[Christmas] Nail Polish Fiction: Wingwoman

Posted on December 4, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

I got a manicure a couple of months back, and the polish was called Wingwoman. It felt like it was begging to be the name of a story…

Wingwoman

‘Lame.’

‘I’m sorry?’

He gestures at her ombré fairy wings – the ones she bought from Claire’s Accessories at ten to five.

‘The theme was superheroes.’

Faux-obtuse, she raises an eyebrow. ‘And?’

‘You’re dressed as a fucking fairy.’

She’s not having it. Especially not from a guy whose idea of dressing for a superhero fancy dress party is a Batman t-shirt over faded jeans.

‘No, I’m a superhero.’

‘Which one?’

‘Wingwoman.’

What starts as a sneer morphs into a grin, as if he can’t help himself.

‘Wingwoman? And what are her super powers?’

She gestures to the corner of the room, where Mark has been sucking some girl’s face off for the past fifteen minutes. ‘She can find you a shag within half an hour of arriving at a party.’

He winks at her. ‘Really?!’

Oh, spare the fucking cheese, she thinks. She doesn’t need this. She’d agreed to accompany Mark to this party because she owed him a favour, but the favour doesn’t stretch as far as tolerating predictable flirting from some guy who used his opening line to insult her.

They’re kids wings, too, and the elastic straps are way too short, so they sit too high on her back – if she actually were a fairy there’s not a chance in hell they’d keep her airborne. She’s wearing them with a silver top and denim skirt and although she knows she looks ridiculous, she thinks it’s kind of cute-ridiculous. At least she’s abandoned her matching wand somewhere over by the wine.

She gives him a withering look. ‘Sure. But only if you put more effort into your chat up lines than you did into your costume.’

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘So that’s your other superpower. You can find a guy a shag in thirty minutes or cut him dead in two. Nice.’

She likes a man with a quick comeback. She has a weakness for guys who turn verbal sparring into actual sparring – the ones who teasingly slap her arse on the way to the bedroom, and then again, repeatedly and harder, once they’re actually inside her. She likes boys who dare her to masturbate in front of them until she comes apart, the ones who tell her to keep her eyes open the whole time, the ones who force her hand back to her clit if she stops. And the ones who bite. Fuck, especially the ones who bite.

‘Yep,’ she replies, and hands him her glass. ‘Or I can trade another drink for another chance.’

‘Red, right?’

‘Well spotted.’

When he returns from the makeshift bar, he’s carrying not only her drink, but also her wand.

‘This belong to you?’

‘It did. I was trying to offload it.’

He turns his hand over so his palm faces upwards and experimentally strikes it with the wand. Hard. The sound of it makes her wet.

‘No use for it, huh?’

‘Well,’ she says, taking it from him, chin tilted upwards and eye-contact maintained the whole time. ‘I wouldn’t necessarily say that.’

‘Look,’ he says, ‘I know this is presumptuous, especially given that it’s been less than half an hour, but do you want to take this upstairs?’

She doesn’t reply, just sashays up the stairs ahead of him, leaving him to follow in her wake. It’s only when they reach the top that she turns to face him, kisses him, and says ‘Good plan, Batman.’ And then she bursts out laughing. She’s inordinately pleased with herself for that line.

He’s laughing too, but his eyes are roaming the landing for some place they can go. The bathroom is occupied. The door to the study is ajar, and she’d fuck on an IKEA desk if that was the best option, but there’s also the bedroom. With a bed. A bed that’s covered in coats.

They’re too horny to care now. The thick heft of his cock is straining against his jeans and he shuts the door, wedges a chair under the handle, flicks off the light and pushes her unceremoniously onto the bed, hard enough to show that he gets her.

She reaches for his belt, but one of his hands is on hers, lifting them high above her head and holding them there, while the other flicks open the steel buttons on his fly and frees his dick.

She wants to touch it, and so she tries to wriggle free, but he only tightens his grip, which makes her wetter still, and brings his lips down to meet hers. He kisses like a dream.

They fuck like superheroes would fuck, his jeans still around his ankles, her knickers shoved to one side, as if either one of them might have to fly off and save the world at any minute. It’s quick, but it’s good: he grinds against her clit with every thrust and before she knows it the world is shattering into a million sparkly pieces and she’s gasping into his mouth. When he comes he buries his face against her neck and she strokes his back, not caring what he might make of that.

She does care though when he props himself up on his elbow and kisses her swiftly on the lips. It feels like she’s losing him.

She tries to make a joke of it. ‘Isn’t Batman also an escapologist? Should I expect you to disappear right about now?’

‘No chance,’ he says, leaning into her again and sinking his teeth into her collarbone.

‘And,’ he says, tweaking her bent and flattened wings as she’s blissfully contemplating the bruise she’ll have tomorrow, ‘It doesn’t look like you’ll be flying off anywhere soon either.’

Sweet little mystery*

Posted on December 3, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

I don’t watch porn. Really. I mean, I watched the odd soft core movie, rented from Blockbuster and accompanied by cheap wine from the college bar, when I was at uni, a lot more on Channel 5 when I was babysitting as a teen for the crap families who didn’t have Sky, a few hardcore clips the boys on my corridor downloaded onto my laptop, and a full length hardcore film three weeks ago in a hotel in Paris, out of sheer curiosity. And because it was free. That’s honestly the full extent of my porn watching. I’ve wanked to porn perhaps once. Because I discovered good erotica pretty young and because I’ve only ever seen porn with terrible and distracting plot lines, I’ve never really felt the need to seek it out.

That doesn’t mean that I’m not bothered by the new UK porn regulations. I’m very much with Myles Jackman, the obscenity lawyer quoted in this wonderful post by Girlonthenet, who said “Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die. If this assault on liberty is allowed to go unchallenged, other freedoms will fall as a consequence.”

Plus, even the Independent is citing the anti-feminist argument (“More worryingly, the amendment seems to take issue with acts from which women more traditionally derive pleasure than men,”) so I think it’s safe to say that being pretty fucked off at this is not overreacting.

Lots of people will write about a lot of the acts on the banned list a lot more knowledgeably than I possibly could, so I’m not going to go there, much as my initial dismay was caused by the fact that bruising is no longer allowed. Instead I’m going to write again about something I’ve written on before: female ejaculation.

I stand by my original take on it. Personally, I don’t like it. That’s if I’ve even ever done it properly. I’ve certainly got very, very wet during penetrative sex, wet enough to soak my clothes and the bed underneath me. For me, that counts. For others, it may not. Either way, I don’t the sloshing noises my cunt makes when he fucks me that way, even though he seems to. I don’t like the feeling of being uncontrollably wet, I don’t feel *lady-like.* And therein lies my problem with banning squirting in porn. It’s not that squirting *isn’t* lady-like, that’s just my perception of it. Which might be partly down to personal preference, but also, I think, has a whole lot to do with the way society polices women’s bodies and the fluids they produce.

Lets go way, way back to when I was eleven. I got pretty good sex-ed at school. My parents had been open and honest about puberty. I was staying with a kind-of friend, the daughter of one of my mum’s mates. I was on a thin mattress on the floor and aside from anything else, I remember being unable to sleep because I was fucking freezing. And then I woke up properly in the early hours of the morning, soaked. In blood.

From there on in, it got worse. I was pretty scared of my mum’s friend, who wasn’t exactly warm and approachable. In fact, based on a later incident where my sister got drunk on cooking wine on a camping holiday and vomited everywhere, I’d say she’s a judgemental bitch. Anyway. My clothes for the next day involved cream jodhpurs (don’t ask). I didn’t dare tell her my periods had started, so I wore the cream jodhpurs and did my best to fashion an impromptu sanitary towel from loo roll. You can imagine the state of me, and the state I was in, by the time I got home.

And so it continued. Later the same year, someone in my class had the famous swimming party at the local pool, complete with massive inflatable for climbing on. Yep, you’ve guessed it, I had my period. My mum gave me a tampon, explained how they worked, and left me to get on with it. The swimming party lasted an hour. Nobody told me you need to change a tampon immediately after you swim. By the time I did change it, an hour or so after the party, it had leaked, staining the beautifully 90s body-with-poppers-between-the-legs (also in cream) that I was wearing. For the second time in less than a year, I was mortified by my body. I’d also learnt a lot about not wearing pale colours during my period.

At 30, I’m obviously much less bothered by my menstrual cycle, except it’s more irregular than ever, and in some ways, more disruptive. The problems of being a woman on her period don’t go away: I keep tampons in my desk drawer at work, but do I then slip one into my handbag and take that with me or do I clutch one in my fist and hope that no one stops me on the way to the toilets? If I sleep with someone who’s happy to fuck me while I’m on my period, I still hate that moment when you have to slip away to take your tampon out. Even if the guy in question *is* happy to fuck me at that point in the month, it’s undeniably less messy to avoid blood during sex, which means I back-to-back packets of the pill way more often than I intend to.

We’re no more open-minded about urination and I don’t mean in a watersports sense. Or UTIs for that matter. I don’t get cystitis often, thank god, but every time I do, it’s a battle to get the doctor to accept that I’ve tried the over-the-counter salts and they haven’t worked, and I need antibiotics. On one particularly memorable (for all the wrong reasons) occasion, I paced the floor of the emergency GP surgery to try to distract my bladder as he wrote me a prescription, on another I thought my entire birthday trip to Latitude festival was ruined because I was bleeding every time I peed and couldn’t get more than a metre from the toilet block before the stinging desperation forced me back again. For some reason, you can order antibiotics for cystitis online via Lloyds pharmacy, but can you do the same in a physical store? Of course not.

Likewise, when I looked briefly at Mumsnet earlier, to see what they had to say about squirting, there were lots of *hilarious* gags about how they could pass off urination caused by a weak post-partum pelvic floor as ejaculation. Very few women seemed to have anything positive to say about female ejaculation in its own right. How did we get like this as a society, and why can’t we be more like the French, who offer pelvic re-education as standard after having a baby? I could go on, because there are still more things about women and their need to piss going unrecognised that bug me, including the fact that city centres often now have pop up urinals for men who’ve been drinking. Is anything similar supplied for women? No, love, we don’t want to think about the fact you piss, so go and crouch behind a wall somewhere where we can’t see you.

And lastly, there’s the stuff that *never* gets talked about, or certainly never did when I was younger – like the fact that vaginal discharge is acidic and can therefore bleach the crotch of your black knickers to a garish shade of orange over time. It took me years to figure out that that wasn’t just me.

I have no idea why female ejaculation has been banned in UK poem – this post is an educated guess, at best. When I read the Independent article, it made me think of this passage, from Kristina Lloyd’s Thrill Seeker:

‘You’ve got to really work it.’ Liam slammed his middle fingers into the pad of my G, his elbow shunting as if he were trying to tug something from me. ‘It can look quite violent.’

‘Ach, I dinnae mind that,’ said Baxter.

I wailed as the pressure swelled within me. All too soon, my walls loosened and I was slushy around Liam’s pounding fingers. I slumped in Baxter’s supporting arms, crying out as liquid rushed from me in a hot, unstoppable fountain.

If squirting’s been banned because the censors associate it with fisting, something which they, insanely, consider to be ‘life-endangering,’ I can almost see the twisted logic behind the decision, much as I still disagree with it. If it’s been banned because someone objected to women’s bodies behaving in that way – well, angry doesn’t begin to cover it.

*The title of this post is a music-related riddle. I think Girlonthenet once used to send her readers a Twix as a small prize for getting questions like this right, and I liked that, so if you’re the first person to guess the link between the title and the post topic, I’ll send you something chocolatey.

Christmas 2014 Gift Guide (of sorts)

Posted on November 26, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

This is another of those posts that I get to write because I blog primarily for me, and therefore I can be completely self-indulgent. I fucking love Christmas gift guides. I think the Guardian will probably launch theirs this coming weekend, which has been pretty good in previous years, the Cup of Jo one is imminent, and is pretty useful if you’re in the States, and there are even gift guides for writers and some written by the wonderful Alison Tyler (again, 2014 ones on the way).

I’m a big believer in buying handmade/indie/Etsy stuff for gifts, the only real exceptions I make being clothing, books/music/film, beauty products, make up and alcohol. Even with the last of those, and chocolate too, I’ll buy from smaller producers where I can. If I’m being totally honest, I do buy books from Amazon, but please be a better person than me and buy them from RL bookstores where possible.

So, with the preamble out of the way, here are my top 30 Christmas gift recommendations. I’d love to know what you’re buying too, so *please*, *please* tell me in the comments – it’s like porn for me…

1. Flasher Bat Plush Bat in Tiny Tighty Whities £29.40

OK, let’s start at the crazier end. I’m a real sucker for stuff that’s completely odd, and this bat definitely falls into that category. I especially love that when you wrap his wings around him you have no idea he’s wearing pants…

2. Willoughby Book Club Subscription, from £34.99

My friends bought me a six-month subscription to the contemporary version of this for my 30th, and I swear it’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. Not only do the books arrive beautifully wrapped in tissue paper every month, it also supports an independent bookstore. There are different options too, including kids’, toddlers’ and cookery books.

3. What I See When I Run Prints, from $30

I’m not really a floral person, but I have the print below in my spare room, and I adore it. The story behind the prints is nice, too – you can find out more about it at http://whatiseewhenirun.tumblr.com.

4. M&S Best of British Tights, £8

These are pretty new, I think, and they’d make a nice stocking filler for a girlfriend. M&S normally make good but really boring tights – lots of these designs (back seam, cable, chevron) are sexy, not tacky. Equally, I bought a pair of these Autograph leaf design ones at the weekend and fuck me, they’re comfy.

5. Cambridge Satchel Co. Shoulder Bag in Oxblood, £255

This is my current handbag, in a different shade. I’ve never had so many compliments on a bag, and if I could justify buying it in a second colour, I totally would. Plus, isn’t ‘Oxblood’ just the best name for a colour?

6.Sharpie Limited Edition 80’s Glam Fine Point Permanent Markers, £16.99

Everyone needs a good set of felt tips or markers and these are the best, as long as you’re working on decent quality paper. Because they’re permanent, they scream ‘Take me seriously!’ Kristina Lloyd signs books with black Sharpie, and, as far as I’m concerned it’s just another reason why she’s so damn kick ass.

7. Hush PJs, £49.50

I sleep naked, which is clearly the only sensible option. However, great PJs double as loungewear, so even though I take mine off before bed, I do kick around the house in them a lot. Hush often have discounts and/or free postage, so they’re worth keeping an eye on…

8. Pulp ‘Different Class’ Album As Books Poster Print, £18

One of those things I wasn’t sure if I loved or hated when I first saw it, I’ve now decided I love it. All the tracks on Pulp’s Different Class album are reproduced on book spines as if they were classic Penguin titles. If you’re not buying for a Pulp fan, there are lots of other artists, too.

9. Origins Ginger Float Cream Bubble Bath, £27

I swear I mention this stuff at least once a week, but it really is the best bath product I’ve ever used. If you don’t like ginger (What’s wrong with you?!), Origins do lots of other gorgeous bath oils and shower gels, any of which I’d be thrilled to receive…

10. Gold Triangle Necklace, £18

This is actually a brass triangle on a gold chain, but it’s very pretty and very simple and I know when I buy stuff from Oh My Clumsy Heart for my friends, they’re pretty much guaranteed to love it. Plus, it’s less than £20.

11. NARS Blusher in Orgasm, £22.50

You can’t go wrong with a classic, and NARS Orgasm is certainly that. It’s a very easy-to-wear shade, but the other colours are worth a look too – especially ‘Deep Throat.’

12. Wooden Mistletoe, £22

This is my latest gift to myself – it’s Christmassy and it encourages kissing. Need I say more? If you want to encourage kissing, but you don’t want to spend £20+, there’s also a smaller £10 version.

13. Mapping Manhattan, £10.53

For some reason, I still don’t own a copy of this, although I’ve bought it for friends. People who read my blog regularly will know that great sense of place is a real love of mine and this book, which contains maps of Manhattan illustrated by a huge variety of people to show what the city means to them, is fascinating to me.

14. Shopping List Magnets, £22

Not gonna lie – I want to be a domestic goddess almost as much as I want to be a successful sex blogger. Plus, I’m a magpie when it comes to shiny, colourful things. These are both…

15. Magimix Le Mini Plus Food Processor, £149.95

Want to tell someone who loves cooking that you love them? Forget diamonds, what they really want is a Magimix. On my list (in orange) as soon as I have the worktop space for it, I’d give a lifetime of blowjobs to any man who bought me one of these…

16. Let’s Make Out Cushion, £63.37

Another item that features a lot in my blog posts, I was horrified by the price of this when I saw it on a holiday in Washington DC, but I went back to the shop to stare at it longingly so often, I decided in the end it was worth it. And I’ve never, ever regretted it.

17. Edinburgh Gin Cocktail Kit, £45

This is so cool I’d never want to take it out of the box, but it probably wouldn’t take much of a gin emergency to persuade me. A good one if you’re willing to spend a bit, but you’re looking for something more exciting than a bog standard bottle of alcohol.

18. What Fresh Hell Pencil Set, £2.63

Alison Tyler and I overlap on our love of Etsy shop Carbon Crusader, and their pencil sets make great stocking fillers for stationery lovers. I think fresh hell is a universal sentiment, but there are lots of other designs available too.

19. How to Feed Your Friends with Relish, £12.99

Nobody cooks from cookbooks anymore, right? And yet, I do cook from this one. The boy (and probably all boys) wisecracks when I cook for him from it that really you should feed your friends something other than relish, but don’t let that put you off. It doesn’t have any pics, which is the downside, but it reads like a novel or a blog. Highly, highly recommended.

20. Essie Nail Polish, £7.99

After Polished, how could I not include a nail varnish? One particularly cool year, I picked out colours that were associated with something to do with each of my friends and then themed the rest of their gifts round the polish name. The one shown below is Midnight Cami…

21. Cowshed Horny Cow Room Fragrance Diffuser, £36

Cowshed is another of my adored brands, not least because it doesn’t contain any nasties. Horny Cow smells of Rose Absolute, Patchouli and Cinnamon Essential Oils and let’s face it, diffusers are so much less fuss than scented candles.

22. Crumb by Ruby Tandoh, £9

Yes, yes, Great British Bake Off fans, you want to hate her, but be honest, you can’t quite bring yourself to. I haven’t baked from this yet, but it would definitely get my vote for gorgeous cover of the year alone.

23. Chicks Over Dicks Keyrings, £31.36

Remember when you bought your friend the Forever Friends necklace? This is like the grown up version and if you’re not totally sure you agree with the sentiment (I’m not), you can also buy ‘Best Bitches’. Plus, it’s a gift for you too, right?

24. Charbonnel & Walker Pink Marc de Champagne Truffles, £12.95

When I was a pre-teen, and chubby, my mum offered to give me £20 cash if I agreed not to eat the Easter Eggs I’d been given. It’s no wonder I have a slightly unhealthy addiction to chocolate these days. Anyway, I think fancy chocolate is underrated as a gift, especially if the packaging is beautiful. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do with an evening than kick back with a box of these, a glass of wine and a good book.

25. Caramel Wafer Cushion, £44.50

After notebooks, cushions are another weakness of mine, which is probably why there are two on this list. And seriously, who *wouldn’t* want a Caramel Wafer cushion?

26. Young Punks Wine, Quickie, £12.49

Wine can be a *really* boring gift. You can make it more interesting by buying ones with cool, or relevant, names, or ones that explicitly reference sex…

27. Brain Design Notebook, £18

You knew there’d be a notebook, right? I personally advocate hardback because you can write in them easily even on public transport, and I love Fanny Shorter’s prints, which are inspired by cross-sections of the brain and the heart. Good for scientists, medics or design fans, less good for the squeamish…

28. Bloom & Wild Letterbox Subscription, from £50

I’ve written before, I’m sure, about why it’s fine, great even, to buy yourself flowers. But receiving them is a lovely, lovely thing, and a bouquet through my letterbox once a month? Yes, please!

29. Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty, 3.49

By far the best book I’ve read all year, ‘Apple Tree Yard’ has a great plot, amazing sex scenes for a mainstream novel and a really well-written central female character. It’s a shame the cover’s shit, but hey, you can’t have it all.

30. Writing Retreats, £45-£500+

I’ve totally saved the best for last. Charlie Haynes runs one day writing retreats in London and longer ones a couple of times a year in Devon. They have very different feels – the London one is pretty intense, while the residential ones are more chilled and make me happier than other holiday has recently. Both involve a hell of a lot of excellent homemade cake. There are no dates up for either at the moment, sadly, but it looks like Charlie might put new residential dates for 2015 up before the end of the year, so I figured it was worth including…

All pictures are taken from sellers’ websites. No copyright infringement is intended. If you’d like a picture removing or crediting, please do get in touch.

GT

Posted on November 24, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

With less than five minutes till the deadline for Exhibit A’s Sinful Stories 2 competition, I can’t work out how to embed Molly Moore’s gorgeous photo, the one that speaks to all my kinks, into the post! Argh! Anyway, you’ll find it here. And my second competition entry is below…

***

It all started with Simon Jamieson in Year 9. All those dotted characters whose dots she could turn into perfect bubble hearts as she married herself off to him on the back of her English exercise book. Gemma Jamieson. Gemma Thompson-Jamieson. GJ. Mrs Gemma Jamieson. He turned out to be a cunt, though. Obviously.

All through her twenties it was the same story, worse even. She no longer met anyone she could see herself marrying, and the guys she did meet didn’t give a fuck who *she* was. They didn’t even call her Gemma – it was always ‘Baby,’ ‘Sweetheart,’ or even ‘Baby Gem,’ like the lettuce. She bloody hated salad.

Alex called her ‘Great tits,’ right from the night she met him. Somehow it was the best nickname she’d ever had. He called her other names, too: ‘Slut,’ ‘Whore,’ ‘Filthy bitch.’ Hard words that she found herself begging him to say. He’d hold her down and sink his thumbs or his teeth deep into her collarbone, her neck, her breasts. She was fascinated by the bruises that formed in the aftermath: the way they sprang up within hours where her skin was delicate and close to the bone, only to appear whole days later on the softer bits round her nipples and on her tummy.

Date night, to her surprise, was still a thing. He could fuck her mouth so hard it made tears stream down her cheeks, tell her to clean herself up, then take her out to dinner *and* let her share his dessert. Why had nobody ever told her it could be like that?

And dinner did nothing to sate his appetite for her. On the way home he’d fuck her in dark alleyways, shop doorways, bus stops. She remembered them all, of course, but none stood out more than the subway.

The subway made her feel vulnerable – that was why she loved it. He made her strip off her clothes, fold them neatly and pile them on the damp, filthy floor. He made her walk a hundred yards from where she’d left them, to the point at which the tunnel sloped back towards the road, and told her to keep watch. It didn’t escape her notice that no one was watching the other entrance, and nor was she sure what she was guarding against.

She heard the hiss of paint and swung her head round. In broad strokes, he’d sprayed her initials in the formation in which he liked to mark her: big and black and smudgy right above her heart and then two smaller, redder swellings either side of it. The formation in which he *did* mark her, there under his graffiti, the smell of solvent still thick in the air. He fucked her, hard, and then he got up and went to fetch her dress.

He’d reduced her to nothing more than a body. He’d sprayed her tits with his come and the wall with an elegy to her tits. She stretched. The concrete bit into her arse. Her grazes stung. It felt like coming home.

***Massive thanks to @Mollysdailykiss for permission to use her gorgeous pic, obviously. Thanks Molly! x ***

Cold for July

Posted on November 24, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

He was hot in the way of British summers: longed for, sticky and never around for as long as you wanted.

That said, they’d lasted a year, on and off, even though she was never quite sure what their deal was. He’d flitted in and out of her life, butterfly-like, and she’d chased him, more than a little eager to stick pins through his wings. He even fucked on top of the covers, as if he couldn’t bear to be beneath them, trapped in the fug of his own body heat.

At first, she’d struggled to associate that on-top-of-the-duvet fucking with intimacy – she wanted the two of them rolled beneath it, not these marooned-on-top shags she got instead. But she’d learnt, with time, that they didn’t need cotton and feathers to bind them – it was enough to wind her arms around his neck as he buried his cock deep inside her and to feel his sweat-slick skin stick to hers as he held it there.

A year in, she still puts in more effort than he deserves. Tonight, for example, she’s wearing the killer heels she knows he loves, and she’s stopped at the hairdresser on her way home from work to have her fringe trimmed. Her hair’ll be out of place ten minutes after he walks through the door.

After sex, her fringe always sticks to her face, and he’ll peel it away and kiss her damp and salty forehead. The room smells of the two of them, and she holds on tight to him, and wills his cock not to soften. ‘I just want you inside me’ – those words trip so often from her tongue, her emails, her iPhone keypad, that they’re like a mantra now.

Tonight though, she never got the chance to say them. Tonight he cut her off before they were even fully naked: he took the hand that was reaching for his belt and guided it gently back to the mattress. She tried to break free, at first – he was just playing Dom, right?

He was playing Dom, as it happened, but with someone new. Someone he’d met in a bar, a few weeks back. Someone he’d thought would be just another fling. But things change…

He didn’t want to mess her around.

And so she let him let himself out. He did it quietly, without fuss. As break-ups went, it was one of her better ones. But the bed, the one she’d always slept alone in six nights out of seven, was too big without him. She slipped down into the gap between the bed and the radiator, where the space felt more manageable, more contained. It didn’t stop her shaking.

She turned the radiator on. It was cold for July.

***

This is an entry for Exhibit A’s Sinful Stories 2 competition. Many thanks to @Flutterbyflip for permission to base the story on her beautiful and inspiring photo.

Holidays are coming…

Posted on November 22, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

So, tomorrow, or maybe Monday, I’m going to post the first ever Sex Blog (of sorts) Christmas gift guide. The Guardian should have theirs out some time this week, but I adore Christmas and have already hit the shops, so even though I think the Guardian one is the best, I can’t wait forever…

Anyway. The reason for this post, which I guess is kind of a teaser post, is that I’m taking part in A piece of Viola’s blogger gift swap because I just love buying gifts for people. You can find out more about the swap here and about the Curiosity Project, which was the first swap of this kind I joined in with, here.

We need to talk about suicide

Posted on November 19, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

On Sunday, a friend and I went to our first jump race meeting of the season. It was the perfect day for it: cool, a bit foggy, dry. We got there slightly late and just made the third race. I’d picked my horse, Sgt. Reckless, but there was something weird going on.

The ground, after two days of solid rain, was shitty, and horses were being pulled from the race left, right and centre. Place betting was abandoned: money was on for the win, or not at all. I’m cautious, so I don’t usually bet that way, but with my original choice no longer an option I stuck some cash on the favourite and hoped I’d make my stake back, at least.

It was pretty clear from early on that I wasn’t going to win, but hey, that’s life. And then, at the last, the horse that was trailing well behind the rest fell, badly – front legs collapsing, body crumpling in on top. I looked away. I can’t bear it when the horses get hurt. I saw them put the screens round on the video and yeah, I got a bit tearful. I really, really hate it when that happens.

Five long, long minutes passed. On the other side of the course, the fancy side, applause broke out. The horse staggered to its feet – just winded, not hurt. I cried more – I’m far from an animal lover but fuck, I’m fond of horses.

Someone explained to me, later in the week, that animals are really bad at handling pain and trauma. If a human breaks an arm or a leg, you put it in plaster and wait for it to heal. The human might be in shock, but they recover from that shock pretty easily. Animals don’t – if an animal goes into shock, it’s hard to save it.

So yeah, we’re resilient. And because we’re resilient, and we think we can cheat death, to an extent, we’re fucking terrified of it. Later the same day, I said, in passing, something along the lines of ‘And if that happens, I may as well top myself.’ I wasn’t being serious. My friend stared long and hard at the cigarette between her fingers. Long enough for the ash to tumble to the ground. ‘I wish you wouldn’t joke about killing yourself,’ she said, quietly.

We’re getting better at being open about depression and anxiety. We’re still fucking awful at talking about suicide. I know it’s not easy – I’d love to say that when friends of mine have been depressed that I’ve been there for them unconditionally, but I know that that’s not true. Because being there for someone with serious mental health issues is really bloody hard.

When I’m depressed, the last thing I want is for everything to become a huge deal. When I mentioned to a real life friend that I was planning to write this post, she asked why I couldn’t talk to her about it instead. She probably wouldn’t be able to give me a response there and then, she said – she’d need time to reflect and give a measured response. Which is great. That is undeniably being a great friend.

But to me, it’s like the ill-fated Samaritans’ Radar. It’s too much. I don’t want my every word on the subject noted and appraised for the likelihood that I’m a risk to myself. When I mentioned the suicide conversation to my therapist yesterday I saw her shuffle her notes, no doubt checking she had my GP’s details – something you have to hand over at the beginning of a course of therapy in case things reach that point. When I mentioned writing this to the boy, he too wasn’t sure it was a great idea.

When I google suicidal ideation (interestingly, people who admit to thinking about suicide aren’t necessarily high risk, but equally, it doesn’t mean that they’re not, as urban myth sometimes maintains) I love that the first thing that pops up is ‘Need help? In the United Kingdom, call 08457 90 90 90.’ That’s exactly where I do want the Samaritans – there if I need them, but not muscling in to find out if I do. I never found out what the key words for the radar were, but my Twitter followers aren’t friends, I don’t want them alerting every time I let off steam. I want to be able to use words like depression, anxiety, suicide, desperate and can’t do this anymore without worrying about what will happen if I do.

Without in any way wishing to suggest that anyone who says they feel suicidal means anything other than that, I think linguistically we don’t have the words to express the desperation associated with depression. I can’t carry on/do this anymore/keep going or I can’t face another day sound very, very much like the words of someone who’s contemplating ending things. They might be, but equally, they might not – there’s just no other easy way to express to people just how shit things feel.

I’m not suicidal at the moment. I know that because in my lowest moments my bed has more appeal than the river, or the railway line. I want to sleep, for a long time. I don’t want to die. But I can’t keep tramping down the desperation that bubbles up periodically inside me – I want to be able to tweet about freely. If people unfollow me, whether because it triggers them or because they’re not interested, that’s fine, but talking about it cannot be taboo.

In therapy for the last couple of weeks, the same theme keeps cropping up. ‘It’s ok to be angry,’ the therapist says, ‘It’s ok to feel hurt. And it’s hard not to lash out when you’re hurting.’ I cry, a lot. ‘I’m so, so sick of hurting the people I love, though,’ I say. ‘I’m the one who’s sick, why do I have to put them through it, too?’ I can’t do it – I can no longer be honest about how low I am with my parents, because I don’t want to see them crumble. Ditto for my friends. My sister. Twitter is a safe space to give voice to the worst of my feelings, to stop them drowning me, and if we accept that it can be helpful for people to use it that way maybe the dialogue will eventually be more helpful for everybody.

I hope so, anyway.

23:30

Posted on November 19, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

It’s 23:30 and I’m sat, naked, on the sofa, where I’ve been since he left. It doesn’t sound good, does it? I’m cold, now, but I wasn’t an hour ago – he’s hot in more ways than one – and at half ten I was dripping with a mixture of come, saliva and sweat. So yeah, I’m not as cosy as I could be, but I’m happier than I’ve been for a while.

The worst part isn’t once he’s gone, actually – it’s the ten minutes or so just before he does, when I don’t know what to do with him. Jumping him again is out of the question but I need as much of that physical touch as I can to tide me over until the next time.

We kiss, one last time – him fully clothed again, me not – and I think the cab driver can see us, perhaps. Ah well. He lets himself out and I mean to get up and load the dishwasher but I’m not quite ready to go back to reality just yet. Instead I finish my wine, then the last few mouthfuls of his, and pull the blanket that’s draped over the sofa around me for warmth.

An hour later, I finally, finally drag myself up the stairs. In my bedroom my ‘Let’s make out’ cushion has been tossed to one side, the way it always is whenever there’s been any actual making out going on. I step over my abandoned jeans, pick up my knickers – the ones I wore for all of an hour – and dump them in the laundry basket.

I ache now, a bit – I don’t remember what he did to my arm – whether it was teeth or fingers, but the muscle remembers it, certainly. When I catch sight of myself in the mirror I have what they really mean when they talk about bed head.

It’s a mess, and I don’t know what to do about it. Right now though, I don’t care. Right now I know I’ll sleep better than I have in days.

‘Don’t read clickbait, read this instead’ – COMPETITION RESULTS!

Posted on November 18, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

As ever, when I put out a call for excellent writing you didn’t let me down. There were twelve posts from eleven entrants on topics ranging from Guy Fawkes to knicker-sniffing. Which was exactly what I wanted: I love sex blogging, but I read much more widely than that and I wanted to acknowledge just how much fantastic blogging goes on, not for financial gain, or for followers, but just for the sheer love of writing.

So let’s start in reverse order by date/time of submission. @brosandprose is a relatively new discovery of mine, but as ever she wrote elegantly and insightfully about the crossover between sex writing and pop culture. My knowledge of Taylor Swift extends only as far as the lyrics to Love Story and something to do with Harry Styles, but I loved this piece.

Then @Juniper3Glasgow, who won my last competition with this amazing story. Fireworks is an equally powerful post, and I love that Juniper has a way of writing about real events that have shaped her in a way that’s neither sentimental or indulgent. Nobody could deny that the girl has a way with words.

@codexonline wrote on heartbreak. I’m a sucker for a sad posts, and this struck a few chords with me – lines like ‘I’m going to be quick because I have to start thinking about her again at some point,’ and his inclusion of the eternally painful quote ‘never allow someone be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.” I know just what he’s getting at. I’ve been there. Sharing that pain never stops being being brave, though.

@bangsnwhimpers submitted two great entries. The first, on kissing with confidence has lots of great moments but I particularly like the vignetted moments of actual kissing ‘ The clearing of the throat, the disposing of gum. The butterflies in the stomach. The shifting in your seat, the stirring in your pants. The hands, the hands reaching around your waist, sliding over your behind, touching your arm’ and ‘The trophy of a kissing session, the dry lips. Kissing a smoker, that ashy taste, that tinge of smoke. A lipstick smudge on his lips. Your fingers wiping it off. And then more kisses.’

The second is on music, and I wholeheartedly agree with every word. It made me laugh, too, with its quips about trumpet players being able to breathe through their ears and the drummer who liked girls to shit on his chest (you’ll need to read it for context).

Massive kudos to @Hornygeekgirl who completely took me at my word when I said people could write about anything they wanted, and wrote about Guy Fawkes and freedom fighters. What I love about this is not only the unapologetic break with her usual subject matter but also that it showcases how positive and thoughtful she always, always is.

@JillyBoyd wrote on a subject close to all our hearts: how to capture the runaway idea when you’re a writer. I’m still on a relatively sharp learning curve where this is concerned but I think her keyword suggestion is fucking genius. Thanks Jilly!

@Innocentlb wrote with great poignancy about an early relationship and the difficulty of balancing friendship and love. I’ve been there, too and I know how hard it is when your friends don’t seem to want the best for you (and in fact, sometimes I’m the bitch who doesn’t want the best for her friends.) There’s lots good about this post, but I like the underlying sense of unease that carries through the whole piece.

First time stories are always a favourite of mine, and @girlseule didn’t disappoint. Evie blends story and musing about what virginity really means masterfully. She’s also completely unabashed about the fact that in some ways she’s still the same girl she was back then: ‘I think I was looking for affection and someone to just like me a lot more than I was looking for sex. I think I still am,’ and I’m a huge, huge fan of her writing.

@FSolomonRR rose to the non-fiction challenge with characteristic enthusiasm, which in itself is enough to make me adore her. Like Jilly she wrote on writing, and the candid honest with which she describes what she’s learnt is an inspiration. I really hope she keeps up the nonfiction writing as well as the fiction though, because she’s damn good at it.

And Molly. Lovely @mollysdailykiss. I think the only fair description of this post is ‘you don’t get much braver than this.’ I’ve learnt so much from Molly’s writing, not least that if you’re candid and true to yourself, even if what you’re describing isn’t everybody’s kink – she wrote about enjoying the smell of her own underwear – people will respect you for the honesty that shines through in your writing. I certainly respect her for that.

We’re getting close to the result now, but first let me start with my runner up. @Fantasticalview usually writes poetry, but you’d never guess that he’s new to prose from his piece. At first, it made me a little uncomfortable – while words like ‘Bitch’ and ‘Slut’ are fine if they’re used in my bedroom or if I apply them to myself, there has to be a damn good reason for them to be used to describe anyone else. But there is a damn good reason here, and also: the best writing often does make you uncomfortable – it should force you to ask uncomfortable questions at least – and this is a wonderful blend of love and grief and writing that does just that. I fucked up the prizes a little on this perhaps – it would have been good to have a second and third prize – but this is definitely a worthy runner up.

What I really didn’t anticipate was that the Readers’ Choice and my own prize might both end up going to the same person. I thought that the winning piece, while it is a stunningly thoughtful and clever essay – might resonate with me more than other people because it’s about the learning curve associated with sex writing. I was wrong – it not only gets my vote, it also took 46% of *your* votes. It’s honest to a fault (‘I didn’t consider my own complicity in getting hurt, that I had become attached to someone who was honest about only wanting something physical. I thought he was pure asshole, and I wrote it all down in a malicious tirade’) but it does it without self-recrimation or regret – it’s an ‘onwards and upwards’ type of post, and I *fucking* love that. So yes, @brosandprose, both Charlie’s Choice and the Reader’s Choice prizes are yours for the fabulous ‘Everything I know about sex writing I learned from Taylor Swift‘ – drop me a line (sexblogofsorts@gmail.com) with your preferred email address and I’ll make sure your prizes wing their way to you ASAP.

Thanks again so much to everyone who entered – expect the ‘Don’t Read Clickbait, Read This Instead’ award to become an annual thing.

Charlie xx

Love

Posted on November 11, 2014 by sexblogofsorts

I inherited my rolling pin, its pale wood slick with the grease of years of rolling out scones, Eccles cakes, mince pies… Believe it or not, some cookware is meant to be that way: in the same way you’d season a wok, what I had was a baking tool that worked like a dream because of how often it had been used. I ruined it, though: my hands are too hot for pastry and I put it to work rolling sugarpaste instead. A handful of trips through the dishwasher to clean it of food colouring, and it’s as good as new – pale, clean wood that bears no trace of its heritage.

I tend to think I’ve been more shaped by the men in my life than the women. I’m a daddy’s girl par excellence: not only do I go to my father for affection and for advice; I mirror him in personality, too: that desperate desire to please that hides a deep-seated anxiety. Which was why, when I was in therapy a few years back, I astonished both myself and the therapist by bursting into tears when she asked about my maternal grandmother.

She died when I was eighteen, and on my gap year. I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye. I cried, as you do, but it had little concrete impact on my life: we didn’t live that close and I probably only saw her five or so times a year.

I didn’t see her much more often as a child either, but how those visits have stayed with me. These are my most vivid memories of childhood: bingo in the village hall on a Friday night, winning £5 and putting it towards Take That’s Everything Changes album, being allowed to play it, ad infinitum, in the kitchen, while she made dinner. And younger still: being left in the bath, the bathroom door ajar, while the Coronation Street theme tune leaked through from the lounge. A hot water bottle already in bed waiting for me, and a glass of hot milk on the nightstand – a skin forming where I didn’t drink it quick enough. Being tucked in so tightly I could barely breathe, and allowed to pick my bedtime reading material from a huge pile of Woman’s Weekly and Best magazines.

But more than anything, it was the cooking: butterfly cakes, coffee and walnut sponge, sweet and sour pork, rice pudding. She’d stand me on a chair and let me help, and I learnt to bake that way. When my gas hob died recently, my mum urged me to switch it for an induction one instead but I won’t – yes, new pans would be more expensive, but it’s more than that, the smell of a gas flame, the condensation on my kitchen windows – all of those things take me straight back to my grandma’s kitchen.

When she died, my granddad burnt a lot of her stuff in a fit of grief. I’d done well, on paper: my mum paid for her only diamonds to be reset into rings for me, her and my sister, but the only thing I really wanted was her recipe notebook, which went on the fire. I have the next best thing, I guess, the beautifully titled ‘Radiation cookbook’ filled with her notes and cuttings, but it’s not quite the same.

I always mean to put music on while I bake, but somehow I always forget, and I realised the other day that that’s because when I’m baking I can channel that immense love: it makes me feel closer to her, and more than that, to all the women in my family. I’m neither religious nor spiritual, but I can find peace in flour, eggs, butter and sugar, almost without exception.

Last week I made a chocolate fudge cake for a bake sale at work – the proper 80s kind that’s all cocoa powder and no real chocolate. I topped it with Smarties, because hey, all the best cakes have Smarties.

I dropped it off at 10. At 11.30 a friend rang. ‘Your cake’s all gone,’ she said, ‘Already.’

‘Yeah, well,’ I said, ‘Everyone loves Smarties.’

That’s not what I was really thinking though. What I was really thinking was ‘Thanks, grandma. I love you.’

PS I owe thanks to two bloggers, Ella Dawson and Floraidh Clement, for the inspiration behind this one. Ella, for her post on what someone said ‘sounded a lot like happiness‘ and Floraidh for reminding me that yes, women are hot, but we love them for their ‘strength, wisdom and talents,’ too. Thanks guys! Also, a reminder that if you haven’t yet voted for your favourite post in my ‘Don’t read clickbait, read this instead’ competition, you can do so here. It’s too close to call currently, so it’s definitely worth doing!

	Dale on Cosmopolitan? Provincial, more…
	Mary Wood on Christmas Gift Guide (of Sorts…
	Mary Wood on Christmas guest guide (of sort…
	Lisa Stone on Christmas guest guide (of sort…
	Christmas guest guid… on Christmas guest guide (of sort…