DEFINING THE ORGASM by Nin Andrews

Perhaps you don't want to admit you've never had an orgasm. Maybe you don't even know what orgasms are, much less what style they come in, and how they might become available to you. That is why you are reading this guide to orgasms. You want to enter the realm of intimate revelations, heightened awareness, evocative sounds and silence. Indeed the history of orgasms is nothing other than the history of the world.

The fact is, orgasms are everywhere, though when we ask what an orgasm is, we find ourselves at a loss for words. Some call orgasms faith, others consider them music, still others say they are the best of ourselves in our best possible positions.

However they are defined, orgasms take great pleasure in men and women, good and evil, visible and invisible, real and unreal. Orgasms can happen to anyone, and there are all kinds of orgasms for all kinds of people.

For example, there are the lyric orgasms, which express deep feeling for an imagined person. You never know when your passionate, moaning lover is actually having a lyric orgasm. There is the ballad orgasm, which is kept alive orally, the dramatic orgasm, which speaks for itself, and the epic orgasm, a long-winded orgasm in which one lover plays the hero or conqueror and then relishes his victory. Men are often content with the small and discrete haiku of orgasms, which are said to around emotions and spiritual insight in a mere matter of syllables. Ministers and somber folk talk about the elegiac orgasms, which are mostly enjoyed by the dead, while celebrities and exhibitionists are inclined towards the performance orgasm, a style enacted before audiences. Good old-fashioned men and women never tire of the pastoral orgasms that appear in the midst of rural scenery. And at any time of day or night, lost orgasms aimlessly wander the streets, waiting to be found.


from The Book of Orgasms, Cleveland State University Press, August 2000