OK, fine, I’ll do it. I’ll talk about the sex box.

‘Sex Box’ is a new Channel 4 programme that gets couples to have sex in a box, then interviews them immediately afterwards about their experience. It has been described as ‘edgy’, for reasons I can’t quite fathom. It is also a part of Channel 4’s ‘Campaign for Real Sex’ season, a response to the terrifying tidal wave of pornography that threatens to engulf the entire country and turn us into unthinking wank-zombies.

I have a number of issues with this, but I’ll watch the programme anyway because I like it when people talk about sex. It’s hot, and interesting, and usually well worth a listen. However, I’m not entirely sure that the programme is going to do what Channel 4 is hoping. Here’s why:

It’s not as ‘edgy’ as they think

Some people have described this programme as ‘edgy’ or implied that there’s something seedy about the idea of couples having sex in a box then talking about it. Presumably because ‘edgy’ gets viewers, and they’re hoping to pull in a crowd of moist-knickered perverts like me who are hoping to hear a few groans or slapping noises (we won’t get them – apparently the box is soundproofed).

Let me just state for the record that talking to people shortly after they’ve had sex is not ‘edgy’. I’ve been to parties where three or four couples were shagging on the floor in the lounge, occasionally exchanging requests that one or other couple ‘give us a bit more room.’ On one memorable occasion, I was being vigorously shagged by my boyfriend while in the twin bed opposite, the equally genital-locked couple paused for a swig of beer and to ask us how it was going. Not the sexiest moment of my life, I have to admit, but certainly more edgy than shagging in a darkened room.

If at any point you’ve been to a house party, or popped round to a couple’s house for dinner, or even gone in to your parents’ bedroom on Christmas morning to gleefully pull toys out of your festive stocking, I guarantee you you’ve had a conversation with a couple that have recently had sex. You edgy maverick, you.

The actual ‘sex box’ serves no purpose

Given that having a post-sex chat is not particularly unusual, why the fuck do they even need them to have sex in the box beforehand? What purpose does the box serve? It’s as if they think that people forget what having sex with their partner is like, and they need a quick reminder before they get down to the discussion. Do we do this with anything else? If a medical expert is invited to give her opinion on BBC Breakfast, do they insist she performs a quick tracheotomy backstage to refresh her memory?

Unless we suffer from short term memory loss, we’re all sexperts when it comes to our own sex. We know exactly what kind of sex we’re having and – should someone ask us about it – there’s no need to pop home for a quick one just to check you’re not remembering it wrong.

The Campaign for ‘Real Sex’

I get what they’re doing with this: I do. And broadly I agree – most people don’t have the kind of sex that professionals have in porn, and so it’s important to understand that what we see on the screen is usually different to the sex that Joe Bloggs has with his partner on a Friday night.

But this is an obvious, trivial truth. Just as most people don’t repoint brickwork like a professional builder or drive like Jenson Button. Professionals do things differently to non-professionals, because they have spent time developing a skill to serve a particular purpose. Jenson wants to win Formula 1 races, the builder wants to please the client, and porn performers want to do things that will visually entertain you. The average person just wants to drive to the supermarket, build a wall that won’t fall over immediately, and have sex that gets them off.

There’s no problem with porn sex being different to real sex as long as we recognise why and how it’s different.

But pitting ‘real sex’ against pornography, as if the two are diametrically opposed, is bloody odd. Because ‘porn’ and ‘sex’ are not opposites. Sitting on the sofa rubbing one out to xhamster is just as real a part of my sex life as sitting on a guy’s dick. Sometimes people want to fuck, and sometimes they want to watch the professionals fuck, because they either can’t do it or can’t be bothered to do it. I watch porn sometimes, just as I’ll hire someone to tile my bathroom: sometimes you need to call the professionals.

What do I think of the ‘sex box’?

I love that there’s sex on telly. And not just the lovely creamy-breasted, taught-buttocked romping that’s almost the whole point of Game of Thrones, but actual conversations about sex. I like that this programme will bring more discussion about sex to our screens and our lives.

But crucially, I think the way it’s being framed will achieve the opposite of what Channel 4 says its after: “a frank conversation about an essential element of all our lives.” Instead it turns sex into a giggly, ‘edgy’ thing rather than something utterly normal which most of us enjoy in some shape or form. It also puts itself at the heart of deciding what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t. And I’m sorry to disappoint you, but when it comes to ‘real sex’, humping furtively in a ‘sex box’ in a TV studio is no more ‘real’ than porn.

UPDATE March 2016: if you enjoyed this extract check out my new book – How A Bad Girl Fell In Love. 

I’m clearly not that good at marketing. Someone recently told me that they’d read my book and were surprised that it wasn’t just a collection of blog entries.

