Sometimes guys ask me for my advice. Stop laughing at the back.

Although I’m as incompetent as the next person, feeling my way through sex and relationships like a horny blindfolded girl groping for the light switch, people occasionally email me and ask for help with their problems. The following predicament concerns a guy who wants to make his fantasy come true, and it struck me that there’s a theme which runs through most emails I get about this subject: whether it’s throatfucking, swinging, threesomes, or something beautifully sweet and simple like the one below, quite a few ‘how do I achieve my sexual fantasy?’ emails share a common theme. So, to try and kill a few extra birds with my stone of shoddy advice, I asked the guy for his permission to post the question, and my response.

Please chip in your own advice in the comments – I’m not an expert, and I am frequently wrong about things.

The problem: how do I make my sexual fantasy come true?

I am obsessed with girls and especially the female body. I absolutely love the female body and how it reacts to sexual stimulation.

I am 19, male and I haven’t had actual sex yet. I have been masturbating and fantasizing for several years now and really want to finally have some sexual action with a hot/cute girl. I don’t want full sex with her but I really really want to make out and pleasure her. I am very curious about how it feels for a girl and how close sexual stimulation feels with her body and words.

So as you can tell I am absolutely mullered by the fantasy of making out with and pleasuring a hot/cute girl who’s OK with not having actual sex.

The thing is: I live in a Christian community and I’m not really attractive or athletic and I don’t have a girl friend. I’m extremely introverted and so I think it’ll be while I’m in my mid or later 20s when I ‘d find a girl friend.

And my parents would wonder what I’d be doing (and against it) if I just went into town to hook up with a girl for a bit. I can’t be openly driving to people’s houses or strip clubs or whatever with my parent’s car.

So I think the best bet would be that I take a walk and have the girl pick me up while I’m doing that and us make out in the car or something like that.

But so far I haven’t found a legitimate website that I can find actual local girls to hook up with for free. I live [location redacted – somewhere rural in the US]. Do you know of any legit and free sites that will allow me to possibly find a girl willing to do this with me?

So far all I have found are scam sites and ones that I need to dumb paid membership for. And for me, I really can’t afford that risk atm. I’ve tried CraigsList but that’s all a bunch of scams..

Oh what am I to do?!?

Answer:

The good news (OK, the fantastic news) here is that what you want isn’t in any way unusual. There are lots of people who want to make out – they want the awesome touching, horny kissing, etc, but not necessarily the sex. Perhaps because they’re not ready for sex, or just because they don’t enjoy sex as much as the other parts. But I assure you, there are many people who want this. So you’re in a good position.

However, there’s a really big problem with your exact situation, and that is that you seem to want a very specific thing, and you don’t seem willing to do anything even vaguely out of your comfort zone in order to achieve it: you can’t drive anywhere, you won’t pay money, you won’t use free sites because of scams, you won’t speak to women because you’re shy. In short: your easily achievable fantasy becomes almost impossible because you need it to land directly in your lap with very little compromise or effort on your part.

If I knew what the effortless solution to your problem was, I would have bottled it, sold it, and be typing this on a gold plated laptop right now.

I don’t blame you at all – this is not my way of calling you a wanker. It seems that you are worried about so many things that all seem insurmountable. Instead of trying to overcome one, or all of these issues, you have made them conditions of your fantasy and I think that’s why you’re struggling to achieve what you want.

To sum it up, your ideal fantasy is one in which you kiss, touch, and generally have sexy fun with a girl without having penetrative sex. Big tick in that box: loads of people like doing it, so your pool of potential partners is huge. But you don’t want to have to speak to a woman much, or develop a relationship with her, because you’re shy (totally understandable, by the way: some of the guys I’ve been hottest for have been shy). You don’t want to pay for membership of a dating site (and who does? They’re pricey!). You can’t use a free site because you might end up getting scammed. You don’t want to have to drive and pick her up in case your parents find out (again, understandable, if you think that the consequences of that would be horrible for you). Basically you want all of your ideal conditions met. And that makes giving you advice almost impossible, because any advice I give would mean compromising on one of your conditions.

