Nothing kills my mood quicker than a genital close-up. I have no problem with people’s bodies, and I think that there’s a distinct type of beauty in a nice, solid cock, but I find it pretty difficult to find porn with hot scenarios that isn’t going to cut to a gynaecological close-up just as I’m getting to the juicy bit.

I know some people love it – most gentlemen with whom I’ve watched porn have expressed a strong desire to look not just *at* someone but *up* them, so I can see why these shots are included: they clearly please a proportion of the crowd. But they don’t please me.

To clarify: this isn’t a disgust reaction – I am not horrified by genitals. Nor am I shaming the spectacular men and women who show them off on screen, and fuck like champions for an audience of internet wankers such as myself. I’m just lamenting the fact that so many directors insist on close-cropped shots of trains going into tunnels, disembodied vulvas being rummaged at by strangers’ hands, or those same hands pulling butt-cheeks apart until all you can see is a gaping void. And these things usually happen during the climax of the scene – at just the moment when the sex is getting hottest and most furious, when the actors would be building to a moment of exquisite lust, our director cuts away from their faces and straight to parts of their body that are far less capable of expressing emotion.

What I’m saying is this: I’d like to see something super-hot that doesn’t turn into a medical documentary just as it’s getting to the good bit.

My porn wish list

I’m not saying that people who like this are wrong/evil/stupid, and that everyone should be forced to watch only porn that comes from a set-list I’ve prescribed. I’m just having a general moan about the number of times I’ve had to cut short a wank to find a video that’s got more fucking and less fanny.

Perhaps the kind of porn I like (lots of kinky, rough, angry fucking) leans more towards these gyno shots, because that’s what directors feel the audience will want. Or perhaps I’m just crap at finding good porn. So, in case any awesome pornographers are watching, or you’ve come across any videos that show shagging without an accompanying smear test, here are some things I’d love to see more of in porn:

Lots and lots of long shots of people fucking

I like watching people actually fuck. Although head and handjobs are fun to have, I find them far less fun to watch, because there isn’t nearly as much action. Jiggling tits, pounding arses, hands gripping squidgy flesh, sweat dripping from people who are really getting into it? Yes. Fumbling and rubbing? Meh.

While we’re at it, that thing that porn stars do where they push a cock into the side of their cheek? It reminds me of the standard childish symbol for ‘blow-job’ where you’d make a wanking gesture near your mouth while sticking your tongue sideways. I get why it’s more visual than other suckoff techniques, but I’ve never met a guy who has expressed a desire that I do that to his penis.

Noises

I’ve waffled on before about how noises are hot. Not fake noises – I don’t need scripted, efficient ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s. I want genuine noises – the ‘unnggh’s and ‘aaargh’s that people make when they’re fucking like they’ve really let go.

Especially – and I cannot stress this enough – from the men. Men in porn are often strangely silent, as if they’ve expressed opinions on the sex before and have been told to keep their mouths shut. Those that do talk often say things that don’t necessarily correlate to what’s happening on screen, as if the guy is just reeling off a list of accepted phrases like a politician at a press conference spouting ‘hard-working families’ over and over again with no discernible relevance.

Faces

If you’re going to give me any sort of close-up, I would like it to be of someone’s face. Ideally, because I am straight and female and pervy, the dude’s. In fact, if I’m completely honest, I have a deep and abiding preference for porn in which the women look a bit bored – in which they’re either idly or sarcastically pandering to the dude’s insatiable lust while they earn a paycheque/watch themselves in the mirror/wait for the washing machine to finish a spin cycle.

I appreciate this specific kink isn’t for everyone, but I know a hell of a lot of people who’d like to see more face. There are, of course, millions of porn videos that show faces, but my main issue with them is that they are not the faces of hot people reacting to orgasmic delight, but usually faces that are being jizzed on. Pop shots are, of course, a porn staple, so I don’t expect this to disappear any time soon, but we could do with more of the other: if you’re the one jizzing, it’s your face I want to see.

