All Posts – Page 344

On touches: touching your dick vs touching my clit

When it comes to sexiness, there are two different types of touch:

  • Being touched to turn me on and
  • Being touched because it turns you on

One of these, I find, is very much hotter than the other.

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On adverts for the ladies

WOMEN! Do you want to buy some PRODUCTS? Well I’ve got something for you – yes, you. You can tell it’s for you because I’ve made it REALLY OBVIOUS by slapping words like ‘fresh‘ and ‘delicate’ all over my packaging and – if that’s not enough to penetrate your fresh, delicate brains – I’ve even painted it pink. Let’s talk sexism in marketing.

It’s like this other thing, but for girls!

Girlified versions of normal things make me spit rage. They stem from a recognition that some girls like X, coupled with an assumption that by golly! They’d like X even more if it came in a slightly smaller/pinker/healthier version.

I’m going to say this really clearly: girls like all kinds of shit. So do guys. You don’t have to limit yourself to an all-male market just because your product involves engines, red meat or RAM. Equally, if you want to make your product appeal to women, you don’t need to dress it up in spangles and call it ‘mini.’ Because the tables are turning, people, and not only will it actively turn a lot of women off your products, quite a few of us get justifiably annoyed and will write angry blog posts about your patronising ad copy.

A female-friendly mindset: sexism in marketing

My rage-sensors were alerted to this by a friend of mine who sent me the ad for STK London. In case you aren’t as eye-bleedingly cool as the people who came up with the name, STK means ‘steak’. It’s a steak house, but with a mind-boggling twist:

STK London boldly proclaims that it has a female-friendly mindset.

A what? Are other steakhouses actively barring women? Do they have large, angry sexists positioned outside the doors holding neon signs that say ‘no chicks’? If so, I could see why a ‘female-friendly’ mindset might help distinguish this restaurant from the competition, but no. Sadly, the ‘female-friendly mindset’ is summed up by this quote from their website:

STK offers small, medium and large cuts of meat, as well as naturally raised options and market fresh fish entrees.

Translation:

We’re appealing to women who like steak by offering them a) smaller portions of steak b) slightly different types of steak and c) something that is not even fucking steak.

B is understandable (although I am struggling to work out why they think this ‘naturally raised’ options wouldn’t appeal to some men too), but a) and c)? You’ve got to be shitting me.

This isn’t a restaurant aimed at men or women. Initially confused, I wondered if it had been designed by confused male advertising executives who love steak but have never met any actual women.  They’re trying to create their ideal steak restaurant:  a sort of picture-book fantasy where women in skintight business attire munch sexily on tiny, feminine portions of ‘steakette’.

And then I saw their YouTube advert, and realised that I was spot on.

Buy my product now, there’s a good girl

And so neatly onto my second example: Lord Sugar, (a British businessman who used to sell a brand of computer you’ve never heard of) sent a tweet this week that’s surely going to have 1950s secretaries giggling into their typewriters:

Unfortunately for Lord Sugar, women didn’t take too kindly to his suggestion that they celebrate Christmas by persuading their bosses to buy them nail files. Sugar himself is probably wondering if they’re all on their blahddy periods or something, so for the record here’s what’s wrong with that tweet:

– it’s incredibly patronising. Assuming that someone’s boss would buy them a nail file for a job well done implies that the job itself is of incredibly low value. Think ‘assistant’ rather than ‘boss.’

– the product itself has been ‘girlified’. Nail files? They’re for women, so let’s paint them pink. Forgetting, of course, that many men file their nails too. Apart from being patronising and sexist, it’s a marketing technique that risks alienating vast numbers of people (i.e. men who file their nails) so that they won’t end up buying the product.

‘Limiting the market just to women’ is a terrible business idea. A TERRIBLE one. How do I know this? Well, it was exactly the reason Lord Sugar himself gave for the failure of the losing team on last week’s Junior Apprentice.

The hapless teenagers had to pitch a cookbook to booksellers. One team decided to go with a cookbook ‘for professional women.’ In a scene I rather hope a lot of ad professionals watched, every single member of the market research group said ‘why just women? Surely men like food too?’ But apparently not.

The team, against all advice to the contrary, decided that Professional Women were a niche market that needed to be targeted with something radically different. Something that only women like. Clearly taking a leaf out of STK London’s book, the food they selected for these women was ‘quick, fresh and healthy’.

I won’t go into the details, and I don’t want to pick on these poor youngsters – they’re clearly doing what they see ad execs and marketing people and ALAN FUCKING SUGAR doing all the bloody time.

The point I’m making is that Lord Sugar shitcanned them. He criticised a bunch of 17-year-olds for making patronising assumptions that even fully-paid-up restaurant marketing executives make. Moreover, a mistake that he made himself just one week later by tweeting “Hey ladies, get your generous bosses to give you a pink nail file as a Christmas bonus.”

