Wachet auf

I know no more perfect artistic representation of male orgasm than the soprano-bass duet, "Wenn kommst du?" from Bach's famous cantata, "Wachet auf" (BWV 140). Here is the German (no umlauts, though, as I don't know how to do them) with the male line in italics, and a typical translation.

Wenn kommst du, mein Heil?
------Ich komme, dein Teil.
Ich warte mit brennenden Ole.
------Ich offne den Saal,
Eroffne den Saal.
------zum himmlischen Mahl.
Komm, Jesu.
------Ich komme, komm liebliche Seele.

When are you coming, my savior?
------I am coming, your share.
I wait with oil-lamp burning.
------I open the chamber,
The chamber is open.
------for the heavenly feast.
Come, Jesus.
------I'm coming; come, dearest soul.

'Heil', translated here as 'savior', also means safety, well-being, goodness, satisfaction, fufilment; it is cognate with the English word 'whole'. The core meaning of 'Teil' is 'part'. No pair of English words can do just the work that 'Heil' and 'Teil' do - certainly no pair of words that rhyme. The woman longs to be whole. She will be whole when the part she is missing comes to her, enters the chamber, feeds her heavenly food. He announces he is coming to fulfil her, to make her whole, to open up and feed her. The music rings with the words 'come', 'coming', 'whole', 'part'. To me, it is straightforwardly pre-orgasmic and orgasmic. And clearly some translators agree. One, for example, has this for the sung English:

Come quickly, now come!
------Yes, quickly I come!
I wait thee with lamps all alighted.
------The doors open wide,
The doors open wide.
------I come for my bride.
Come claim thou thy bride! Come quickly!
------Forever in rapture united.

'Come, Jesus!' has here become 'Come quickly!'; the duet is entirely secularized and sexualised. I assume that Bach intended and enjoyed the parallel between the impatience of the woman waiting for her lover to come and the impatience of the Christian awaiting Christ. Of course, many women want the man fucking them to come quickly just to get it over with, and perhaps this was true of Bach's own wife. But the impatience in the duet is not that of a woman who wants to get sex over with in order to get back to the business of life - not, therefore, at all like C's politely expressed desire, once she has come, for my own orgasm. To me, it reads rather as the longing for simultaneous orgasm - she cries 'Come quickly! Come now!' as her climax approaches, and the man adds his own imperative - 'Come, dearest!' - as he himself comes.

Still, it would be quite reasonable to interpret the duet as involving only male orgasm. Most fucks involve only male orgasm, according to the data. For a perfect representation of female orgasm I would choose the final chapter of Joyce's Ulysses - surely the most amazing masturbatory episode ever committed to paper, and one of the most affecting.