Couples who have been together for a while often need to explore new ways of keeping their sex lives interesting. But sometimes “interesting” ends in injury. Lynn Beisner shares her own story of sex gone wrong.
I’ll admit it; I found Noah Brand’s photo spread kind of hot, so I thought I would try it at home. I asked my 50-year-old slightly geeky husband, who has hair everywhere but on his head and a little bit of a Buddha belly to do a floor show for me.
To his everlasting credit, Pete took a risk. He did a complete strip show, and ended with a wonderful propeller trick. It was HOT! I was inspired and turned on by how he was able to let go of his anxiety about his body and his geeky dance moves, and become uninhibitedly sexual.
I applauded and told him that he was sexy as hell. In fact, I told him, I was pretty sure he could pay off his student loans if he would just shake that booty in a women’s club a couple of times a week.
I might have gone a little too far, because that was when Pete got that mischievous glint in his eye. He asked if I wanted to go to bed with a stripper. I gave him an enthusiastic “Yes!” surrounded by a few other words unprintable here. He grinned, and fell backwards onto the bed. He folded his hands behind his head and informed me that since he was a hot and sexy stripper, he would just lie there and look gorgeous. He had the right to be a pillow prince: I would need to do all the work.
You would think that having my way with a pillow prince would be easy for me. After all, I have been quite the sexual adventurer in my life. But I have never had to deal with even feigned sexual indifference. It made me feel completely incompetent. I reached into my bag of specialties, those things I am really good at. But his feigned disinterest made me fumbly, clumsy, and utterly inept at even my best moves. I decided to try something really bold at just the same second Pete decided to drop his indifferent act. We ended up in a tangle of limbs, and somehow he ended up with his weight on his left knee, which just so happened to be on top my right knee.
We both heard the crunch, and then I was hit by that nauseating wave of dark pain. I had felt that particular sensation before and I knew at once that my patella had slid off. I screamed. But then I clamped my mouth shut and moved away from Pete. I didn’t want him to see my pain, to blame himself.
Pete apologized profusely. But that just made me sad. He shouldn’t need to treat me like I am something fragile. He should have a partner whose body was as willing and ready as her spirit. I felt deeply resentful of my broken body—of all the things that I can’t do that others take for granted.
Pete brought me ice and Vicodin, held me in his arms while I straightened my leg and got the knee-cap to slide back in place. Once the screaming and crying was over, the funniness of the situation hit us both. We began laughing and reminding each other of all the other times our sex has gone bad. “Oh, and remember that time when you gave yourself a black eye because you hit your head on the nightstand when you came?”
When we talk about risky sex, what we generally are talking about is sex that is unprotected or with strangers. But I would argue that the longer you stay in a relationship, the riskier the sex gets. Your bodies start to age, and to keep your sex life vital and alive, you have to take a few chances with each other. Sometimes risk involves showing a new side of ourselves to our partners, or we try acting out a fantasy or doing something completely new and out of our comfort zone. Sometimes taking a risk works out really well, as it did with Pete’s floor-show. Sometimes taking a risk flops, as happened when I tried to seduce a pillow prince. And sometimes people get hurt.
In fact, people accidentally hurt each other during sex a lot. A British study has shown that 1/3 of us will hurt someone or get hurt during sex in any given year. Most of it is rug-burns and sprained necks, ankles, and knees. But occasionally, it is much more serious. People sometimes sustain head injuries, genital lacerations, and occasionally a man’s penis will actually get broken.
There are some great conversations going on right now about how to handle it when people intentionally hurt each other during sex. Our own Clarisse Thorn has put together a great guide for how to keep people safe during S&M scenes, how to give aftercare, and what to do if it goes badly.
What I haven’t found anywhere is a guide for how to handle it when we unintentionally hurt each other while having sex. It seems to me that with so many of us getting hurt, we could use some sort of aftercare procedures at the very least.
Between now and the time we come up with a guide, you are welcome to use the rules Pete and I have come up with: No one gets mocked. No one gets blamed, and no one gets to feel guilty. We apply ice, get medical attention if necessary, and above all, we keep our sense of humor. Once the screaming and/or crying has stopped, we make it a point to find the funny bits. And there are always funny bits.
Lynn Beisner is the pseudonym for a mother, a writer, a feminist, and an academic living somewhere East of the Mississippi. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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