I hate spiders. They terrify me to the point of irrationality. I’ve barged people out of the way to escape them, reflex-kicked my bare feet at walls, and fallen off beds when I suspect there’s one near the headboard. This fear pisses me off, but it’s so guttural and instinctive I doubt I can do much about it. I live with it, because it’s not like I’ll get rid of all the spiders any time soon, and besides – they’re relatively easy to avoid if I have kind friends ready with a glass and a square of paper to hand.

Fear is easy to live with if you rarely have to confront it. But every now and then it ends up confronting me, and I realise that I wasn’t being a big brave girl all along, I was just avoiding something that was so enormous and terrifying I didn’t dare to face it.

I fear being naked.

Body-image and irrational terror

That might sound like a weird confession coming from a sex blogger: I have loads of sex, and I’m frequently naked. But despite getting my kit off on a regular basis, I haven’t combated the fear, I’ve just been finding cunning ways to avoid it. Like the time when I put a mug over a huge spider and left it on my kitchen floor for a week – I’ve dealt with the immediate problem, but the problem still festered away.

When I was carefree and fucking lots of different guys, I’d spend long hours shaving legs and armpits and crotch, plucking stray hairs from random places on my body, sucking my stomach in and avoiding cake. It didn’t make me fear nakedness any less, it just gave me a temporary stay on the hatred I felt for my body. Being naked with guys was vital to my happiness, and being attractive seemed like an impossible goal, but one I should strive for nonetheless. I could be… not gorgeous or stunning exactly just… prettier. Better.

Since I got into a relationship, my fear and hatred of my own body has been dulled. He loves it, so I try to ignore the whispering voice in the back of my head that says it’s just not good enough. Again, though, this isn’t really dealing with the problem any more than putting a mug over a spider will magically send it outside.

Getting my tits out in public

It was hot on the beach. Not the kind of wet-picnic, blue-lipped misery you’d get in Britain, but glorious, blue-sea hot like you get in those glossy holiday brochures. It was also one of those beaches where most people are topless. I was fascinated. These were alien creatures with a philosophy I could barely comprehend – people for whom the fear of tan lines was far greater than the fear of getting their tits out. In fact, looking at the way some of them were strolling around with ice creams, I had a sneaking suspicion that these people weren’t scared of nakedness at all. Imagine. Watching women walk around nearly nude in public gives me similar cowardly envy as watching the playful kids at school pick up daddy-long-legs with their bare hands.

I took my top off in the sea.

Not properly off – it was wrapped around my wrist, tightly like a security blanket. Just in case the tide should suddenly rush out and I was left standing there in half a bikini and an invisible blanket of shame.

“You look awesome,” he said. And “I want to touch you.” And, oh, a million variations on this: you’re beautiful, sexy, hot. I love you. I love the way you are. I love your body. Professing his desire for something that I’ve only ever felt disdain for.

And I wanted to say ‘thanks.’ I’d have loved to do what my mother taught me, and accept a compliment with grace. But I couldn’t do better than a choking, angry “fuck off.” Because he can’t love my body, of course – it’s awful. Horrible. Monstrously wrong and different and bad and appalling.  Just as no one can ever really want a pet tarantula – they just get them to show other people how brave they are. How cool. How unusual. My irrational, fearful self knows this with the blind conviction of someone who is almost certainly wrong.

“We should go to a nudist beach.”

“Hell no.”

“We don’t have to. It’s just… well… it might be fun.” He grinned. “I know you’re nervous, but what if we did it together?”

So we did it together. Shaking with fear and sweating under the flimsy layers of cotton summer clothes, I followed him to a place where it wasn’t just OK to be naked, it was expected. Embraced. The whole thing seemed absurd to me – the idea that people would enjoy being naked more than they liked being clothed. This wasn’t just a practical response to tan lines, it was a genuine love of something that made me nauseous with dread. It wasn’t a fear of being judged – how could I possibly pass judgment on a stranger when the hollow ache of my own terror is rendering me insensible? And how could they possibly pass judgment on me when I couldn’t imagine them having anything other than the same ridiculous worries?

I didn’t fear these people. I feared myself. I feared my body.

Just get over it

This week, the amazing @ArchedEyebrowBR blogged on Summertime body shaming. She highlighted the ludicrous simplicity of the idea that in order to get a bikini body you just have to ‘get a bikini and put it on your body’. Of course it’s not that easy. It’s definitely not that easy for me. Because although my rational mind wants to stamp out all the body-shaming, all the self-loathing and misery, it’s not just a case of ‘forgetting about it’ or ‘getting over it.’