“You know what you should do?” they said, like someone who knew far more about promotion than I did, “You should tell people that it’s an actual full-on story rather than just some bits and pieces you’ve cobbled together from your blog.”

So that is what I’m doing: there’s an extract from my book below, and although there are some bits in the book that have previously appeared on the blog, it is an ‘actual full-on story’. If you like it, please do buy it. If you’ve read it, I’d be super-grateful if you could review it on Amazon (US link).

Friendship, love and number eight

Why are we expected to place friendship over love? Don’t get me wrong, friendship is awesome. Having people who are willing to stand by you through thick and thin, stop you making mistakes, and hold your hair back while you’re vomiting up the mistakes you have made, is utterly crucial.

I’d no more tell my friends to fuck off than I’d cut off one of my arms, but all the same, no friend will ever take precedence over a lover. Why do we ever expect them to?

Say what you like: ‘friends come first’, ‘men come and go but your friends will be there forever’ or even – if you’re an unforgivable cunt – ‘bros before hos’. But ultimately if you fall in love with someone the chances of you sacking them off because one of your mates doesn’t think they’re good enough for you are low indeed.

It’s not your fault – no matter how much you love your friends your body is hard wired to seek out certain things: food, shelter, comfort, and sweaty wriggling with someone who makes you hurt with joy. People do the oddest things in the name of love: they give up dream jobs, ditch families, move halfway across the world. You rarely see people leaping over barriers at airports to prevent loved-ones leaving these days, but that’s not because we’re lacking in passion, we’re just more cautious about terrorists. Love is still one of the greatest motivators, and makes us act like one of the stupidest breeds of monkey.

No one should feel bad for putting love, or even sex, above friendship – I certainly don’t. Don’t beat yourself up about the times you’ve blown off trips to the pub with your mates in favour of staying at home cementing your shiny new relationship with lots of delicious getting-to-know-you shagging. As the saying goes: your friends will be there no matter what. You might only have one chance to grab the guy or girl of your dreams, and if it all goes pear-shaped your friends will be there to pick up the pieces, pass you the tissues, and repeatedly call you a dickhead until you feel much better about the whole thing.

This is all by way of explaining that when I met boy number eight everything else fell away. I’d made some tentative friendships during Fresher’s Week, by getting lots of rounds in and pretending to be interested in other people’s degree subjects. But most of these friendships faded into the background as soon as he appeared. My roommate and I were still close, on account of the fact that we shared a room so we’d bloody well better be. My second flatmate Rena – for the first two terms at least – was still an excellent person to get into trouble with every now and then. But when number eight was with me, all my friends became neatly irrelevant.

Pub trips, club nights, lunches in the Union – these things were only interesting to me if they included him. If he wasn’t there I’d make polite small talk, craning my neck to look over other people’s shoulders and see if he was about to walk into the room. In lectures I’d seek him out and in seminars I’d disagree with him. Not always because I thought he was wrong, although I frequently did, but because I just loved hearing him debate me. I’d steer my flatmates towards the clubs that he’d be at and invite him to anything that could even vaguely be described as a social event. It’s lucky he was on a philosophy course and not something more hands-on – if he was a chemist or an engineer I’d have followed him into the lab in a mooning, lovesick daze and ended up setting fire to half the university.

But this would be a pretty shit love story if everything ended there – me lusting helplessly after a boy I couldn’t have, and wanking myself into a froth every evening while imagining him taking me roughly up against a bookcase in the Ethics section of the library.

Long story short: he liked me too. I say ‘liked’ rather than ‘loved’, because it took him a while to decide he actually loved me. He’s long been forgiven for that – if everyone were as decisive (no, not impulsive – decisive) as I am then we’d never get any interesting emotional build-up. Love stories would last for three pages:

Page 1: Girl meets boy

Page 2: Girl sucks boy’s dick

Page 3: Girl meets a new boy, and the whole charade begins again.

But number eight liked me. 

He liked me enough to seek me out and sit next to me on the first day. By week two he liked me enough to meet me before each lecture, and invite me for drinks afterwards. We started sharing ideas before seminars, notes during classes, and giggles together in the back row. Eventually we graduated to sharing stories, jokes, and hugs that lasted ever-so-slightly too long.

In the evenings we’d get drunk then collapse beside each other – not quite touching. He had a girlfriend at a university in another city who he was determined to make a show of being faithful to. Consequently the very first touches I remember were tentative. He’d brush my arm, or I’d lean on his shoulder. We’d lie next to each other, barely breathing, just waiting for the other one to reach out and give the first shivering touch.

In public we were friends, but in private we were driving each other insane. Sleeping fell to the bottom of my priority list – the nights I spent with number eight were the only time we could really be close, and I’d lie awake feeling him next to me, going slowly mad himself.

