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I don’t want to hang shyly in a corner of a pub, batting my eyelashes and clutching my outdated gender stereotypes while the man of my dreams sits fucklessly by the bar.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.

 

“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.

Huffington Post this week has scraped right through the bottom of the internet barrel, and presented us with two photographic galleries of relationship ‘deal-breakers’. These are things which, if your new girl/boyfriend finds them in your flat, will mean an instant end to your relationship. Things deemed so important that people must eradicate them from their home at all costs lest they risk terrifying future partners.

For the record, and in the interests of full disclosure, here are some of mine:

Girlonthenet’s deal breakers

1. A signed photograph of Nadine Dorries.

2. A sofa smeared in fresh human excrement.

3. A well-thumbed copy of Neil Strauss’ hateful twat-manual ‘The Game’.

4. A bathroom cabinet filled with homeopathic remedies.

5. A severed human head.

With these in mind, I had a look through the HuffPo galleries, at the things they’d elevate to ‘deal breaker’ status. For the record, I’m expecting horror: racist literature, blood-splattered walls, cavepaintings drawn in one’s own faeces, etc.

Deal breakers for women

Here is a selection of HuffPo’s top ‘deal breakers’ for women – the things that, if found in a man’s apartment, would put them off for life.

1. An empty toilet roll tube. Because women, as well as being prolific urinators, are also incapable of asking you where you keep the spare loo roll.

2. A cheap Ikea coffee table. Because if you are poor and you cannot afford a nice antique coffee table, then you do not deserve coffee-cup relief. Put that cup on the fucking floor like the cheap, tasteless scumbag you are. You think I’m joking, but this is what the journo actually suggests.

3. Hair in the sink/dirty dishes/dirty sheets. These are all variations on a theme. Basically, gents, they’re telling you that all women will give a significant and powerful flying fuck about how clean your house is. Learn to de-scale a kettle or you will die alone.

4. Toothpaste in the sink. I might be alone in this, but my first thoughts were ‘what the crying FUCK is wrong with toothpaste?’ The journo kindly explains: “This is a total gross out.” What? Why? Toothpaste is a product designed to a) go in your mouth and b) make it clean. Describing it as a ‘gross-out’ displays levels of squeamishness that any sensible human would struggle to sustain.

5. No hand towel in the bathroom. That’s right – being unable to dry your hands after washing is not just an inconvenience, it is a DEAL BREAKER. If a woman has wet hands she categorically will not fuck you. As someone who has a) jeans and b) the initiative to dry my hands on my jeans should I ever find myself lacking a hand towel, this was the deal breaker for me, and the point at which I gave up on this particular gallery.

Luckily for me, you and no doubt the rest of civilisation, there was another gallery – one which evened out the balance by explaining the heinous and absolutely deal breaking crimes that women commit, as listed by the men who have broken deals because of them.

Deal breakers for men

1. Stuffed toys/blankets/dolls. Basically anything from your childhood: items from your childhood are liable to turn a man off. Burn them.

2. Pictures of your exes. Because the thought of you having ever been with another man is a turn-off so huge that no man could ever overcome it – DEAL BREAKER, remember?

3. Cats. Men clearly associate cats with bad things – spinsters, wicked witches, and Tom off of Tom and Jerry. Luckily, though, cats are the only pets mentioned, so feel free to choose from anything else in the animal kingdom. Personally I’m a big fan of snakes.

4. Nice cups. Because men will only drink things from either pint glasses or mugs, and will take any offer of beverages in a more delicate drinking receptacle as a slur on their masculinity. Remember this is not just a ‘nice to have’, it’s a DEAL BREAKER, so if you give a man coffee in a china cup, don’t be surprised if he hurls it on the carpet then storms out of your house screaming ‘I thought you were SERIOUS about this RELATIONSHIP.’

5. Tampons. And this was the point at which my head exploded, splurging gory mess all over the nice cups I keep on my cheap Ikea coffee table. I couldn’t even clean up the splurge, because when I went to the bathroom I realised I had neither hand towels nor toilet roll. So instead I just accepted that my flat would be permanently covered in blood. From now on, once every four weeks, I’ll have to wander my flat, menstruating mournfully, unable to staunch the flow with tampons in case men who love me feel a bit uncomfortable when they spot them lurking in the back of the bathroom cabinet.

I joke, of course. I am no more going to stop using tampons than I’m going to start regularly washing my sheets. But that’s not because I don’t care what men think, it’s because I am 100% confident that most people don’t actually see this stuff as a ‘deal breaker.’

It’s only a bit of fun, GOTN, you idiot

I don’t mind people playing up to stereotypes a bit to get a laugh. I don’t even mind people being a bit shallow sometimes and joking that they couldn’t possibly go out with someone who couldn’t pick their dirty pants up off the bedroom floor. But what I do object to is when lazy journos assume that humans are about seven bajillion times more shallow than we actually are.

