Mother of Masturbation
on Steroids

I'm at peace now when I'm called the "Mother of Masturbation." Although I resisted the label in the past, I've grown quite fond of it recently. After all, there is no job more important than motherhood even if society only pays lip service with one day a year set aside to take Mom out to dinner. It's been an honor for me to have mothered this basic form of sexual expression by making it more socially acceptable. It's also been an honor to teach so many mothers and would be mothers how to enjoy their orgasms by learning and practicing masturbation skills.

I'm also excited about learning new things and relearning things that I thought I already knew. For instance, "never say never" is an old one for me because I do it all the time. One example: "I'll never travel across the country and do several cities in a row. I'll never go around to stores signing books. I'll never…." well, you've got the picture. One saving grace is that I manage to disregard my own rules from time to time. Like the recent three city trip to LA, Seattle and Victoria BC, all with engagements including several book signings.

When Josi picked me up at the airport in LA, I came off the plane wheezing, coughing and gasping for breath. Instead of enjoying a nice dinner together, I was put straight to bed. Friends rallied and the consensus was that I was too sick to continue my trip. I'm like an old army mule who never gets sick until one day it just drops in its tracks. Finally Leslie, my friend that I was staying with announced, "You're going to see my doctor!" I felt so bad I didn't argue. After several tests, a chest X ray, breathing into and out of weird things, I was diagnosed with asthmatic bronchitis with an underlay of emphysema. You can't smoke cigarettes for forty years without paying a price.

When I told the doctor that I could cancel my LA gigs, but I had to show up in Seattle the following week and onto Victoria because I had film crews waiting in both places, he recommended steroids. Sitting there I must have looked weird because he asked me what was the matter. I told him I was afraid to take steroids and he said I should be. These were serious drugs. But if I wanted to breathe and continue my trip, this was the only way he knew that would work. With Leslie's encouragement, I filled all three prescriptions. Several days later I boarded a plane to Seattle wired to the gills.

Amazing stuff steroids! No wonder dancers, athletes and body builders get hooked. All body pain disappeared, I could fully breathe again and I was flying high. They don't call them "performance enhancing" drugs for nothing. I turned into a jock, ate like an elephant and shit like one. I was aggressive and funny and engaged everyone I met in conversation. I was also aware that I was inside someone else's body, not my own. The scary part was how much I liked the feeling of being speedy and indomitable.

Seattle is a very hip town that is incredibly green. It also has an active group of sex positive people who are doing some very interesting things at their play parties. My lecture with a slide show of my art was at Jeff Hengst's Little Red Studio. Jeff is the artist who came to New York several years ago to photograph my paintings and drawings. He was sent to me by Rae Larson who is part of the staff at SISTER (Seattle Institute for Sex Therapy, Education and Research). To celebrate their 25th Anniversary in 2000, the board, staff and volunteers decided to endow a graduate scholarship in sex art archiving. They unanimously selected me as the artist/educator they wanted to honor.

Rae and I go back to the early seventies when we first met in San Francisco. She had long feminine hair back then. Today she looks like a cute little old man with the same bad posture my Dad used to have: the top part of their bodies slump down into the pelvic bowl pushing the tummy out with a belt that sits on top. At first I was reluctant to get involved with Rae. She has a brilliant mind and a fabulous sense of humor, but she's a total slob when it comes to her living space. I'm a tight-assed Virgo who believes everything has a place and everything is in it's place. Rae can't recycle anything so there are narrow paths between stacks of papers, magazines and boxes.

I used to believe "collectors" revealed an emotionally disturbed person, but now I've changed my mind. Thanks to Rae, I'm bringing my art out of the closet. One recent vision is to have a big gallery exhibition and sell my entire collection. A percentage of the proceeds would go to the Betty A. Dodson Foundation for Sexual Pleasure and Health. Did you know there isn't one foundation with the word "pleasure" in it? I'd say it's about time so I continue to work toward creating my foundation.

