Category Archives: Unsolicited advice
How to be the best boyfriend/girlfriend/partner/lover
When I do the washing up, I sing. It makes the chores less painful, and it means that for ten minutes or so, I can flush out the bit of my brain that won’t usually shut up: the bit that tells me I have a million things to do and that I shouldn’t be wasting time on showtunes.
Sometimes I can hit the high notes, and sometimes I wail off-key. The quality of the singing is not important: it’s about the fun.
And so, when my partner opens the kitchen door and pops in to put the kettle on, I need him to do something which goes against all of his immediate gut instincts at the time: I need him to not make me stop singing. No ‘cut it out’ gestures, raised eyebrows or putting his fingers in his ears: I need an absence of mockery or distaste. To not just to tolerate my fun, but to love it. He knows how to be the best boyfriend – he doesn’t have to sing along, or tell me I’m good enough to go on Xfactor (I’d be one of the people they feature in the ‘you’re having a laugh’ section early on in the show), because it’s not about the singing. He just has to love the things that make me happy, even if they make me look like a dick.
I appreciate that, when I’m halfway through the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack, that is no mean feat.
Sing like no one’s listening
It’s really important though, because if you can love my enthusiastic singing, you can love all the other bits of me that might be annoying or tricky or unphotogenic. The way I snore and talk in my sleep, the panicked way I run through the station to make sure we’re ten minutes early for a train, the way I come home late at night and fling my shoes across the room before lying face-down on the carpet.
The way I fuck.
If you want me to fuck you like I really really want to, I need to be comfortable that you’re going to embrace it. No ‘euurgh’s or ‘what the fuck?’s or ‘I don’t think you’re doing that right’s. Embracing and loving the weird things as well as the standard ‘suck dick, sit on cock, orgasm, high five‘ things.
Sometimes men ask me how they can find a woman who is kinky and imaginative and open to lots of new things in bed. I have a much much longer post coming on this at some point, but my initial gut reaction is to tell them this:
You may already know one, but it’s possible she doesn’t want to tell you about her passions. Maybe she wants to sing loudly in the kitchen. Maybe she wants to dance at that wedding. Maybe she wants to get naked and hump you with enthusiastic passion in the middle of the living room floor. But she’ll struggle to do any of these things if she’s heard you laugh too loudly when she’s fucked something up.
A long time ago someone asked me if he should tell his girlfriend that she was bad at giving blowjobs. No – God no. Never. Because saying ‘you’re bad at this’ is the exact opposite of encouraging. We get told all the time that certain things are ‘not good enough’ – as well-meaning friends and relatives take metaphorical red pens to half of our lives. Don’t tell someone what they’re doing wrong – tell them how to do it right.
‘I love it when you do X’ will always be more effective than ‘you’re bad at Y.’ Because if you hurt someone over Y, they’re unlikely to try Z.
How to be the best boyfriend (partner, lover, whatever)
So, what’s the most important quality in a partner?
I think it’s enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for me and what I do, even when I do it wrong. Enthusiasm for trying again, and failing again, and laughing together on the sofa. Being as comfortable with someone’s quirks as you are with their successes. Let me sing in the kitchen, lie face-down on the carpet when I’m drunk, and whisper my weirdest fantasies in your ear.
Syrupy e-cards encourage us to ‘dance like no one’s watching’, but we know that someone usually is. If you want someone to really open up about their deepest fantasies, their most exciting secrets, and all the fun they’ve dreamed of having, you need to smile even through their fuck-ups. Don’t wince, or groan, or imply that someone’s failure means they should never have tried, or that their fun is less important than the way they come across: enjoy the times when they let themselves go, and do something for the sheer, sparkling fun of it.
No matter how bad I am at it, make sure I always want to sing.
How to dominate a man – sexy ideas from an eager amateur
How the hell do I dominate a man? If your partner has any kind of submissive tendency, and if – like me – you’re enthusiastic yet clumsy when it comes to wielding a whip and calling someone a ‘filthy puppy’, at some point you may have heard the two most terrifying words in the English language:
“Surprise me.”
On sexy pictures, and shame
Yes, these are my tits. Not bad, eh? Or, realistically, nowt special, just your common-or-garden boobs, clad in cheap underwear and shot on a smartphone.
I get that boobs are pretty popular. As far as ‘popularity on the internet’ is concerned, they come second only to cats. Were it possible to combine the two, by placing a tiny kitten in my cleavage, I’d have done so.
