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.

A confession: sometimes I pretend to be asleep. He knows I’m pretending, and I know he knows I’m pretending, but as I breathe softly and try not to move, I’m pretending to be asleep.

I love to lie still and wait for him to come to bed. To slip naked under the covers and squash up to me. I love feeling his dick go from flaccid to solid as he rests it in the crack of my arse.

Best of all I love his hands. Tentative strokes at first – easing softly from a hug to a grope, building to very gentle pinches of my nipples. Like he’s trying very hard not to wake me up. Like he just needs to feel the texture of my skin, or squeeze the curve of my hips.

Like all he wants is to touch me.

I breathe in and out, trying to measure the movements and sounds so that my fake sleep remains convincing. His hands wander further, and he gets rougher in his movements. He knows what I’m waiting for, and he sighs with open lust as he pushes his cock up against my arse.

Grinding, squashing, pushing it against me, before he pulls away and grips it with his right hand.

His touches get more urgent. As he rubs himself slowly, his other hand wanders all over me – stroking me, grabbing my arse, using his fingers to push the thin fabric of my knickers deep into my crotch. Sometimes he stops, licks his fingers, then puts his hand back, this time pushing the fabric to one side so he can work them in further. All the time gripping the shaft of his dick and rubbing himself closer to orgasm.

I shift slightly, just the tiniest movement as if I’m stirring in my sleep, and he takes the opportunity to flip me over. With his left hand, he pulls at my shoulder until I’ve rolled onto my back, then his greedy hands are back again – pawing at my chest. His left hand gripping one of my tits while the bed shakes with the effort of vigorously rubbing his cock.

Lying there as still as I can, my cunt taut and aching with need, I suppress the desire to fuck him – to ‘wake up’ and turn over and slide neatly down the shaft of his dick. I want to do that, but what I want more is to lie in the stillness, hearing the shuffling and gasping and feeling the sheer, objectifying need of him. This one thing – this gulping, horny, compulsive desire to grab and swallow me up – is the single unifying feature of all the best sex I’ve ever had.

That lust. That desire. Those greedy, greedy hands.

I can hear his breathing getting faster. The little ‘mmm’s and ‘ungh’s that I imagine him making when I’m not there. His movements get faster too. Rubbing himself angrily and squeezing me tightly. He dips his head to suck hard on one of my nipples, grunting lustfully as if the only thing that will sate him is my body.

And it does.

In one quick movement he kneels up. With one hand still firmly gripping me – pinching a nipple with all the force he held back on earlier on, he leans over my still body. A short grunt, a sigh, and the lashing jets of spunk hitting my chest, my neck, my face.

As he lies back down, he idly rubs the liquid into my skin as it cools, then rolls over and settles down. With my clit throbbing and my knickers wet, it takes me another hour to get to sleep.

 

Note: The idea that he might touch me while I sleep naturally raises some questions around consent, so hopefully this note will answer them. There are two ways my partner and I deal with consent around sleep sex:

Firstly, I make it fairly obvious when I want this stuff to happen: I lie in a very specific position – on my stomach, one leg straight and the other bent to the side, giving him easy access to the crotch of my knickers and my dripping wet cunt.
Secondly, on the very few occasions when I actually am asleep and he hasn’t realised, I either wake up utterly drenched with arousal, and assume the position to encourage him to continue, or I wake up irritable and I growl, in which case he stops and wanders off to the living room.

I shouldn’t need to say this, but when I don’t I get comments from people saying ‘oh my god you’re encouraging people to just go ahead and do this’. I’m pretty confident that no one is going to read something like this and take it to mean that all women want to be touched up while they’re asleep, but this note is here just in case you think they might be. So, yeah. If you have sexy, greedy hands, don’t fuck things up by using them when they’re not wanted.

At about nine o’clock, most people are gathered outside in the garden, smoking loose roll-ups or cheap cigarettes that come in packets of ten. The supply of supermarket vodka has been depleted and someone’s started a whip-round so they can run to the shop to top up our stock with some clear, petrol-tasting cider and another pouch of tobacco.

While college-age guests scrabble for booze, the party host is surveying the damage and praying they’ll get it all cleared up before their parents arrive home on Sunday afternoon. Inevitably, as the drunken groping escalates to second or third base, one or other of us asks the host:

“Mate, which room is the sex room?”

“Front living room. But there’s four other people in there at the moment so you might want to take a blanket or something.”

“Ta.”

Sex parties that aren’t sex parties

There’s a huge difference between deliberate swinging and the kind of sex parties that my nostalgic self longs for. Parties where the main aim is to get drunk, but the side show involves hustling your giggling other half across a room full of silently copulating others – others too horny to wait until everyone’s gone home or fallen asleep. Others who are used to fucking in front of people because – hey! We’re eighteen! Life’s really fucking short so let’s not go short on fucking!. I miss those parties.

The casual ease with which you’d step over a friend, her legs twitching with pleasure as her latest squeeze buried his face beneath a blanket and deep into her crotch. The ‘sorry’s as you’d make your own room in a tiny sliver of space – feeling not just your partner’s eager hands but the clammy heat from couples either side of you.

At one party, I fucked my boyfriend on one of those deep tub-shaped armchairs. The duvet spread over the top of the chair provided a vaguely private tent, and I slipped my knickers to one side and sat down on his dick, burying my head in his shoulder to muffle my heavy breathing. Raising myself only ever-so-slightly with each stroke, I fucked an inch or so at a time, until his cock was swollen with desperation and his toes curled – visible by everyone else as they stuck out of the bottom of the duvet. It took me twenty minutes of this slow, controlled fucking to come, and when I did, the small shudder of our makeshift tent gave no indication of just how amazing it felt.

Not swinger’s parties

I miss this stuff as an older person – the sex you have to have right now because you’re so horny. The knowledge that there’s a room upstairs you can sneak off to, and still hear the chatter and laughter from the party downstairs. The quick, urgent, silent fuck you share on a pile of coats in the spare room, or over the bath, or – best of all – in a room with other people. All of you groping and kissing and fucking – not sharing each other, but sharing the experience.

I’ve had it once as an adult – a late drunken new year’s party with so many guests missing last trains that they spilled over into my bedroom. Mates I loved (and had probably fucked at one point or another) giggling and groping on the floor, maintaining casual conversation with me and my boy.

“Are you fucking?” One asked me, halfway through a casual conversation.

“Hmm?” I replied, clenching my cunt around the tip of his dick, which he’d inched slowly, cautiously inside me.

I made a quick shuffle that could be passed off as rearranging the bedclothes, and pushed my arse backwards to take the full length of him into me. He coughed to try and cover up his satisfied sigh.

I’ve been to swinger’s clubs, but never a party that’s explicitly labelled a ‘swinger’s party’ – the idea of group sex is deeply hot, but there’s something about the explicit planning inherent in the whole thing that turns me off. Perhaps it’s all the impromptu fucks I had as a youngster that have killed the idea for me, but sex parties seem far more fun when the ‘party’ comes first.

I don’t want to bare all and stride purposely through a group of likeminded people, picking which of them I might invite to join me in a slippery tangle of limbs. I want something spontaneous to happen when some of us are horny enough – no swapping or swinging, just a mutual desire to fuck, and an aching need to do it right now. Not because others are there, but despite it.

I want to slowly lower myself onto his dick, and have him stifle a gasp. I want him to work eager hands into my bra and pinch my nipples when he thinks no one else can see. To whisper and giggle and fumble in the dark.