Well done, humanity, you have done me proud. When The Guardian printed this problem page question from a lady who fantasises about being passed around a group of old, obese men who struggle to get erections, I expected the comments section to be a sulphur-stinking pit of hellish mockery.

Because that’s generally what happens when someone admits to a fantasy that doesn’t fit with one of our traditional stories. I was going to say ‘an uncommon fantasy’ but to be honest, given the horror this woman feels about admitting to her fantasy I’d have to go out on a limb and say this dream may be far more common than we think.

To my surprise, though, the comments were mostly sensible.

“Why on earth would you feel guilty? And why do you think of yourself as ‘sick’? Those are strong statements. Your sex life is fine and If you don’t want to share your fantasy with your fiancė then don’t.”

“Of all the fantasies I’ve ever heard, this has got to be one the of the most easily realizable.”

Hot fantasy about old obese men

One of my favourite wank fantasies involves a pair of older guys. Ideally (because I love my backstory) in a position of power or authority over me. Traditional scenes begin in an office, where I play up to patriarchal stereotypes by wearing an incredibly short skirt and bringing coffee into the business meeting being held by these two men.

One of them is usually relatively young – thirty or forty – and he’s staring at my arse like he wants to bite it. The other guy is older, perhaps fifty or sixty, calls me ‘sweetheart’ and leers inappropriately through the stretched fabric of my tight shirt as I bend down to put the coffee tray on the table. One of them, inevitably, slaps my arse.

The older guy (my boss) remarks on how obedient I am, and asks me to show his friend just how willing I am to please. He leans back in his chair, unzips his flies, and pulls out a thick, twitching, semi-flaccid cock. I drop to my knees in front of him, and as he croons ‘that’s it’, I slip his dick into my mouth.

He’s big and looks bigger – looming over me with his paunch and his jowls and his filthy, smug grin. He knows I feel obliged to do this to him, and that’s part of the turn on. The other part being, of course, the ability to show off his toy to his friend.

As I suck him harder, he pulls my head down so that my lips are around the base of his cock, his thick head pushing hard up against the back of my throat. Occasionally he makes small grunts to show just how much he’s enjoying it, or mutters ‘good girl, just like that’ through gritted teeth. But in between these interjections he keeps talking to his friend.

“Good, isn’t she?”

“Absolutely. I should get one for my office.”

“You can… ungh… you can have a turn when I’m done if you like. She’d be only too happy to oblige.”

The friend sits there watching, stroking at the erection that’s pressing against the crotch of his suit trousers. But I don’t fuck the friend – I never get a chance. Because as I picture the thick, desperate hardness of the older guy’s dick pushing solidly against the back of my throat, and imagine the strangled grunting sounds he makes as he comes, and conjure up the feeling of his thick, hot spunk gushing down the back of my throat… that’s usually the moment when I come.

The younger guy rarely needs to fuck me in order to complete the fantasy.

Being ashamed of fantasies

So, to all the Guardian readers who refrained from making comments along the lines of ‘ewww’, when someone confessed to fantasies of obese older men, I salute and thank you. I guarantee you that this particular fantasy isn’t limited to one individual, and that there are many more people who like that sort of thing.

To the woman who wrote the letter in the first place: don’t be upset. Most people have at least one thing that gets them horny in secret but that they wouldn’t want to shout from the rooftops. There’s no need to be ashamed of if you get off on something unusual. You’re not hurting anyone by doing it, you’re just pushing the specific set of buttons that happen to have been wired in your brain that way.

As one of the Guardian commenters so excellently put it:

“There is nothing wrong in a fantasy, like emotions, they are not good or bad. they just are. We can’t control them but they do no harm to others (it is our actions that may hurt others, not the thoughts in our heads), so whatever they are they are nothing to be ashamed of.”

