Category Archives: Unsolicited advice
Win a ticket to Eroticon 2015 and help me write my talk
Forgive the meta-blog, this is one for other sex writers and bloggers, so if you’re just here for the filth or the ranting, check out a random archive post or two and normal service will resume on Sunday.
When I first started sex blogging, I didn’t really think it’d be a big thing. I thought I’d write some half-baked opinions and spit out some of the sexy stories that I was itching to tell people, and then one day I’d shrug my shoulders and just… well… stop. Then some people started reading it. They were joined by more people, and in the brief periods of time between writing a blog and worrying that it wasn’t any good, I managed to start doing things like writing articles for other websites, and a book, and other stuff.
Then I went to a conference in which loads of people gave me advice on how to be better, and it was amazing. It basically answered a whole bunch of questions I had about sex blogging, like ‘how do you get people to pay you to write about hot things on the internet?’ and ‘how do I pitch articles to people who have never heard of me before?’ To be honest, the only question that remained unanswered was ‘how much time do you spend masturbating?’
Are fetish club dress codes always necessary?
“Dear GOTN, despite the fact that you’re a grumpy arse for most of the year, I’d like to invite you to my birthday party…
Ooh! A party! How fun!
“It will be held on Saturday at 8pm…”
Yay! I’m free on Saturday! I can go!
“At this address…
I’ll find it on Gmaps. Oooh, I’m so excited!
“The fancy dress theme will be…”
Shit it, I’m not going.
(more…)
The tragedy of older women
I suspect this might be a first time this warning’s been put on a sex blog, but the following post contains spoilers for this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special. I promise you it’s relevant.
My Mum finds it hard to get served at the bar.
I’ve seen it happen: she’ll be there for twice as long as most other people. She waits, purse in hand, trying to catch the eye of the bar staff, and making sure that she’s standing assertively. She’s not shy or nervous, hanging back or offering her place in line to other people – she’s just there, prominent yet invisible. Unnoticed. And people around her – younger people, and older men, nip ahead and throw their orders in.
And she waits.
In defence of monogamy
Here is a can of worms. Please sit down, make yourself comfortable, and watch as I try to sort them into delicate piles without squishing any of them.
I’m in a monogamous relationship. For me, that means that my partner and I both lust desperately after other people, but we try not to do anything about it, save sighing and making the odd comment about how beautiful those other people are.
When I tell people this, often they’re surprised, and some of them make efforts to persuade me that I really should consider opening up my relationship. That it’d be healthier if my guy and I could see other people, or that polyamory is actually the best course of action for everybody in the human race. I like the sound of it: I do. I like the idea that there’s a hell of a lot of love in the world, and you get to share lots of different kinds of love with lots of different people.
Thing is, I’ve tried it, and it sucks for me. It really sucks. I get jealous, angry, upset, and anxious. I feel worthless. My rational brain tells me that he can fuck other people without it having any bearing on how he feels about me, and that if he goes for a drink with a girl he fancies with a view to potentially snogging her at the end of the evening, that act itself isn’t sapping any of the fun or love that he and I share together.
Unfortunately, my irrational brain is a tedious Iago – piping up and screeching “I like not that!”, and ruining everyone’s fun.
How to initiate sex with your partner
When I was young I thought sex was probably quite a rare occurrence. From what I’d seen on TV and in films, it looked like sex within a straight, long-term relationship involved a fair amount of rigmarole. You have to shave your legs, wash your hair, put on makeup and look seductive. If you’re a dude you’ll probably have to do a different kind of groundwork: snuggling in front of a film, and inching your arm along the back of the couch painstakingly slowly until it finally comes to rest on one of your partner’s breasts.
I’ve never seen a TV couple start fucking the way we usually do.
“Do you want to shag? We haven’t done it for a while.”
Or seduce each other with the kind of lines you can only get away with if you know the answer will be ‘why not?’
“Do you want to touch my freshly-shaven cunt?”