Author Archives: sexblogofsorts

The things that make us who we are …

Posted on by

1

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what it is that’s stopping me from going after what I really want when it comes to love. Sure, I’ve dabbled with internet dating, but I hate it. And recently, I’ve realised that, unlike many people who hate it because it can be depressing and it takes up precious time, I hate it because it means confronting my biggest fear: that no one will want me.

As ever, no melodrama intended – that’s just my honest world view. One of the things that has surprised me most since setting up this blog is the followers I feel I have most in common with are not the sex bloggers, but the relationship bloggers. That’s not to say that there aren’t some fab and supportive sex and erotica bloggers out there (if you haven’t read Kristina Lloyd or Alison Tyler you really, really should), but the girls who write about their search for Mr Right have been kinder and more interested in what I’m doing here than I could ever have hoped for.

Because relationships are my greatest hang up. Technically, I’ve never had one. How did that happen? Well, it’s a pretty long story….

Why do you walk like that?

I’ve touched on some of the issues in this post before. My very first post was about my slight disability and the way complete strangers react to it, but it’s not always complete strangers. The first person I ever felt wasn’t able to accept that my body wasn’t normal was my mum.

This isn’t some kind of attempt to pass the blame for all my insecurities back to my parents – they’re fantastic, and I adore them. In fact, when I first went to therapy, the first thing I said was that I had no interest in trying to pass the buck back to them for how I got so fucked up. But my mum hasn’t always got it right. She walks at 100mph, for example, and I’ve always been expected to keep up. My dad is generally better at recognising that this is tricky for me but when I was a kid, we got taken into his office every Christmas Eve and every year I fell over on the walk from the station and ended up in awful emergency Sock Shop tartan tights.

Not only do I have to keep up though: I have to walk properly. I’ve got much better at this – until very recently I was becoming more agile, not less. She’d say things like ‘You’re walking badly today – are you tired/not concentrating/wearing uncomfortable shoes?’ Often, yes, one of the above – but who isn’t one of those things much of the time. When I paid close attention to every step, I walked better but at the expense of becoming massively self-conscious. It’s never gone away.

No one wants to kiss me

All through primary school, no one noticed that I wasn’t as co-ordinated as every else. Then, when I started secondary school, all that changed. Not only was there a fair amount of teasing, there was also the hell of school discos and under-18s club nights. All the other girls would spend most of the evening with some boy’s tongue down their throat while I hovered on the edge of the group, desperate for the evening to end. Did my disability mean that I was a terrible dancer? Actually, I have no idea – I’m a pretty cautious dancer, but I don’t know if that’s because my body won’t let me be otherwise, or just because I’ve never had the guts to properly throw some shapes. In the end, I was 17 before I had my first kiss and then, irony of all ironies, 17 and a half when I lost my virginity. In a nightclub.

Older men

When the boys your age aren’t interested, you’ll turn elsewhere for male attention in the end. I have a lot more to say about crushes on teachers, so I’ll write about it in more detail later, but let’s just say that most of the years from 15-18 I wasn’t interested in anyone who didn’t take a register. Wanting to impress helped me to get into one of the best universities in the country, but the opportunities for sex there were far and few between too. Plus ca change …

Just good friends

My first grad job was in the middle of nowhere, and my first good friend in that job was senior to me, but behaved at least five years younger than I was. He was a terrible flirt, and he had a Geordie accent that left me weak at the knees. We spent increasing amounts of time together until he decided to tackle the fact that I clearly fancied him head on. He wasn’t ‘in a good place for a relationship,’ which turned out to mean that he’d been in love with his girlfriend’s twin sister for nearly seven years and the idea of moving on was completely alien to him.

That rang true with me. I started seeing a therapist about a year later and one of the first things she asked me was why I thought I continued to be drawn to him despite the fact that we didn’t want the same things. My answer: he doesn’t want to sleep with me.

