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…

As I might have already explained, I’m deeply impatient. So impatient, in fact, that if foreplay lasts longer than ten minutes I am liable to cry. I was once mocked by a guy, who was far keener on build-up than I was, because apparently the only thing I ever said in bed was “pleasepleasepleaseplease.” I don’t know what he was upset about – it’s certainly better than “mehmehmehmeh.”

Anyway, because I love guest blogs, and particularly guest blogs from people who have a different perspective to me, the following excellent post by Helz captures perfectly her delight in making someone wait. And wait. And then…

Antici….pation

Okay, yes, I did steal this title from a Rocky Horror lyric. Shoot me. It’s very apt though.

What is almost better than a conquest is the magnetism, the frission, leading up to it. It’s something organic between two people that can’t be forced, you both have to want to rip the clothes off and melt into each other so badly and you both know it. No one has made the first move yet and all you have is heavily layered conversation where you can barely focus on the words because even talking to each other makes you wet, and you’re zoned in on her mouth, her lips…her skin and her eyes, boring into yours and you both know that you’re going to see a lot more than each other’s eyes later on… but not yet. That anticipation, that mutual magnetism, is pretty rare yet so delicious. The excitement, and the wonder that you might be mistaken, that she might not want you and it’s all in your head and the electricity that zaps right down through you at the thought of her is what makes the whole exchange magical.

I like to, whilst making out with someone, draw back. Make them wait for our lips to meet and shrink away from their touch. Soften my gaze and my body, make it look completely touchable, mutely draw them in with my eyes, then refuse them. When your lips are centimeters away from mine and you can actually feel my warmth, but you’re unable to touch me because I keep drawing away… I know that you really want me. I like making you want me. The frantic, hot, hard kisses and touches you give me after that after being denied for so long show how much you crave this, crave me…

Before I eat out a girl I like to make her anticipate it for a very long time. I love the downy inner thigh which leads up to your cunt, and I love to linger on it for as long as I possibly can, giving your butterfly butterfly kisses and softly kissing, licking and stroking your thighs, occasionally giving your lower lips some very, very light touches or kisses, and I do this until I know that you are biting your lip to mask your croaks and moans, so hard that it could draw blood, until you’re dripping with ladyjuice and until you’re rolling your eyes upwards, as if you’re praying to some Sapphic goddess. I know you’re tingling with desire all over and I kiss your lower self harder and harder and slloooowwwly work my way to your cunt and start very gently, just when you think you’ll get some form of release I stop and kiss your pelvis and your stomach, then work my way down again until you quiver and your knees buck…

You like the anticipation, sometimes, more than you like the actual sex act, and the fact that you want it, me, so much makes me horny as hell and gives me almost as much satisfaction as if you were giving it to me.

Then it’s my turn.

According to some people who give way too much of a shit, Jeremy Paxman has grown a beard.

Think what you like about it, but by God you have to think something. Today the internet has been bubbling with chatter: are you for or against the beard? Does it look good? Does it look scary, because for some reason someone once decided that all bearded men are Harold Shipman? Has your attitude towards Paxman’s hard-hitting interview questions changed because he happens to have some hair on his face? Let’s do a sodding online poll about it, shall we?

Anyway. Because I’m fucking contrary and annoyed, I’m going to weigh in to the beard debate with the definitive answer as to Whether Beards Are Good. Ready? Here goes:

Growing a beard is good

I’m a fan of beards – they’re often a pretty sexy way of framing and defining a man’s face. I’ve been with a few guys who have had some sort of facial hair, and with one guy who found facial hair so amusing he would regularly grow a beard just so that when he shaved it off he could experiment with various comedy styles.

They’re occasionally a bit scratchy when you’re kissing someone, and might irritate you if you’ve got sensitive skin, but the same can be said of a particularly coarse jumper fabric.

I love running my hands over a guy’s beard, feeling the scratchy texture of the hair on my palms. I love watching him trim the edges, that ‘I’m so grown-up’ feeling I get when I think about him doing something so adult. I enjoy the way it frames his face, and the variety – the different stages of beautiful he looks as it gets longer, shaggier, and eventually gets tidied up.