Our flirting got less playful and more desperate. My vague attempts at seduction (‘How about a fuck?’) were rejected with awkward laughs or trembling sighs. While his – oh, God. His occasional drunken declarations of lust gave me pangs of longing that squeezed my chest and made me hurt for him.

“You know, when you were wearing those tight trousers I looked at your arse and wanted to bite it.”

“I saw your knickers when you bent over in the pub. I want to put my fucking face in them.”

I’ll leave it there, because I suspect it’s good marketing to leave you hanging and wondering whether he did actually put his fucking face in them. Find out by buying my book, or just asking me when I’m two gins into an evening.

I’m sitting on the sofa and I’m horny. Not just horny in an abstract ‘quite fancy a shag’ sense, but in the throbbing, aching way I get horny when I’m hungover. My knee’s jiggling – a painfully obvious sign that what I need is release rather than affection – and I’m idly browsing through the lovely Sinful Sunday images that are guaranteed to provide a satisfying wank.

I could, of course, simply go through to the bedroom and wake someone up. He’s not only incredibly horny 99% of the time, he is also generally happy to have his sleep interrupted as long as there’s either coffee or a fuck waiting when his eyes open.

But I’m not going to do that. Because, lovely though sex is, it doesn’t always scratch the right itch.

Admin wanking

I’ve waffled on about wanking before, frequently, and I’d hope there’s nothing surprising about the idea of a woman treating herself to a hand job on a lazy Sunday morning. But I think there’s often an assumption that wanking is a substitute for sex – something you do because you can’t get laid at that particular point in time.

On the contrary. It’s not even something you do because you’re feeling deeply aroused and have a particular image or fantasy in your head that requires special attention. Often I masturbate simply because it’s something I have to get out of my system before I can get on with my day.

The admin wank, if you like. This is one born of a vague sense of hungover-horniness combined with the knowledge that sex will take too long and there’ll be no porn that satisfies my particular mood. In these instances, shoving my hand down my knickers and frigging myself for a maximum of 60 seconds will usually do the trick.

This doesn’t mean I like sex any less, this doesn’t mean I fancy him any less – it just means that, right now, that’s the most suitable way to get what I need.

A long time ago…

It’s stiflingly hot, and I’m lying awake in a single bed in a villa in Spain, listening to my boy frantically rubbing himself under the duvet of the other bed, on the other side of the room. I am trying very hard not to cry.

This is unusual: normally the idea of boys wanking nearby me is enough to make my knees go funny and give me that lustful borderline-crosseyed look that I reserve for exceptionally arousing situations. I love both extremes of boywanking: the times when I’m not just present but involved – when he’s touching my tits or gripping my arse as he pumps his fist up and down his own cock, preparing to cover me with jizz when he reaches the climax. And the other kind: when he has solitary, private wanks that he tells me about afterwards – sending me links to the videos he was watching so I can imagine at just which point he was pushed over the edge.

Both of these things are hot, and amazing. Part of me is getting tingly – the sound of this guy wanking purely for his own physical pleasure, letting out small sighs or suppressed grunts as he gets close makes my head spin. But part of me wants to weep at the sheer waste of it. In the villa I’m absent: not included or involved, just in the same room by chance, not as asleep as he thinks I am, torn between feeling voyeuristic and vulnerable, telling myself that his furtive release is a necessary tactical manoeuvre rather than an implicit rejection of me.

I try to control myself and fall asleep, but I fail, eventually storming out of the room in a huff just as he twitches to mark the conclusion.

It’s not about sex versus masturbation

That incident happened a long time ago – when I was younger and far less used to the kind of admin wanks that are one of the easiest and simplest sexual things adults can do. The masturbation that isn’t a performance, just a quick solution to an immediate problem: like going to the toilet, or quenching your thirst.

I used to see sex as something I should always be striving for: with a partner one of the boxes I ticked when calculating whether I was happy was looking at how many times we’d fucked. The quality was always good, but what really mattered to me was the quantity. Naïvely, I saw every wank my partner had as a fuck I’d missed out on, failing to realise that masturbation isn’t always a substitute for sex: sometimes it’s a snack that keeps you going until the next meal.

The day I got back from that Spanish holiday I had a chat with the gentleman in question. I explained how his furtive hand-shandy had made me feel left out, miserable and unwanted. Reading the story back now, I’m having a serious chat with myself – explaining that the way I reacted makes me look like an inconsiderate arse.

It should never be about sex versus masturbation – there’s no either/or. You can love sex and love your partner and think they’re hotter than the sun, but still find yourself occasionally needing a bit of alone time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me for a couple of minutes…