UPDATE March 2016: if you enjoyed this extract check out my new book – How A Bad Girl Fell In Love. 

I’m clearly not that good at marketing. Someone recently told me that they’d read my book and were surprised that it wasn’t just a collection of blog entries.

“You know what you should do?” they said, like someone who knew far more about promotion than I did, “You should tell people that it’s an actual full-on story rather than just some bits and pieces you’ve cobbled together from your blog.”

So that is what I’m doing: there’s an extract from my book below, and although there are some bits in the book that have previously appeared on the blog, it is an ‘actual full-on story’. If you like it, please do buy it. If you’ve read it, I’d be super-grateful if you could review it on Amazon (US link).

Friendship, love and number eight

Why are we expected to place friendship over love? Don’t get me wrong, friendship is awesome. Having people who are willing to stand by you through thick and thin, stop you making mistakes, and hold your hair back while you’re vomiting up the mistakes you have made, is utterly crucial.

I’d no more tell my friends to fuck off than I’d cut off one of my arms, but all the same, no friend will ever take precedence over a lover. Why do we ever expect them to?

Say what you like: ‘friends come first’, ‘men come and go but your friends will be there forever’ or even – if you’re an unforgivable cunt – ‘bros before hos’. But ultimately if you fall in love with someone the chances of you sacking them off because one of your mates doesn’t think they’re good enough for you are low indeed.

It’s not your fault – no matter how much you love your friends your body is hard wired to seek out certain things: food, shelter, comfort, and sweaty wriggling with someone who makes you hurt with joy. People do the oddest things in the name of love: they give up dream jobs, ditch families, move halfway across the world. You rarely see people leaping over barriers at airports to prevent loved-ones leaving these days, but that’s not because we’re lacking in passion, we’re just more cautious about terrorists. Love is still one of the greatest motivators, and makes us act like one of the stupidest breeds of monkey.

No one should feel bad for putting love, or even sex, above friendship – I certainly don’t. Don’t beat yourself up about the times you’ve blown off trips to the pub with your mates in favour of staying at home cementing your shiny new relationship with lots of delicious getting-to-know-you shagging. As the saying goes: your friends will be there no matter what. You might only have one chance to grab the guy or girl of your dreams, and if it all goes pear-shaped your friends will be there to pick up the pieces, pass you the tissues, and repeatedly call you a dickhead until you feel much better about the whole thing.

This is all by way of explaining that when I met boy number eight everything else fell away. I’d made some tentative friendships during Fresher’s Week, by getting lots of rounds in and pretending to be interested in other people’s degree subjects. But most of these friendships faded into the background as soon as he appeared. My roommate and I were still close, on account of the fact that we shared a room so we’d bloody well better be. My second flatmate Rena – for the first two terms at least – was still an excellent person to get into trouble with every now and then. But when number eight was with me, all my friends became neatly irrelevant.

Pub trips, club nights, lunches in the Union – these things were only interesting to me if they included him. If he wasn’t there I’d make polite small talk, craning my neck to look over other people’s shoulders and see if he was about to walk into the room. In lectures I’d seek him out and in seminars I’d disagree with him. Not always because I thought he was wrong, although I frequently did, but because I just loved hearing him debate me. I’d steer my flatmates towards the clubs that he’d be at and invite him to anything that could even vaguely be described as a social event. It’s lucky he was on a philosophy course and not something more hands-on – if he was a chemist or an engineer I’d have followed him into the lab in a mooning, lovesick daze and ended up setting fire to half the university.

But this would be a pretty shit love story if everything ended there – me lusting helplessly after a boy I couldn’t have, and wanking myself into a froth every evening while imagining him taking me roughly up against a bookcase in the Ethics section of the library.

Long story short: he liked me too. I say ‘liked’ rather than ‘loved’, because it took him a while to decide he actually loved me. He’s long been forgiven for that – if everyone were as decisive (no, not impulsive – decisive) as I am then we’d never get any interesting emotional build-up. Love stories would last for three pages:

Page 1: Girl meets boy

Page 2: Girl sucks boy’s dick

Page 3: Girl meets a new boy, and the whole charade begins again.

But number eight liked me. 

He liked me enough to seek me out and sit next to me on the first day. By week two he liked me enough to meet me before each lecture, and invite me for drinks afterwards. We started sharing ideas before seminars, notes during classes, and giggles together in the back row. Eventually we graduated to sharing stories, jokes, and hugs that lasted ever-so-slightly too long.