The lecture in Seattle was a near disaster with the slide projector breaking down. The Powerpoint flash drive I brought was too big and it kept crashing each lap top computer they plugged into. Live and learn. The audience was looking at weird lavender and white images that were terrible. Toward the end, the images finally appeared in full color and the room sighed, "Ahhhhh," in unison. Thanks to steroids, I just kept right on going while being filmed, acting like everything was cool. I've seen some of the footage and it will make a nice DVD so friends and fans will know that I've done more than just masturbate. I've also created an impressive body of sex art.

Sunday afternoon, there was a high tea in my honor at a local erotic art gallery. Raven, a forty-something woman, has created a wonderful space for local artists. She's a dynamo who is also part of the sex positive community and I recognized her as one of my spiritual daughters. Rae and her partner Ann Manly set up a silver tea service with delicate china cups, small cucumber and salmon pate sandwiches with little bowls of olives and nuts. Dainty little desserts were served on a young woman's voluptuous nude body that was wound tightly in Saran Wrap from her titties to below her pussy. She lay down on a table with crossed ankles to show off her high heeled shoes. We were instructed not to use our hands, so we each took a tiny cake with our mouth. I chose a chocolate-covered strawberry that sat on top of her pretty shaved vulva.

During tea, I met a woman who did "Vaginal Mapping" and I asked her if she would map mine. We met a couple of days later in my room with Raven, Ann, and A.T., the woman who does the mapping. A.T. stands for Arctic Tundra. She belongs to a group who meets on a regular basis that enjoys on-premise sex. She has mapped over 500 women's vaginas without keeping any records. Because she wrote mine up, I told her that I was the start of her database. A.T. showed up with an acrylic tube that was open on top for viewing the vaginal lining, a mirror and a flashlight. This is her email:

"The presentation of your outer genitalia was astonishing. The lovely 'wattle' you possess is something to be proud of! You have a very large and healthy clitoral hood, shaft and glans. The responses were positive and showed great interest when touched. Your pre-orgasmic skin textures and tone are youthful and healthy in appearance. No visible openings for glands (Bartholin's, Skeen's). There is also a healthy appearance to the urethra. It was wonderful to feel your crura and enlighten you to the wishbone "straws" function in pleasure. The results of your Kegel exercises have made a huge impression on me! Thank you for the FIRM handshake. I was very impressed.

"After inserting the PPV to view your insides, I was amazed at the fresh pinkness of your cervical oz. The texture remains smooth and akin to uncooked veal, the moisture and secretions from it appear healthy and normal. The walls of your vagina show quite a bit of scar tissues and fusions due to past events with surgery. Finding your "G-Spot" encased in scar tissue was a new discovery for me. Upon stimulation it expanded to almost twice its size, and responded with coloration and lubrication appropriate to its size.

"Your vaginal walls are not all scar tissue and showed wonderful responses. Looking at our clock, the most energetic points are at 1 o'clock, 6, 7 and 12. The largest energy center is actually just under your cervical oz. This area appears to hold the most pleasure and sensation for you. The feedback from all these areas to my fingers was positive. Your responses in color and lubrication of all of these tissues were similar to a 20 Year old! Slow deliberate tracings seemed to cause more positive sensation than quick movement and hand vibration techniques. Having a partner go at a relaxed pace will create greater stimulation for you. Deep penetration to your inner cavern will yield the greatest reward. All the right outer and inner stimulations should invigorate and refresh you for many orgasms to come."

What wonderful feedback! I will continue to be the voice for women who do not experience sexual pleasure from G-spot stimulation- for a multitude of reasons. The scar tissue is obviously from my abortions and the miscarriage I had the second year of marriage. Back in the fifties, they used metal instruments instead of the soft plastic suction method of today. So thump, poke and strum away on the ceiling of your vaginas if it feels good and squirt to your heart's content. Not all women have this response and many of us don't feel like we're missing out on anything. Like my friend Dr. Leonore Tiefer said, "Betty, you must bequeath your sex organ to the Smithsonian Institute."