So, bearing that in mind, here are three advice options:

• Keep trying with free sites (I am a big fan of OKCupid, and I think you have that in the States, but if anyone else has suggestions please leave them in the comments!), and trying to weed out possible scammers wherever possible. Accept, though, that you will meet people on it who are either scamming you, who want something slightly different, who might want a relationship before makeouts, or who don’t have their own car: that’s just how humans work, and it’s impossible to recommend a site which can deliver you someone guaranteed to fill every aspect of your fantasy.
• Go pro. When I read the first half of your email it occurred to me that if you really want this specific thing, but without having to develop a relationship, then speaking to a sex worker could be ideal. Find someone in your area (on Twitter I see adultwork mentioned often by sex workers, so I’d recommend heading there first, unless any sex workers have better suggestions that they can leave in the comments, pretty please!) who you can have this experience with. This involves compromising on your ‘free’ rule, but it’s one of the simplest ways to guarantee that you can have what you’re looking for.
• If you don’t like the above ideas, then the only thing I can recommend is to compromise on the ‘shy’. Which I know I know I know is hard to do. Speak to women, and try to develop a relationship with one who would like to do this with you. You don’t necessarily have to be boyfriend and girlfriend if that’s tricky for you, it might just be a girl you get along well with who also wants to have a go at making out and touching: it’s fine. I know this is scary if you’re shy: incredibly so. But it won’t get any easier if you never do it, and if you don’t manage to find a girl who’s willing to do this with you, you may still have met some nice people and had fun with them.

And that’s it, I’m afraid: I don’t have any magic bullets. As I said originally, I’ve been asked similar questions quite a few times, and I struggle to give advice because often I think what the guy wants is for his fantasy to just happen. You’re luckier than others in that usually their fantasies are things that are a bit more niche or kinky, so their original pool of potential partners is limited by the fact that only a small slice of the population would be up for the act itself. But either way I’ve seen lots of variations of “I need X but I have to get it without doing A, B or C”. As with you, they’re all usually legitimate concerns, and understandable problems. The trouble is, when you add them all up, the only way the fantasy is actually going to happen is if a passing woman just happens to fancy making out with the stranger she’s driving past, and has the confidence to shout out of her car window and ask for it.

So, to summarise, my advice would be that you need to pick one of your conditions and either compromise on it or make some effort to overcome it, or you need to cross your fingers and hope really hard that the very unlikely happens, and do a hell of a lot of wanking in the meantime.

Oh, and worry about the car situation when you get to it.

“Tribute wank” is a term that I was unfamiliar with until this week, making me think I should spend less time wanking myself and more time conversing with other humans.

A tribute wank is, from what I gather, a wank you have about someone in particular, which you send them evidence of later. It could be anything from phoning them to say “hey, I cracked a quality one off over you yesterday when I was thinking about the hot sex we had last week” to sending them an actual physical photograph covered in your own jizz.

The hotness

I once received a fantastic video from a guy which had – as most of my favourite videos do – his cock in it. He stroked vigorously for the requisite few minutes, just enough for me to start salivating a bit, then came nice and hard all over his hand. So far, so traditionally excellent.

But in the background of the video he had his laptop open, with a picture of me comfortably full-screened. He’d used one of the pictures on this blog, downloaded it, opened it in a new window then – most flattering of all – focused on it for the duration of an entire wank.

The not-so-hotness

So having established that I think tribute wanks can be really hot, I’m going to backpedal madly and tell you to think very very carefully before sending your delightful post-wank picture/video/text. Apart from the obvious problems (once it’s out there, it’s out there), you need to be really sure, before you hit the ‘send’ button, that the person at the other end will be pleased to receive it.

Even as a lover of hot pictures and homemade porn, there are certain things that will turn me off quicker than if you’d taped a picture of Jeremy Clarkson to your bellend. For instance, if you demand an immediate response, you might as well put your camera away and just chuck a bucket of cold water over my privates. Equally if you decide to send me something when I’m pissed off with you, I’m unlikely to leap joyously from my seat and shout “my God, what a touching kiss-and-make-up gesture, I must hump this man into a sticky mess immediately.”

