What is Vanilla sex? I have to ask, because I don’t even remember…
My wife and I were talking before I came up to visit, and she said, “You know, I miss vanilla sex. I love S&M, but over Thanksgiving, I feel like it was too much BDSM and not enough vanilla sex.”
And I got worried. Because I thought she was trying to say that she wasn’t as interested in BDSM anymore. And it became an awkward conversation, and luckily, the first night I was up we ended up having what I felt was pretty vanilla sex.
And the last week I was up there this trip, as we rid ourselves of the baggage related to our misbegotten attempt at switching, she made the same comment. “I need vanilla sex.” And so I made an attempt to have just vanilla sex — no hurty fun beforehand, no domination-submission games, no pegging, just me making love to her.
And in the middle of it, she cried out, “Baby?” And I focused my eyes on hers, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her shoulder move, something blur toward me, and the left side of my face exploded in pain. She had struck me, hard, on the side of the face. I felt my cock throb and her own response, which was to get wetter and contract against me. I smiled down at her amidst the ringing in my ears and moaned, and she told me to scoot up, and then began yanking and twisting my nipples. She then began pinching the skin on my belly, my chest, scratching my shoulders. A few minutes of that, and I came, hard.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” She said. “I love the vanilla.”
I looked at her. “That’s your idea of vanilla sex?”
She looked surprised. “Yes, penis-on-vagina penetration.”
“Honey, you punched me in the face!”
“That was a slap.” She said. “You liked it.”
“You tortured my nipples! You pulled my hair!”
“Didn’t you like it? I thought you liked that.” She was beginning to get worried.
“I fucking loved it. But it’s not vanilla, is it?” I asked.
She looked at me incredulously. “Isn’t it? There were no whips, no handcuffs, no pegging, you came inside me, nobody got peed on…?”
“Well, yeah, but…is your concept of vanilla sex really just vaginal penetration?”
“Um, yeah, what else would it be?” She said. “Sex is sex. I like sex. I like whipping and pegging you, but there’s nothing like you inside me. I’d like to have more of it during our scenes.”
“I thought you wanted vanilla, no hurting, no pain-play, sex.” I said.
“Is that vanilla? It means I can’t hit you?”
I was at a loss for words. “I, uh, don’t really know. But I mean, if this is the vanilla sex you’re talking about when you say you want more, I’m down with it.”
And it’s got me thinking, because really, what is vanilla sex? At this point, I don’t have a single vanilla friend who hasn’t done anal at least once. Or masturbated with their partner. Or had oral. Most of them have tried toys, although it’s usually pretty garden-variety. Porn is ubiquitous. I know a lot of people who have done a lot of spanking and made videos and quite a few who’ve had some kind of group sex at some point in their background. Is vanilla just non-kinky sex? What is kinky? Is it BDSM? Is it something really transgressive? I mean, I live in a very cosmopolitan southern city, transgressive is all over the place. My wife lives outside a major eastern city. Our idea of “normal” sex is pretty expansive.
Is vanilla just a “baseline,” and does the fact that our baseline now involves me getting hit in the face make it vanilla in spite of the blows to the head? Or is it that my wife and I think of ourselves as “normal” despite our kinks, and so our sex, by its nature, is vanilla, in spite of the kink?
Where do we fall? I mean, our friends who don’t know what we get up to, they call us the most vanilla couple they know — ha! — but are we really that kinky? I can’t help but think on a kink scale of 1-10, we’ve got to be at least a 5, right?
It doesn’t matter. I’m beyond comparing the kink version of dick-sizes. My wife and I are pretty at ease with ourselves since we moved back to Mistress/slave dynamics, and I don’t really know anybody in the real world who’s kinky that I care to share our lifestyle with. But still, it raises the question: What’s vanilla now? Can we ever go back to it? Is vanilla some standard set up by the world that doesn’t move, or is it just our — my wife and I — our version of fairly kinkless, no-whips and cuffs, no pegging and piss, sex?
