Last night, the boy in my life wrote at length about why he doesn’t like receiving oral sex. I love going down on him, and while I knew that he doesn’t tend to come that way, I didn’t realise that he wasn’t even that keen on the act per se. What struck me most when I read it is that, although we’ve been fucking for two years, it isn’t something he’s felt able to tell me to my face.

It got me thinking about all the things I don’t share with him. My friends will tell you I’m not shy when it comes to talking about sex, whether it’s looking for innuendo anywhere I can find it (Heston’s Pulled Pork, Waitrose shoppers?) or over-sharing about what I did last night. But in the run up, and during the act itself, I tend to keep pretty quiet about my likes and dislikes.

The one thing he does know is that I identify as submissive. Not in a particularly technical way – he ties a pretty crap knot and I’d far rather he pinned me down using his own strength than a length of rope – but submissive nonetheless.

However, part of the reason I think I’m submissive (without at all wishing to imply that I think other people’s submission is driven by insecurity) is that the other thing I identify as is disabled. Over the years, many people have tried to convince me that this isn’t a badge I have the right to wear, and yes, it’s true that my disability is much less severe than what many other people have to cope with. Nor do I hope to write even half so eloquently on the subject as the wonderful @halfabear, whose hilarious piece on the inappropriate questions people ask her about how she’s able to have sex (she’s paraplegic) is something I think everyone should read.

I ‘only’ have mild hemiplegia, so people don’t tend to ask those inappropriate questions. What they do do, occasionally, is pause in the street, look me up and down, pause, and say ‘You’re limping.’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I always have.’

At best, it stops there, but every so often it’s worse. One guy tilted his head to one side, looked thoughtful, and added, ‘So you’ll limp what, like, forever?’

You’ll notice that I said this only happens occasionally. In the real world, since I left secondary school at least, it does. In my head, every guy thinks this way. And it affects the sex I have.

Until pretty recently, I was purely a one night stand girl. It took the pressure off. If you let someone pick you up in a club, or a bar, or you fuck your best friend ‘just  to see if there’s chemistry’ then you never have to find out whether they rated you highly enough to bother to come back for a repeat performance.  And then I found a fuck buddy.

In many ways, it’s helped. He claims he’s never seen me as anything other than able-bodied, and mostly, I believe him. But it’s still easier to let him take control – if he’s holding me down then it feels like my clumsy limbs are less likely to betray me. Hold me down and I can’t fumble with your belt, because my hands aren’t free to do so. Tell me exactly what you want me to do to your cock and I’ll focus on that, not on the fact that I can’t do that thing with my left hand because I don’t have the dexterity to empty the dishwasher with it, let alone jack you off. In other ways though, it hasn’t helped at all – it’s still just too tempting to sabotage the whole thing by visualising him running off with his fantasy ‘able-bodied’ girl.

The point of this piece is to explain what I mean by ‘of sorts.’ This is a sex blog and I fully intend to write honestly about sex (and to throw a good deal of erotica into the mix, too). But I also want to use it to explore my emotional responses to the sex I have, and to face up to the things that scare me. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

PS There’s a lot of body hatred in this piece, I know. But rest assured that that doesn’t extend to my tits. I love my tits – they’re great.