Now, looking back, that seems odd, even to me. I’m unapologetic about how much I love sex – chasing it, talking about it, having it. But I didn’t want to have sex with anyone I really cared about – I couldn’t face the fact that the morning after they’d inevitably wake up knowing that I’m bad in bed and liking me less because of it. But I stuck with it nonetheless, increasingly unhappy. For two whole years.

What ended it? He met someone, obviously. Someone younger, stick thin, and with no tits to speak of. It’s rare that I don’t love my cleavage, but we had a rough few weeks around that time.

Friends with benefits

Of course, looking back I can see that he didn’t end up with someone else purely because my body was a disappointment to him. It probably wasn’t a disappointment at all – it was probably just that he didn’t fancy me. Or that he wanted someone who was less emotional, less of a drama queen. And that’s ok. Well, ok to an extent – we’ve never salvaged the friendship, but he collects stuffed meerkats now, so I consider myself to have had a lucky escape.

Hopefully all of the above makes it clearer why I consider the current boy  (wow, nearly wrote relationship there!) to be something of a break through. The first time I slept with him I honestly expected that I would never see him again – I certainly never imagined that two years on, despite huge ups and downs, we’d still be fucking, or that I’d be comfortable enough with him to not need to pull my clothes back on straight after sex or to always need a few drinks beforehand.

Of course, the things that don’t work in this arrangement have been well-documented over the last few days – I’m reluctant to lose what we do have, but I know that if I stay, I’ll be giving up a massive chunk of my dreams. I can argue until I’m blue in the face that I’d rather have a baby by myself, but honestly? It’s self-defensive bullshit. I would have one by myself, absolutely, if I don’t find anyone to have one with. But would I rather find someone to raise my children with, someone to slob in front of the telly with, someone who loves my body and who wants to be my friend? Well, obviously. Who wouldn’t?

Playing stupid

Posted on by

0

Weirdly, I was going to write a very different post tonight about playing stupid and then someone left a very interesting comment on my post on endings from a couple of days back. And now this is a very different post on endings.

I’ve known for a while now that the boy plays games – I didn’t know from the start but I’ve known for long enough that I should have just walked away already. He doesn’t want monogamy until I do, and then suddenly, just as I threaten to walk away, that card suddenly appears on the table. Which is a surprise, because it turns out that other girls have been dealt the monogamy card too. At the same time.

So knowing all that, I really should call it quits, right? A story: the last guy who hurt me promised we could still be friends. I moved away. He said he’d come and visit. I invited him. No reply. When I next saw him I asked if he ‘d just forgotten to reply. But no, eventually he admitted that his girlfriend wouldn’t let him. Now, that’s fine – but be honest about it. I’d moved to a new city, where I knew no one and I just wanted to fill my weekends. If he’d said no, I’d have freed up the space for something else, but a no reply makes that harder. And, just as you’ll have guessed, we no longer even try to be friends.

The current boy is cleverer. He makes me feel special, then he disappears, then he makes me feel special again. It’s like being on the waltzers, and I hate fairground rides. When he wants to be in my life, his presence can make me almost claustrophobic – he’s joining in my Twitter conversations with people he wants to befriend, texting me, emailing – all stuff that would be perfectly acceptable if it wasn’t followed by huge periods of silence.

And, as I’ve blogged about in other posts there are other upsides too, such as the way he makes me feel about my body. But the result of being on such a constant roller coaster can be devastating, especially for someone like me, whose mental health is fragile at the best of times. Last time I ended it I didn’t sleep all night, then I had a massive panic attack and ended up taking a day off work. That’s still fresh enough to not want to end it again right now.

I don’t really know how to end this post. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I’m not stupid, and deep down I know he doesn’t care about me. That he’s lying to me. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier to stay than to go, right ? I wish he’d be honest with me , that’s all.

Casual sex – just how intimate should it be?

Posted on by

2

The last couple of posts I’ve written have been pretty personal, and there’s one more post I’d like to write in the same vein, but I have a feeling it might be a lengthy one, so I’ll save it for later in the week. For now, there’s something else I’ve been thinking about – when it comes to friends with benefits, just how much intimacy is desirable?

