“Of course I don’t have a ‘type’,” I lie. “I’ve fancied so many different people that the idea I’d only go for one type of guy is laughable.” I tell this to people I know and love, and I tell it to myself. And it’s bollocks.

Much as I’d love to not have a type, I do. Oh how I do.

There’s a certain kind of man that gives me a certain kind of feeling. Not pitiful butterflies in my stomach or shivers down my spine or any of that saccharine crap: these dudes make my cunt wet and my eyes water and they send my heart into an angry, drum-beat overdrive of panic. They make me afraid.

These men with their lithe, casual hotness. Slightly (or incredibly) nerdy, playing nervously with glasses on the bar, or with cigarettes in their hands. Men with wet eyes and eager smiles, and the tiniest hint of a late-lost virginity that gives them extra enthusiasm for fucking. Men who wank creatively: with buttplugs and lube and grotesquely unconscionable fantasies.

There are two or three in my head right now (get out get out get out). There are a couple in my back catalogue who – if I walked down the street and bumped into them – would wonder why I was physically staggering with shock, or shaking in an effort to hold back the urge to kiss them. Not kiss them, sorry, that’s wrong: bury my face in their neck and just… fucking… bite them.

I don’t want to have a type, but I do. It’s these guys: the ones who hold back dark secrets and stutter through chat ups and joke that ‘oh of COURSE you won’t fancy me but on the off-chance you did I’m quite into choke-fucking if that’s your thing?’ Men who call me ‘mate’ and who smell so filthy and good when they hug me. Whose cocks press tight against the inside of scruffy jeans. I can’t see but oh sweet Lord how I can imagine.

They make me cold with fear.

I’m terrified of these guys because they are the ones with whom my self-control goes out of the window. Making me wonder – and quite rightly – whether I can claim to have any self-control at all if it disappears in a spray of jizz when the right kind of temptation sidles into view.

What’s your sexual type?

I’m not telling you what my exact sexual type is in case you either:

a) are it, in which case things will become awkward at parties or

b) are not it, in which case if we’ve ever fucked, or ever might fuck, you’ll mistakenly assume that because you don’t ‘match’ I won’t enjoy it. I still will.

I’m reading a book by Marian Keyes at the moment in which she describes heart vibrations – how two people can be perfect for each other because their souls give off the same rhythmic vibe. That’s obvious twaddle, of course, but it made me think of the feeling when I meet a guy who’s ‘my type’ – a similar gutpunch of obvious attraction, similar vibrations. Except it’s not my heart that’s quivering.

I want to fuck all these bad men

I’ve met some ‘types’ recently and it’s all I can do to bite my lip and smile and say ‘nice to meet you.’ I chit-chat with them and laugh at their jokes and pray to Christ they laugh at mine. I introduce myself to their girlfriends, and say goodnight at the end of the evening. Just ‘goodnight’! When what I really want to say is ‘oh please please please fuck me. Fuck me so hard it makes me cry. Please put your hands on me – anywhere – and just squeeze and rub and slap and punch me and make me feel better about feeling like this when I shouldn’t. Take away the misery of unrequited lust, and tell me I’m a bad bad bad fucking person for wanting you.’

It’s not their fault, of course: it’s mine. To paint these guys as tempting architects of my failure at monogamy would be to pretend that I have no agency: no morals.  But although they can’t help striking exactly the chord that has me throbbing with need, I have to avoid them, and come across as either rude or awkward. I can’t help it.

While one of my types is nearby my mind will do bad things: flash images and scenes of him fucking me against a wall. Or pulling my jeans down to below the crack of my arse and rubbing a trembling hand between my legs. Slowly and deliberately opening one button on my shirt, and grinning as he reaches in to put cold fingers on my nipples. Wrapping a belt round my throat and choking me with it while he fucks me – while he whispers ‘you shouldn’t be doing this and you fucking know it’, pauses for a beat… two beats… lets me take a breath… then slaps my face as he pushes his cock harder inside.

Do you have a type?

I hope some of you know what I mean. Some of you conjured an image of a particular type of person – that person who sets you on a course of lustful flashes, and for whom your attraction feels almost dangerous. I feel like this about certain guys regardless of anything else that might be going on: whether I’m currently with someone who is also my ‘type’, for instance. And I laugh and point out hot men and go ‘that one there – he’s pretty’, and I point out interesting men and go ‘him: I’d go for him’ and all the while I’m thinking ‘yeah, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? I’d go for anyone with a good sense of humour and a pair of hands to grab my arse with. My type is something stronger, and utterly intangible.’

So when you ask me if I have a ‘type’ that’s the reason I’ll lie. I’d rather say ‘no of course not’ than give someone the full, disgusting truth. I do have a type when it comes to sex, and it’s undiscerning, perverted, and arational. It doesn’t matter in the slightest if these guys are bastards, if they’re already attached or totally disinterested. My cunt doesn’t care whether they’re the kind of people I could live with forever or the ones I’d throttle after 10 minutes. It doesn’t care how many of them there are: there is always room for one more.

I say I don’t have a type, because with enough love and enough interest I’ll have this passion for anyone. But these guys… these guys… these insta-lust ‘types’ that my brain hates but my body needs like sunlight: when I’m on my death bed and watching the guilty replays of my life’s mistakes, it’ll be these guys who play the starring roles.

My nerdy, horny, depraved and desperate men. My weaknesses.

My types.

