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…

Every now and then Twitter goes on a nostalgia trip – everyone starts using the hashtag #TweetYourTeenageSelf to dispense wisdom their real teenage self would never have listened to.

But I’d have liked it, I think. Even if I didn’t take the advice. We’ve all got wisdom we’ve love to impart to our younger, less knowledgeable selves. And I’d certainly pay big bucks now to hear from GOTN aged fifty, and find out what I should or shouldn’t do in the next twenty years to avoid being a spectacular fuck-up.

This post is a bit saccharine, bordering on the cheesy, but anyone who has read my book will know that although I come across as a sex-crazed harpy, there’s an emotional romantic underneath. She’s just quite deep underneath.

So, in no particular order, here are the top five things I wish I’d known as a teenager.

1. There’s no such thing as ‘good in bed’

Really. I used to believe that being ‘good in bed’ was like having decent hand-eye coordination: a skill that you either had or didn’t. The nervousness that accompanied my first few fumbling shags was made more terrifying by the knowledge that This Was It – the time when I would find out whether I was part of team Goodshag, or team OhChristThatWasShocking.

It turns out that’s not the case at all: one person’s Goddess is another’s Godawful, and there’s no one holding up scorecards when you’re lying in a postcoital sweat. Sex isn’t a skill that individuals have or don’t have: it’s a skill you learn together.

2. People you fancy rarely notice the things you hate about yourself

I say ‘rarely’ because there are some things – being overweight or excessively tall, for example – that have attracted the odd comment from guys I’m attracted to. But in general, the worries I have about my appearance are things that my loved ones only notice if I point them out myself. For instance, I’ve got a slightly dodgy tooth that prevents me from smiling too often, but people are far more likely to notice that I’m not smiling than the reason for my grumpy face.

So, I’d tell teenage me: there’s basically nothing wrong with you, because there’s something different about everyone.

3. Your cunt is actually something straight guys like looking at

Ah, youth. That period of time when all the things about your body that are usually hidden under clothes suddenly become fixations for your own self-disgust. I remember being quite unnaturally scared of what my cunt looked like when I was younger. It looked a bit like the cunts in porn, but not exactly the same, even when I tried to shave it so I’d look more grown up.

The first time a guy went to go down on me I leapt away in terror, begging him to turn the lights off lest he see the actual lines and curves of it. I’d probably have enjoyed teenage sex more if I could glimpse the future: a future in which I’m lying on a bed in my own grown-up flat as a boy I love runs his hands over it and tells me, for the millionth time “you’ve got a pretty cunt.”

4. Those douchebags don’t actually care what you wear

Like most people I know, I had a fairly rough time in school. I was tall, broad, scruffy, and not very good at makeup. What I’d loved to have known is that the people who laughed at me for being a goth didn’t actually give a flying fuck what I wore. I could have come in dressed head to toe in designer gear, with hair dyed blonde and swishy, heels that rapped a sexy rhythm as I sashayed down the corridor – they’d still have said the same old shit.

Because real life is nothing like an American teen movie. No one changes their place in the hierarchy just by getting a makeover, because the cool kids’ disgust has nothing to do with what you wear or look like – those are just easy things to get bitchy about. Their opinions are actually founded on some arbitrary moment in the past where people were divided into cool and not-cool. These labels stuck

But don’t worry – your label will expire the second you leave the building.

5. There is more than one love of your life

That guy you’re head over heels for? He’ll go. Then there’ll be another, and he’ll go too. Then there’ll be more who – you guessed it – will go. And each and every time it’ll feel unjust and impossible. You’ll want to scream and cry and tear the world apart because you just loved them so much and you’ll never find someone like that again and oh God how can you survive this pain? This misery feels utterly unbearable.

But don’t worry: you’ll bear it.

What do the following things have in common?

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

“I’m not really a ‘books’ sort of person.”

“Haha – your boyfriend’s a shortarse.”

Any guesses? Here’s the answer: they’re all things guys I’ve slept with have said to me shortly after I’ve met them.