I’ve always liked casual sex for its lack of intimacy. The boys I fucked at uni always got kicked  out of my room before anyone was likely to fall asleep and a close male friend of mine who came to stay for the weekend and who I ended up sleeping with ‘just to test the chemistry,’ got sent back to the spare room before he’d barely even caught his breath. I still feel pretty bad about that.

So the fact that the guy I’m currently sleeping with doesn’t stay the night doesn’t really bother me. I always think there’s a Cosmo type pressure that makes us think we should snuggle up together after the act, but seriously, wouldn’t you rather have the whole bed to yourself and a good night’s sleep? As far as I can see the only downside is that you don’t get a second round in the morning.

But then the boy went and wrote about how good he thinks he is at / how much he enjoys intimacy – how he likes looking into someone’s eyes, stroking their face, staying spooned together after he’s come, Honestly, that’s not my experience with him, or at least the spooning part isn’t – there’s rarely any snuggling after sex – but as I’ve mentioned previously, he also has other partners, so who am I to say how intimate he is with them?

It gets to me more now than it used to, though. I’ve written previously about how much I love the traces he does leave behind, and although I like getting my bed back, I do wish he wouldn’t spring out of it quite so quickly after the act, just like I also wish he’d fuck me under the covers from some time (I get that he likes the view of being on top of the duvet, but sometimes I crave the closeness of being underneath it) and that there was sometimes more focus on the hotness of undressing one another (sure, there’s something very horny about urgency, but being skin to skin from top to toe is usually hornier, in my opinion).

Why does it get to me more now? Well, because I care about him more, surely? On the surface, I’m saying one thing (usually ‘Stop pretending we’re friends. We’re just two people who fuck’ – which rarely goes down well), but on the inside I’m wishing he’d be more honest with me, about everything from what’s going on in his life to his likes and dislikes in the bedroom. Or at least, half of me is thinking that. The other half is thinking ‘No, keep the intimacy  out of it, especially if it’s something you can turn on and off like a tap.’

Because, after all, one day he’s going to get out of my bed and not come back to it, isn’t he? And that’ll be the one time that I am grateful that we’re not friends, just two people who fuck.

Endings

Posted on by

2

I’m so bad at putting a stop to things that aren’t good for me. Friendship not working? I’ll be the bitch from hell in the hope you’ll just stop trying to arrange stuff, but I’ll never do the grown-up thing and just have a sensible conversation about why doing stuff together is no fun anymore and maybe we should just stop.

And with boys, it’s worse still. A few years back I had an extremely close bond with someone whose behaviour subsequently began to hurt me quite a lot. I let that carry on for over a year: half-heartedly applying for jobs that would allow me to move away from him, but not able to cut him out of my life while he was still in the vicinity. I was on anti-depressants, in therapy. And so, so unhappy.

The current situation in my life is not dissimilar. Unusually for me, I have tried to draw a line and end it twice, but both times he got back in touch and I got drawn back in to a situation that was great for my confidence at the start, but now just corrodes it. I need a guy who ‘s monogamous, who cares about me beyond when I’m next available to fuck and I’m just too weak to cut him loose and stick with my decision. It not only makes me hate him, it makes me hate myself , too.

I tried to end it again this week – or rather, I didn’t – I asked him to end it. Apparently, he won’t take that responsibility for me. I can see that he shouldn’t have to, sure, but I just don’t trust that if I do find the inner strength to do it that he won’t contact me again – there’s nothing I hate more than that moment when you can feel the misery of having lost someone you care about begin to lift only to have them pop back into your inbox. So I stick with what we have – a situation where the pleasure and the pain are constantly jostling for superiority – and meanwhile I halfheartedly trawl Internet dating sites looking for a reason to break it off for good, but not really wanting to find someone else because I’m convinced that ultimately they’ll just hurt me too.

Sometimes I think I should swear off men for good – that I’d be more emotionally secure if there was nobody in my life. I’ve never been that bothered about getting married, after all – I just want to be a mum one day, and we all know that there are other ways of going about that.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll stick with what I have and keep trying to find the resolve to do what I know I need to. Because sure, loneliness hurts, but so does hating yourself for constantly swimming back out into the rip tide.