If it were that easy I’d have done it already. I’d have embraced the fact that – in truth – my body isn’t monstrous or horrible or any kind of enemy: it’s actually fine. Sometimes fatter, sometimes thinner, sometimes hairier or paler or bruised for no apparent reason. That would be the rational thing to think, and I know right now that it is the truth in the same way as I know right now that spiders are more scared of me than I am of them, and it’s not like we live in Australia or anything where the little fuckers can kill you with a single bite.

But self-loathing isn’t rational, or easily brushed aside.

With the sun shining, my boy whispering words of kind encouragement, I got ready to do it. I set my brain to work overdrive in ‘rational’ mode, telling me that my body was gorgeous and my concerns were unnecessary, that no one was looking and no one cared and those that did look would probably be smiling. Finally, eventually, I took off my bikini. Hooray for me! Well done! I overcame my fear of being naked! What a happy ending!

Once it was off, I lay naked for ten minutes sobbing face-down into a beach towel.

I’m not saying I’ll always be like this, or even that I’m guaranteed to be like this – on a good day with a fair wind and a happy outlook I’ll probably be less tearful and more strident. Nor am I saying that anyone else should be like this, or should feel obliged to get over it if they are. All I’m saying is that it’s hard. It’s harder than I make out sometimes, when I write rational, angry blogs about what is not wrong with you. It’s harder than just ‘getting confident’ or ‘ignoring your worries’ or ‘facing your fears’. I’m saying that I’ve stamped on a few, but there are still a million spiders. Sometimes I worry that there always will be.

I’ve been lax in my sex blogging, for I have not yet mentioned that May is National Masturbation Month. It’s nearly over, so presumably as soon as it has finished we’ll all put away any sex toys we might have lying around, pull up our trousers and get on with our lives. Until then, though, I thought I should mark the occasion.

I’ve had a long and joyous relationship with wanking. From initial ecstatic delight when I realised I could make myself come through my jeans through to weary defeat at the end of a day ‘working from home‘ in which the only work I had successfully completed was giving myself a sore shoulder and a tingling clit. I am, if nothing else, a complete and utter wanker, and I have been for all of my adult life. But in the very beginning I didn’t realise just how varied, joyous, and interesting wanking could be.

When you’re sitting at a computer screen with one hand down your jeans and a shining strand of drool dangling from your lips to your keyboard, it’s easy to forget that wanking isn’t always something simple, or functional. Fuck it, it isn’t even always solo. So, composed just after my most recent hand shandy, here’s a Brief History of My Thoughts on Wanking.

Pre-masturbation

People don’t really do that, do they? It sounds a bit weird and not particularly fun. Don’t they have any good books to read instead?

Initial discovery of masturbation

Holy Christ on a cock horse, this is what all the fuss was about! I need to do as much of this as possible, so that I can research all the slight variants on how it makes me feel amazing. If I just angle this bedside light correctly I can position the cold metal of the lampshade so it chills one of my nipples while I rub myself through my pants.

OK. That was excellent. I should probably go down to breakfast now. I’ll just quickly test it on the other nipple. What if I roll onto my stomach? What if I lie on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor? What if I…? Why are you still here? Please excuse me while I fail to eat, sleep, or do anything productive for the next two to three years of my life.

A year after discovering masturbation

I might have to go to the doctor because I think my clit is broken. No matter how much I rub it, all I feel is a bit numb.

A week after worrying that I’d broken my clit

Seems to be OK again. Clearly leaving it alone every once in a while is a good idea. I should do that more often. Ah, who am I kidding? *locks bedroom door*

Upon discovering sex

So, like, I probably won’t want to wank as much now, which I guess is for the best given the whole clit-break thing. But then the sex I’m having is really fucking hot. I should think about it a bit and… dammit.

Upon discovering mutual masturbation

You know that thing boys do where they ineffectually prod your clit? I sort of want to grab their hands and show them how I do it.

After showing them how I do it

Holy God that’s good. That’s… yes. That’s… umm… mmmm… yes that’s pretty much spot on. Little to the left. Harder. Bite my nipple… unngh. Yeah.

Just before wanking in front of someone for the first time

I’m not entirely sure I want you to watch me wanking. I wank far too quickly and I make odd faces and weird noises and you won’t fancy me any more and it’ll be awful.

Just after wanking in front of someone for the first time

If it always gets this reaction I should do it way more often. In fact, if it made all guys jizz that hard I would open my own show in the West End.

Present day, during sex

I’m so close. So close. So clo… I’ll just reach down here for a bit. He seems to like that.

“Do you like that?”

“Fuck yeah. Come for me.”