So, if you’re tribute wanking over your partner, and you know they’d be keen to see the evidence, my advice would be to time it carefully: try not to send it when they’re in the middle of a conference call, or angry at you because yet again you’ve failed to do the washing up.

The downright awful

This might sound shocking, but many people just don’t want to be sent homemade pornography at any time. They’d rather you kept your dick/tits/arse/that cool trick you’ve just learned with a Hitachi magic wand out of their inbox.

I’d hazard a guess, based mainly on how many cock pictures I (sex blogger but basically a nobody) receive versus the number of cock pictures my friends (nobodies who don’t also happen to run a sex blog) get, that most of the cock pictures flying around the internet are unsolicited. That is to say, they are not sent between two consenting adults, but sent from one consenting adult to another adult they are really hoping will enjoy the picture.

I fully understand why you might find it hot to send your naked self to a stranger, but do you see the problem here? You can hope, you can wish, you can dream, but if you send any part of your anatomy to someone you don’t know, who has never asked you to send anything, you can’t guarantee that they want it.

So here lies my problem with tribute wanks: while some receivers find them amazing and sexy, I know a lot of people who would find them not just undesirable but awkward, horrible and downright terrifying. Others, of course, might enjoy receiving one from a person they really fancied, but wouldn’t extend this enthusiasm to everyone on their contacts list.

We receive spam all the time, and of course it’s easy to hit ‘delete’ or ‘unsubscribe’. But this is different. It’s not the equivalent of a delivery driver shoving some useless local pizza deals into your mailbox, it’s more akin to … well … a photo of an anonymous nob in your mailbox.

So, in conclusion, tribute wanks are like any other sexual act under the sun: some people like it, some people don’t. If you want to do it you need to make sure that the person you’re sending it to is not just ready but eager to receive it.

Note: I used to ask guys to send me pictures. It was amazing and lovely. I’ve since realised that was a bad plan, as I was inundated with pictures, many of which I didn’t have time to reply to and some I didn’t even have time to look at. I’m sorry. I have learned my lesson.

Humbugs abound as I do my annual Christmas shop. Not because I don’t revel in the idea of finding exciting and unique gifts to shower upon my loved ones, but because everywhere I turn I’m confronted with ridiculous lists of ‘gift ideas for him’ or, indeed, ‘her.’ In honour of this horror, here are my 12 sexist (and not so sexist) Christmas gift lists.

On the first day of Christmas my true love/friend/mum/colleague who drew my name in the office secret Santa gave to me…

1. A Ryan Gosling tea-towel

That’s right, number one on the Prezzybox list of ‘stocking fillers for women‘ is a Ryan Gosling tea towel. Because if there’s one thing women love more than spending quality time in the kitchen, it’s drying pots and pans with a celebrity’s face. Bonus points for trying to persuade us to spend almost an entire tenner on a ‘stocking filler’.

Note that those who might not have been tempted by the Ryan Gosling tea towel might instead like chocolate pills. So what’s the equivalent for men?

2. Tabasco-flavoured chocolate

Luckily the man in your life can have chocolate in his stocking too, but none of this ‘chocolate pills’ nonsense.  This sweet treat for your man is Tabasco-flavoured. According to prezzybox, to women chocolate is some sort of emergency medication, but to men it is a delivery mechanism for SPICY HEAT.

3. A gendered gift experience

For those with more money to spend, why not treat your loved one to a special day? They can go paintballing, if they are blue, or for afternoon tea, if they are pink. Boots actually gets bonus points in the ‘trying not to be too sexist’ stakes, because when you click on either of these panels they take you to the same page. If they get rid of the pink ‘for her’ and blue ‘for him’ landing pages next year, Father Christmas might take them off his ‘naughty’ list.