Shameless plug: if you want to read more about dirty fucking, and thoughts on porn, my book is currently ridiculously cheap on Amazon (59p in the UK, 96c in the US). I have no idea how long it’ll be on offer for, so if you want it then now’s a good time to get a copy.

I’m really excited about this guest post. Not only is it something that I’ve never written about before, it’s about something that is so rarely written about you’d be forgiven if you hadn’t heard of it.

Since I started this blog I’ve had lots of people get in touch with me to say lovely things, and the loveliest of all is ‘I feel this way too.’ Whenever this happens I’m overwhelmed with a sense of relief to find that I’m not alone.

This week’s blog is about a completely new topic, written by someone who has a very different experience of sex, and a problem which is rarely written about in the mainstream media. I hope it gives you something interesting to think about, even if it doesn’t directly affect you. And I hope you can share it, so that others who have similar experiences can find it and know they’re not alone.

Over to Artemis…

On Vaginismus

Vaginismus is an ugly name for a physical condition which affects a small and mostly silent minority of women (vaginismus.com puts the figure at 2 in 1,000 women, but acknowledges the difficulty in getting accurate statistics). This is how I experience it.

I am in bed with my boyfriend, and he is going down on me. The sensation is exquisite but I want more: I want to be filled with him, I want him inside me right now, I want more than just his finger and tongue pushing me to climax. I am hot and wet and wide open, my cervix is dilated, my eyes wide, my nipples hard.

He puts on a condom and then he pushes his way inside me. Everything stops. I have to force myself to relax enough for it to stop feeling like I am being stabbed with a blunt instrument. I gasp, in pain not lust. My vagina burns, inside and out. Even so, I feel completed: this is what I wanted, as close as it gets for me; I wanted him inside me and now he is. He begins to move, and there is an unbearable pressure in my abdomen, it feels like I will explode; I pull him closer and the pressure recedes.

The pain wanes but never leaves. I am scraped raw, but still, this is satisfying, and perhaps this time it will stop hurting for long enough that I can find my own pleasure and cum with him inside me. But that does not happen, and when he finishes I am drained and happier, but not released from myself. I go to the toilet. It hurts to pee: the entrance to my vagina is slightly scraped, and stings when touched. It will heal by tomorrow.

Living with vaginismus

This has been my sex life for nearly 13 years. In that time, I have had penetrative sex with four different men. I have probably had sex less than a hundred times in my life. I have lost two relationships because of it. Once, my hormones were so wild and I was so fucked up that I managed to orgasm even though the pain never left; I cannot describe what it is like to cum like that, fighting against my body. An angry orgasm, like Hedwig’s Angry Inch but, obviously, different parts involved.

I’m sure you don’t need me to go into detail about the large number of ways this can affect not just the primary sufferer but her partner as well. It would be easier if we were all lesbians, and I’m sure a lot of bisexual or heteroflexible sufferers do deliberately seek out female partners accordingly – the same has to be true of our silent and totally ignored male counterparts – but that’s not a solution, it’s a response. My response is far less healthy: it combines very well with my desire to harm myself when I hate myself, which it’s very easy to do when you feel like a failure as a woman.

Why is vaginismus invisible?

The media does not talk about people like me. Medical treatment is hard to come by and mostly involves “dilators”, which don’t actually dilate you – there’s nothing wrong with the size of my cunt – but which persuade the body not to fight the sensation. Psychological therapy is more expensive, you see. Far easier to give you some phallic glass and a tube of KY.

Society largely ignores anyone who doesn’t like sex. I have a lot of sympathy and solidarity with asexual people, although I’m not asexual, I’m really not, I want sex so much I could cry just thinking about it. But society doesn’t care that any of us exist: people should be sexual creatures. For men, there are readily available treatments if you can’t get it up; but no-one talks about the small percentage of men who experience pain from penetrating a partner. Women don’t even have reliable Viagra: we are expected to just be able to lie back and think of England regardless of our own pain, discomfort, arousal, or ability to orgasm.