It’s not easy being … monogamous

Posted on by

3

Early this morning I flew back into London to a perfect dawn. The whole sky was orange, and it was truly beautiful. I was tired, and groggy and coming down with a cold, but I was happy. I’d spent the past two days having great sex with someone I really care about and who I’ve missed, someone who knows, in the bedroom at least, just how far they can push me.

Just above my left breast is a tiny purple bruise, subtle, but painful when pressed – the best kind. Sure, it’ll fade, but it’s the best souvenir I could have brought back. Sometimes it feels like my whole sex life is a quest for good memories – even the most knee-trembling orgasm fades; but the feel of a guy’s come inside me, or the ache from a bruise lasts longer – it can be taken back out into the world and enjoyed over and over again – if you watch closely you’ll see me slide two fingers under the neckline of my dress from time to time and press down on the skin – I’m remembering how good it felt to get that mark in the first place.

I may be wrong, but I think this is the first time I’ve been honest with him about liking low-level pain. It’s the first time I’ve been honest with him about other stuff, too: the first time I’ve been willing to admit that yes, if it’s snowing and slippy I *am* scared of falling, and I would rather hold on to him. The first time I’ve been willing to go to bed dishevelled post-bath and been more than happy for him to find me that way, holed up under the duvet, prioritizing snug over sexy.

Sometimes I think I’ve spent years trying too hard. I always want to be sexy in a traditional, girly kind of way – you know, matching underwear, great cleavage, good cook, when the reality is that actually, I don’t have the restraint or discipline to be that kind of girl – I’m too loud, too curvy, too honest, too emotional and my behaviour reflects that – I eat chocolate for breakfast, for example. Yes, most days.

And this weekend it felt like he didn’t care. Like I was hottest in big jumpers, drinking too much, asking stupid questions. As if as long as I was being fun, it didn’t matter that I came ill-prepared for seduction – yes, I bought new, fancy underwear for the trip, but he ended up having to sever the tag on the knickers with a corkscrew, because I hadn’t brought scissors and therefore couldn’t get it off. When he tried to play chivalrous and help me put my coat on at the end of the evening, I handed him my phone and bra to hold instead, because I’m happy for the concierge to see my nipples if it means I don’t have to go to the effort of putting everything back on. And, finally, finally I felt like I could be me and still be sexy. That realisation’s been a long time coming.

But when the confidence and happiness take you by surprise that way, it inevitably takes you equally by surprise when they’re yanked from underneath you. Because I fucked up: I fell for a guy who likes to have multiple partners, and I, well, I just don’t. Sometimes it’s easy to ignore. He’s overseas, after all and that makes it easier to turn a blind eye, easier but still not always possible. I live by the motto that what I don’t know can’t hurt me, but if the information’s out there somewhere and it’s down to me whether I look or not, I always will. Even when I know it’ll make me cry.

And that’s what happened this afternoon – I saw something I didn’t want to see, and now I can’t go back to not knowing. All I can do is learn from it, and what I choose to learn is that I have to get better at not seeing monogamy as some kind of personal failure. Sure, this blog will never be a rich source of all the different things I’ve done with different men who all thought I was the best thing since sliced bread, but then, that wasn’t why I set it up. If it means I write mainly about him, and the handful of boys who preceded him, I’m not going to apologise for that. I like boys, and I like sex, and I like writing about them. I just have to learn to do it my way.

On other people’s relationships

Posted on by

0

I’m currently watching a couple on a pretty awkward date (I think). Of course, that’s not guaranteed. They could be friends with benefits, colleagues having an affair, or, possibly, they think they’re on the best first date in the world…

Watching other couples doesn’t usually fascinate me. Other people’s PDAs, intimacy, affection for one another is a massive trigger for me. It reminds me of how lonely I often feel. Today is unusual, because until a few minutes ago I was having lunch with my own friend with benefits, and yes, I’ll admit it, we were watching this date as a source of entertainment.

