Let's talk about sex
Hello RH community, Tony Cuseo here.
TRIGGER WARNING: This newsletter is about sex. Parts of it are graphic and it contains a non-consensual sexual experience.
I am going to tell you the story of the first time I had sex, and how I’ve related to sex throughout my life. I’m telling you up front here so you know what you’re getting yourself into.
Friends of mine had “girlfriends” by the age of 13 and were doing “hand stuff” soon after.
I was miles behind them.
I didn’t so much as hold a girl’s hand until I was at least 17, and I didn’t have my first kiss until the age of 22.
A year later I was naked in bed with a woman I had been dating.
We were making out and she was straddling me.
Suddenly, without telling me, she slipped my cock inside her. I wasn’t wearing a condom and I felt scared.
After a couple of seconds of her sliding up and down, I frantically yelled, “Off off off!” Before promptly ejaculating onto her leg and my bedsheets.
That’s how I lost my virginity. Pretty romantic, eh?
After that, I became obsessed with learning about, and getting “good” at, sex.
For most of my 20s, the number of books I read about sex far exceeded the number of times I actually had sex.
One of the books I read during that period was “Sex Matters” by Osho.
Somewhere in that book is a line that says something like:
“All your problems are sex problems.”
I thought of myself as pretty fucked up at the time. I often felt depressed and anxious and was generally unhappy. So believing all my problems boiled down to sex was a huge relief.
Unsurprisingly, I tried to fix myself with my mind, by learning more.
I ordered even more books and signed up for courses online that claimed they’d teach me how to make a woman squirt. Or show me a method for giving her an orgasm in under 5 minutes, etc.
In my late 20s, I got curious about Tantra.
I read book after book, signed up for online classes, and eventually started attending in-person workshops.
To me, Tantra seemed to imply that sex is a divine and sacred act. There was an emphasis on connecting deeply with your partner, emotionally and spiritually.
I wasn’t totally sold on the idea.
Sometimes I wanted to have deep, meaningful, “sacred” sex. Other times I didn’t.
"Sometimes I want to fuck just because I’m horny, or because I think a woman has great boobs, or because I’m bored and craving a blowjob,” I thought.
So I left the Tantra world and entered the BDSM scene.
At first, I felt relieved. The people I met in that community didn’t seem to think of sex as sacred at all.
In fact, many of them didn’t seem to care who the hell they were having sex with. What seemed most important was finding play partners with compatible kinks.
I had fun in the kink scene but after a while, I got bored. Meeting someone at a play party who liked to be spanked or liked to be tied up was fun.
But I rarely felt emotionally connected to them and I didn’t feel fulfilled afterward.
I don’t think of my time exploring Tantra and BDSM as a waste, however.
The more I understood what I liked and didn’t like sexually, and the more I expressed those things out loud, the freer I felt.
I also found that the way I related to myself and others in a sexual context very much mirrored how I related to myself and others outside of sex, and vice versa.
For most of my life, I have struggled to ask for what I want.
When it came to asking for what I wanted sexually, I was an absolute mess.
My go-to move was pretending I liked everything.
Whatever my partner wanted from me, I pretended I wanted to give it to them. Whatever they did to me, I pretended I liked it.
It wasn’t until I started practicing Radical Honesty, and later met Betty Martin and attended her workshop that I noticed just how much I was enduring. And how much I wasn’t creating what I wanted in my sex life, and in my life, life.
Once I realized how much I was hiding out, I started asking for what I wanted inside and outside the bedroom.
I also started telling women what I liked and didn’t like sexually.
I told my partners what turned me on, and told them about things I had never tried but wanted to — all of which seemed like a HUGE risk to me.
I felt tense and scared and had feelings of shame and guilt, simply at the thought of asking for oral sex, or asking if I could film my partner while she went down on me.
And if a woman said no or made a face that I judged as disapproval after I asked for what I wanted, I felt even more shame. Along with sadness and anger.
Nowadays I feel well-practiced in asking. And, I still regularly feel tense and scared when I do.
I also have the judgment that the more I “own” the things I want sexually, the bigger and fuller I feel.
I feel more and more whole.
That’s why I’ve wanted to create a Radical Honesty sex workshop ever since I attended my first 8-Day Intensive.
And this January and February, Lindsay and I will be doing just that.
We’re running an online workshop series all about sex. Actually, two of them...
In true Radical Honesty fashion, we’ll talk about the things we’re not supposed to – what we like, what we don’t like, what we pretend to like, and what we secretly want to try but have never told a soul.
We might share about the type of porn we watch, what we think about when we masturbate, or whatever the hell else comes up for us.
The workshop will feature a series of games and practices I’ve learned from my work as a Sexological Bodyworker. And, we will lead you through some exercises that Lindsay and I made up using our own neurotic, erotic, minds.
We’ll explore fantasies, taboos, desires, fears, and whatever else shows up in the moment. I imagine those who join us will experience a wide variety of wanted and unwanted sensations.
Both series will feature 4 live video calls, and we'll spend 2.5 hours talking. We will run two separate groups to accommodate both the US and European time zones.
The Thursday Group will meet on the following days at 5pm PST/8pm EST/2am CET:
January 5, 12, 26 & February 2 (no call on Jan. 19)
The Saturday Group will meet on the following days at 9am PST/12 pm EST/6pm CET:
February 11, 18, 25 & March 11 (no call on March 4)
The Early Bird price for both groups is available until December 10th!
If you’d like to lose your virginity with us and join the first-ever “Let's Talk About Sex” workshop series, we would love to have you.
With love and lube,
Tony
Tony Cuseo is a Radical Honesty Trainer Candidate who co-leads workshops and practice groups. He also holds certifications in Embodied Counseling and Sexological Bodywork. Tony is passionate about creating art, music, and love.
Upcoming Workshops Co-led by Tony: