All Posts – Page 307
Self bondage with tight corsets
Sometimes, when I’m on my own, I do a simple form of self bondage: I put on a corset. One of those rigid, steel-boned ones that I can do up so tight it takes my breath away. One that I can feel squashing my tits into my chest and which – when I try to sit down – digs into my hips and makes me feel trapped.
Guest blog: dealing with sexual frustration
About three minutes after I tweet one of my filthy blogs, I’ll usually get a DM, email or reply saying “thanks a fucking bunch, GOTN, I just read that on the bus.” Sorry about that, commuters – while I try my best to keep the timings of the dirtier posts to those bits of the day when most people aren’t at work, it’s inevitable that – with Twitter and Facebook and all the things that ping through to your phone – most of us will get horny at inopportune moments.
This week’s guest blog is from just such a guy, and one of the reasons I love it is because it captures that exact feeling of ‘oh God I need to come right this minute and I can’t.’ While I can’t pretend I suffer from the same degree of sexual frustration, I can certainly empathise – and I suspect many of you do too. So read, enjoy, and then let me know if you’ve found any ingenious hiding places to have a quick one to calm the nerves…
The lament of the sexually frustrated…
When I read Girl on the Net’s column, I revel in the joyful atmosphere of sexual freedom, honesty and opportunity. But it’s not all saucy happy funtimes, because although reading her site gives me the massive and righteous horn every time, I’m almost never in a situation where I can do something about it.
Her book lies half-read on my Kindle, the screen metaphorically stained not with the ultraviolet evidence of excited DNA, but with the sweaty misery of tube-ride blue-balls and the anguished tears of tossing (not like that) impotently next to a light-sleeping partner.
And of course it’s not just GotN who’s responsible for inopportune arousal. Chemistry lends a hand, raising testosterone levels first thing every day, and just the act of turning over in bed, or pulling on a pair of pants, can provide friction that, if not dealt with, causes eye-rolling distraction until some mundane task that nevertheless requires concentration removes the physical need. Or I sneak to the bathroom for a speedy one off the wrist.
So it’s clear that the baby Jesus wants us to be getting it on before the sun even gets close to the yardarm. Heh, “yardarm”. But then the baby Jesus never had a baby of his own. Mornings no longer belong to either of you (or even to your left hand), but to the crapping, moaning thing that needs feeding, wiping and reading the same bloody book eight times in a row.
Dreams should be the perfect place to let off steam sexually, right? My god, if I were one of the lucky few who could lucid dream, I’d wake up exhausted every morning after a long night fulfilling every erotic fantasy I’ve ever had and several I thought might make a nice change. But no. Even worse, when I do have a hot dream, my subconscious (usually) wags a scolding finger and reminds me I’m in a monogamous relationship.
Location is another big factor in the unwelcome stiffness stakes. Unlike some people, I seldom get actively frisky on the train or the bus, but when my mind is set off in that direction there’s no delicious sense of naughtiness or anticipation, just a frustration that whatever is stimulating me, I can absolutely guarantee I won’t be fucking it.
Work has more potential, if only because I figured out how to lock the other cubicle door even when I’m not in it, thereby giving my colleagues no reason to hang around in the loos. It’s usually a release-type situation, rather than something to be savoured, though sometimes – and they are a bit glorious – it’s a 2 or 3 times a day thing. The exception to this limitation – and I don’t know if this happens to everyone or if it’s just a superpower of mine – is when I’m hungover. I’d love to know the physiological mechanism behind it, but when hungover I can more or less have as many orgasms as I like without the fundamental drive dissipating as it normally does. Silver linings, eh? Though on the down side, I invariably don’t look great, definitely don’t smell great, and if she’s had a skinful too then no amount of pleading or prodding is going to get me what I (repeatedly) want.
Of course, it’s not all doom and gloomily rearranging my privates on the 38. There are times when the stars and schedules align, and I know nothing will interrupt me until either I’m utterly sated or the dishwasher needs emptying. Woody Allen got it right (not words you hear often these days) in “Annie Hall” (mmm, ’70s Diane Keaton, I’ll be in my bunk, etc.): “don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love”.
What all the above does tend to mean is that when I do get time to myself, I spend a lot more of it on self-abuse than, say, doing an open university course, playing squash or learning Flemish. But I’ve long since come to terms with this outcome, because it’s fucking great, regardless of whether or not I’m misunderstood in Oostende.
The gent who wrote this blog post has donated his guest blog payment to the next person, so the next accepted guest blog submission will get £20 instead of the usual tenner. If you have an idea for one, check out the guest blog page and get in touch!
Please Sir/Daddy/Mister – what should I call my Dom?
“I’m going to give you six whacks with this,” he says, and then he does. As he does, I have to count them. I know not why – tradition dictates it. As if dominant men are notoriously bad at simple arithmetic and if I don’t count them he’ll beat me forever. Maybe I’ll forget to count them.
Thwack. Hot stings and tingling, delicious arousal. I’m already part way to moaning out loud and begging him to fuck me. The counting is a bit of a distraction, if I’m honest, but needs must.
“One.”
I settle back in, focusing on the warmth of the first stinging smack against my naked arse. Ready for a second, a third. Wanting him to give up control and just beat me like he doesn’t care how many.
“What do you say?”
“I… umm… I said it – ‘one.'” I resolve to speak up a bit next time, to avoid having this awkward break in the proceedings.
“But what do you say?”
Oh Christ, he wants me to thank him. Try not to sound too stroppy…
“Thank you.”
Phew. Back to the beating. Any minute now the next stroke will come down and it’ll knock this irritation away, putting me back into the place where I can just whimper and gasp and love it.
“Thank you what?”
Oh for the love of Christ.
Sir
“Thank you Sir” works in very specific scenarios for me – ones in which we’re role-playing that he’s my boss, or my teacher, or anyone in a position of authority (if you’re reading this, guys who might be likely to beat me at some point in the future, I have never yet had angry military commander berating me – a junior member of his troop – while spanking me over the desk with a riding crop. Just FYI). In an authority scenario, ‘Sir’ sounds reasonably natural, and I could – at a push – see me using ‘sir’ with a regular dominant who’d decided he wanted me to address him as such.
But in my lounge? When I’ve got my jeans around my ankles and you’re still half in your work clothes? It doesn’t feel right. I’ll call you ‘Sir’ if you want me to, and beg “please, Sir, can I have some more?” as you’re flogging the backs of my thighs and working me into an stinging ball of lust, but it only serves to highlight that what we’re doing is play. If I use a formal term, I’m highlighting the fact that we’re not really taking this seriously.
Daddy
I’ve never gone with ‘Daddy’, although I’ll admit to a slight kick of envy for those couples who use this word during play. Something about purring ‘Daddy’ at my partner during a particularly intense session makes me melt with desire. I strongly suspect this is something that’s been conditioned via porn (both visual and written) in which the word is often used as a neat, sharp shortcut to establish in the mind of the reader that this is a dominant relationship. He orders: she obeys.
But saying it out loud? To my partner? My partner who brings me Marks and Spencer sweets after work and calls me a twat when I tell him the worst of my jokes? No matter how horny he is, I think he’d struggle to suspend disbelief for long enough to be convinced I really meant it.
Mister/Mr Surname
In my opinion, this is an underused term of BDSM endearment. I used to do a lot of school role play (what can I say? I just love knee socks and the smell of chalk) and I could not get enough of the delight of using the formal names of some of my best friends. In the evening, when we were sipping wine and chatting, a guy might be ‘Mark’, but in the schoolroom when he stood in front of me and asked me what on earth I thought I was doing, he was Mr Smith. I’d talk about them to other ‘girls’ just for the pleasure of rolling their new names around my tongue. Mr Smith told me this. Mr Smith gave us homework. Mr. Mister. Amazing.
Again, though, the whole thing collapses in on itself when it’s my regular partner, because he’ll never be a Mister to me. A ‘Mr Smith’ would sound like a sarcastic hint that we should get married someday, or a means of expressing my displeasure – it would never naturally indicate submission.
Name
That’s the one. The name. When asking ‘what should I call my Dom?’ the question itself feels nonsensical. Because I’ve never had a Dom, much as the sex-focused part of my brain would have liked one. Thing is, the sex part of my brain doesn’t always have the control – it’d be knackered and withered within a week if I let it run as rampant as it wants to go.
I’ve known deliciously dominant guys, and guys for whom holding a whip is a fun Friday-night activity but not something they’re deeply drawn towards. I’ve played with men who speak to me in German, and beat me with rigid and unrelenting authority. Men who have laughed when I’ve asked to be restrained and railed sarcastically at me as they hitch my skirt up and bend me over their knee. I’ve known guys whose feet I’ve wanted to fall at, naked and sobbing and begging them to hurt me in ways I’ve not imagined yet.
I really want to call them ‘Daddy’, or ‘Sir’. I am envious of the people in relationships where they can subdivide their play and make it – to my mind – more intense and all-encompassing. Where play is a deeper experience than the kind of casual tennis-match style of my own BDSM.
But ultimately, I’ve never ended up in the kind of relationship where it’d feel natural to call someone ‘Sir’ or ‘Daddy’ – even when he’s got his cock in the back of my throat and is taking swipes at my arse with a riding crop. When we’re in the pub, he’s [Name], and when we’re sitting on the sofa playing Fable 3 and arguing about whether we should have sex with the hairdresser, he’s [Name]. Beating me feels like an extension of the other stuff we do: different category, same tone.
What’s in a name? Everything.
How to be the best boyfriend/girlfriend/partner/lover
When I do the washing up, I sing. It makes the chores less painful, and it means that for ten minutes or so, I can flush out the bit of my brain that won’t usually shut up: the bit that tells me I have a million things to do and that I shouldn’t be wasting time on showtunes.
Sometimes I can hit the high notes, and sometimes I wail off-key. The quality of the singing is not important: it’s about the fun.
And so, when my partner opens the kitchen door and pops in to put the kettle on, I need him to do something which goes against all of his immediate gut instincts at the time: I need him to not make me stop singing. No ‘cut it out’ gestures, raised eyebrows or putting his fingers in his ears: I need an absence of mockery or distaste. To not just to tolerate my fun, but to love it. He knows how to be the best boyfriend – he doesn’t have to sing along, or tell me I’m good enough to go on Xfactor (I’d be one of the people they feature in the ‘you’re having a laugh’ section early on in the show), because it’s not about the singing. He just has to love the things that make me happy, even if they make me look like a dick.
I appreciate that, when I’m halfway through the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack, that is no mean feat.
Sing like no one’s listening
It’s really important though, because if you can love my enthusiastic singing, you can love all the other bits of me that might be annoying or tricky or unphotogenic. The way I snore and talk in my sleep, the panicked way I run through the station to make sure we’re ten minutes early for a train, the way I come home late at night and fling my shoes across the room before lying face-down on the carpet.
The way I fuck.
If you want me to fuck you like I really really want to, I need to be comfortable that you’re going to embrace it. No ‘euurgh’s or ‘what the fuck?’s or ‘I don’t think you’re doing that right’s. Embracing and loving the weird things as well as the standard ‘suck dick, sit on cock, orgasm, high five‘ things.
Sometimes men ask me how they can find a woman who is kinky and imaginative and open to lots of new things in bed. I have a much much longer post coming on this at some point, but my initial gut reaction is to tell them this:
You may already know one, but it’s possible she doesn’t want to tell you about her passions. Maybe she wants to sing loudly in the kitchen. Maybe she wants to dance at that wedding. Maybe she wants to get naked and hump you with enthusiastic passion in the middle of the living room floor. But she’ll struggle to do any of these things if she’s heard you laugh too loudly when she’s fucked something up.
A long time ago someone asked me if he should tell his girlfriend that she was bad at giving blowjobs. No – God no. Never. Because saying ‘you’re bad at this’ is the exact opposite of encouraging. We get told all the time that certain things are ‘not good enough’ – as well-meaning friends and relatives take metaphorical red pens to half of our lives. Don’t tell someone what they’re doing wrong – tell them how to do it right.
‘I love it when you do X’ will always be more effective than ‘you’re bad at Y.’ Because if you hurt someone over Y, they’re unlikely to try Z.
How to be the best boyfriend (partner, lover, whatever)
So, what’s the most important quality in a partner?
I think it’s enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for me and what I do, even when I do it wrong. Enthusiasm for trying again, and failing again, and laughing together on the sofa. Being as comfortable with someone’s quirks as you are with their successes. Let me sing in the kitchen, lie face-down on the carpet when I’m drunk, and whisper my weirdest fantasies in your ear.
Syrupy e-cards encourage us to ‘dance like no one’s watching’, but we know that someone usually is. If you want someone to really open up about their deepest fantasies, their most exciting secrets, and all the fun they’ve dreamed of having, you need to smile even through their fuck-ups. Don’t wince, or groan, or imply that someone’s failure means they should never have tried, or that their fun is less important than the way they come across: enjoy the times when they let themselves go, and do something for the sheer, sparkling fun of it.
No matter how bad I am at it, make sure I always want to sing.
Guest blog: Primary school sex education
There’s lots of debate at the moment around how young people are taught about sex. My own sex education was fairly decent, if a little patchy, but focused pretty much entirely on the basics. Trains in tunnels, how to avoid a tiny baby train coming out of the tunnel, that kind of thing.
This week’s guest blog is a fantastic overview of why the more emotional aspects of sex education are so vital, and is a call to arms for those who work with younger children, to make sure that they are given a good emotional grounding rather than just a quick, embarrassed talk about the birds and the bees. Tasha is a primary school teacher who is keen to get better age-appropriate sex education on the curriculum. When she emailed me, with the example she uses in the piece below, I thought it was such a perfect example of the odd views society has on things like consent, and why it’s important to help children understand issues like this early on.
Primary school sex education
My sex education at primary school boiled down to one video; a video starring a naked couple, coolly walking around their flat allowing us to check out some of the physical changes that our bodies, on the cusp of puberty, would soon experience. I was then given a special copy of Mizz magazine that came with a couple of pads and instructions on how to get along with my mum. No follow up lesson was planned for, no opportunity to ask questions or explore any of the revelations that the video had given us a snapshot of. This picture remained the same through secondary school, where, while I was taught about the mechanics of sex, important emotional and sexual health details remained untouched.
Begrudged by the memory of my own scrappy sex ed, I knew I wanted to deliver some kick-ass lessons of my own when I started teaching upper primary a few years back. By giving children access to honest information, I hoped the sessions would enable them to feel confident and knowledgeable about both the physical and emotional aspects of sex and relationships. The importance of the latter became clear a few weeks ago during a chat with the girls in my class on puberty.
After these girls had cooed over some bras (it took three attempts to explain the difference between the number and the letter on the bra’s label), we checked out some hypothetical problem scenarios together. One of the scenarios told the story of how a girl, in year 6 (10-11 years), felt unready to kiss her boyfriend, but was scared not to do so in case he dumped her. Almost all of the girls in the group deemed this to not be a ‘real problem’ and unanimously agreed that she should just suck it up and kiss him, lest she become a laughing stock and, heaven forbid, become single at the age of 10.
These girls, aged between 9-10, believe that being a girlfriend equates to existing as somebody who will indulge a man’s desires regardless of their own insecurities and needs. Will this same group of girls in a few years time think that a girl should suck it up and have sex due to fear of being dumped? To suck it up on the street when cat called? When groped in a bar? By no means is this exclusive to females, boys at a young age are subject to very similar pressures. Interestingly, when the boys in my class were posed with the same scenario, they responded much more compassionately, suggesting that they should both ‘have a bit of a chat’. Supposedly, a mix of peer pressure, the endless objectification of women in our media and personal insecurities help to cultivate these dangerous ideas at such a young age.
Recently it has been revealed that Cambridge University is considering sexual consent classes in a bid to educate students on sexual violence. While it’s great to see that universities are becoming proactive in educating their students on consent, it is evident that legislative steps need to be made to ensure that all children receive quality sex and relationships education at an early, albeit appropriate stage of their school careers.
Unquestionably, all personal, social and health education must be age appropriate and delivered in an environment that is safe and inclusive. Children are curious about sex, therefore as a practitioner it is important that you teach accurate, honest information to avoid misconceptions and mystery around the subject, so that they are equipped with the knowledge to make informed choices as they grow. The more confused a child becomes due to lack of information, the more likely they may be to seek information from unsuitable sources that may misguide them.
The conversation that took place in my classroom that day shows that children in primary school need to be taught skills that will enable them to nurture safe, positive relationships. While it can be necessary to separate boys and girls for some aspects of sex and relationships education, it is valuable to run mixed lessons that encourage discussions between males and females. Take the example above, for instance, where girls and boys separately discussed their thoughts on the girl in the story who was unready to kiss her boyfriend. On reflection, I would now teach this as a mixed session, where both sexes can critically analyse a range of views on relationships and sex in society. Exercises like these will teach children how, through negotiation and discussion with one another, positive solutions can be reached. Hopefully, providing they receive quality sex education that promotes this mutual respect between the sexes throughout their school careers, they will begin to recognise gender inequality within relationships, fully equipped to make their own, informed decisions that will keep them safe.
Sex and relationships education is currently only compulsory to those aged 11+. There is an argument against teaching sex education in primary schools, since there is the unfounded belief that it encourages the early sexualisation of children. This bullshit stems from ministers in our own fragmented government, who are neglecting children by failing to ensure that they are educated on happy, healthy, sexual relationships. Without question accurate, factual information provided through sex and relationships education will prevent uncertainty about sex and encourage children to respect themselves and one another. In a society that struggles itself to clarify the blurred lines surrounding sexual violence, can we really afford to keep sex and relationships as a non-compulsory part of our primary curriculum?