We were having so much fun that I invited Rae to join me for the Victoria Erotica Festival. At the crack of dawn, we boarded the Clipper, a hydroplane ferry that skimmed along just above the water for a two and a half hour crossing that was very pleasant. Rae's back pack had everything a person could want or need so being a pack rat came in handy several times. As we pulled into the harbor, I had no idea that Victoria would appear so different from America. The buildings and architecture are uniquely English with far more charm than I imagined. We were met at the dock by our two smiling organizers, Beck Peacock and his wife, Carol Pharo along with Roland who was already filming us with his camera.

Beck and I met back in the seventies at Sandstone outside LA in Topanga Canyon, a beautiful on-premise sex country club for members only. Carol had taken one of my workshops in San Francisco in the eighties. She is a beautiful woman in her fifties and Beck, who is in his early seventies, is a good looking man who exudes sex energy. They took us out for lunch at a fabulous restaurant where I ate like a starving athlete.

Thursday night I was the keynote speaker to kick off the festival. The slide show presentation of my art went without a hitch because by then we'd reduced the size of the file. The audience was very receptive as they laughed along with me. After a brief reception, they screened the "O Tapes" produced by Chris Arnold that gives an overview of women who struggle to become orgasmic. I'm a big part at the end of his film that was bought by Showtime so I invited him to take us to high tea at the Empress Hotel.

Rae and I missed the final Masquerotica party due to advanced fatigue. She's an old fogy at sixty-six who goes to bed early and while I'm a night owl, my poor body was worn out from going at a fast pace the entire time. Every morning it began at breakfast where I held forth entertaining the other guests at Marketa's Bed and Breakfast. Then I carried on throughout the day into evening doing P.R. for radio and TV, talking ninety miles a minute over the next glorious meal that I'd eat like a famished jock. When I got home, I was amazed that I'd only gained a pound.

There was a misting rain on our last day in Victoria. The soft light was perfect to enjoy the famous Butchhart Gardens where they provided little see-through plastic umbrellas. Just before we entered the garden, I enjoyed a toke that mellowed me out. The huge variety of tulips all in bloom had little crystal drops on every petal high-lighting the breathtaking colors. I breathed my way though the exquisite beauty of this spectacular garden that went on and on for what seemed like miles with shapes and colors flooding my eyes at every turn as I inhaled the clean, fresh, moist air.

The Canadians got who I am and they honored my efforts to acknowledge and discuss masturbation. Quite a contrast to America's dirty joke attitude about jerking off. You know Victoria was named after Queen Victoria who ushered in the Victorian era of extreme sexual repression that's been long gone from Canada. However, the Queen would approve of America today with our born-again president who caters to the Christian-Right with all their sex negative morality.

The film crew in Victoria wants to do a full documentary about me. My friend Mark wants to do a film focusing on my art with the material he shot in Seattle. Right after I got back, the film students Rachael and Hagan premiered their 30 minute doc titled, "The Mother of Masturbation." They too want to do a full documentary. I also have a group of women in LA who want to move ahead on making a documentary about my life. All of a sudden I'm in great demand and although you'd think this would be a wonderful feeling, I find myself on overwhelm with difficult decisions to make.

Several weeks later, I'm finally back home in my body, mind and spirit. Surprising as this sounds, even to me, I've already set up two more trips. In October I'll be in Denmark for a week teaching a group of women sexologists my system of sex coaching. Then in November, I set off for Phoenix to be the key note speaker at a conference for ASEP (Association of Sexuality Energy Professionals). Rather than being limited to talk therapy, this group believes in touching a person's body in the process of healing repression and teaching sexual skills. While traveling remains tedious with the too much too late security crap, connecting with old friends and meeting new people makes it all worthwhile. See you at the airport.

@ copyright 2007 Betty Dodson