How to chat up a woman

I’d be gobsmacked if anyone who writes about sex hasn’t been asked the question “So, how do I go about getting laid?” or something similar. I’ve been asked a fair few times, most recently I’ve been asked what someone should say to make girls like him. The generic ‘how to chat up a woman’ request. I’d love to be insightful and wise bout this, but unfortunately all I have is some very generic advice:

• if you want to sleep with women, talk to them
• listen to them, and try to establish whether you’ve got anything in common
• make the most of the opportunities afforded by the internet
• don’t be a dick

I think what the people who ask these questions are looking for is something more specific than this: some magic words or a few good conversation starters that will have the average lady slipping off her chair with arousal halfway through the first round of drinks.

I can’t do this, I’m afraid. And anyone who tells you they can is either incredibly deluded or having you on.

I’m rubbish at chatting people up. My technique runs from the obvious (send them a flattering message on OKCupid then hope that when we meet in person I am drunk/brave enough to suggest a shag) to the arduous (develop a friendship over the course of many years, cross fingers that one day they’ll fancy sleeping with the girl who’s been hanging around like a bad smell) to the direct (“Fancy a shag?”). The benefit of being appallingly bad at chatting people up is that I fully understand how difficult it is, and sympathise with anyone who has spent two hours staring at a stranger across a crowded bar trying to pluck up the courage to offer them a drink.

Redefining success

I don’t think anyone’s bad for asking – naturally anyone who’s had crap luck when approaching people they fancy would be keen to see if there’s a way to minimise any failures in future. So often I write about what people shouldn’t do, it might seem logical that there’d be something we should do to improve the odds. Unfortunately this is one of those issues where although there are standard things you should avoid when you’re trying to look attractive (being rude, for instance, or accidentally being sick on their shoes), there’s no guaranteed ‘hit’ technique.

As the original ‘lines’ in this blog demonstrate – you can say something either mundane or cringingly foot-in-mouth but still end up in bed with the person you approached. Likewise, you can wow someone with your charm and charisma and still end up going home for a lonely wank.

But (and I appreciate it might not seem like it when you’re lonely and keen to find someone) the fact that there are no magic words is a good thing.

If I were a charlatan, I’d tell you there are techniques that’ll have anyone eating out of the palm of your hand. But if that were true, the world would be an awkward and horrible place: one where we ended up getting together with people purely on the basis that we fancied them for five minutes. If you had a magic ability that meant anyone you liked would be persuaded to shag you, you’d end up shagging a hell of a lot of unsuitable people.

Can you think of anyone you fancied on first site but then ended up disliking? Because I sure as hell can. I fancy most liberal-sounding, scruffy-looking, slightly-nerdy guys I meet purely on the basis that I’ve had pretty decent luck with these guys in the past, and most of them have turned out to be both fun and hot. But that doesn’t mean they’ll all be. If I had Abracadabra’d all of them into bed, there’d have been plenty of awkward mornings in my life when both of us woke up and realised that we weren’t suited to each other at all.

So: chatting up. It’s never going to be 100% successful, and I can’t give you any advice that will make it so. Because your aim when introducing yourself to a stranger should never be as simple and boring as just ‘getting that stranger into bed’. Your aim, in my honest and unskilled opinion, should be finding out whether you both actually want to go to bed together.

We’ve all got things that we fantasise about which, were they to happen in real life, would disgust or annoy us. Things that might get our genitals throbbing but which cause the moral part of our brains to rebel, and give us a post-fantasy stern talking to.

My most embarrassing fantasy isn’t sexual – it isn’t even exciting. But it’s the one I have spent the most time on in the last week. I close my eyes, block out all the things I should be thinking about, and spend a few minutes on my idle dream.

What’s my most embarrassing fantasy?

I dream of being saved. Not in a knight-in-shining-armour way: it’s far more tedious and practical than that.

I retreat to this shameful fantasy when I’ve had a bad week and everything seems to be going wrong. When I end every day miserable and exhausted and knowing that the next day will be the same. When I sit at my laptop, babbling nervously into a to-do list and panicking about all the things yet to be crossed off, I dream that – corny as it sounds – my prince will come.

He won’t marry me and whisk me away to a suburban idyll, he’ll just come to hold me, let me sob dramatically and unnecessarily on his shoulder, before making a few phone calls that melt all my troubles away.

When I’m down, and sad, I dream of a man who can do all the things I just don’t want to do. Ringing insurance companies, rewriting my CV, replying to emails that have languished unhappily at the bottom of my inbox. My prince: the pragmatic multi-tasker.