I’m not generally smug when I’m out and about with the boy. Our own dynamic often leaves a lot to be desired and I spend a lot of time wishing we had more moments just like these – having lunch, feeling like we’re on the same wavelength, relishing the fact that, after 2 years, we know each other well enough that it’s no longer that awkward and yet the sex is still damn hot.

But of course, it might not appear like that to other people. They might watch us and think we don’t like each other at all. We don’t hold hands when we’re out and about, for instance. Are other people watching us and thinking, ‘Thank fuck we’re not scared of showing we care.’ And when we bicker, (there’s a lot of one upmanship) – are they thinking. ‘So glad we never argue.’

My point, I guess, is that, much as it’s fun to watch other couples and to draw your own conclusions, you shouldn’t use them as a barometer to judge your own relationship. Use them as a funny story to tell your partner, your friends, your colleagues, but, good or bad, don’t try to be more like them. You have to find your own happiness.

Sexy stuff

Posted on by

1

Wow, it’s been quiet around here recently, hasn’t it? I’ve been making my first proper foray into writing erotica during NaNoWriMo and the word count got a little bit on top of me near the end. Still, I pulled it off with just half an hour to spare, so I’m feeling pretty proud of myself right now.

This afternoon, I rewarded myself with a trip to see Blue is the Warmest Colour, a film that’s getting a lot of critical attention. It’s very long (179 minutes), especially for someone like me who has the cinema attention span of a small child, but it is also excellent, and not just because of its much publicised 7 minute sex scene.

That scene though, in my opinion, is not what makes the film sexy. By the by, isn’t ‘sexy’ a ridiculous word? Nothing makes me feel less sexy than hearing someone refer to something as sexy. Anyway, I digress. What makes it sexy isn’t just the usual things that I find hot about sex – like watching fingers press hard into flesh or redness rise from a playful slap – it’s also the way it homes in on the little details – the way the light shines through Adele’s fringe when Emma is sketching her, the unlikely hotness of Adele’s voracious appetite. Because really, aren’t these the things we find sexy about the people we love? Things like the freckles on a guy’s shoulders, or the way his jeans hang from his hips, a particular quirk of his accent or the way his cock looks when he’s hard but still wearing his jeans.

I don’t think we’re restricted to seeing sexiness in people of just one gender either, no matter what our sexual orientation – much as I adore men, I can get equally turned on by good cleavage or a woman with great lips wearing gutsy lipstick.

It’s also easy to zone in so much onto what you know turns you on in your fantasies – for me, dark, damp alleyways and sex with strangers – that you forget to be open to other stuff. It’s why I love finding sexiness in unexpected places, like this bit from one of my cookbooks (yes, really!), Joanna Weinberg’s How to feed your friends with relish:

‘There was runny cheese to follow, then ice cream and very fudgy brownies. Ed ate a lot, in a pleasing rather than greedy way. He instinctively made sure everyone’s glasses were always full. All I remember, from under the haze of alcohol, was that he asked me a lot of interesting questions. I couldn’t have told you what they were the next morning, but I definitely found them interesting. I don’t think I talked to whoever was sitting on my other side at all.

After a while, it must have been late, and everyone else seemed to melt away. Suddenly it was just me and him in the flickering light of the kitchen. So I went and sat on his lap and I kissed him.’

Despite that, I find that you can go a surprisingly long time without seeing something sexy in day to day life, especially if you’re single. So, one thing’s for certain: although girl on girl doesn’t usually turn me on, this is one film I’ll certainly be buying on DVD.

I like your cock … just not as your avatar – Part 1

Posted on by

5

Alison Tyler is one of my erotica heroines. Not only does she edit collection after collection of seriously hot erotica, she also runs craft competitions and she loves bookshelves. How could I not love her?

Last week, she posted on Twitter ‘If your avatar is a picture of your penis, I’m probably not going to follow you back.’