In the evenings we’d get drunk then collapse beside each other – not quite touching. He had a girlfriend at a university in another city who he was determined to make a show of being faithful to. Consequently the very first touches I remember were tentative. He’d brush my arm, or I’d lean on his shoulder. We’d lie next to each other, barely breathing, just waiting for the other one to reach out and give the first shivering touch.

In public we were friends, but in private we were driving each other insane. Sleeping fell to the bottom of my priority list – the nights I spent with number eight were the only time we could really be close, and I’d lie awake feeling him next to me, going slowly mad himself.

Our flirting got less playful and more desperate. My vague attempts at seduction (‘How about a fuck?’) were rejected with awkward laughs or trembling sighs. While his – oh, God. His occasional drunken declarations of lust gave me pangs of longing that squeezed my chest and made me hurt for him.

“You know, when you were wearing those tight trousers I looked at your arse and wanted to bite it.”

“I saw your knickers when you bent over in the pub. I want to put my fucking face in them.”

I’ll leave it there, because I suspect it’s good marketing to leave you hanging and wondering whether he did actually put his fucking face in them. Find out by buying my book, or just asking me when I’m two gins into an evening.

I’m sitting on the sofa and I’m horny. Not just horny in an abstract ‘quite fancy a shag’ sense, but in the throbbing, aching way I get horny when I’m hungover. My knee’s jiggling – a painfully obvious sign that what I need is release rather than affection – and I’m idly browsing through the lovely Sinful Sunday images that are guaranteed to provide a satisfying wank.

I could, of course, simply go through to the bedroom and wake someone up. He’s not only incredibly horny 99% of the time, he is also generally happy to have his sleep interrupted as long as there’s either coffee or a fuck waiting when his eyes open.

But I’m not going to do that. Because, lovely though sex is, it doesn’t always scratch the right itch.

Admin wanking

I’ve waffled on about wanking before, frequently, and I’d hope there’s nothing surprising about the idea of a woman treating herself to a hand job on a lazy Sunday morning. But I think there’s often an assumption that wanking is a substitute for sex – something you do because you can’t get laid at that particular point in time.

On the contrary. It’s not even something you do because you’re feeling deeply aroused and have a particular image or fantasy in your head that requires special attention. Often I masturbate simply because it’s something I have to get out of my system before I can get on with my day.

The admin wank, if you like. This is one born of a vague sense of hungover-horniness combined with the knowledge that sex will take too long and there’ll be no porn that satisfies my particular mood. In these instances, shoving my hand down my knickers and frigging myself for a maximum of 60 seconds will usually do the trick.

This doesn’t mean I like sex any less, this doesn’t mean I fancy him any less – it just means that, right now, that’s the most suitable way to get what I need.

A long time ago…

It’s stiflingly hot, and I’m lying awake in a single bed in a villa in Spain, listening to my boy frantically rubbing himself under the duvet of the other bed, on the other side of the room. I am trying very hard not to cry.

This is unusual: normally the idea of boys wanking nearby me is enough to make my knees go funny and give me that lustful borderline-crosseyed look that I reserve for exceptionally arousing situations. I love both extremes of boywanking: the times when I’m not just present but involved – when he’s touching my tits or gripping my arse as he pumps his fist up and down his own cock, preparing to cover me with jizz when he reaches the climax. And the other kind: when he has solitary, private wanks that he tells me about afterwards – sending me links to the videos he was watching so I can imagine at just which point he was pushed over the edge.

Both of these things are hot, and amazing. Part of me is getting tingly – the sound of this guy wanking purely for his own physical pleasure, letting out small sighs or suppressed grunts as he gets close makes my head spin. But part of me wants to weep at the sheer waste of it. In the villa I’m absent: not included or involved, just in the same room by chance, not as asleep as he thinks I am, torn between feeling voyeuristic and vulnerable, telling myself that his furtive release is a necessary tactical manoeuvre rather than an implicit rejection of me.

I try to control myself and fall asleep, but I fail, eventually storming out of the room in a huff just as he twitches to mark the conclusion.

It’s not about sex versus masturbation

That incident happened a long time ago – when I was younger and far less used to the kind of admin wanks that are one of the easiest and simplest sexual things adults can do. The masturbation that isn’t a performance, just a quick solution to an immediate problem: like going to the toilet, or quenching your thirst.

I used to see sex as something I should always be striving for: with a partner one of the boxes I ticked when calculating whether I was happy was looking at how many times we’d fucked. The quality was always good, but what really mattered to me was the quantity. Naïvely, I saw every wank my partner had as a fuck I’d missed out on, failing to realise that masturbation isn’t always a substitute for sex: sometimes it’s a snack that keeps you going until the next meal.

