Girl on the Net

Note: this post will seem screamingly self-indulgent unless you care about the minutiae of my life. It’s a piece about my hopeful heart, and some behind-the-scenes updates from the last couple of months. If you like that sort of thing, you’ll like this. If you don’t, please go read the porn instead for now, and pop back on Sunday for something more fun than navelgazing.

A long time ago, one of my Patreons asked me: do you ever get embarrassed? It’s a question I’ve been thinking on for at least two years, and as I ponder it I’ve written three or four different answers that are all stuck in draft. The short answer is yes, I sometimes get embarrassed. For instance if I write something clumsy that doesn’t do justice to the person who inspired it, or if I say something that, on reflection, I realise is ignorant or hurtful. But the main things I write on the blog – sex stories, love stories, earnest posts about friendship and connection – are not a source of embarrassment no matter how intimate they are, or how silly they might make me seem to an audience of strangers. I don’t think I’m ever truly embarrassed about telling you the things that bring me joy. I have a hopeful heart, and I want to fill it with love and sex and pleasure and fucking fun. Then when it’s full of all these things I like to let that joy spill out in public. I had an amazing shag; I fell in love with a boy; I came up with a cool new story to wank to… whatever.

Even the posts in which I get butt plugs stuck up my arse or chewing gum stuck in other places rarely make me blush for very long: by the time I hit ‘publish’ I’ve made peace with my mistakes, so all that’s left are the jokes or lessons learned or warm feelings about whoever I shared that experience with. I think the original question was primarily aimed at sex – do I get embarrassed when talking about sex? But that’s one area where I categorically don’t. Shame and embarrassment comes (and should come, I think) from hurting people: behaving in ways that are cruel or thoughtless. I can’t feel foolish for chasing sex or love, even when I do that very badly.

As I run around like a headless chicken, chasing love year in year out, I’ve definitely stayed with men far longer than I should have done, allowing my hopeful heart to dream about a future that my rational brain knows is not possible. I’ve embarked on (or returned to) relationships that others might have predicted would end in pain for one or both parties. And I’ve definitely leapt in with both feet far too soon if a hot man deigns to be nice to me. Hope is at the root of so many of my mistakes, I think. As I bet it is for many of you too. We cling to people who maybe we shouldn’t because the hope is there that they’ll live up to our expectations (or perhaps their promises, or our combined dreams), even in moments when that yearning seems naïve and optimistic. But how else can we build on the foundations of love if we don’t lean a little on our optimism and naiveté? We plough on, hopeful as fuck, because love is compelling. As fellow sex writer Emilia Romero said on Twitter recently: we show up with our dickhead hearts, every single day.

The Plot

Although these days the vast majority of traffic to this sex blog comes because people search ‘audio porn’, I know that there’s a group of you who are at least a little bit invested in the story. The misadventures my hopeful heart drags me into. The fates of the poor men who appear here, in the low-ratings, low-budget soap opera that is my romantic life. I used to jokingly refer to that category of the blog as ‘Plot’ but I have now – disgracefully, like a wanker – started earnestly framing it that way in genuine, real-life conversations (check me out doing it over on JM Seaborn’s podcast, Written in Kink). Because ‘The Plot’ is no longer just my life, it also gets repackaged and reused and becomes a core part of my work.

I have considered, in the past (shudder with me, for this job has truly made me the narcissist I always threatened to become) drafting a page for the ‘about’ section that’s something like ‘the story so far’, giving links to key ‘plot’-related posts so new blog readers can catch up on the backstory. There’ll be an overview of the ‘characters’ so you understand that when I refer to ‘Bracelet Game’ you know I mean a man who was as gentle a soul as he was brutal a fuck, and that ‘Toyboy’ refers to a guy who was briefly my subby little bitch. ‘Jess’ is one of my best friends: a funny, wise, sexy-beyond-comprehension woman with whom I’ve done a few Patreon interviews (and a little bit of sex as well if you’re interested). People can read backstory on what I mean when I mention ‘my big break-up’, read a few amazing things about that guy, from posts spanning an entire decade, and if you like you can even jump back really far in time and see the hopeful-hearted post in which I first realised I was in love with him. You know: The Plot.

