Girl on the Net

The hottest thing about you – and please make sure you hear me all the way out, because at first glance it might sound dismissive – is that you want to fuck me. That’s it. The best fucking thing. The red-hot fire in the gusset of my knickers right now: I just know that you definitely would.

You can keep your cool and aloof and your ‘will-they-won’t-they’: right now I want a man who’s hungry for it. Who looks up eagerly each time the pub door opens, hoping that it’ll be me. Hoping that I’ll look how he remembers.

A guy who, when asked ‘what do you see in her?’ instinctively wants to answer ‘my dick.’

I want a man with no chill. A man who spent last night lazily stroking his cock and idly wondering what songs he might put on as I knelt on the floor to suck it. A man who’s all hands and wide eyes and just-licked lips and jeans that get tighter when I stare him down and say ‘how about it?’

The hot thing about you, my friend, is that I don’t think I would even need to ask. There’d be no seduction or careful dance round possibilities. I know already: if you could, you would.

So the only question really is how to get you from the ‘yes’ that is thudding through your veins and to a place where you know it’s reciprocated. What possible thing could I do that would have the greatest impact? I want to hand you a matching parcel of joy – the one that comes when you realise how desirable you are in return.

I want to give you that sudden rush of realisation – that dicktwitch moment when you realise that I would too.

You would, I would, and neither of us will

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with a few guys who I know for a fact I can’t fuck. They’re attached monogamously, for instance, or they live outside the M25. There’s a guy on Twitter who occasionally sends me hot DMs, and this shy dude I bump into once or twice a year at events. Another guy who lives in a different country. A stranger that one of my friends flagged down for me. You get the idea.

When I was attached, flirting didn’t have the same kick. It felt safe and distant, only borderline relevant: like a note scrawled in the margin of a book which you can choose to ignore if you want to. But now that I’m single, even a purposeless flirt is suddenly imbued with excitement. In the absence of someone whose ‘yeses’ come regularly and clearly, I’ll gulp down the pleasure of reciprocated attraction from strangers. It doesn’t matter if a particular guy acts on that attraction, all that matters is that I reckon he would if he could.

When I get locked on and I’m in the mood, I’ll flirt wildly with whoever happens to be in my sights at the time, taking the anxious voice at the back of my brain which whispers ‘you look like a desperate slag‘ and crushing her into a box labelled ‘who gives a fuck?‘ She’s there for good reasons, of course: self-preservation learned in school when boys used to ask me out as a joke, or grimace if they had to kiss me during rounds of spin the bottle. Then cemented later in life by men who would pick apart my flaws in agonising detail. But inside us there are many different people – those who hold us back as well as push us forward – and this anxious, self-hating one could really do with taking a back seat a little more often. After all, what good does it do to remind yourself of what could go wrong if it stops you from chasing the things which could go right?

Truth is, I am a desperate slag.

I adore the feeling I get when I know someone fancies me too, even if we never get to act on it. I’ll happily wade through fifty ‘no thanks’ in order to reach that golden ‘fuck yes’, because the glow of knowing I’m wanted is a rare and powerful thing. And I’m not just hunting that joy for myself, I’m also dispensing it to the fanciable dudes around me. Even if we can’t fuck, they know I definitely would.

The joy of being flirted with

As a general rule, I don’t lean towards Domme. Power feels heavy and uncomfortable in my hands. But when it comes to flirting, I’ll waive this rule completely – I enjoy having power if I know how to use it for good – to give a dude that kick of ‘someone fancies me’ excitement. Turn on the full-beam headlights of my most tryhard flirting and make it clear to him that he’s wanted.

Look up at him from beneath my eyelashes over the rim of a pint, then smile the same smile I’d flash if I’d just made him come in my mouth. Tell him he smells good while we’re hugging and let myself trail off in a way that makes him wonder if I was about to elaborate further. Lean a little closer when he asks me a question, and whisper something under my breath, like we’re sharing a secret. Like the next thing I might whisper is ‘I want you.’

So send me a man who is thirsty. A guy whose reaction when I do this is ‘who… me?’

A guy who is intrigued by me, but doesn’t understand why he’d be intriguing in return. Someone who’s spent his life with that same voice in the back of his head that tells him he’s not good enough, and that no one will want him. Give me some power and I’ll use it to shut that voice up – at least for a while.

Send me a man like that, and let me drink in his wide-eyed surprise when he realises the flirting’s aimed at him.

Let me give him a shiny prize to take home at the end of the evening. Not a snog or a fuck or a promise for later, just the cast-iron certainty that he’s definitely desired. The knowledge that I would.

I fucking would.