The day I got back from that Spanish holiday I had a chat with the gentleman in question. I explained how his furtive hand-shandy had made me feel left out, miserable and unwanted. Reading the story back now, I’m having a serious chat with myself – explaining that the way I reacted makes me look like an inconsiderate arse.

It should never be about sex versus masturbation – there’s no either/or. You can love sex and love your partner and think they’re hotter than the sun, but still find yourself occasionally needing a bit of alone time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me for a couple of minutes…

I am not very sexy on weekday mornings. Not just in the sense that I have hair like a Muppet in a wind tunnel and breath like a Wetherspoons toilet, but also that if anyone touches me first thing in the morning I’m liable to cry. When my alarm goes off and I force my eyes open, the last thing I want is to have my tits touched: I will leap 20 feet into the air and run to the shower before you can say “I’m late I’m late I’m late.”

Life is exhausting and unfair. The fact that morning is usually when boys have their hardest, easiest erections is a cruel slap in the face: I feel ungrateful for saying ‘no’ to something so amazing, but at the same time… it’s 7 am, for fuck’s sake. I just want to drink my coffee, have a shower, and get the hell to work. Of course later in the day when my brain’s stopped caring how many minutes I have before I’m officially late, I feel like an idiot for wasting a lovely opportunity.

So I have to make opportunities elsewhen:

Just after work

I know people who change their clothes as soon as they get home, even if they don’t wear a suit to the office. The transition between work and home is an important way to strip the stresses and strains of the day from your body, shout “fuck that for a laugh”, and put on your relaxation face.

For me, post-work sex serves much the same purpose. I don’t want a guy to come home, sit on the sofa, and turn on the TV to wind down. Ideally I want him to come home, growl about what a shit day he’s had, then unzip his flies so I can sink eagerly to my knees and suck the stress out of him. If that fails, I’ll settle for a quickie up against the wall in the hallway, taking occasional glimpses of us in the mirror as he grabs, twists, pulls, and generally messes up the hair that looked so professional earlier.

During the evening

Sex has never, for me, been naturally associated with bedtime. Perhaps it’s down to my formulative teenage years, when the sex I had necessarily happened between 5pm and my 9pm curfew. I couldn’t sleep at my boyfriend’s house, ergo sex was an early-evening thing. As an adult, when sleeping with new people, I’d always prefer to have sex before we go to the pub, if at all possible, meaning I won’t be stuck trying to get a night bus at 3am after an unnecessarily long pre-sex preamble.

What I’m saying is that I like sex in the evening. I’d much rather be taken roughly over the coffee table before we watch Grand Designs than led gently to bed after Question Time for a half-hearted ‘I can barely keep my eyes open’ shag.

Evening sex is excellent – it inspires me to think more about when we might be able to fit a quick fuck in, and keeps me constantly on edge. I spend a lot of time appraising the boy as he sits hunched over his laptop on the sofa, cock visible through the thin fabric of his pyjamas. Coquettishly (but not that subtly) leaning up against him, rearranging my t-shirt so it shows enough cleavage to tempt him into putting an arm around me and squeezing.

The best thing about evening sex is that it doesn’t tend to become routine. Sex at bedtime can easily become part of my day in the same way as brushing my teeth or taking the bins out. Whereas evening sex can happen any time, anywhere – outside the bathroom, on the sofa, in the spare room as one of us ambushes the other while they’re putting away the laundry. Or, in my favourite scenario, bent over the bottom of the bed as I’m changing the duvet cover. Hands folded in the bed linen, gripping onto the fabric of the sheet as he pulls my jeans down just far enough, unzips his flies, and fucks me functionally until my legs give out. A fuck with just a few grunts, the feeling of him pumping spunk deep into my cunt, followed by a quick clean-up before I get back to the evening’s chores.

At the weekend

Because at the weekend I never have to worry about where I have to be and when. I have more time to do the things I need to do, so the things I want to do get more of a look in.

At the weekend I can wake up to him playing with my nipples and I can moan and play back, knowing that if I’m still tired we can go to sleep afterwards. At the weekend I can take my time when I suck his cock – edging him closer to orgasm then pulling away, grinning and watching him twitch with frustration. We can fuck in different ways, enjoying the pressure, the view, and the solid, tight feeling of each of our favourite positions. He can take his time to fuck me slowly but firmly, each stroke a teasing slap against my aching cunt as I will him to go faster, harder, to let me squeeze myself around his dick.

In the morning during the week we’re both desperate to get to work, and it matters if we don’t make it. At the weekend we’re desperate to come, but it doesn’t matter when we do it, as long as we both do.