Girl on the Net

If someone were to ask me what I bring to the table, sex-wise, I wouldn’t mention specific parts of my body. My body is fine, my hair is fine, my clothes are basically clothes. I like to think I’ve got a pretty filthy grin, but apart from that my physicality is nothing to either write home or pen a strongly-worded letter of complaint about. So if we’re having sex, what I’m bringing to the party isn’t my body, it’s my attitude. To be blunt: my enthusiasm.

Laying aside the occasional foray into the delights of pretending-to-be-asleep-while-you-fuck-me, broadly I am hungry for your dick. My enthusiasm comes from a place of genuine, heartfelt gratitude if you happen to be willing to give it to me. Unfortunately for me, my enthusiasm is also something of my downfall. Because enthusiasm and desperation smell very much alike.

I have heard it said that while the worst thing for a man to be is ‘creepy’, the worst thing a woman can be is ‘desperate’. This runs through so much of the advice I’ve been given throughout life: play hard to get, don’t text too much, be chill. Be cool. Don’t make him a birthday cake with ‘please fuck me in the ass’ iced on top of it. I hate it, frankly. The trope, not the cake. Cake is good! Please bend me over the kitchen table and shove my face in it while you anally fuck me.

Enthusiasm is good

Unpicking the trope of ‘desperation’ has to begin by acknowledging that enthusiasm is good. Those of us who like fucking can all agree that doing it with someone who loves it as much as we do is pretty much the best you can get. Fuck off with your cool and aloof and your hard-to-get and ‘maybe I’ll fuck you, but only if you ask me really nicely.’ The best shags are the ones that all participants ache for, and although there are many different ways to adapt the tone of a fuck (dialling up and down the status of each individual to create cool power-imbalance scenes, for instance, or actively leaning in to the red-hot ‘bored and ignored’ genre), no one really wants to shag someone who’d rather be elsewhere.

So enthusiasm: good. But ‘enthusiasm’ is so often the absolute antithesis of cool.

Why, then, are we encouraged to feign ‘coolness’ to get people to fuck us in the first place? The story goes that if I want a man to want me, I have to play the coquette. Run two steps away, then take a tentative half-step back towards him to try and encourage him to chase. Make him think that capturing me is a challenge, because if I just stand naked in his living room with ‘free slut, help yourself’ written in biro on my tits, he might think the whole thing’s a little too easy to bother with. But counterpoint: I think that’d be hot. And I don’t really know how to go about hinting at its hotness while also appearing aloof. It’s hard to beg for cock while maintaining an aura of chill.

What I’m saying, really, is if you want to have fun in bed…

Sucks to be cool

I hate cool. I hate it with a passion. And if you like, feel free to chalk this up to a hatred born of never having been it. Even when I was a teenage goth, and genuinely thought I was cool, those around me who were better qualified to judge (i.e. the kids in the sporty groups who had shinier, swishier hair) would have laughed at you for even suggesting it. So it’s easy for me to tell you, from my lucky position of World’s Most Desperate Loser, that cool doesn’t matter. It’s OK for me, I’m enlightened. I wear jeans with holes rubbed in the thighs and badly-applied eyeliner and literally the same clothes almost every day. I have spent more of my life listening to Radio 4 than dancing in nightclubs. I own a pair of Crossrail-branded trainers, box fresh because I will only wear them when the line finally opens and I can take my equally nerdy train-loving friend on it for a Crossrail launch picnic.

The really annoying thing is that I think sometimes I slip into ‘coolness’ by accident. I am dismissive or aloof not because I try to be, but because I’m really busy, and it’s hard to maintain a constant stream of texts to willing men when I’m busy living the life in which I’m hoping they’ll join me to bang. As I explained to a gentleman recently, I will absolutely suck at replying to your texts sometimes, when you amount to no more than pixels and promises, but when you’re actually here beside me, I’ll be present. Available. Not constantly playing on my phone, but eagerly thirsting for your cock. I say this not to pretend I’m cool, more to highlight the fact that cool can sometimes creep in, even when you don’t want it to. In order to live happy lives, we must remain vigilant at all times, and avoid falling into the trap that is ‘cool.’

If enthusiasm is what makes you good in bed, then cool is the death of sex. Cool is arm’s length and sneery. It rolls its eyes at your sex playlist and makes comments about that spot on your bum. Cool’s the pressure you put on yourself to look good in the heat of the moment, ruining your own orgasm because you don’t want to pull a silly face. Enthusiasm leaps into your bedroom, naked and lubed up and begging ‘please please fuck me’, while Cool swaggers in with one eyebrow raised and makes you twirl on the spot for assessment before it will deign to say ‘yes.’

Don’t be cool, be desperate

If I fancy you, I am probably not just ‘eager’, but actively desperate for your cock. Desperate for you to fuck me like it’s punishment. Desperate for you to place one hand firmly on the back of my neck and stare into my eyes as you call me a dirty girl. In thirsting so hard for it, I’ll turn some people off, and that’s OK. The kind of people who want to fuck a cool girl would never have lasted more than a couple of rounds in bed with a slag like me anyway. Far better, I think, to slough off the baggage of the word ‘desperation’ and embrace it with open arms and legs. Don’t let the people I’m fucking walk away without a compliment. And definitely never let them leave without fully understanding that I’m grateful.

Important note, that I wish I didn’t have to add but I definitely do because this is the internet: when I say ‘be desperate’, I obviously don’t mean go chasing chasing chasing after someone who isn’t receptive. I mean, once you’re in the room with someone – in their thoughts and pants and mind and wherever else – don’t hold back. When you meet people you like, tell them why you like them. Compliment your friends and peers and lovers, whenever you get the chance. If you’ve got something nice to say, for fuck’s sake say it as soon as is humanly possible, because life is short and people are fragile, and it’s always better to bring them a shining drop of joy than it is to try and impress them with your restraint.

Enthusiasm is the priceless look on a guy’s face once when I handed him a cup of tea and asked, as he took the first sip: “when you’ve finished your tea, do you want to come in my mouth?” It’s the way he immediately spluttered tea and then – oh God the HOTTEST FUCKING THING – slowly put the cup down onto the coffee table, like ‘no I am immediately done with tea and I need to come in your mouth now’. How he half-stood up, like ‘well if you’ve offered to let me come in your mouth there is no way I’m wasting a single second on tea, I am locking this shit down on the off-chance any hint of aloofness will make you change your mind.’ It’s memories of enthusiasm like this that keep me warm at night, and I don’t ever want to knowingly miss the chance to hand some of that joy to someone else. Because yeah… with this guy… I still carry huge regret that I missed the opportunity to ask him to fuck me in the ass via birthday cake icing.

So yes, call me desperate. Call me slutty and silly and eager and pitiful and thirsty. Tell me that I am ‘too much’ (because I am, I really am, and that’s OK it’s OK), or frown at me when I gush, in the afterglow, about how grateful I am for the fuck that you gave me. But please don’t expect me to be cool, my friend. Not when there’s dick to be sat on.