We are silenced before we even open our mouths, mired in self-hatred from the very start, and then ignored by Cosmo and More, Loaded and FHM. Hollywood rarely ever shows a sex scene where the woman doesn’t have a vaginal orgasm – something which is literally not possible for a large number of women due to the way that the clitoris and vagina interact – and outside of rape, women are only shown in pain when they’re losing their virginity. (For the record, I didn’t have a hymen to break, my first time. Lots of women don’t. All it takes to disappear is moderate physical activity, and some women are born without one at all.) They’re occasionally shown as being in discomfort, but that’s usually to demonstrate the clumsiness and inferiority of their partner – which of course makes the partners of women with vaginismus feel just super about their ability in bed.

I want to see more discussion about the reality of sex rather than the fantasy, because I think that might have helped me at the start, and because the tendency to fetishise a homogenous, cookie-cutter idea of sex is deeply unhealthy for all of us. That means listening to those of us who are denied that experience for whatever reason, and not dismissing our experiences just because they’re not yours. This includes not giving facetious “advice” like “I bet I cud make u cum ur boyfriends just shit in bed”. That response is part of the reason why I’ve lost relationships, and will lead to me kneeing you in the balls, and then we’ll see who doesn’t like sex for a while.

“Tribute wank” is a term that I was unfamiliar with until this week, making me think I should spend less time wanking myself and more time conversing with other humans.

A tribute wank is, from what I gather, a wank you have about someone in particular, which you send them evidence of later. It could be anything from phoning them to say “hey, I cracked a quality one off over you yesterday when I was thinking about the hot sex we had last week” to sending them an actual physical photograph covered in your own jizz.

The hotness

I once received a fantastic video from a guy which had – as most of my favourite videos do – his cock in it. He stroked vigorously for the requisite few minutes, just enough for me to start salivating a bit, then came nice and hard all over his hand. So far, so traditionally excellent.

But in the background of the video he had his laptop open, with a picture of me comfortably full-screened. He’d used one of the pictures on this blog, downloaded it, opened it in a new window then – most flattering of all – focused on it for the duration of an entire wank.

The not-so-hotness

So having established that I think tribute wanks can be really hot, I’m going to backpedal madly and tell you to think very very carefully before sending your delightful post-wank picture/video/text. Apart from the obvious problems (once it’s out there, it’s out there), you need to be really sure, before you hit the ‘send’ button, that the person at the other end will be pleased to receive it.

Even as a lover of hot pictures and homemade porn, there are certain things that will turn me off quicker than if you’d taped a picture of Jeremy Clarkson to your bellend. For instance, if you demand an immediate response, you might as well put your camera away and just chuck a bucket of cold water over my privates. Equally if you decide to send me something when I’m pissed off with you, I’m unlikely to leap joyously from my seat and shout “my God, what a touching kiss-and-make-up gesture, I must hump this man into a sticky mess immediately.”

So, if you’re tribute wanking over your partner, and you know they’d be keen to see the evidence, my advice would be to time it carefully: try not to send it when they’re in the middle of a conference call, or angry at you because yet again you’ve failed to do the washing up.

The downright awful

This might sound shocking, but many people just don’t want to be sent homemade pornography at any time. They’d rather you kept your dick/tits/arse/that cool trick you’ve just learned with a Hitachi magic wand out of their inbox.

I’d hazard a guess, based mainly on how many cock pictures I (sex blogger but basically a nobody) receive versus the number of cock pictures my friends (nobodies who don’t also happen to run a sex blog) get, that most of the cock pictures flying around the internet are unsolicited. That is to say, they are not sent between two consenting adults, but sent from one consenting adult to another adult they are really hoping will enjoy the picture.