This week I walked in on a boy wanking. Late at night, I woke up to go to the loo, spotted the light on in the living room, and thought I’d pop in to casually grope him before sleepily wandering off to bed. You know how I love watching boys crack one out – there’s a beautiful desperation about the urge to come, and I relish seeing that on his face. But of course, the most beautiful wanks of them all are Schroedinger’s Wanks – the ones I would change just by observing them. The wanks I am destined never to see…

(more…)

Once upon a time I was sitting in a tiny greasy bar with a boy, when a rose seller came along. She had a basket full of dozens of roses, each one tied up nicely and ready to be hawked to the nearest soppy romantic.

I growled my customary ‘don’t disturb me in the pub’ growl. The boy looked interested.

Romantic acts

Romantic acts don’t have to be the obvious ones: diamond rings, flowers, breakfast in bed and the like. But these things do have a certain kind of charm, and if you want to impress someone, it might be easier to reach for a bunch of flowers than a deeply personal something-or-other that has the potential to backfire.

I have a deep and sincere admiration for people who perform romantic acts. Those who know exactly when to shower love, and in exactly what quantities, to make someone melt.

But it’s not easy. One person’s romantic gesture is another’s worst nightmare, and the success of the gesture in question all comes down to how well it’s received. I was reminded of this recently when a friend told me a story about a guy she knew: madly in love with one of his friends, he journeyed the two hours it took him by train to turn up at her house. Rather than knocking on the door and sobbing his undying love directly at her, he decided to be a bit more subtle. He knew she was a chess lover, so he left two chess pieces: a king and a queen, on her doorstep, along with a dozen red roses and a letter that explained how he felt.

“Aww,” said I “how romantic.”

“Fuck that,” said she “it’s creepy as all hell.”

The roses and the romance

I hate that this is the case, but it is, and I have no idea why. Romance is a fantastic thing, and I’m sure many of us would love to have more of it in our lives. But it seems like the main thing that makes a difference between a romantic act and an inappropriate one is something the romancer can’t always know: whether your crush actually fancies you.

If they do, you’re a hero. If they don’t, you’re a loser. And possibly a creepy one at that.

I’m going to tell you two different versions of the roses story now.

Version one:

The rose seller approaches me and the boy, and my heart is beating far too quickly, hoping against hope that this shy, nerdy first date doesn’t turn into a mush-riddled disaster. All I know about this guy is his name, his occupation, and a story he’s told me about how his sister once pushed him off a swing. I don’t know him well enough to anticipate whether he’s cheesy enough to think the ‘rose for a pound on a first date’ gambit is a good idea.

He does.

Red-faced, I accept the rose. Later that evening we part, and his post-date text seems unnecessarily gushing. We never see each other again.

Version 2:

The boy grins at the rose seller, and I whisper to him “seriously, dickhead, don’t buy me a rose. I’d only have to carry it home.” He squeezes my leg under the table, looking slyly at me in the way he knows makes me want to lick him. For the last two, three, four years I’ve alternately mocked and raged at him for his lack of romance, his lack of spontaneity.

“How much for a rose?” he asks the lady with the basket. I’m looking away now, too embarrassed to make eye contact and show that, secretly, I actually really want a bloody rose, even if it’s drooping slightly and will end up getting left on the bus. She tells him how much they cost, and there’s a long silence. Ages. Aeons. Millennia pass while I stare at the rings of liquid on the bar and fiddle with the plastic twizzly gin and tonic stick and just wish he’d get on and tell her ‘no’ so that we don’t have to eke out the embarrassment.

Years, or perhaps five seconds, later, he speaks.

“I’ll take the lot.”

And he hands over note after note after note from a wallet that’s rarely opened unless it needs to be. And I walk home arm in arm with my boyfriend of many years, drowning in roses and love.

There’s no right way to do romance

Arguing with my friend over the chess incident made me sad for the boy who’d tried so hard. For his unrequited love and his inability to read the girl’s reaction. Assuming they were both in earnest, no one did anything wrong here: it’s just a misjudged gesture and a mutual tragedy. But from my friend’s point of view, it’s a stupid guy making a desperate play for a girl who’ll never want him.

As she put so succinctly: the difference between creepy and romantic often just comes down to whether they actually fancy you.

I don’t think I want this to be true.