Over the course of thirty years on this planet, I have sent fewer than ten naked or vaguely indecent pictures of myself to loved ones. Of those, only one of them included nipples, and one included cunt. I have no regrets about sending most of them – they’re relatively basic, utterly anonymous shots like the one I’ve posted here, and like the others that are scattered sporadically across this site. In short: should any of these turn up on the front page of the Daily Mail I won’t be spitting coffee over my laptop and begging for them to be burned.
But there are a couple I regret.
Sexy pictures I regret
The one I texted to a guy I had no intention of sleeping with again. I was drunk, and in the mood for someone relatively remote and distant. Some flirting, general horny chit chat, an early night with some of his personally-tailored smut and my own right hand. I got the smut, but only in exchange for a blurry, oddly-angled close-up of my fingers deep in my own vagina. The regrets come partly because I’m not 100% sure the guy will have kept it to himself, but mainly because I don’t even wank like that. It’s an inaccurate depiction of my own masturbatory habits, and thus I suspect one of the least sexy pictures I’ve ever taken.
The second one I regret wasn’t taken by me. Halfway through a particularly energetic fuck, in a position the guy clearly loved, he asked if he could take a picture of me. I said yes, and he did. Looking at the picture afterwards gave me a genuine jolt of delight. As one who generally thinks my body is wrong in all the classic ways, this pic surprised me by being a quickfire, candid, naked shot in which I actually felt I looked hot. The morning after I was walking on air: delighted at the slightly sore feeling of satisfaction after a delicious, no-strings fuck, and hugging myself in the knowledge that maybe I was sexy after all. Four hours later I found out that he hadn’t just shown me the photo – he’d sent it to half the people in his address book.
What am I ashamed of?
When people talk about naked pictures, one of the most common go-to emotions is shame – body shame, slut shame, the shame that comes from feeling like a dirty little fucker who should have known better than to let someone see your private bits. I think I’m so used to hearing about shame when naked pictures or videos are circulated that I find it hard to calculate what my actual feelings are towards the incidents above.
Sure, I’m angry – I’m angry because trust has been broken, or might be broken, or because the significance of my rare pic-giving hasn’t been fully appreciated. There’s perhaps a pinch of self-loathing in there too. Not only am I not the greatest fan of my own body, but smartphones are not the most flattering tool with which to show it off. I’ve often been tempted to send something, but given up after spending half an hour contorting in front of a mirror to make sure that my tits are in shot, my face isn’t, and my knickers sit just right without showing a bikini line shadow or an uncomfortable bulge of hip fat.
Sexy pictures aren’t shameful
I’m cool with feeling these things. They are, after all, my own emotions and mistakes and neuroses. Shame, though? I don’t want to own any shame. Shame isn’t the product of the photo itself, it’s the product of the reaction. Shame – like guilt – is one of those emotions that isn’t always mine. There are many times I’ve beaten myself up about a perceived slight, or an insensitive comment, and wanted to beg forgiveness then be swallowed by the ground forever. There are many more times when I’ve felt I was in the right – that my ‘insensitive’ comment was actually a fair and frank assessment of whether someone or other was an arsehole – but I feel guilt anyway because other people are telling me to. The first kind of guilt I own, because I actually feel it, whether it’s come about by my own navel-gazing or someone else highlighting a genuine fault. The second kind is one which is applied to me even though it baffles me.
Shame is the same. I can be ashamed of that time I got so drunk I could barely walk, and phoned a close friend to tell him I was being chased home by pizza delivery guys (I wasn’t, obviously – they have more important things to do), and although I still blush to think of it, I don’t feel any worse than I realistically deserve to.
Picture shame, though? That’s applied – projected onto us. It comes about because we’re used to people reacting with horror to the idea that we have body parts and desires and (yay technology!) the ability to send them to each other over the internet. The shame applied to sexy pictures isn’t one that comes from my own beliefs about what’s right, it comes from other people’s reactions.
So when people say “what would your mother think?” or “aren’t you worried your future children will be horrified by your sex blog?” what they’re actually saying is “don’t you feel ashamed?” Perhaps my answer should be “I might, but only if you make me.”
On questions I have asked my boyfriend
We all know that communicating about sex is vital. Whether it’s sending a hot email with your filthy plans for the evening, or asking your partner just how hard they want to be spanked, sex cannot possibly be fun unless you know which bits the other person likes.
And yet for some reason people laugh when I ask the burning questions.
Are you sad that you can’t fit your whole fist in me?
Is it nice if I keep sucking for a bit after you’ve come?
Do the ‘blow-job-imitating cock sheaths actually feel like a blow job?
For some reason I am known as one who irritates – even pesters – gentlemen I fuck about the deep details of their opinions on anything to do with sex.