January 19, 2008 at 11:11 pm
I cracked up when I read this, because I had a very similar conversation with a submissive not too long ago. we didn’t do the pissing and pegging and whipping, just hot sex with some choking and face slapping and me riding him–then promptly got the giggles because he looked up at me and said “it’s nice to know you can still have vanilla sex.”
I think vanilla may be as fluid a concept as the couple makes it. for me, that’s about as plain and ordinary as it gets… therefore, in my mind, it’s vanilla.
January 20, 2008 at 8:20 pm
One time at our club, a woman named Dimmie was giving the newbie orientation, and explaining that vanilla sex is discouraged at the club. She kind of paused and said, “What is vanilla sex?” and someone (another old timer) said, “Don’t worry, Dimmie – you’ve never had it.”
January 20, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Myles: I agree. I think our vanilla spot has scootched right over in the last few months. In the wake of this blogpost, my wife has taken to referring to what we do as “crazy vanilla” based on a flavor of ice cream we bought for our daughter, which turned out to be vanilla with brightly hued colors and sprinkles.
Dev: Seriously, do you know what they defined as vanilla? I’d be interested in knowing. For, uh, academic purposes.
January 21, 2008 at 11:48 am
At the club, the primary concern is legal. The club is “membership-only” (which really just means you have to fill out a piece of paper on your first visit and get a card that says you’re a member), which is one way to handle it, but the other (still) important thing is that people aren’t paying to watch other people have sex. (Beatings are OK.)
So, kind of the way it works, in practice, is that if you’re having some kind of sex as part of a scene, it’s fine. So for instance, having your submissive go down on you in a scene is all right. Theoretically you could fuck, but I’ve never seen it happen.
What they really don’t want is people coming just (or primarily) to have regular sex. I think it was the club owner who said, “If you’re going to fuck someone, have the decency to at least tie them down first.”
January 21, 2008 at 12:05 pm
[...] 21 January 2008 — devastatingyet Undertheboot has an interesting post asking “What is vanilla sex?” (The post is also hot. I’m enjoying his blog more and more now that I think he’s [...]
January 21, 2008 at 2:50 pm
A few years ago us pervs had this discussion on a FemDom board, we decided that the only definite vanilla sex was lights out, under covers, missionary only, no oral, and the man had to ejaculate inside (or not at all) either without any condom or only with a “regular” condom (which was added later because someone brought up the idea of using numbing condoms.) There was to be no hitting, no biting, no insulting comments – or taunts about how your other lover is so much bigger/better, no spitting, no touching the anus – even just to tickle it… etc.
Anything more exciting that that was “Vanilla with sprinkles” or “whipped cream” or “chocolate syrup” or even “French Vanilla” etc. Until we got all the way down into the “rocky road banana sundae” kind of stuff.
January 21, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Oh and another fun thing… try defining sex. Is it only PiV? Anal? Oral? Hand? What if no one cums? What if someone cums without any direct physical contact?
January 22, 2008 at 2:59 am
Aarkey: Even my most vanilla-y of vanilla friends wouldn’t qualify as having vanilla sex if that’s the definition. I like to think of vanilla as being a little broader, I guess. I mean, in a world where nipple clamps are the new anal, and porn is readily available, there’s a lot of room in the old vanilla house for all sorts of things.
January 26, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I always think of vanilla sex being purely concerned with physical pleasure (including visuals, sounds etc.). So for me, anal sex for mutual pleasure is vanilla, but as soon as it’s to do with power or pain it’s not.
It’s complicated of course: some would say pain can be pleasurable, or fetish gear is a sensory pleasure, but to me those requires a different ‘idea’ of sex that makes them kink.
January 27, 2008 at 12:46 pm
So for me, anal sex for mutual pleasure is vanilla, but as soon as it’s to do with power or pain it’s not.
I like that. It makes sense to me.