.

“I only want good sex now,” my mate says. “I’m too old to stand for anything else.” It’s a mantra repeated by many of my girlfriends heading into middle age – and here’s to that. We all need help. Marilyn Monroe said, “I don’t think I do it properly.” Me neither, for years. Now I say: go for bold. Do something in bed you’ve always wanted to, but have never had the courage to ask for. Strip yourself bare; say what you really want. Make love heroically. Act audaciously. A lot of women find it hard to demand sexually. You never know where it’ll lead you. Perhaps another – delicious – level entirely. 

My friend’s learnt to make love audaciously, and that’s a big milestone in a woman’s sexual life. A lot of us in our younger years can’t face the thought of people seeing us as who we really are, for it means losing control of that tight public persona we’ve so carefully set up. And we never get closer to the truth of our dark, vulnerable, messy selves than with sex. My mate’s loosened, relaxed, let go, in the most wonderful way – and it took her until the age of invisibility to get there.

Nikki’s new novel, With My Body, is out now.