As he fucks me nice and deep and hard I move my fingers to the place I’ve loved since that first youthful exploration. I spit and I rub and I grind against him, and I feel his dick deep inside me. I rub with a frantic desperation and a need born of total abandon – a love for my clit and for his dick and a lack of shame about what the two can do together. When the waves of orgasm hit my cunt spasms around him, squeezing the first jets of spunk from his cock. He licks my fingers.

A tribute to masturbation

Wanking is awesome. It’s my greatest stress relief, my most enjoyable hobby, my favourite procrastination tool and one of my very best friends. In fact, if you measure affection in terms of how often your lover makes you come, how well they know and understand you, how easily they can enhance your highs and smooth your lows, then it’s not exaggerating to tell you that masturbation is truly the love of my life.

I’d kiss my own hand, if it weren’t so sticky.

I don’t have a guest blog for this week, so you get to listen to my inane Friday ramblings instead. Today, I would like to talk about having sex with robots. To be honest, on most days I would like to talk about having sex with robots, but I don’t normally get a good excuse to do so.

A recent OnePoll survey found that 17% of people questioned said that they would have sex with a robot. My initial reaction was: only 17 per cent?! What are these people having sex with at the moment?

Robots we fuck

Technically most sex toys are robots. I’ve fucked a few myself. I’ve put them in me, pushed them against my clit, and – in the case of one awesome-looking fucking machine – lusted after it like it was my high school crush on Viagra.

So, on a very basic level, most of us who use sex toys are already having sex with robots.

Of course, it’s impossible to know what kind of robot was envisioned by the survey respondents, because as with most survey press releases they never tell you what the exact question was. This frustrates me enormously, but I’ll leave my nerdy whining to one side for now and simply assume that they mean something android-y. Something humanoid. Something which can talk to you and carry out a reasonable conversation as well as hump you with all the stamina that comes with hardcore battery power.

Sentient robot sex workers

Apparently a lot of people said they didn’t want to have sex with a robot because it was ‘creepy’. I’ll be totally up front here: I would definitely have sex with a robot if that option were available. Because firstly I’d be incredibly curious, and secondly I feel like perhaps I could get away with it and it wouldn’t technically be cheating, in the same way as having sex with a filthy human male would.

Here’s what confuses me, though. The creepiness seems to be something that’s related to whether the robot in question is sentient. If the robot has thoughts, feelings, etc, then people feel like having sex with it would be a creepy thing to do. On the other hand, if the robot had no feelings or sentience, it might essentially be the equivalent of a fucking machine and therefore perhaps not so weird.

But as far as I’m concerned, it’s not the sentience or otherwise of the robot that’s a problem. After all, if the robot is sentient, sexy and smart, aren’t you basically a silicon-ist if you refuse to fuck it? A sentient robot can make a choice to shag me. Maybe I meet it in a bar and buy it a cup of oil, or perhaps I just hand it fifty quid and that special groin attachment it’s always wanted, and it agrees to hump me in exchange.

The problem would only come if a sentient robot (not something that’s going to happen any time soon, by the way – we can’t even create a programme that passes the Turing test) is one which is compelled to serve. If it is not just sentient but enslaved to human desires. So with hypothetical future robots, as with humans, what’s creepy isn’t the act of fucking them, it’s the idea of fucking something or someone that has no active choice in the matter. Which is totally the right thing to do.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or, to be far more literal about it: don’t hate the silicon-based life-form, hate the programming that might compel it to shag you even if it doesn’t want to.

Top five RILFs (Robots I’d Like to Fuck)

5. R2D2 – Star Wars

Because, if it’s the humanoid thing that bothers people, R2D2 is basically as far from that as one could possibly get. Also, with enough lube, I reckon you could ingest him.

4. Gigolo Joe – A.I.

He is played by Jude Law. Not just any Jude Law, but Jude Law in a tight wet-look PVC jacket.

3. Robot Bill and Ted

Because threesomes. Also, each of them can remove their heads at will, which I think will make for exciting ‘watching a dude suck himself off with his robot head’ sex.

2. Kryten – Red Dwarf

He’s not as innocent as you might think. One of his happiest memories was when he accidentally welded his groinal socket to a front-loading washing machine. Filthy fucker.

1. Data – Star Trek

What can I say? Making shy, awkward love to Data, that gradually becomes rougher and more intense as he embraces his sentient side, and bangs me while insisting “I am not capable of love”? This is the pinnacle of my nerd fetish.