I fully understand why you might find it hot to send your naked self to a stranger, but do you see the problem here? You can hope, you can wish, you can dream, but if you send any part of your anatomy to someone you don’t know, who has never asked you to send anything, you can’t guarantee that they want it.

So here lies my problem with tribute wanks: while some receivers find them amazing and sexy, I know a lot of people who would find them not just undesirable but awkward, horrible and downright terrifying. Others, of course, might enjoy receiving one from a person they really fancied, but wouldn’t extend this enthusiasm to everyone on their contacts list.

We receive spam all the time, and of course it’s easy to hit ‘delete’ or ‘unsubscribe’. But this is different. It’s not the equivalent of a delivery driver shoving some useless local pizza deals into your mailbox, it’s more akin to … well … a photo of an anonymous nob in your mailbox.

So, in conclusion, tribute wanks are like any other sexual act under the sun: some people like it, some people don’t. If you want to do it you need to make sure that the person you’re sending it to is not just ready but eager to receive it.

Note: I used to ask guys to send me pictures. It was amazing and lovely. I’ve since realised that was a bad plan, as I was inundated with pictures, many of which I didn’t have time to reply to and some I didn’t even have time to look at. I’m sorry. I have learned my lesson.

Well done, humanity, you have done me proud. When The Guardian printed this problem page question from a lady who fantasises about being passed around a group of old, obese men who struggle to get erections, I expected the comments section to be a sulphur-stinking pit of hellish mockery.

Because that’s generally what happens when someone admits to a fantasy that doesn’t fit with one of our traditional stories. I was going to say ‘an uncommon fantasy’ but to be honest, given the horror this woman feels about admitting to her fantasy I’d have to go out on a limb and say this dream may be far more common than we think.

To my surprise, though, the comments were mostly sensible.

“Why on earth would you feel guilty? And why do you think of yourself as ‘sick’? Those are strong statements. Your sex life is fine and If you don’t want to share your fantasy with your fiancė then don’t.”

“Of all the fantasies I’ve ever heard, this has got to be one the of the most easily realizable.”

Hot fantasy about old obese men

One of my favourite wank fantasies involves a pair of older guys. Ideally (because I love my backstory) in a position of power or authority over me. Traditional scenes begin in an office, where I play up to patriarchal stereotypes by wearing an incredibly short skirt and bringing coffee into the business meeting being held by these two men.

One of them is usually relatively young – thirty or forty – and he’s staring at my arse like he wants to bite it. The other guy is older, perhaps fifty or sixty, calls me ‘sweetheart’ and leers inappropriately through the stretched fabric of my tight shirt as I bend down to put the coffee tray on the table. One of them, inevitably, slaps my arse.

The older guy (my boss) remarks on how obedient I am, and asks me to show his friend just how willing I am to please. He leans back in his chair, unzips his flies, and pulls out a thick, twitching, semi-flaccid cock. I drop to my knees in front of him, and as he croons ‘that’s it’, I slip his dick into my mouth.

He’s big and looks bigger – looming over me with his paunch and his jowls and his filthy, smug grin. He knows I feel obliged to do this to him, and that’s part of the turn on. The other part being, of course, the ability to show off his toy to his friend.

As I suck him harder, he pulls my head down so that my lips are around the base of his cock, his thick head pushing hard up against the back of my throat. Occasionally he makes small grunts to show just how much he’s enjoying it, or mutters ‘good girl, just like that’ through gritted teeth. But in between these interjections he keeps talking to his friend.

“Good, isn’t she?”

“Absolutely. I should get one for my office.”

“You can… ungh… you can have a turn when I’m done if you like. She’d be only too happy to oblige.”

The friend sits there watching, stroking at the erection that’s pressing against the crotch of his suit trousers. But I don’t fuck the friend – I never get a chance. Because as I picture the thick, desperate hardness of the older guy’s dick pushing solidly against the back of my throat, and imagine the strangled grunting sounds he makes as he comes, and conjure up the feeling of his thick, hot spunk gushing down the back of my throat… that’s usually the moment when I come.

