Fay Weldon's Fake Orgasm
Last week I reported on Edi Stark's obsession with bowel movements, as she interviewed author William Boyd in our weekly book programme Cover Stories. This week, Edi asked Fay Weldon and Joan Bakewell if either of them had ever faked an orgasm.
"Of course, " said Fay, "one gets tired, one wants to go to sleep."
Joan was a little more discreet, suggesting that orgasms should be left to take care of themselves but admitted that "striving after the experience might actually cancel it out."
Fay Weldon's book What Makes Women Happy and Joan Bakewell's The View From Here both deal with the advantages and disadvantages of growing older. Edi had introduced both authors by saying that there was a time when she though being thirty was ancient. This discussion was an uplifiting antidote to that. Joan described the internet as being a great thing for anyone in their seventies because it allowed them to keep in touch with children, grandchildren and the wider world. Fay said many women regarded the keys to happiness as "sex, food, friends, family and chocolate."
Her book if full of moral advice including the notion that it acceptable to "sleep with your best friend's boyfriend once, but not twice."
Ah, if only we'd known that twenty years ago.