4. A mug that kills women who touch it

There’s nothing more traditional than a mug with a crap slogan, and iwoot (the website formerly known as I Want One Of Those Dot Com) has come through with a few. Their gifts for him offers the ‘man mug‘. It comes complete with spirit level, to check how horizontal your masculinity is. It also has a sign on the bottom which makes it absolutely clear the mug is Not For Girl -, I can only assume that if a lady drinks from it, she is instantly poisoned:

Still, ladies mustn’t worry, because if they’re lucky then they’ll get a mug in their stocking too. For women iwoot suggests this ‘Little Miss Giggles’ mug (spirit level definitely not included):

5. Virgin experiences

If you’re after a special day out, Virgin’s one-upped Boots and does indeed have special, separate pages for women and men. Phew. No more wading through spa days when you want to buy a dude a day out: it’s cars and paintball almost all the way.  I say ‘almost’ because… what’s this?

That’s right – a special afternoon tea. Not one of those boring ladies’ ones with sandwiches, no. This one has been (as the copy explains) ‘designed to satisfy a man’s taste and appetite’. Which it turns out means switching sandwiches for mini toad-in-the-hole. Oh, and illustrating the ‘tea’ with a picture that contains ‘beer’. Although, according to the copy, there will only be a choice of tea or coffee, there is beer in the picture because that is what men like. See below.

7. Beer, glorious beer

How much do men like beer? A lot, according to totallyfunky.co.uk.

Of course these beer-related items only appear first because the list is alphabetical, and if you scroll down further you’ll see that men also like Darth Vader and eating out of dog bowls.

So that’s Christmas sorted for your dad/brother/husband etc. But what should you get your daughter? Totallyfunky suggests bath products, gloves, and a shoe that you put a spoon in. Or you could go for…

7. Anything to do with One Direction

If the lady you’re buying for is a bit too young for the Ryan Gosling tea towel, The Works has you covered. With One Direction. EVERYWHERE.

Of course, boys don’t like One Direction, so instead they get dinosaurs and helicopters.

8. Not-so-sexy underwear

One of my personal bugbears is that when it comes to Christmas underwear, straight guys are encouraged to buy something sexy, slinky, and sensuous for their partners, whereas straight women are offered a selection of comedy Christmas socks or hilarious cock-cosies with which to wow him. This red-hot image brought to you by TopMan…

9. A world I don’t want to live in

Onwards, now, to presentfinder, where boyfriends are ‘difficult’ and girlfriends are ‘gorgeous’. It’s tricky to compare these gifts because they’re all so twee and quirky, but essentially we’re being asked to believe in a world where men like booze, money and edible tits which come in a tiny metal box:

While girls like pink VW camper vans, and being given plasters for Christmas.

 

Is there a better way to write Christmas gift lists?

If we say to shops “hey, this Christmas gift list is a bit sexist, isn’t it?” their response will most likely be “but it has to be – this is the stuff you’re searching for, and the stuff you end up eventually buying. If we were to stop being twats about it we’d never sell anything.” Which is partly true. We do search for ‘Christmas gifts for her’ and ‘Christmas gifts for him’ (although it looks like we’re doing it less each year).

But that’s not to say they can’t grab our attention in other ways. It’s more than possible to market effectively without descending into lazy stereotypes. Even at Christmas.

To round off the twelve, here are a few examples of shops that, I think, are doing it better.

Not-so-sexist Christmas gift lists

10. Lovehoney’s underwear hot-off

As mentioned above, I dread the ‘Christmas underwear’ thing. Mainly because it seems the idea is for a woman to receive something sexy and lacy and beautiful, and a man to get a comedy santa-hat for his bellend.

So credit, then, to Lovehoney. As a sex toy retailer, it’d be pretty hard for them to not split their toys by sex, given that so many of them depend on the sex organs that you have. So their ‘gifts for her‘ and ‘gifts for him‘ pages make sense. But on top of that, they also have the same feel: these gifts are genuine gifts for people. It’s not split by comedy vs sex: there are genuinely sexy pants for the guys, and toys that individuals will actually play with (rather than giggle at) on both sides of the sex divide.