The younger guy rarely needs to fuck me in order to complete the fantasy.

Being ashamed of fantasies

So, to all the Guardian readers who refrained from making comments along the lines of ‘ewww’, when someone confessed to fantasies of obese older men, I salute and thank you. I guarantee you that this particular fantasy isn’t limited to one individual, and that there are many more people who like that sort of thing.

To the woman who wrote the letter in the first place: don’t be upset. Most people have at least one thing that gets them horny in secret but that they wouldn’t want to shout from the rooftops. There’s no need to be ashamed of if you get off on something unusual. You’re not hurting anyone by doing it, you’re just pushing the specific set of buttons that happen to have been wired in your brain that way.

As one of the Guardian commenters so excellently put it:

“There is nothing wrong in a fantasy, like emotions, they are not good or bad. they just are. We can’t control them but they do no harm to others (it is our actions that may hurt others, not the thoughts in our heads), so whatever they are they are nothing to be ashamed of.”

I hate olives. In my opinion, these disgusting, overly-flavoursome nuggets of not-food are the best way to ruin a salad. Even so, I am repeatedly told by friends, family, and others who I suspect are getting secret kickbacks from olive farmers, that when I am older I will grow to love them.

Sadly, despite the olive I eat once a year to test whether I’m officially an adult yet, I have failed to start throwing them gaily into my mouth like someone at a posh dinner party.

Why am I banging on about olives? Because, although I still hate them with a passion only usually reserved for mushrooms, there are other things that I have acquired a taste for as I get older. In no particular order, here are a few adult sexual tastes that I’ve acquired, that are far more fun than olives:

Sexy massages

I used to feel the same about massage as I did about tickling: that it was something people were forcing on me in the misguided belief that I’d like it.

Now, at the grand old age of ‘oh shit I’m nearly 30’, I find that having moisturised hands pummeling my back and shoulders is not only nice but borderline orgasmic. The slickness, the power, the feeling of being so utterly cocooned and caressed by someone is delicious. Even more delicious when the massage goes south, and his slippery hands are mainly just lubing up my arse.

Only from someone I love, though – getting any sort of massage from a stranger still brings me out in a cold and unpleasant sweat.

The word ‘panties’

I have no idea why. Perhaps because when I was younger the word sounded too childish. As an almost-woman I was keen to project the image of an adult seductress. But now this dainty word makes me feel ever so slightly younger. It also conjures images of small, candy-coloured scraps of knicker fabric which makes me feel sexy even when the reality is less ‘miss’ and more ‘M&S’.

Spending more than a tenner on bedsheets

I know, it seems profligate. At University I’d have been happy to use the same cheap polyester sheets for an entire term, taking only short breaks to crinkle them a bit when they became too stiff with sex juices.

Now, as a much more mature adult, I find there’s something tingly and sexual about not just clean bedsheets but quality bedsheets. Soft cotton with a hint of fabric softener puts me in mind not just of sex but of the kind of sex I’ve had in hotels. Passionate, filthy, do-it-in-each-corner-of-the-room sex. Sex with bubble baths afterwards, and fresh towels, and occasionally complimentary slippers. Young me didn’t know the joy of this sex: adult me wants to reminisce about it by spending money in John Lewis and constantly loading the washing machine.

Sober sex

Naturally sober sex has always been good. I’m just not sure I realised how good, until I hit 25 or so. The older I get the more frustrated I am with my drunk self for not being able to fully appreciate every stroke, slap and sigh of a really decent fuck.

Drunk sex can be fun: giggly and uninhibited. And the slight spinning of the room makes you feel like you’re fucking in a fairground. But with sober sex you can feel every stroke, squeeze at just the right moments, and above all avoid falling off the bed.