All Posts – Page 323
On whether I hate men
Some people think that because I’m a feminist I must hate men. I definitely, truly, genuinely do not. So here’s an open letter to them all… Dear men,
Sleepy fucking: a change of plan
“Nah, I’m knackered.”
I was too tired even for sleepy fucking. The kind of tired where I could barely open my eyes. Tired where I’d have been willing to pay a week’s wages just to get a day’s reprieve from work. Tired like I really didn’t want to fuck.
Male sex toys are awesome, and Jezebel can fuck off
“Ever seen a blog post about a weird sex toy designed to simulate the feeling of a vagina and thought, what kind of a lonely fuck would use one of those?”
No, I haven’t. And yet the author of this Jezebel post clearly has. If you ask me that says acres more about the author than about the many hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy using male sex toys.
(more…)
On intense pain
When I think about pain, there’s one particular guy who comes into my head. Many of the guys I’ve been with have helped me squirm in delicious agony, but there’s one in particular who hurt me more than any other. Exquisitely.
Everything that happens in this story was heavenly. To this day, I still daydream about it when I’m horny and itching and only some hurting will do.
Softly softly
This guy was only a few years older, but light-years ahead of me in maturity. He had a neat haircut, wore suits, was chivalrous in an old-fashioned way that I’d have found adorable in someone less dominant. He had a calm, detached air – the kind that comes from knowing I’ll do exactly what he says. He treated me as if I was utterly fragile, yet still his to break.
I rang the doorbell, having refused his offer to escort me from the tube station: something about the cold walk to his house helped to focus my mind. He opened the door with a courteous smile, and ushered me inside in a way that his curtain-twitching neighbours would have approved of.
Then he closed the door with a controlled ‘click’.
“Take off your boots.”
I took off my boots.
There was silence – one beat, two beats.
I lined them up neatly next to his own shoes by the door.
Three beats. Four beats.
Then he pounced.
Grabbing me by the hair he pushed my face up against the wall, twisting my neck awkwardly so I was poised in a semi-standing crouch. Makeup smeared against the wallpaper, hands pressed against the wall to hold myself steady.
Keeping my hair firmly gripped in his hand, he used his other hand to grope me – to inspect me. His roughness didn’t outweigh his calm, though. Every movement was carefully measured – squeezing one of my tits, sliding slowly down over my waist and hips, carefully pulling up the hem of my skirt so he could run his fingers against the crotch of my knickers.
“You’re wet.”
“Yes.” I was dreading what was coming next. Please don’t make me say ‘sir’, please don’t make me say ‘sir’, please…
One beat, two beats…
“Yes what?”
“Sir.”
A few ‘sirs’ and light slaps later, and he was leading me by the hair into his bedroom. This was essentially what I’d turned up for. It’s all very well being told off in a hallway, but I wanted him to turn his controlling nature to pain.
I’ve never been much of a pain slut – I enjoy being spanked not because I like the feeling of the slaps, but because I love that the guy in question gets off on it: I like that hearing the thwack of belt on skin makes him hard. That I get to feel dirty and bad even as I’m feeling ecstatic.
He didn’t disappoint.
Stripped to the waist, with skirt hiked up around my middle, he pushed me face down on his bed.
“Knickers down.”
I wriggled out of them.
“Hands behind your head.”
Again, I did as I was told.
“Bite down on this.”
He placed a leather strap in my mouth, and I had a nervous three seconds to wonder what he was going to hit me with before he brought a slipper down onto my arse with a solid, painful thump. I twitched, and arched my back slightly for the second blow.
Thud. Ouch. On and on until my eyes watered. Each one in exactly the same place, the stinging heat growing more intense with every stroke. I could feel from the strength and impact that he wasn’t just testing me – he was drawing his arm back and whacking me with full force. Unable to see him, I pictured it in my head – his arm drawn back above his shoulder, hand holding the slipper, face placid and expressionless, then the twitch of a sadistic smile as he whipped it down again. My stomach thumped with arousal.
“Keep your head down,” he said. “Eyes closed.”
I disobeyed him – I wanted to see what he was bringing next. Through semi-open eyelids I watched him stride across the room: no rushing, still oozing calm control. He opened the wardrobe then did one of the hottest things dominant guys can do before a beating: he rolled up his sleeves. At that point I put my head down, revelling in the anticipation of the unknown. I’d told him before I arrived that I wanted him to hit me – hurt me. Push me with pain I didn’t truly like – less thudding and thick slaps, more thin whips and tingling canes. He took me at my word.
The first stroke didn’t hurt for two seconds – I just heard the whish-click as it landed across the top of my thighs. Then the sting came. Red-hot and searing through my skin, cold metal and hot coal and ice and fire and pain.
“Good,” He crooned. “Good-” whip “-girl.” smack.
He used the wire on me a few more times – each time putting a bit more swing into it, bringing it down a bit quicker, harder. I bit down on the strap and let out a muffled cry. He moved around me, no longer standing at the side but directly in front of my face. I could see his dick pushing tight and hard against the crotch of his trousers. I arched my back further and pushed my stinging arse into the air. He leant forward and hit me again – three more times, harder than he had before, until my head was swimming with pain. I dropped the strap from my mouth and groaned.
“Ow.” Once more – whish-click. “OW! Fuck. Please. It hurts too much.”
He dropped the wire and bent forward over me. I felt his hands on my arse, rubbing, kneading, pushing the pain deep into my muscles and away from the raw surface of my skin. His hands were cool, and I wanted him to keep them on me, still and calm, until the pain was over.
But he didn’t.
He stood up, unzipped his trousers, and lifted my head up so he could slide his dick into my mouth. I sucked him, hard, wanting to feel his dick twitch like I’d twitched when he hit me. When his spunk hit the back of my throat it was as warm and welcome as the stinging slaps he’d given me.