I totally get where she’s coming from with this, and, with a few exceptions, generally the people I follow don’t lead with a picture of their cock. I’m sorry – but your cock in isolation, whether it’s hard or not, just isn’t that hot (for the record, it’s probably hottest when it’s semi-hard).

That doesn’t mean I’m not a fan of naked men, or of pictures of naked men on the internet. This one, courtesy of Kristina Lloyd’s blog, is currently my desktop background, and he makes me very happy indeed.

So, what’s the difference? Well, firstly, you can see his whole body, but more importantly, it’s sexy because a) you can see his face (kind of, it is actually blurred out), and b) it’s an action shot, and that sense of movement, of intruding on a private moment, is oh so hot.

It also brings me neatly to the viewpoint of Girlonthenet, someone else whose writing I really rate, but whose view on cock pics I was pretty sure I didn’t share, since her email address actively encourages guys to send her pictures of their dicks. I’m totally on board with the whole ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’ approach, but if it were me I’d rather photos of your legs, say, or your amazing forearms.

Then, last month, in very quick succession, she posted two pieces that I couldn’t agree with more. The first was on how hot guys look when they’re wanking and they don’t know you’re watching (see, that brings me back to Kristina’s picture), the second was about how much hotter words can be than images.

I understand completely that what I’m asking for might be unrealistic. After all, your Twitter account, or your blog, is in the public domain, and yes, you’d be plain stupid to put up pictures where both your cock and your face are clear as day. But, that said, in an ideal world, what I want from naked pictures of men on the internet (in increasing order of importance) is:

1) Words – Yes, ok, when you post a picture of your cock, and it’s hard, I can see that you’re feeling horny. But that’s all I know – I can’t tell what you were thinking that made you hard, and that’s what I’m really interested in. If you want to make your cock pic hot, put some sexy words alongside it – erotica you’ve written, a brief description of something that turns you on, how you felt when you took the picture. Because that’s what I’m really interested in.

2) Your face – Even if you turn away from the camera, it’s nice to get a sense of your face in pictures. From a picture of your cock alone, I find it hard to conjure up an image in my mind of an act, whether that’s you wanking, me sucking you, or you fucking me in a nice hotel room. Make it easy for me: give me a hint of your jawline, or your cheekbone, your hair even – that’s the picture I’ll take to bed with me.

3) Action – See above. Pictures of you engaged in an act are the sexiest of all – they suggest that you’re not afraid to have people look at you when you might not look your best and they require the least mental work on my part to devise a scenario in my head that I can get off to. It’s a win win situation.

I’m rereading Kristina Lloyd’s Asking for Trouble at the moment, and today I reached this passage, which sums it up perfectly:

‘He was bare from the arse upward, his naked back facing me. His olive skin was overlaid with a sheen of dark bronze, and he was perfectly muscled: sinewy, work-strong contours rather than vulgar brawn. His black-hair was cut in a grade-two crop and the suggestion of skull beneath was menacingly beautiful. His head was slightly turned, eyes downcast, mouth set in a firm line. You could see an ear, jawline, a high cheekbone, and part of a big hawkish nose. 

His left arm was angled at the elbow; his hand was in front of his body. It looked like he was wanking, oblivious to anyone else.’

So yeah, I’m not a massive fan of pictures of your cock, but if anyone wants to stage the scene above for me, and take a photo, I’m totally on board with that.

Why I love good underwear

Posted on by

2

Image

I’ve said it often enough on here, but I’ll say it once more: i’m not a massive fan of my body. That said, if you asked me whether i’m more comfortable dressed or undressed, I’d choose the latter. Clothes, it seems, or the wrong clothes at least, cling to all the bits I like least – the extra weight around my middle and my bra straps, too – suggesting that my tits are too big, rather than perfect just the way they are.

Continue reading →

The things he’s taught me to love …

Posted on by

1

Rough week with the current boy in my life this week – lots of misunderstandings and anger, compounded by the fact that we’re communicating virtually, not face to face. Sometimes it’s hard to remember why we’re still bothering to keep in contact at all, so, in bed one night I made a list of the top 3 things he’s taught me to love.

Continue reading →