O by Jonathan Margolis Read Free Book Online Page B

traffic in tactile, facial and verbal communication during pre-sex and sex, there is also a busy chatter of olfactory signals in the form of pheromones, for which the nose is the receptor. The nose, indeed, is something very close to the radar of sexual engagement.
    The earlobes are another seemingly peripheral outcrop with a role in the build-up to orgasmic release. When the earlobes become swollen and engorged, they develop an unexpected hyper-sensitive, erotic capacity. Earlobes were formerly considered an uninteresting relic of a time when we had bigger ears, but are now known as a place so sensitive that large numbers of men and women are capable of achieving orgasm purely through earlobe manipulation – especially by mouth, tongue and teeth. The nipples are another only peripherally sexual area which come into play as erogenous playthings in pre-sex; in both genders, but more so in the female, nipples become swollen and erect, increasing in length in women by as much as a centimetre. Tumescence darkens and emphasises the pigmented skin around female nipples, which turn a deeper red.
    What, then, of the principal players in this drama, the penis and the vagina? Early on, in the more social stage of copulation, the dinner and a movie stage, if you will, the human penis undergoes one of the most dramatic changes seen in Nature. From a short flaccid organ in its normal state, it expands within a few seconds to as much as double its quiescent length and girth. The scrotum simultaneously contracts, applying constricting pressure to the testicles, which are drawn into the body.
    The erection is the site of the greatest volume of vaso-congestion in the human body. Within the quite confined space of the penile tissues, the volume of blood in the erect penis increases approximately eleven-fold. This explains the quite remarkable change in the organ’s size and rigidity.
    At this stage the erect penis presents quite an aggressive and determined sexual statement. But, as the feminist writer Naomi Wolf has pointed out, the erection is also lost very easily. Slight distractions such as a sudden noise, especially by children who might be about to threaten privacy, can rapidly subdue a male erection. (Women’s response to distraction, surprisingly in the light of their greater susceptibility earlier in pre-coitus to ‘losing the mood’, is less sensitive now, according to Wolf; women will tend to be the more resolute in trying circumstances to see an orgasm through to fruition.)
    Erection unrelated to orgasm is common in men; a variety of Internet sources (‘Jenn Even’, an American e-zine sex advisor on
www.sagazette.com
is just one) suggest that the average Western man has eleven imagination-stimulated erections a day, and it would be reasonable to suppose that something like that applied to early man. But blood engorgement pre-intercourse also starts to affect less obvious, but equally indicative, extremities of erectile or semi-erectile tissue in the body. The facial lips of both men and women also become swollen and red; lipstick, along with rouge, is a socially acceptable mimicking of these pre-sexual changes.
    The walls of the vagina also become engorged with blood, often at an early, flirtatious stage of a sexual encounter. This onrush of blood quickly – as with the penis, within seconds sometimes – stimulates lubrication of the vaginal tube. There is an accompanying lengthening and expansion by up to four inches of the inner parts of the vagina as the female enters the phase of high sexual excitement. Her blood, too, is now pouring into the vessels of the pelvic and genital area and expanding the nerve bundles throughout. Muscles around the clitoris, the opening of the vagina and the anus swell.
    The clitoris also becomes enlarged, sensitive and protuberant, although its distension is obscured from view by more general swelling of the labial hood. The clitoris will not, when penetrative