I’m not embarrassed about these posts either, by the way. It might seem cringe to some people, but I really love writing Plot. As the saying goes: joy shared is doubled, sorrow shared is halved. Spilling my sadness out helps me process and digest it, so by the time I hit publish on a post aimed at making you cry, my own tears will be starting to dry out already. The fun ones feed my excitement, too: you might read about a hot fuck I had with a relative stranger even as real-time me falls in love with that same man ten dates later. You’ll get to hear an argument just as we’re patching things up, or see advice that I’ll be merrily breaking even as you digest the words on the page.

If you’re reading this post, and you’re up-to-date on The Plot, at the time you pick the story up you’ll probably think I’m nursing a broken heart, because in the summer I split up with Hot Punk Guy.

Real life versus the blog

It fucks me up a little bit, this job. This repackaging of events into bite-sized stories, and commitment to broader narrative arcs that reflect real-life love and loss. I’m not complaining: I enjoy it, and it definitely fucks me up less than the office job I used to have where senior managers bullied me and I spiralled into truly dark places. But the act of curating my life online has definitely given me some odd and uncomfortable feelings. Sometimes – like the time I got stealthed – I find myself biting my tongue because I’m waiting for the right moment (and the perfect words) to tell you something important. Other times I find myself choked up because I want to capture something that means a lot to me and nothing I write seems good enough to do it justice. I go a bit mad during these times, I think. Madder than usual. Anxious and spiky and nauseous and on edge. I’ve become so used to turning everything into a story, parts of my life don’t feel real until I’ve written them down. This or that man doesn’t exist until I’ve introduced him to you. This or that incident can’t be a genuine trauma that deserves time and care, because I haven’t written it up for the fucking blog yet, so did it even happen?

I write a lot of notes to try and deal with this. I have ‘diaries’ that essentially consist of blog posts that can never be published. When I broke up with HPG and told you I wouldn’t explain why, a few kind people replied to tell me not to worry: I don’t owe you an explanation, and you can trust that I wouldn’t have done it unless I had to. That’s true, and a lovely sentiment, but what I didn’t say at the time – what I thought might be a little crass to say – is that secretly I do want to tell you this stuff, as I desperately wanted to tell you why things broke down with my big ex in summer 2020. It’s not that I want to stick the boot in, I just don’t know how to process things unless I’m writing them down. I can’t churn out new stories until I’ve told you the old ones, and it’s so much easier to write things down if I think there’s an audience who cares (note to self: definitely one to address at some point in therapy).

Back to embarrassment, then. If I were to go into detail about any given break up, those posts absolutely would turn out to be embarrassing. Not only would they be hurtful to the men in question, they’d also be untrue: the reasons we part ways from people are only ever our fraction of the truth, filtered through a lens of anger or sadness or disappointment. What’s more, time allows us to heal and process, and as we do that our perspective changes. Anger might be replaced by regret, bitterness by cosy nostalgia. I am confident that if I’d told you, in 2020, why I broke up with my ex, I’d look back on those posts today and blush so hard I burst into fucking flames.

Maybe the reason I don’t get embarrassed about what I write is that I always try to focus on the good. Posts that are written from my hopeful heart are always more likely to see the light of day than ones which were drafted when my angry head took over.

Which is why, although I can’t tell you the reasons I broke up with Hot Punk Guy back in June, I am not embarrassed to tell you we got back together.

Doing Stuff

One of the things I love about him – that we love about each other – is that we do stuff. We are not a Netflix-and-chill couple, we say ‘yes’ to invitations and each other’s random ideas. One of the reasons I originally found HPG so compelling was that he was willing to do stuff with me. Not just sit on the sofa showing me his favourite TV shows so I could smile and nod along, but make plans for exciting things we could do together in future.

In arguments, too, he’s not one for empty promises – he does stuff to try and fix things. The first big row we had left me reeling and sad, and in the wake of it I did what I always do which is fling a lot of words at the problem. I sent him an email of (I shit you not) over 4,000 words, truly convinced that if he understood how I felt then this problem might disappear. I know! I am fucking exhausting! But explaining myself and being heard matters a lot to me. He’s not the same, but his approach sometimes complements mine. His response was to read all my words and then offer action: “How about instead I just do… this?”

Fast forward to this summer, when we broke up. There is (of course) this ache of longing for him that I’m trying to crush down and ignore. You have to do that, when you split up with someone: ignore your heart and focus on your head and allow yourself to mourn the end of it all. That’s what I aim to do, anyway. I’m a big advocate of ‘no contact’ with an ex because the more they’re in front of you the harder it is to haul your hopeful heart away and towards a different future.