I won’t buy your shit just because you painted it pink

Marketers, you’re way better than this, you know that? There have been some masterpieces of advertising created in the last 5-10 years. Ads can make us laugh, cry, reminisce, and – yes – more often than not open our fucking wallets.

But you don’t need to stoop to this level. You don’t need to patronise women and imply that we’re incapable of enjoying certain things unless they’ve been packaged for us, labelled ‘fresh’ and covered in sparkly glitter. Sure, some people might want pink iPod nanos or lilac convertibles, so make ’em if you want to, just don’t label it the ‘ladies version’. You’ll piss off a lot of ladies, and more than a few pink-loving men.

You need to become more varied, more interesting and more inclusive. But even if you can’t reach these lofty heights, can you at least try to be better than a bunch of terrified teenagers on The Apprentice?

On what is about to happen

I’m sitting on the sofa next to a boy who is playing Halo 4 on the Xbox. This is almost the best way to spend a Sunday. I write, he stares in deep concentration at the TV, running his fingers quickly over the controls, occasionally murmuring ‘shit’ or ‘motherfucker.’ It’s fantastic -relaxing and horny at the same time. But it’s not quite as good as what’s about to happen.

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On turning someone down

On Friday night I did a bad thing. In case you’re expecting domination, sadism and sexy pain, I should warn you right now that this isn’t going to be that sort of blog.

In the pub on Friday, around five or six pints into an eight pint night, a funny conversation I was having with a friend was interrupted by a reasonably attractive, smiley gentleman. He cut in, with a cute, ‘can I get to know you’, response to something I’d been saying. He was sweet, and friendly, and nice, and making an honest attempt to chat me up.

And I shot him down.

Not just a ‘not right now’ shoot down, or an ‘I have a boyfriend’ shoot down. I didn’t even crack out the cold stare that I’ve seen others give to this kind of approach when they’re not in the mood to be spoken to. I shot him down with a cruel, cruel comeback. Something that both my drunken mind and my drunken friend agreed was hilarious and witty, but which my sober mind wants to suck straight back into my evil, rude, insulting face.

Chatting people up is hard

I’m obviously not going to shag every passing drunk who says ‘hello’, but I’ve always sworn that if someone approached me politely they’d get politeness back.

Why? Well, it takes a fuck of a lot of courage to approach someone you don’t know. A guy who talks to me in a pub is not so much wearing his heart on his sleeve as offering his dick up on a platter: ‘do you want this? Is this good enough for you? Do I gain your acceptance and approval?’

I come out in shivers of nervousness and terror just remembering times when I’ve done the same.

And I have, by the way – done the same. I’m no fan of being the chatter-up rather than the chattee, but I’ll do it when I really fancy someone, because I don’t want to be reliant on them making the first move. Girl friends of mine have told me that I should refrain from stamping up to men reeking of vodka and slurring “You’re brilliant. Can I buy you a drink?” and wait instead for them to approach me. But bollocks to that.

I don’t want to hang shyly in a corner of a pub, batting my eyelashes and clutching my outdated gender stereotypes while the man of my dreams sits fucklessly by the bar. I also know that the sort of men I like (shy, nerdy ones) are often unwilling to approach me because they’ve seen their more confident friends on the receiving end of unnecessarily harsh rejections.

Bottom line: I understand why people are terrified of chatting someone up, because I am also terrified. But I do it to avoid being stuck in a sexless limbo. Horrible though approaching is, asking someone if they fancy a shag and receiving a ‘no’ is still marginally better than going home alone to crywank under the duvet.

I don’t want to fuck an arsehole

But ultimately, the most important reason why politeness should always win out in chat-up scenarios is because being rude makes you wholly unfuckable.

Even if the person chatting you up isn’t necessarily one you fancy, someone you do fancy could well be nearby. And I don’t know many people who’d want to sleep with the sort of shitbag arrogant cunt who would immediately dismiss someone.

Moreover, that hot stranger standing nearby might be thinking about talking to you. He or she might be preparing a line, working up the courage, eagerly anticipating the chance to talk to you. If they hear you telling someone else to utterly and unequivocally fuck off, they’re unlikely to leap eagerly into the conversation and offer their own dignity up for you to shred.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry

And so my penance for doing this – for being just the sort of cold-hearted arrogant twat that I despise – is to relive the moment as I write this blog entry, and cringe in miserable shame. I can’t make things better, but I can apologise, so if you’re reading this, sweet 20-something blond boy in the long grey jacket: I’m so fucking sorry.

I’m sorry I was cruel. I’m sorry I’m a shit. And I’m sorry that you might just think twice before you talk to a girl again. I didn’t just break my chat-up rules, I broke the only rule that ever really matters: whatever life throws at you, try not to be a dick.