What’s the best porn you’ve ever seen?
Have you ever warmed up a melon and then fucked it?
Or their bodies…
When you hold your dick to stop yourself pissing, does the semi mean you stop needing to go, or just that you can’t go?
Do you like the taste of your own spunk?
Can you tell the difference between this [wanks off with right hand] and this [wanks off with left hand]?
The truth is that, while a lot of these questions are there because I’m just tingling with curiosity…
Is it more fun to jizz loads in volume, or to jizz with force and power?
What’s better: coming inside me or coming on my tits?
Many of them are there because the very act of him answering turns me on. Watching his eyes glaze over as he considers the implications – the details – of each question I ask makes my blood run hot and my mind run into overdrive.
If I rub my cunt on your feet while I’m sucking you, does that put you off your own orgasm?
When we first got together, did you used to wank about me?
Do you still wank about me?
As I ask about it, I like to think about him doing it. And I know that while he may not share my fantasies, he’s more than happy to play along with them for a few minutes – to give me that delicious sense of sexual hope that comes from his temporary uncertainty about the answer.
Would you suck another dude off and let me watch?
Do you prefer to come on my tits or my arse?
What’s the most wanks you have ever had in a day?
And I know it can sometimes be trying…
No, but hypothetically, if you were going to suck another dude off and let me watch, which dude would you pick?
Or clumsy…
If you could get a hand job from anyone, would you rather someone with huge hands so they could envelop your cock, or tiny hands to make your cock look massive?
Or downright bizarre…
If we were having sex, and I turned into a zombie halfway through, would you keep going?
But I love asking questions – I love it. I love that despite the oddness of my pillow-talk investigations, he takes this shit seriously. No matter what I ask. Whether it’s weird hypotheticals…
Any kind of sex you want with just one person, or only blow jobs forever but from as many people as you like?
Would you rather never wank again but get shagged once a month, or never shag again but can wank as often as you like?
If I transported you back in time, blindfolded, to different sexual encounters, could you tell who you were fucking just based on the shape and feel of their cunt round your dick?
Ridiculous scenarios…
If you saw me in an Amsterdam window, how much would you pay for a shag?
What’s five Euros in British money?
Tittilating possibilities…
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever shoved up your arse?
Which of these x-rated Tumblr gifs is your favourite?
Tentative suggestions…
Your opinion on spunk bubbles?
Could you come just from me doing… this? [does ‘this’]
Or genuine concerns…
Do I taste different at different times of the month?
Have you ever woken up when I’ve been wanking next to you in bed?
I love the questions – I love the chat. From the sublime, through the terrifying, to the so-ridiculous-he-can-barely-give-an-answer. Because it’s not the questions themselves that matter – it’s the fact that I’m asking them. That I’m saying “hey, I’m really interested in this. I’m interested in you. Now please tell me everything you can about your penis.”
I know it gets irritating sometimes, and when it’s late at night and we’re lying in bed, and I have his dick in my hand, often the last thing he wants to do is engage in a surreal sexual game show.
Pizza or buttsex? Blowjobs or throatfucks? Nancy Botwin or Danaerys Targaryen?
But he answers. Because he knows that the best way to give me a window into his desires is to give me the rapid-fire answers to sexual questions. If you asked me what I like sexually I could write two thousand words that passably reflect what goes on in my head: the thrusting, aching, wet desire that covers all the things I truly love. He, on the other hand, would sit in front of a blank page for half an hour and eventually scrawl “tits” before throwing it into the bin. But neither of us would come close to really nailing the nuanced and subtle things that push us into arousal.
He answers my questions because the answers paint the picture that neither of us can fully do with words. Because alongside zombies, time-travel, spunk-force and Amsterdam windows, what I’m actually asking is:
What do you like?
And that’s my favourite question of all.
Note: All of these are genuine questions I have asked my boyfriend at one point or another. He helped me write the list for this blog post, and there were about a hundred more that didn’t make the final cut. If you have any questions you’d ask your partner, chuck them in the comments and let’s see if we can get different people answering them!
On celebrity crushes (part 1)
It’s been years since I got that teen-crush feeling. When I was younger my walls were plastered with celebrity crushes – mostly thanks to pages cut from Just 17 magazine (which, incidentally, was perfect for a thirteen year old but by the time I hit 17 seemed childish and disappointing). There were guys I fancied, guys I vaguely thought might be decent boyfriend material, and guys I’d stare at for hours imagining exactly how they’d come in for a kiss. Taj out of 3T had the best pre-kiss build up, if I remember my youthful fantasies correctly.