Women & Sex

Awaken Her Senses

By decoding the secrets of your lover's sensory awareness, you can connect passionately, even viscerally, with her body and her soul. Learn how as five discerning women share the tour of their sensual selves.

by Anne Taylor Fleming Modeling by: Cinthia Moura
[ Updated: Jul 14, 2008 - 5:11:53 PM ]

My eyes are my history. They contain the archives of all my memories. Eyes wide open or shut tight, I can still see them, the faces and places I have loved, shared with people long gone -- Tucker, my first childhood pug; Hattie, the black woman who was with us for only 6 months when I was 12; my father, a more recent loss. He strides, testosterone-filled in the prime of life, across my vision, the movie screen of my memory, my eyeballs.

All of my adult life, we lived within a mile of each other, and some days I see him everywhere: building a fence in my backyard in dirty overalls; driving his big white Lincoln Continental on the main thoroughfare, rakish cap on his head; laughing big and hard at one of my stories on the patio of the local hamburger joint in his signature white windbreaker. Ha, ha, ha. People are watching because he laughs big, as he does everything, and I don't mind. We are a father-daughter spectacle of mirth, and everybody is watching us. With their eyes, they are taking a snapshot of us. I am doing it, too, so that all these years later -- 35 -- I can call it up, pull it out, and still see us there. Click.

They are astonishing, these eyes of ours. They are scavengers, promiscuous; they roam everywhere, taking their pictures, sending them up the most sophisticated neural pathways to the brain, where they are processed and stored. Things loved: that father. Young, older, heartbroken. A zillion pictures. Things marveled at: the pyramids in Egypt, the Seine at night, New York ashy and wounded after September 11. Click, click, click, click, click, click. And in the foreground: a traveling companion, a dog, a sister, a lover.

Remember: I see him there in that hotel, thick-trunked, furry, excited. I'd forgotten I had that shot. I blush to see him there again, us there. I am just out of range, coming out of the bathroom. He is lying on top of the orange-flowered bedspread, looking at me, smiling. Yum, his eyes say. Before there is a touch, a taste, a moan, a smell, there is perception, seeing and being seen, eye-beckoned. Sight is foreplay. And even when you collapse next to that lover, you can still see, as you yield to pleasure and close your eyes, every inch of him -- as later, asleep and dreaming, you can see him again.

We talk of love at first sight. Is there really such a thing? Both men and women attest to it, using their eyes to scan -- even inhale -- each other on first sighting. But do they see the same thing, react to the same cues? It is always said that men are more visual, more reactive to physical attributes, their eyes specifically aroused by the waist-to-hip ratio of 26 inches to 37 inches, ideal for childbearing. Call it the porno-procreative package.

And women? I don't think we are any less visually aroused. We take note of the abs and pecs and whatnots, the soft spots, the hard spots, the places to linger. But maybe our visual snapshots are a little more holistic, if that makes sense: the quirk of a smile; a look that says, "I like women, I like bed," even "I might be a little bit dangerous but not in a hurting way"; a follow-up arm on the elbow to steer us toward dinner -- those are the cues we rehearse later. And the scars, the places they've been hurt.

Tell me what happened.