But the best thing, I think, about men who have beards is that they are clearly capable of making independent decisions about what to do with their own face.

Not growing a beard is also good

I also, though, like clean-shaven dudes. There’s a certain elegance and beauty about a really smooth shave. Again, I like to watch men do it, particularly the bit where they tip their head back to get at the hairs on their neck. I love the slight scratch of stubble as it starts to push through in the evening. I utterly adore the smell of a freshly-shaved guy when he rubs his face up next to mine.

But again, the best thing about a clean-shaven gentleman is that he is capable of making independent decisions about what to do with his own face.

Growing a beard is your own decision

I’m surprised at the number of people who would respond to the ‘should women shave their legs?’ question with a loud and decisive ‘it’s none of your fucking business’, yet are happy to pass judgment on a TV presenter just because he has chosen not to shave. I wouldn’t bother writing about this issue if it were just Jeremy Paxman – I appreciate that people are having a bit of fun and Paxo isn’t going to be sobbing into his autocue because some people on Twitter said his beard was shit. But the beard vs no-beard debate leaks awkwardly into a lot of our sexual discussion in a way that is pretty offensive to men, and this seems like an appropriate time to tackle it.

People say things like:

“I just couldn’t kiss a man with a beard”

“Men with beards just look untrustworthy”

Or even, in a move designed to hit not one but two of my ‘rage’ buttons: “The only thing worse than a beard is a ginger beard”

I’m not making these up, incidentally, these are all things people have said to me – the latter prompted a bollocking in the form of a tedious drunken lecture. Mumbled apologies ensued. Awkwardness happened. Lessons were probably not learned.

Preference vs pressure

I understand that people have personal preferences: some gentlemen really do prefer blondes, and some people really can’t get aroused unless their partner is clean shaven. Fair enough – passions like these are hard to control, and there’s no rule that says we must bestow equal lust on men no matter what their facial hair situation. However, there certainly is a rule that states we must avoid pressuring people to do certain things to their bodies just for our aesthetic pleasure. It’s the ‘don’t be a total arsehole’ rule.

Most adult men, in their natural state (and most women, come to that) will grow some hair on their faces. It might be dark, light, thick, coarse, downy or patchy, but ultimately most people will grow some hair on their faces. Having some hair on your face is the natural default for the majority of the adult population. The decision to remove it is one that can only be made by the owner of that face, and making them feel bad about their decision based purely on your aesthetic opinion about beards makes you a total arsehole.

So, just as it’s none of anyone’s business whether I shave my legs, wear make-up at work or wax my pubes into the shape of a lightning bolt, likewise it’s not for us to decide what hair Jeremy Paxman should or shouldn’t remove from his face.

Voting is now closed on the ‘describe your orgasm‘ competition. It was a rollercoaster ride of fascinating insights, evocative description, and my own tawdry masturbation as I sifted through the entries.

Thank you to everyone who took part, and everyone who voted on one of the final five entries. I loved reading your stories, and I am genuinely gutted that I can’t give a prize to everyone.

After tallying the votes, the winner is… *unnecessarily dramatic drum roll*… Cammies on the Floor! The spectacular prize, of a ‘Veni, vici’ trophy, is on its way to her as we speak.

And for those who logged in today for tittilation, here’s the winning post in its full, dramatic, cunt-throbbing glory:

Orgasm competition winner – Cammies on the Floor

It starts with pressure inside of me, a pressure of friction, an awareness of movement in and out of me. Then I begin to tighten into the pressure. I can do this at whim, but more often than not, it just happens.

When I am short on time, know this is a quickie, or am tired, I can tighten, making me come closer to the sensation faster. When I want a slow buildup, I just allow it to naturally happen, enjoy the other sensations besides the focusing on clamping down into it.

But my orgasm gets going when I tighten around whatever is inside of me, increasing the pressure, not a consistent tighten, more like a gripping and releasing of muscles(my lover will feel this).

My body grows taunt due to this tightening. I begin breathing heavier. My mind empties of thoughts. In and out, pressure on certain places, like the g-spot, deep inside, at my entrance; or held pressure in one spot that is almost so overwhelming I want it slid against rather than held against. All my thoughts, all my concentration, is on my muscles, on feeling the pressure build, of the gripping and releasing.