Because of all the things someone could ever give me – money, power, a nice thick cock and a regular eye-rolling fuck, the most valuable thing they could ever give me is time.

Why is this an embarrassing fantasy?

I am a capable, reasonable, competent human being. Honestly. Last year my boiler packed up and I managed to get a replacement without either

a) getting ripped off

b) leaving it so long I had to shower in freezing water or

c) sobbing wildly on my kitchen floor shouting “why won’t you just WORK you dogshit arsewipe pile of metal bollocks?!”

OK, maybe I did a teeny bit of c).

I’ve made it twenty nine years so far with only the occasional need of outside help – someone to show me where the stopcock is, the odd spider that I just can’t handle, that sort of thing. And yet despite my pathetic pride and determination to do nearly everything myself, I occasionally let my mind wander off into dreams of men who’ll do these things for me. Bleed radiators, clean kitchen cupboards, instruct solicitors and other such tedious bullshit.

I feel dirty and wrong for this, not because it’s sick or unusual in the way that many of my fantasies are. Not because it’s demeaning or degrading, but because I feel like this makes me a bad feminist. I mean, it’s not very independent, is it? The Suffragettes didn’t go through hell just so I could get a man to deal with my paperwork when I get too flustered. It goes against principles that mean a lot to me, and much of what I’ve worked for.

But still. When things get tricky, and I find myself wading through the mountain of DIY, admin and “please hold for an operator who can explain to you why we’ve suddenly doubled your gas bill” I’m not wishing for more internal strength, but for someone who’ll be strong on my behalf.

Fantasy vs reality

I’ve voiced this fantasy a few times – usually over a pint or two of gin and one of those terrifying crying attacks where your friends either cuddle you so no one can see the state you’re in or push you into the toilets to ‘get it out of your system.’

And occasionally, when I confess my fantasies of being saved, people have commented on the fact that it’s at direct odds with what I actually want in life. That if a guy came through for me on this kind of fantasy – if he cleared up my messes and cleaned my to-do list and took hold of the reins of my life, I would scream blue murder and banish him forever.

To which my reply is: of course. Of course. It’s a fantasy. Just as I don’t really want guys to beat me – I want them to spank me in a very specific way, with a very specific degree of pain, to the point where it’s hot and sexual but no further – I also want them to support me to just the right degree without ever taking away my own agency.

The most enjoyable thing about many fantasies is that if you really wanted to, you could make them come true: as with this one. But I haven’t made it come true – I just like to wallow in it. I like to sit and think and dream of my practical prince, while eschewing any kind of assistance that might make me look less than competent. So by thinking this I get to find out what my little heart actually desires – the difference between what I actually want and what I think I want.

He can still do the washing up though. There’s no shame in letting him do that.

Communication: it’s bloody hard, right? You just never know what’s going to offend people and whether your words will be hurled back at you in a storm of rage and misery, leaving you cowering in a corner nursing your hurt feelings.

The above is only semi-tongue-in-cheek: I know that words – while they’re sometimes our friends, are often crude tools with which we dig ourselves a massive hole into which we accidentally spew things that we probably shouldn’t have said. Hence: communication’s important, but we all get it wrong sometimes.

It’s hard to give advice to people on the right things to say – although plenty of Pick-Up Artists will try, and tell you that there are specific rules and lines that are scientifically proven to impress strangers. However, usually the only thing anyone can advise is to try and be empathetic, listen to the other person, and for the love of God don’t say anything awful like this. To cover this last category, I’m handing over to the excellent @halfabear, who has some very strong and hilarious opinions on the questions people ask about her sex life.

Sexual questions

Since becoming paraplegic I’ve become very used to being asked questions about my health; friends asking how I’m getting on and if I’m in pain, strangers gently prying and trying to find out what’s wrong and how it happened. Nosey but innocuous questions that I generally don’t mind answering, providing that it’s not done insultingly and they understand I won’t answer if a line is crossed. I’ve been quite endeared over the years by the sensitivity that people have approached the subject with.

Well, most of the time.

There is one subject where it appears that all boundaries and sensitivity go out of the window in a heartbeat. Be it friend or stranger, it’s a subject which arouses such curiosity that no answer is simply not good enough, and there really is no way to tread carefully. Sex.

Read about awkward sexual questions, and the hilarious answers she gives people, over on her own blog…