Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

• Login
• Join

Search this site:

Over the past several years I've had the occasional longing to stand in front of a blank canvas again. What kind of painting would I turn out after walking away from my art studio thirty-five years ago? Many friends wondered along with me. My birthday is in August, so I gave myself the gift of exploring easel painting for the entire month. I was with my girlfriend Marianna Beck. Her beautiful summer house in the woods overlooks Green Bay, Wisconsin. Although we went out for dinner occasionally and visited friends in the area, we were primarily on a creative retreat.

The day I went to the art store to recreate my palette, I left out yellow ochre, a major color, and had to make a special trip to buy a tube. When I first faced the blank canvas, I felt lost. Mixing colors was also a mystery until the knowledge returned a little each day. Marianna was sculpting a large stone with her new power tools so she was having her struggles too changing bits that got frozen.

Every evening before dinner we sat on the deck enjoying spectacular sunsets over the sparkling water of Lake Michigan discussing the challenges and joys of the creative process while sipping wine. There were days when nothing seemed to be working; other days we were exhilarated with breakthroughs that proved promising. During rainstorms, we sat inside the screened-in porch listening to the rain punctuated by streaks of lightening and thunder discussing our future film on the clitoris. I can still recall the fresh smell of rain on the surrounding trees.

At first, I thought about painting the horrors of war along the lines of "Guernica," Picasso's famous painting. But I couldn't find a place inside myself to conjure up images that matched my feelings of hatred, disgust and grief over a never ending war with innocents being killed or wounded fighting to make old rich men richer. When Katrina hit at the end of August, Mother Nature exposed the Bush government's utter disdain for the planet and the human condition. I decided not to let their toxic regime dampen my joy of being alive.

After the first week of standing long hours blocking in an image of a man and woman embracing, I ended up painting everything out. The experience gave me a renewed appreciation for all the years I'd spent long hours, days and even months working on a canvas only to end up whiting it out so I could begin again. Creativity is about striving toward perfection knowing it's unreachable - the ideal training for a life of dedication that borders on obsessive-compulsive behavior that's socially acceptable when it's art. But when I became dedicated to sex, I was viewed as a perverted weirdo.

Learning to stay with a painting was also good training for my career of teaching and writing books about sex. I now believe that any teacher who changes a person's life for the better is practicing the highest art form. Easel painting is an entertaining luxury by comparison. My favorite part about this summer was realizing that I'd made the right decision when I left the art world to teach sex. No regrets.

The summer before, I did pen and ink drawings of my sexual fantasies that kept me turned on the entire month. As I confessed in the essay I posted a year ago, I was masturbating so much that instead of going blind, I was convinced my eyesight had improved. But this summer orgasms were not plentiful. In fact I'm embarrassed to admit there were only two the entire month. Working on a 30 by 40 inch canvas drained off all of my sex energy. When I was younger, painting the classical nude would regularly send me to the couch for a quick session with my clit. Now I need much more than the pretty form of a breast or the curve of a hip to turn me on. My dirty fantasies were doing the trick, but this time I wanted to create more acceptable images that could be shared with more people.

Unwittingly, I ended up with a sentimental picture of "Lovers with Humming Bird." Just outside the window where I often worked, there was a humming bird feeder. I would have been better off painting the little bird and leaving out the lovers. The man looked like a stiff, wooden Eric in the arms of a mystery woman who had parts of my body, an insipid face and Marianna's hair.

In between struggling with the large canvas, I made little sketches of nudes using a combination of pen and ink with oil paint. They were lighthearted and fun! First I started off with a small self portrait. Then a cunt landscape, a reclining nude with pussy cat, a menstruating nude, two women entwined, back view of a nude, etc. Gradually it dawned on me that I can draw and paint with oils anytime I chose. I don't have to rent an art studio or buy any major equipment. I can play with oil paints right in my own space. They now have turpentine that is odorless. I don't need a large standing easel because my little desktop easel works just fine. There are drawing pads with sheets of canvas in varying sizes and once a painting dries it can be stored in a flat drawer filing cabinet just like a drawing.