UPDATE September 2017: Well this is very embarrassing. It’s actually not necessary to split sex toys by gender – it’s far more helpful to split by category in this instance too. Not only because there’s no need to list out e.g. ‘butt plugs for men’ (spoiler: butt plugs can be used by anyone who has a butt) but it also excludes trans and non-binary people.

11. Argos

To show it’s possible to sell children’s toys without painting half your website pink and shouting “YOU WANT TO BE A PRINCESS, DON’T YOU, PRINCESS?!” here’s a picture of the Argos ‘toys’ menu:

Do you see? Toys divided by category, brand, age and popularity. If you can find any hint of gender segregation there I’ll give you a mince pie.

12. Marks and Spencer

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve had a peruse of the M&S ‘Christmas’ page, and I can’t find anything that is unnecessarily gendered.

It appears that the nation’s favourite place to buy socks and knickers has resisted compiling lists of ‘gifts for him’ and ‘gifts for her’. They stick to ‘men’ and ‘women’ for clothes, which is understandable given that’s how they split it in the shops, but there don’t seem to be any lists of gifts ‘for him’ or ‘for her’. The only page I can find where they categorise gifts is by personality. “Gifts for foodies”, “Gifts for gardeners” and suchlike.

For that they get a gold star to stick on top of their Christmas tree.

The examples above are, of course, the product of my own frequently-flawed opinions and half-arsed research via Google. But I’d welcome any more examples (especially ones of shops who do it well) in the comments or via Twitter. Please tag them with #RyanGoslingTeaTowel, because Christmas should be FUN. 

How to not be sexist at Christmas

Every good Christmas story has a moral, and this one’s no different. Just as it’s possible to sell toys without labeling them ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls’, it’s more than possible to flog your Christmas deals without assuming that men want beer and women want bubble bath. Not only will you get my admiration if you split your Christmas deals by personality, you’re also (prepare for a shock) making it genuinely easier for me to find the perfect present. After all, we’re not painfully simple creatures: we usually know more about the person we’re buying for than simply what gender they identify as.

I know that Sarah likes cooking, Bob likes cosy sleepwear, and yes, Ashley is a big fan of both Ryan Gosling and drying dishes. It’s a damn sight easier to find these presents if you narrow it down by something useful.

The other day I walked in on the boy asleep on the sofa, wearing just pants and a t-shirt, right hand cupped gently around his junk and wide out in the open. Mmm.

There’s definitely something comforting about touching yourself – not necessarily in a filthy way that means you’ll get hairy palms, go blind and/or go to hell. Just holding yourself to get some warmth, and feel the solidity of your genitals beneath your palm.

I love to do this. On rare occasions when my hands aren’t occupied with a cigarette, a laptop or a cup of coffee, I’ll stick my hand down my knickers and cup myself. Silk or lace up against the back of my hand, coarse hair and warmth on my palm. It’s not hot like a bent-over fuck but it’s nice like a warm bath or coming inside from the rain.

I do the same with my tits. Boys I’ve known have occasionally commented that if they were girls they’d play with their tits all the time. Rarely do they stop to consider whether those of us with tits do that anyway. Running our hands over the underside of our breasts, slipping a hand inside the bra just to grab a bit of extra warmth. It’s thumbsucking for grown-ups, and I love it.

Cup me

That rather long ramble was merely a shameful excuse to tell you that this happened the other night, and it kicked me so solidly in the gut with lust that I couldn’t help but write about it.

I was in bed, and awake early in the morning. Having slipped out to go to the loo, I’d stumbled back in and smooshed around a bit, trying to find the warm patch I’d had to leave behind. As I snuggled down, the boy with me stirred. He’ll do this at any time of night, no matter how asleep he is: movement from me equals him turning, reaching out, grasping for me in the dark. Usually he flings a limb over me, or runs his hand up my stomach before his forearm settles just underneath my tits, pushing them gently up so they rest on him.

I love this. I love this more than I can say. I love this so deeply that it makes it harder for me to go to sleep, because I’m busy enjoying the feel of his big arms around me, throbbing warmth into whichever bits his sleeping brain reaches for first. The occasional tired moan or snore into my ear. Amazing.

