Girl on the Net

Despite the best efforts of cinema and TV to convince us human beings can be smooth in seduction, most of the time we’re as ham-fisted at that as we are at everything else. Flailing around and trying to act cool when really we’ve no idea what the actual fuck we’re doing. Which is why it’s lovely to encounter someone who manages to pull off a smooth transition: from hanging out to making out, with no pissing about in the middle.

As a sex blogger, I have a feeling I’m expected to be good at that transition. Taking someone from ‘chit chat’ to ‘frotting eagerly against me on the sofa’ using just a raised eyebrow and the perfectly-tailored sentence. In reality, I’m quite shit at it. My ex used to playfully tell me off for being terrible at foreplay, because my idea of ‘foreplay’ was turning to him and saying ‘please can you put it in me?’ without so much as a hand on his thigh for warm-up.

Now that I’m single, I’m trying to get better at doing it, but I still fall far short of where I’d like to be. In the moment, what I usually do is make a few jokes that border on ‘risqué’ then try and turn the chat to something horny (the last time the two of us shagged, for instance, or asking him questions about something he might find hot) then see if he picks up the hint and leaps upon me.

This helps me banish the nerves that are still lingering from my past life: I’m naturally quite a direct person, but I’ve learned to be wary of being too forthright in case that’s not what’s called for. It’s hard to let my ‘let’s fuck now’ confidence out of the box even if I know that new and different people might like it. On top of this, there’s a power imbalance in some of my interactions that I’m still struggling to get to grips with: some men can’t quite shake the fact that I’m GOTN, and turning down a shag from GOTN has implications that I think might influence them in a yes-wards direction, even if their horn is in more of a ‘no’ place right now. Tl;dr – I don’t want to pressure men into saying ‘yes’ to sex by hurling a direct question into their face too early into the evening.

I’m meant to be good at communication, though, so I try. But so far I’m not even half as good as some of the men I’ve been shagging.

From hanging out to making out

I’m with a guy I know quite well, and he’s only just arrived at mine. He’s had a long journey, and is probably quite knackered, so I’m not going to leap on him the second he gets indoors because he’ll need time to wind down first. I’m not entirely sure he’ll be up for shagging at all, to be honest, so I’ve banished my libido firmly into a locked cupboard at the back of my mind that says ‘HAVE PATIENCE’ and so far she’s been a good girl.

So we sit and chat and we have a couple of drinks, and I try not to think too hard about his dick. Then at one point, he just flat-out tells me:

“I’m up for sexy stuff at any point this evening, by the way. I just thought I’d let you know so that if you want to as well you can pick your moment and know it’ll be well received.”

YES. I cannot express just how awesome this was to hear. There’s a moment of tension relief when you realise you’re not the only person in the room thinking about fucking, as well as a rush of joy when you learn you’re about to get fucked. The calm, measured certainty with which he said this was absolutely masterful.

Shall we…?

Different dude, different evening.

We were hanging out at his place, sitting on the sofa having chats that occasionally dipped into the vaguely horny. I, still avoiding directness but desperately keen to get shagged before too long, was doing my best trying to steer the conversation to sexier topics and revelling in the youthful thrill of getting a bit wet each time he put one of his hands on my knee. Thinking, but not saying, ‘God I really hope we get to fuck soon,’ and trying to see if I could get a read on whether his dick was getting hard.

There’ll be some of you thinking ‘why didn’t she just SAY, for fuck’s sake?’ and you’d probably be right. But the reasons listed above, plus a few others that are specific to my past dates with this guy, combined to make me keep my mouth shut and not just blurt out ‘please please please put it in me!‘

No matter, though, because he was on top of it. At one point, during a brief lull in the conversation, while my skin was still tingling from his hand on my thigh and my cunt doing much the same from the horny chat we were having, he turned to me and said:

“Are we going to have sex? Because I’ve got a real semi…”

To which my response, before he’d even uttered the rest of the sentence, was:

“Oh my GOD yes.”

Then I pounced.

Wait, no – he pounced.

OK, we both pounced.

There’s a reason I don’t write these things as ‘how to’ guides: not everyone’s going to respond to the same moves in the same ways. Your approach, chat-up, shift to making out, or whatever it is you’re doing to try and escalate, is never going to come from the pages of a book or a tip left on a sex blog. It needs to be something that works for the person you’re with, and feels natural for you too. Since I drafted this blog post over a month ago, I’ve had other amazing transitions from hanging out to making out: some more subtle (a hand brushing something from my hair and telling me he wants to kiss me) and some entirely devoid of words at all (I took a step towards him, and he took a tiny step to face me – squaring up like we might either fuck or fight. We did not fight).

I find these transitions searingly hot, in part because they’re so difficult. In the early stages of getting to know someone, there is no easy way to transition from hanging out to making out which doesn’t risk awkwardness, embarrassment or rejection. Sometimes when I talk about consent, angry dudes comment to say that they can’t possibly ask for sex, because what if their partner says no??? To which I can only really reply: that’s the point, you bellend. That’s so obviously the point. A good transition/approach/move – whatever you want to call it – can only be hot if you’re ready to accept ‘no’ for an answer. When someone puts their moves on me, the excitement of knowing that we might just fuck now is greatly enhanced by the flattering knowledge that they like me enough to take a bit of a risk. The transition is hot not just because you might get to have sex in a minute, but also because you’re putting yourself out there – being willing and eager to risk rejection – to let this person know that you want them.