 Do you want to have sex with a robot? Which robot? Please join in the discussion in the comments which I expect will descend into nerdy infighting about sci-fi portrayals of artificial intelligence. If you would not like to discuss robots, feel free to talk to my friend Eliza, buy me a sex robot, or read this review of a totally dumb, unsentient robot I fucked in the past.

The average adult reads at 250 words per minute. That means that the average person will read this blog post in under three minutes. As you’re reading that online, most of you will naturally read faster than you would if you were reading print, potentially skimming through a few sections of text as you skip ahead to particularly fascinating subheadings.

Frantically rubbing my clitoris

As you read this post, I want you to imagine the stage you’d be at if you’d started masturbating at the beginning. During the first sentence you opened your fly, pulled down your pyjama bottoms, or lifted your skirt and yanked your knickers to one side – whatever best fits your own masturbatory routine.

By now you’re about ten to twenty seconds in. For some of you, you’ll be in the ‘early arousal’ stage – just starting to get wet, or hard, or tingly, perhaps licking your fingers or reaching for the lube to speed things along.

Others might get there a bit more quickly – you’ll have graduated beyond the initial fumblings and be furiously frigging yourself, making all the delicious slick-wet or dry-rub noises that you most associate with this pleasurable past time.

If you read at the average speed, we’re now about thirty to forty seconds in.

If you’re me, you will have come already.

Speed wanking, and why I’m a bit odd

As a child I was a big fan of the film Grease. Big songs, big hair, and John Travolta in a tight leather jacket – what’s not to love? Somewhere in that film there’s a line about sex taking “just fifteen minutes.” Because I was young and inexperienced, I took this not just as a casual joke but a cast iron biological fact with the result that, during my teenage years, I was beset with occasional bouts of intense worry. I thought that either:

a) I wasn’t doing wanking right, because it was taking me between 30 and 45 seconds to come, and that if I kept doing it for longer I’d experience a ‘proper’ orgasm. This didn’t work too well, because too much wanking post-orgasm caused me much sadness and occasional intense pain. So the only other possibility was that:

b) I was a biological anomaly, and when I eventually got into bed with a man he would scream and run as soon as the first waves of orgasm twitched around his totally normal, 15-minute-ready dick.

The grass is always greener in someone else’s pants

Now that I’m an adult, I’m pretty used to my personal body quirks, and although things naturally take me a bit longer when I’m shagging, as a general rule my wanking has remained pretty quick. Thirty seconds, give or take.

I don’t usually think about it but the other day I had a conversation with a guy in which he told me – in exquisitely growling and lustful detail – about evenings he spends treating himself to extended masturbation sessions. These are the opposite of 30-minute wanking sprints – they last from when he walks in the door after work to when he finally ejaculates at bedtime. Porn, more porn, toys, slow rubbing on the sofa, frantic bouts of near-orgasmic frotting, pausing just before he comes, breaks for coffee, cigarettes and phone calls. Everything you’d do if you had all the time in the world and nothing but your genitals to play with.

I’m sad that I can’t ever really enjoy the kind of extended sessions guys like him have told me about – edging for hours until they’re ready to spurt at the lightest touch, or calmly stroking themselves to a plateau of not-quite-coming as they enjoy a particularly horny video. But even when I try to do this I fail miserably. If I watch porn (which I do, although probably not as often as people who are conoisseurs of it) I’ll watch it for about five minutes, find a section that I really like, then immediately initiate the frenzied clit-rubbing that’s so speedy and loveless I can almost hear the Countdown theme tune in my head.

It’s not that I hate wanking and need it to be over as soon as possible, or even that I’m biologically incapable of drawing it out. I wonder if it’s because when I’m alone and horny,  spending longer than is strictly necessary feels like a disgraceful and guilty indulgence. If it took me half an hour to come I’d feel that was half an hour well spent. But if it only takes 30 seconds, spending longer on it might seem a bit excessive. Like preparing a gourmet meal when I’m not hungry, or wearing high heels to do the gardening.

How long does it take you?

It’s a nice trick most of the time – I don’t know many people who could pop the kettle on then guarantee they’ll have frigged themselves to orgasm by the time the water’s boiled – I’m not complaining as such. I just wonder if I’m the only one. Perhaps I’m walking through a world where most people spend two to three hours a week on masturbatory self-care, in which case I’ll kick myself for being the overly-efficient robot who bashes them out in less than a minute, never stopping to truly enjoy the build up.

If you made it to the end in less than three minutes: congratulations on your reading speed. If you went back to the beginning and started wanking to see if you could finish before the last full-stop: well done, and I’m sorry it didn’t contain more filth. And if you managed to both read it and orgasm in less than 30 seconds, perhaps we should start a league.