But yeah, my hopeful heart. It dwelt on things that I should have been forgetting: how funny he is, how beautiful his hands are… his outrageously sexy tattoos. His kink for intimacy, and how powerful it feels on the precious occasions when he really opens up. All the plans we’d made to Do Stuff with each other: rate pubs and take trips and go on silly adventures like heading to Thorpe Park mid-week when the kids are at school so we could get on all the coasters without queuing. I missed the way we’d support and encourage each other in our weird, beautiful jobs. I lamented the fact that I was struggling to think of anything horny to write that didn’t centre the connection I’d shared with HPG in particular… ah fuck.

We met up, after a while, and he was very eager for me. I’m a sucker for that, as you’ll know if you’re one of those people who cares about Plot. The thing most likely to melt my hopeful heart is a man who shows that he really wants to be in it. It turns out that while I was trying to move on, Hot Punk Guy was doing something. So when he turned up, eager as fuck, telling me all about the thing he was doing and how this made a difference to what we could be as a couple, I realised I was looking for an excuse to do exactly what my hopeful heart wanted.

This isn’t the full story, of course. There were lots of tentative steps. Questions and caution and uncertainty. At one point he asked:

“Are you sure about this?”

And I didn’t really know how to answer. Because honestly… is anyone ever sure? Do we ever, as adults who are well-versed in our mistakes, embark on relationships with 100% confidence that this one’s definitely right? I don’t. I haven’t had that kind of misplaced certainty since I was sixteen years old. Every new relationship started, or old one reignited, has always come with a big fat question mark. Is this going to cause more pain? Is the joy in this moment worth the heartache later? After all, we do sometimes cling to people when it’s safer to let go because hope is incredibly powerful. We want to believe that this will live up to expectations, promises and dreams. Whether that’s a promise that we’ll be kinder or better at communication, or a mutual dream to go on a date where we ride all the best Thorpe Park rollercoasters. We plough on, hopeful as fuck, because love is compelling.

In the end I replied to his question by explaining the obvious truth: I’m here because I want what we talked about. When you strip out all the anxiety and uncertainty, what lies at the heart is a feeling. I’m here because I feel hope. And want. And yearning.

As Emilia Romero might put it: I choose to show up with my dickhead heart. Please try hard not to break it.

I won’t tell you any more about the conversations that led us from miserable silence to getting back together, but I will tell you that the other day… we went to Thorpe fucking Park! And although some of my friends have (kindly, lovingly) asked questions to make sure I’m not walking headfirst back into heartbreak, when I sent round a photo of the pair of us grinning on Nemesis Inferno, they were pleased to see us so happy.

So yeah. Hot Punk Guy is back. And we’re doing stuff again: we have a list! It covers a lot of bases, from ‘all you can eat wings’ to ‘role play a chat-up in a hotel bar like we’re strangers’. Plus a whole bunch of horny ones too, of course, not least of which involves some pretty big plans for my strap on. I think that’ll please the people who are mainly here for porn, as I hope this post has satisfied those of you who’re interested in Plot.

There’s one final thing I want to say before I get back to the smut. A few weeks ago, he and I were discussing my weird job and how the act of not writing about him was choking me. Stories untold, Plot un-explained, backstory and detail that I wanted to get on the page but hadn’t yet managed to articulate. I was eager to re-introduce him, but I hadn’t yet found the right words. He surprised me by saying that he felt a little relieved.

“I’m worried you’ll feel pressured to stay with me,” he said. “If you write about us getting back together, you might think you’re stuck with this choice because you’ve told everybody on the blog now. I don’t want you to stay with me because you’re embarrassed to break up again.”

And oh, oh, oh. Fucking hell.

If you’ve read this far and you’ve paid close attention, I hope you know (as he now does) that this won’t ever be a problem. Shame is reserved for careless, hurtful acts, I’ll never be ashamed of feeling hope. If we split up next week, I won’t regret writing this today. He could dump me five minutes after I publish and I still won’t feel embarrassed.

It fucks me up a little bit, this job. Things don’t always feel real until I’ve shared them. So I’d tell you this chapter of the story no matter how it played out: good, bad, indifferent. Success or abject failure. Blissful romance, clusterfuck heartbreak or anything in between. And I don’t care if that makes you cringe, I won’t be embarrassed.

I’ll show up with my hopeful heart, every single day.