I’m far more likely to have dirty bedsheets and a cheap Ikea coffee table than some of the guys I’ve fucked. I’ve got ex-boyfriends who will rant about my inability to clean the bathroom. I’ve fucked guys who’ve had piles of dirty washing up, plugholes that look like they need to be shaved, and – on occasion – no fucking bedsheets whatsoever. And yet none of these things has ever been a ‘deal breaker’ – for me or for my open-minded shags.

We humans are a beautifully disgusting collection of weirdos, so why are we still reading lazy jokes that make us all look like predictable, automated arseholes?

Most people will see these things for what they are – there probably won’t be men reading it thinking ‘oh God, that’s me. I never have hand towels available, it’s no wonder I’m so miserable and alone.’ But there will be women whose friends joke that they need to ditch their cats before they can find a boyfriend. There’ll be girls who feel like they should buy nice cups and soft furnishings if they’re going to be a ‘proper’ grown-up. There’ll be boys who have a weird discomfort around tampons despite the fact that they’re actually – you know – a pretty fucking normal thing to have lying around the house.

Men are filthy, indolent slobs and women are collectors of pretty, homely things. Girls hate it when guys don’t put the toilet seat down, and guys hate it when girls menstruate. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Boys are blue, girls are pink. 

It’s a joke, I get it. It’s just a really fucking old one.

I fucking hate tickling.

Why the actual fuck is tickling portrayed as a sexy thing? I’ve seen so many films and books in which the gleefully happy couple engage in a spot of playful tickling that then leads to a sexy snog, or a fuck, and I find it unfathomable. Moreover, I’ve had guys try to initiate a good shag with me by pinning me down and gleefully prodding at my reflexive bits.

It ticks some of the hot boxes, sure – you’re getting close together, there’s physical contact. But that is absolutely and completely where it ends for me.

Why tickling is beyond horrible

Tickling is

a) aimed primarily at making someone laugh, which as far as I’m concerned has absolutely no place in the bedroom. If I’m fucking you and anything about that process induces laughter I’m liable to call the whole thing off and storm to the bathroom for an angry, solitary, straight-faced wank.

b) something that parents do to their children. Unless you want me to call you ‘Daddy’ then tickling will never be a prelude to me taking my knickers off.

c) painful. Yes, I know I’m laughing, but it’s a reflex thing. Tickling makes someone laugh, but for many people it is actually a phenomenally uncomfortable, horrible feeling. My mouth might be curved into a smile, my laughter ringing in your ears, but my eyes will be burning with the closest I ever come to genuine hatred.

d) really really fucking annoying. Power and control can be sexy, when it’s something that you’re voluntarily giving up to a person. But losing control simply because someone slightly stronger than you is poking you in places that you are physiologically incapable of not reacting to is about as sexy as a smear test. You’re not controlling me through the force of your will or because I’m so hot for you that I’ll submit to your command, you’re just making my body do things it has to do. You shouldn’t be proud of your achievement any more than you should be proud that my irises contract when you turn a bright light on.

Seriously, fucking stop it

Why do I feel the need to have this rant? Because ticklers don’t seem to know any of this. Ticklers find it hilarious to give me playful pokes in the ribs to watch me squirm or to punctuate a point they’re making. Ticklers will hold me down and giggle as I try to wriggle free. They’ll tickle me and think it’s hot that we’re writhing together, even though my writhing is involuntary. And they will interpret my reflexive laughter as enjoyment.

I cannot say:

“Haha, no, seriously. Haha, seriously this is so horrible. Haha oh please stop I hate it so much.”

Because it doesn’t sound serious then, does it? It’s hard to say a meaningful no through involuntary laughter, and it’s especially hard to explain that you hate it if someone’s misguided enough to believe they’re doing something playful and sexy.

Haha, no honestly stop it now

I know that some people like it. Some people enjoy the playfulness and the physicality. I don’t expect films and books to stop using tickling as foreplay any time soon, but what I would like is to see is at least one scene where person A initiates a quick tickle, and person B refrains from giggling, pushes A firmly away, and then proceeds to throw a righteous fucking shitfit.

It’d give a bit of balance. It’d show people that there’s diversity around tickling just as there’s diversity around who likes buttsex and whether or not you spit or swallow. It’ll show us that no matter how harmless, any specific type of physical contact will never have universal appeal. It’ll be beneficial not just to people like me who hate tickling, but to people who don’t like cuddling, who don’t like jizz on their face, who prefer not to be stroked or touched in other ways we usually assume are standard.

I’d like for it to always be OK to turn this sort of thing down – to articulate your preferences and have your partner actually listen. With something like buttsex they usually would. But for tickling? Not always. I’ve often told people I don’t like tickling only to be greeted with ‘haha, you love it though, don’t you, come here…’ followed by a repeat of exactly the irritating, painful twattery I’d just expressed a dislike for.

OK, it’s not the world’s greatest problem, but it annoys me. Because every time I get tickled the pain of the tickle and humiliation of laughing through the misery is compounded by the knowledge that when I say to the tickler afterwards “please never do that again” they’ll see the residual reflex-laugh flicker across my face and find it difficult to take me seriously.

So listen very carefully, observe my straight face and angry eyes and straightforward, serious tone:

If you ever ever tickle me, I will punch you in the mouth.

It’s a reflex thing.