All Posts – Page 332
On sex practice
So, here’s an odd statement, which the guy who emailed me was kind enough to allow me to publish:
I sometimes want to try things out – I have zero or little experience and I worry about that. Would be wrong to use a girl as just like to practise on and improve?
The word ‘practice’ bothers me, and not just because of its context-dependent spelling of ‘s’ or ‘c’. This gentleman was asking, after my article on virginity, whether it was OK to find someone to practise sexual things with (kissing, oral, and other delicious non-penis-focused activity) without having to have actual sex.
The answer to this question is a wholehearted ‘yes’, but also a wholehearted ‘no’, because of the way it was phrased.
Not having sex is totally fine
If you meet someone and want to do sexy things but without having what you’d class as ‘full sex’ (i.e. train goes in tunnel) then that is not only fine but, if the other person you’re with is a fan of kissing, oral, frotting, etc, utterly delightful. There’s a deep and gutwrenching joy in having things that aren’t ‘full sex’, and although I am personally a bit of a penetration fetishist (I find it hard to get off if I’m not being pounded, or at least under promise of being pounded in the very near future), there are hundreds of other things that are fun.
However, the word ‘practice’, makes me shudder with discomfort, because it implies some things that make me sceptical of how you actually feel about your partner.
There is no sex Olympics
The key question, really, is what are you practising for? Is there some sex competition that I didn’t know you could enter? Are there skills and techniques you need to know in order to pass a shagging exam? Is this hard work going to pay off ten years down the line when you meet someone who refuses to sleep with you unless she can see your Doctorate in lovemaking? No? Then what you’re doing isn’t practice.
It’s an uncomfortable word because usually we practise on something that isn’t the real thing. We learn to drive with supervision, in cars that have a spare set of pedals so our instructor can slam the brakes on when we almost power headlong into a roundabout (and Colin, if you’re reading this, I’m really bloody sorry). We practise exam questions on past test papers. Above all, the results of our ‘practice’ don’t really matter, because the marks aren’t real or final.
But in bed, the person you’re with is real. They have real nerve endings, real emotions and desires. To reduce them to a GCSE test paper, in which the marks (i.e. their feelings) don’t really matter sounds deeply disrespectful. This, coupled with the word ‘use’ was what gave me shudders in this guy’s email.
There’s nothing wrong with having consensual sex fun with someone that doesn’t involve penetration, but there is definitely something wrong with viewing any individual sexual partner as just a stepping stone towards the amazing sex that you’ll eventually have with someone else. Heavily implied there is ‘better’. You practice on the not-quite-real person, then have better sex with someone… well… better.
Eww.
Sex practice doesn’t make perfect
Most importantly, the idea of practice implies that if you do enough of it you’ll eventually become ‘good’. This is one of those bullshit beliefs we hold because so many advice columns, sex books, and articles about ‘Ten Ways To Blow Her Mind In Bed’ insist on peddling the myth that everyone likes the same thing. That you can be, objectively, a ‘good shag’. This – and I cannot stress this enough – is bollocks.
Sometimes you’ll have sex with someone for the first time, and loads of your trademark moves will genuinely blow their mind. They’ll sigh, and writhe, and moan in delight as you rub, lick, suck, and fuck them into a glorious and delicious climax. But this is rare. Most of the time you’ll do some things they like, some things they love, and many things that make them want to say ‘left a bit’, ‘a bit softer’, ‘no, wait, a bit harder’ until you do something exactly the way they like it.
I’ve slept with a fair few guys as well as a few girls. Each and every one of them was slightly different, with some of them doing things in ways I’d never have anticipated but turned out to love. Others did things that worked well for their previous partners but turned me right off. I’m sure the same is true of what they thought of me, and generally with those people I was with for longer, we got better at pleasing the other one and knowing what they wanted. No amount of practice can prepare you as well as the knowledge that everyone’s different. So practice doesn’t make perfect – it doesn’t even make ‘good’ – the best revision you can do is to talk to the person you’re with, and listen when they tell you what they like.
Don’t ‘use’ anyone
You don’t owe it to any hypothetical future partner to be the best you can be in bed. It’s not the case that you can pick people who don’t matter to help you perfect your techniques so that you can wow the love of your life at some point. Firstly because the love of your life may well want something completely different, secondly because whoever you’re practicing with may turn out to be the love of your life, and finally because it’s just a shitty thing to do. If I had wild and sticky sex with someone and subsequently found out that they were just ‘using’ me for ‘practice’, I’d kick them out of bed before you could say ‘I am not an unfeeling shag-robot.’
I don’t think this guy is deliberately being mean, or callous. After a few emails back and forth I think he’s just under the impression that he needs to be the best he can be. But you can be at your best not by learning techniques or practising your cunnilingus skills, but by being empathetic, caring and considerate of what your partner needs and wants. Not a hypothetical future partner – the one you’re with in exactly that moment.
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.
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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.