The big nothing is everything
I spend all day thinking about sex

Laleh Banoo
December 13, 2006
iranian.com

Andy Warhol once called sex "the big nothing." In a very fundamental way, I think he is right. Sex is something natural, it ensures the survival of the species, without it none of us would be here, and etc. Sex is the first thing I think about when I wake up, the last thing I think about before I go to sleep, and I think about it at least 20 times between those two events each day. So if Andy Warhol is right, I spend all day thinking about absolutely nothing.

Sex really shouldn't be a big deal. So why, then, is sex such a big, complicated mess? Especially if you happen to be a single Iranian girl in your early 20s, even one who has had six lovers by now and done it hundreds of times. Perhaps it's a mess because you happen to love it even while knowing full well that your culture (and most cultures, really) views it as dirty and shameful. Maybe you love it because of that. Well, that's me, and I suppose this is not a new story, but I want to write about my most intimate thoughts in a thoughtful way. And I want other people to read it. The reason for this is two-fold. The first is that I am a writer by trade, and this is the only way I know to work out my problems. The second is that I am a shameless exhibitionist. Not one stupid enough to use my real name here, though I'm sure I'll get plenty of email from Neanderthals (to which I say, bring it, suckers!), but I get off on blurring the lines between the private and the public spheres, I am a voyeur and I desire voyeurs, and... it's fun.

So here I am, writing under pseudonym for Iranian.com, the very website where I first learned that there exist Iranian women who like to (dare I say it?) fuck. And thanks to Sarvenaz, I learned that it's perfectly okay to fuck - and even better to fuck in Farsi. So I have some vital questions that I am trying to answer here. Is it possible to be a sexually liberated Iranian woman without keeping your liberation a secret from the entire world, besides your lovers? Is a secret liberation any liberation at all? Also: Does sex without guilt exist for me? Is there any real way to tell if a man will be good in the sack before you go through the hassle of matching your undergarments? What if he sucks in bed and you like him despite it? All big questions, and perhaps some of you have answers. If so, send them along.

Back to Mr. Warhol's point, though, perhaps it is more accurate to say that half of my lovers were big nothings, and the other half meant something, or even everything. And here are some other statistics, because I love numbers: two and a half of them were Middle Eastern, two were blond, three were American, one said "fuckin' girls from Persia" mid-coitus in his Boston accent upon my request (I like to keep things light and he was pretty boring otherwise), all six were tall, one had a small penis that couldn't stay hard, five had huge penises that I didn't realize were big until I saw the small one, two were older than thirty, one made me hot by talking dirty in Farsi, one had the privilege of sticking it to me without a condom, and none made me orgasm.

A friend of mine once told me that I am a potent combination of a man's libido trapped in a woman's body. I don't think he knew that he was lifting that line straight from Sex and the City, but I believe he's right (incidentally, he is Iranian, too). And here we are, dear readers, with me living the high life of a very intelligent and pretty girl in a major American metropolis, surrounded by gorgeous men and women, with my numbers sure to go up, perhaps with a girl or two thrown in the mix (I'm curious), and hopefully with some Farsi dirty-talk. Hopefully we'll all learn a little something, so stay tuned. Comment