But the other night he didn’t reach for the same places. As I got back into bed, feeling cosy and soft and on the verge of tipping back into sleep, his hand explored downwards. I leant up with my back against his chest, and his right hand ran softly over my stomach, coming to rest in exactly the comforting crotch cup that I use myself. Inside my knickers, with the silk against the back of his hand and his palm up against my skin, he gave a very soft sigh and rested there.

I stayed awake for thirty minutes, trembling slightly, holding myself as still as I could so that he wouldn’t move. The feeling of his hand cupping me felt more intimate, more arousing, more significant than a pinch of my nipples or even a fuck. It was made hotter by the thought that it might have happened before, but neither of us knew it. Touching me in the dead zone between waking and sleep, running his hands over me without knowing where they were going, and warming each other while our minds were dreaming elsewhere.

When he woke up his hand was wet.

The vast, vast majority of the time, I am a loser. A lank-haired, jeans-wearing, slouching drunken loser. With a cider in my hand, a chip on my shoulder and a face like a bulldog chewing a whole hive of wasps.

I say this only to counter what’s coming next: right now I am hot.

I’m hot because I’ve had my hair cut – it swishes in that shiny way that some people achieve daily, but for me comes round only twice a year when I go for my biannual hack. I’m hot because I’ve spent the last week doing more exercise than I normally would and – although there’s no immediate visual difference – I feel stronger and livelier and readier to bounce around like a puppy on MDMA. I’m hot because I’m wearing knickers that cup my arse comfortably, and because I’ve been doing DIY in hot pants and getting dirty and sweaty and wet.

We need to deal with your high self-esteem issues

I’m British, of course, so writing the above paragraph was torture – it took me a good ten minutes to bash out just a few sentences without tagging something self-deprecating on to the end. I’ve been trained, through years of TV, magazines and friendly banter, that to talk about the things you actually like about yourself is a social crime. Like eating steak with the fish fork or passing a joint to the right.

Most of the time this makes sense. After all, we’d all be excruciating and insufferable if our conversations started not with “how are you?” but “how hot am I!?” We’d barely get beyond introductions before we were hurling into buckets at the appalling displays of self-love.

No, instead we must only ever speak of the bad stuff, while desperately hoping that other people notice the good. We’re trained to make the best of ourselves, so we spend hours primping and preening and picking out just the right kind of shoe only to shit on all that effort later on by replying “no, really, I look awful” when someone says something nice. It’s a reflex gesture, and one which makes sense most of the time. When the hard-earned compliments come, we bat them away with great force, because self-hate is a much more attractive quality than arrogance.

Start fancying yourself

I’ve got nothing wrong with light self-deprecation, and on an ordinary day I’m far more likely to make a tedious aside about my weight than to bounce into a room and shout “Look! Aren’t my tits brilliant?!”

But not today. Because, fuck it, I don’t always feel good. And on the rare occasions that I do, I want to start making the most of it. In fifty years time I’ll be yearning for the chance to wear this arse again, to sit in hot pants on a stepladder sugar-soaping walls and enjoying not just being me but looking like me too.

You should do it too – go on, do it. Fancy yourself a bit. There are bound to be bits of yourself that you’re not a fan of. But isn’t it bizarre that it’s these disliked bits that get all the attention? Hours in the gym toning a stomach that you hate. Days in front of the mirror shaping eyebrows or facial hair in some sort of damage limitation exercise. Weeks spent traipsing around shops that make clothes for people who always seem to be a different shape to you. All that time spent rectifying or changing or enhancing – how much time do you actually spend appreciating?

You don’t have to take pictures of yourself in sexy poses and pin them on the fridge, or give yourself cringeingly awkward motivational pep-talks about how beautiful you are. Just give yourself a bit of time to appreciate the things you fancy. The things that your partners will go primal for. Stand in front of a mirror if you like, touch yourself if you want to, put on or take off the clothes that make you feel best, and just revel in a bit of self-lust.

Because no one else can love you like you can.