I feel drawn, almost leaning my body into my groin. My stomach clenches down, my whole body becomes tense. The clenching around becomes more intense, the coming and going of pleasure building, the waves of pleasure building higher and higher, crashing faster and faster.

It is not a letting go, unless of cohesive thoughts. It is an absolute building of pressure that is pleasant nerve endings being vibrated, thronged deeper and longer, spreading from inside my crotch, my lower belly, gripping tightly, spreading suddenly as if heat of a wildfire, moving up my torso and down my thighs at the same time, making me catch my breath, rending my limbs tense and immobile trying to clutch at anything (my toes may curl painfully at this point of clutching), my breath catching (sometimes too long), my head spinning, my thoughts completely blacking out. It is a force burning throughout my entire body, clutching it so tightly, making it rigid, flushing out even to my skin. An awareness of every muscle, a pressure so hard in my core – it is pleasure so focused, a tingling sensation that doesn’t lower or stop. It is quick, but it leaves me weak with its force.

The tingling begins to actually represent tingling, with the skin overly sensitive, my limbs tremble, I remember to breathe, my head is still slowly spinning, my thoughts seem so distant, as if I am far away from my body, amazed at the power of my orgasm.

My body is aware of how tense it is, my sex completely lets go of what is inside of me – as if taking a deep breath and releasing it, my body and limbs heavy, my chest heaving from erratic breathing, my throat raw either from screaming with the force (which allows a deeper orgasm) or from the effort in suppressing any noise (a weaker orgasm as it requires me to focus on a place other than my pleasure). I feel like I am sinking, my thoughts lazily floating back into my head, my body relaxing after its fierce control.

I become aware of my lover again; or toy or fingers are removed. If my breathing was held, I may see black spots blurring my vision. My head may hurt, a throbbing headache, if I held my breath. This is the point where I become aware of my toes if they curled, as I try to painfully stretch them. My fingertips may have been too clenched into my lover’s skin, and just now feel the muscles protesting. I may become aware of raw skin that I scratched in my clenching (I will sometimes clamp nails into my thighs or calves if I am holding them up). My stomach may be sore, feeling as if I did too many crunches or sit ups. My heart hammers inside my ribcage, thunders in my ear.

If is a strong orgasm, regardless of movement inside of me, I may still feel my muscles clenching inside still, gripping and releasing, shuddering, giving lapses of pleasure still, echoing throughout my body but not causing that tenseness, just a brief flutter of pleasant nerves being surged through, slowly until they dwindle to nothing. I call them aftershocks (as they mimic an earthquake’s to me). Or if movement/stimulation is still there, the clenching follows the pattern of movement, gripping inside of me, releasing, quicker than the first time, with more intensity, until I clench around it tightly, my body reacting far quicker, the wave of pleasure rising far higher and crashing more violently than the first time, and another orgasm grips me.

A following orgasm; feeling just like the first, but more intense, spasms rippling through me. I become dizzy far easier, and more likely to hold my breath. Control over my noises is less likely after the first orgasm. I am less in control of it happening or the speed in which it happens.

I am capable of multiple orgasms. I have not tested nor counted how many I can achieve in one session, though I am sure the number is more than five that I have accomplished. It leaves me weary, shaken, depleted, incapable of sound thinking, my nerve endings so sensitive to touch of different textures. I am aware of the softness of sheets, the sheen on my skin, the air flowing across, the crispness of a sting of a spank of my ass, the burning of any skin been marked too roughly, the imprint of where pressure used to be, the chill and the heat of objects around me. I am easier to get to orgasm from touches other than penetration, as my muscles inside my sex are far easier to tighten and clench, and need nothing to clench around to begin that cycle of spreading pleasure.

If I orgasm from clitoral stimulation, it begins in my clit, sliding, the pressure dances in time to my sex, pumping the pressure of pleasure from groin outward again. If I orgasm from my nipples, they are often pinched hard, the pinching becomes a focused pain of pleasure, it travels and tugs to my groin, which clenches tight down echoing the pressure on my nipples, so tight that my body comes again.

Hot, right? I love people.