We had a few guests during the month. My partner Eric stayed home to mind the business. Marianna's partner Jack Hafferkamp came for a week. Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence from San Francisco spent a weekend with us. This is the third year we've all gotten together using my birthday as an excuse to celebrate. All five of us have degrees in sexology and we work in the field. Robert and Carol recently established the Center for Sex and Culture, a non-profit foundation. Carol is an author of many books about sex and she also works at Good Vibrations, the sex store in San Francisco. For twelve years, Jack and Marianna published Libido, The Journal of Sex and Sensibility. They now own Libido Films, Inc. making erotic videos that show women in charge of their sexlives. When we all get together, you can imagine the profound and profane discussions that go on about the good, bad and neglected state of sex in America.

Marianna's handsome 23 year-old son Ryan was with us most of the month working for an organic farmer. The veggies and eggs he brought home were the freshest I've ever had. I even went to the farm and met the chickens who had individual names. Our multi-colored eggs were laid by happy hens. Through Ryan and the couple who own the farm, I learned about genetically modified organisms (GMO). Monsanto is the evil corporation who actually patented living seeds. Organic farmers avoid these seeds, but if they accidentally get blown onto their fields and show up in their crops, they get charged a royalty. And guess what? All GMO crops need much more spraying with insecticides to survive which supports the big chemical corporations. Our best hope is to support the local farmer's markets around the country and buy organic food whenever we can.

After five enjoyable weeks, we returned to Chicago where Marianna and Jack are based. We've been good friends for 15 years and I figured we'd not only work well together but also have fun in the process. I was right. They have been my production team for two of my new videos. The newest DVD titled "Orgasmic Women: 13 Selfloving Divas" will be available on my website after October first. The second DVD "Learning Orgasm: Be Your Own Sex Coach" is still in the works. It will show my step by step method of teaching women how to have a first orgasm or to improve the ones they're having. The teaching tape will be available sometime next year.

On my last day in Chicago, the sex store "Early to Bed" hosted An Evening with Betty Dodson where I showed 15 minutes of "Orgasmic Women." The crowd was very mixed and lively and they loved the film. Thanks to some good PR from Chicago's Time Out Magazine, the store was filled to capacity with nearly 100 people. The response to the video was wildly enthusiastic. It was a fabulous evening for all.

As soon as I returned to New York, I continued on my path of pleasure working on a final edit for my memoir. The manuscript has been on my computer since the early eighties and its gone through a hundred rewrites. Toni Lopopolo, my literary agent, thinks we have a winner. The working title is Democratic Sex: One Woman's Revolution. When I first shopped the book in the mid-eighties, I secretly worried that revealing my explicit past would discredit me as a sex educator. Ageing well has its benefits because I'm beyond that concern today. Once again I'm reminded that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

My webmaster Grant will be thrilled when I finally publish the memoir. He's an important part of the book and helped as an editor off and on for years. In 1966, at the beginning of America's sexual revolution, we entered the garden of earthly delights. At the time I was 36 and Grant was 42. We were both recently divorced and extremely sex starved when we started mainlining orgasms together. After five years of an open-ended relationship, we moved along to have other primary lovers. We even double dated with our new lovers. Since then we have remained close friends. That's pretty fucking democratic sex to my way of thinking. The following is an excerpt from the forward to my memoir:

In the 1800's the scandalous suffragette Victoria Woodhull called sex for pleasure "free love." In the seventies we called it "casual sex." Gay men call it "sport fucking." The younger set today calls it "friends with benefits." Tomorrow, who knows what we'll call it, but enjoying sex for the sheer pleasure of it will endure alongside monogamous marriages, open relationships, exclusive serial relationships, and celibacy. But masturbation will always be the most democratic sex act of all because it's equally available to everyone for the sole purpose of pleasure.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have a masturbation break and dedicate another orgasm to world peace and organic produce. Why don't you join me?