On yet more sex shame
A couple of weeks ago Geraldine O’Hara wrote a warm, personal article about what life was like for her as an erotica author. Initially I leapt with delight at someone being so open about their writing, but my delight quickly turned to frustration and disappointment when I read on – it seems that even as she works hard to cater to her reader’s passions, she’s squeamish and pretty judgmental about them.
In the Telegraph article, Geraldine takes pains to explain to us that she doesn’t do ‘the things in [her] books’, and that she’s not a ‘sex maniac’ – the unspoken implication being, of course, that her readers are. Her worry is understandable: despite the explosion of erotic writing, many of us are still either giggling in a corner about sex or condemning it as something corrupting and vile. But how depressing when even those who produce porn feel compelled to protest: “Oh, I write it, of course. But I’d never think about doing it.”
It’s good to talk
I write filth, and the thing I enjoy most about writing is that I know I’m describing things that people actually do, and thoroughly enjoy. They email me their stories, and comment to say “oh God I did this once and it was spectacular.” I know it can be spectacular because I’ve done it too.
But as much as I’d like to think everyone’s becoming more open about their sexual needs, I still get a surprising number of emails from people saying ‘thank God it’s not just me’ or ‘I like [insert deliciously hot sex act here] too – I was worried that there was something wrong with me.’ These emails usually come from women, and they always make me sad. Men are equally likely to email, but their “oh yeah I love throatfucking” is more likely to come with a “lol” than a lament about how they’re probably sick and dirty.
You’re probably normal and it’s fine
Few of the acts I talk about here are particularly unusual. Even if the majority of people don’t enjoy these things, they’re relatively common fantasies: being spanked, enjoying giving head, having sex with groups of men instead of just one at a time, that sort of thing. And yet while we’re happy to accept male sexuality as a storming force of nature (often to the detriment of men), women’s heartfelt and lust-inducing fantasies are often treated as either faintly embarrassing or downright obscene: things we can write books about but never actually admit to ourselves.
I write mostly non-fiction. That is to say that almost everything I describe actually happened. I slept with that hot stranger. I had that threesome. I went to that bondage club. I didn’t do it because I was ‘curious’ about how other people got off: I did it because I, along with thousands of other women, enjoy it. I’m not ashamed of any of the sexual things I’ve done – I’m far more ashamed of times I’ve lied to people, ignored important phone calls from friends, or said cruel things to loved ones in the heat of the moment. The sex I’ve had isn’t just a collection of sordid fumbles which I’ve later come to regret: it’s sociable, heartfelt fun with adults who I like and respect.
Evil shameful deliciously hot sex
In her article, Geraldine explains that “I don’t write erotic fiction to satisfy any urges. I write it because readers want it.” I’m sorry to have to break it to Geraldine, but urges are definitely being satisfied – those of the readers. And alienating those readers by discussing their sexual fantasies as if they’re the deviant lusts of a sex maniac shows a stunning lack of understanding about sexuality, not to mention a lack of respect for the audience.
I’m not arguing that Geraldine should have to experience all the kinds of sex she writes about – far from it. I’d no more tell her what to do in the bedroom than what not to do, and if her imagination’s good enough to float people’s boats then I wish her the best of luck. But when she explains that
“asking an erotic romance author if they do everything in their books is like asking Stephen King if he’s murdered anyone lately”
it makes me want to laugh, then cry, then cry some more, then fight a rabid dog like they do in Cujo.
Sex is not murder. Not even if it involves whips, chains and squealing. An unusual type of sex might not appeal to you personally, but to compare consensual sex between adults to murder frames people’s fantasies as devious and evil, and makes me think that the author has fundamentally misunderstood that sex is a good thing. A more accurate comparison, surely, would be:
“asking an erotic romance author if they do everything in their books is like asking a romance author if they’ve ever been in love.”
Look: we’re all adults. We know that across the spectrum of adult humanity there is a veritable rainbow of sexual tastes and desires. There are those who would frown upon BDSM, pornography, threesomes, or anything that came with even a whiff of the sexually unusual, and they are well within their rights to do so. But for someone who creates porn – who actually makes money from the people whose fantasies she portrays – to compare those fantasies to an act of calculated evil? That’s just perverted.
Telling us we’re unhealthy is unhealthy
This sex shame is damaging and unnecessary: it leads to people (and women in particular) feeling like they should suppress their genuine desires for fear of looking deviant or freakish. In turn, the fact that there are few women publicly willing to admit to ‘this sort of thing’ means that younger women are more likely to feel guilty about their own (perfectly healthy) fantasies and desires.
It leads to the double-standards we apply to women and men (when was the last time you heard a male pornographer declare that of course he wouldn’t watch his own material?). And, of course, it creates an odd dilemma for people like me: unashamed to write about sex but preferring to write under a pseudonym lest future employers are horrified to find I’m not a sexless work-robot. It leads to those awful articles in magazines in which self-appointed ‘experts’ explain to strangers exactly how to please your lover in bed, because you’re scared to ask for what you actually want in case you’re branded a pervert. Above all, it leads to a hell of a lot of bad sex.
It’s not fair to lay all of this at Geraldine O’Hara’s door – it’s not her fault that we, as a society, are weird about sex. But as someone who writes about sex, and makes money from catering to people’s sexual fantasies, it would be helpful if she remembered that these are actually real desires – these fantasies take place in the heads of real people, who will (quite rightly) be offended when they’re compared to murderers. We aren’t perverts or souls to be pitied: we’re adults who are making informed choices about our sexuality. I’m not a bad girl who needs to be punished: I’m a woman who knows what I want.