 

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On number 13

“What do you want?”
“A gangbang”
“No, really, what do you want?”
“A gangbang.”
“OK. Let’s try again. Within the realms of what I can realistically achieve in the next 24 hours or so, what do you want?”
“I’d like to watch another man sucking your dick.”
“…”
“…”
“I’ll see what I can do.”

It’s not easy persuading straight guys to have their dick sucked by another guy. Luckily for me the gentleman in question was not so much ‘straight’ as ‘elegantly curved’, and willing to bend in any direction that gave him even a hint of a hard-on.

A few minutes on the internet and we had something – a gay but slightly bi-curious guy had published a straightforward ad offering cocksucking. He just wanted to pop round someone’s house, drop to his knees, suck for a while, then sod off home again. Straight guys were not only welcome, he promised, but his favourite.

We paused briefly, taking a silent moment together to marvel at the pervert possibilities that had been opened up by the internet, then got in touch.

Oh god even remembering it makes me a bit weak

An hour or so later I was sitting, tense, on the sofa waiting for my boy to arrive. He’d gone to the station to meet our stranger, check him out, and have a coffee. If all was well, he promised, they’d return together and I could watch whatever happened.

Nothing quite prepared me for the odd feeling of watching them begin. The boy sat nervously on the sofa, rock-solid and straining upwards, as the stranger went to work. He started by licking thickly from base to tip, smacking his lips and gripping the boy’s thighs as he moistened everything. Then he took the whole cock in his mouth, and I saw the boy tremble as it slipped in. Nervous though he was, he was clearly enjoying it – loving the skill with which the other guy was sucking him.

I sat in the corner on my knees, squeezing my legs together to stop myself trembling too. Watching in fascination as the stranger worked my boy’s dick in ways subtly different from mine. I was trying to remember, to learn, to maintain my composure. Most of all I was trying not to breathe too loudly in case it broke the spell.

It was here that we should have stopped. This was the hottest bit – the sucking, the trembling, the nervousness of the boy I knew and the casual skill of the one I didn’t. If I could have paused time I’d have kept it right there – with them both solid and happy and me sitting quietly nearby.

But we never stop in time

I didn’t want to be the one to suggest a fuck, but I don’t think I needed to. My memory grows hazy halfway through this story, but at some point the boy was lying naked, face down on the bed, with number 13 – the stranger – poised and ready to fuck him. Ever useful, I handed them a condom then retired to my position of trembling observer, watching as they went for it.

The stranger was big – not with muscle, but with beer. The boy was lithe and skinny and almost disappeared under the mass of the other. He turned his face towards me, wincing with pain and arousal as the other guy fucked him. I clasped my hands together behind my back to try and refrain from touching myself.

And then… and then things went a bit odd.

I think they felt guilty that I wasn’t joining in. I think they felt bad that, although they got to rub and lick and suck and fuck each other, I was left in the corner. I think they thought I wasn’t getting anything out of it.

I was summoned and, awkwardly, I went. I took off my clothes, and things suddenly turned from super-hot live-action gay porn to uncomfortable date – I didn’t want to say no and look like I was rude, but saying yes meant I had to fuck someone who had confessed that he didn’t much care about women.

Don’t get me wrong, fucking two gentlemen at once is one of my favourite things, and for all the weirdness of the situation, it was still nice to be at the mercy of two naked cocks. If I’m honest, I’m frequently grateful to be in the same time zone as two naked cocks. But although one of these guys was incredibly hot for me, the other gentleman was pretty damned gay indeed. He wasn’t interested in me, he was interested only in the fact that my presence kept the other guy hard.

We fucked together for a while – my boy fucked me while the stranger fucked him, and then we did it the other way around for a bit, all the while I was thinking ‘how can I get out of this with dignity?’ Watching two guys go at it makes me wet, but feeling one of them limply humping me while looking stonily into the distance, clearly thinking only of maintaining some semblance of an erection, is not exactly my cup of tea.

Awkward goodbyes

When it was finished I think we might actually have had a cup of tea. Just a quick one, the cup of tea that says ‘I definitely want you out of my house very soon, but I’m going to drink hot drinks with you to prove that I do not think badly of you as a person.’ And, to be fair, we didn’t. He was a perfectly lovely guy, and an incredibly skilled cocksucker. He was friendly and chatty and calm and experienced and easy to get on with.

He was just… you know… gay.

There are a number of morals to this story – ‘always stick to what you agreed on the internet’, ‘don’t join in sex scenes you’re uncomfortable with’, ‘be honest about what you actually like’, etc.

But the one I’ve always taken from it is that no matter how much you like someone, and how much you love fucking, sometimes not fucking is the best thing you can do.