I often walk down the street and imagine a hot guy (who probably looks a bit like David Tennant but with piercings and maybe a bicep tattoo) stepping out of a nearby shop and saying “hey there, you look incredibly attractive and exactly my type – do you fancy coming into my dungeon so that we can have all the sex?” Sadly my life is not a porn film, and the closest it’s ever come to one is that one time a plumber came over and I’d forgotten to put trousers on before I answered the door. That’s where the similarity ended, though, as he blushed a bit and I had to pretend that my boxer-brief/jumper combo was how I greeted all my house guests.

This week’s guest blogger has had far more interesting experiences, though, and he’s here to tell you a couple of deliciously exciting stories about unexpected sex. Take it away Simon…

Guest blog: the joy of unexpected sex

Sex is fun, exhilarating, a relief, all sorts of things. When it is unexpected it is even better – and I don’t mean when your partner suddenly decides that “Tonight’s the night, dear” when you’re settling down in front of Match of the Day. I mean when someone you know, but haven’t paid a great deal of attention to, surprises you with an out-of-the-blue session that leaves you completely sated. It’s happened to me twice and both times were mind-blowing.

I used to work at a hospital. A bunch of us would get together once a year to put on a show – all very silly and amateur but we took it fairly seriously and I had massive, full-on lustful cravings for one of the nurses who was part of this group. Very sexy, black wavy hair and a cracking smile and laugh. A real shame, as my amorous advances were never returned and she ended up with someone who I considered far behind her in evolutionary terms. What I didn’t realise was that another nurse in the group (I’ll call her Evie) had her eyes and ideas set on me and I was totally unaware of it.

We gathered one evening in my flat – I lived quite close to the hospital – was the usual messy, friendly  hilarious rehearsal for the show, spurred on with more than a few drinks and everyone (I thought) left quite late. I ushered them all out of the front door, dumped the empties by the bin, washed, brushed my teeth and jumped into bed to find Evie there wearing nothing but a chunky necklace. Genuine blonde, booby and a seriously gorgeous figure. This was well before the acronym “WTF” was invented but that’s probably what I thought at the time. (I should have written it down and patented it). However, being unmarried, unattached and certainly not one to look a gift nurse in the mouth, we had a rompingly good time involving massage oil, hands tied together, feet tied together, clothes pegs – use your imagination – and a pair of airline eye-shades. I am fairly certain I had four decent orgasms over the following hours and I am not sure I have managed that in one session at any time since. I know I was very late for work the next morning and several more in the following few weeks.

Wind the clock forward quite a number of years and I am on the way to deliver some training in the north of England. This is to an outfit whose manager I have known for some time on a purely professional basis – friendly, but definitely professional. I am due to be at her office between 8 and 8.30 a.m. but I get a call to ask if I can swing by her house to pick her up and drive us both in, then (she says) we can use her parking permit at work. So I drive up at about half past seven, ring the doorbell and she answers the door wearing a dressing gown.

That stopped me in my tracks for a start – I was expecting business attire and a “Let’s get the day started” attitude – but she had the gown open quite low, her hair was down and she did look absolutely drop-dead gorgeous and more than just a little sexy. Even more so when she reached past me to shut the door, then walked a few steps into the house, turned round and let the dressing gown fall away. It had the sort of effect that she obviously wanted. My jaw was probably following the dressing gown on its way down to floor level and my cock inside my trousers responded with a speed it hadn’t displayed for a while. I can’t remember if I actually said anything but, if I did, it was probably gibberish and pointless. She looked pleased at the effect she was having, climbed a few of her stairs and sat down, waiting.

I really didn’t need too much encouragement after that. Would any man? My jacket and tie came off remarkably quickly and I positioned myself at her feet and opened her knees wide, kissing and licking up the inside of her thighs as she lay back on the stairs and closed her eyes. I found she was extremely wet already – and extremely tasty, too – and the next few minutes were spent teasing her, opening those beautiful cunt lips to admire a swollen clitoris and to help it to swell even more. I slipped two fingers into her and she arched and shuddered and came hard and it was all I could do not to join her, though I was still mainly clothed. I stood up and started to undo my trousers and let my aching cock into the light; she turned her back on me, climbed another couple of stairs and stuck her arse out towards me, presenting me with a picture that most red-blooded men would like to frame and keep. Still with my trousers around my ankles, I slipped straight into her and she braced herself against the stairs with one hand and pulled me harder into her with the other. We fucked in that position harder than I had known for ages – the excitement of the situation, a new experience with someone who was almost a stranger made me rock hard with pleasure and I came like a train inside her, flooding her with my come for what seemed an age. For some inexplicable reason – guilt, pleasure, surprise? – we both collapsed and started laughing helplessly on the stairs and slithered to the bottom step in a sticky, tangled heap.

The trickiest bit was walking into her offices, washed and cleaned, over an hour later and keeping myself from smiling inanely while trying to train her staff with her present in the room.

People ask me for advice sometimes, and I find this a bit terrifying because ultimately I am just a bumbling nobhead, who stumbles through life trying to work out how to look like a grown up without anyone noticing that actually I am a ball of bluster and panic. I expect some of you feel like this too, but because I am human I think that I have it much worse: that I am surrounded by functioning adults who have brains and wisdom and the ability to fill out mortgage paperwork, while I still struggle with the concept of having to throw milk away when it starts to get smelly.

So when you ask me for advice, know that I am doing one of two things:

1. Making it up, based on ‘what I reckon’, and given that I often come home half-drunk and ‘reckon’ I should lie face-down on the carpet until my partner covers me with a blanket, my reckonings are unlikely to be particularly insightful.

2. I give advice that other people have given me before, which struck me as wise and thoughtful and far better than anything I could say.

Today I am doing the latter, and I present to you the 3 best dating tips I’ve ever been given.

Dating tip 1: say yes

A long time ago I had a horrible break up. I did that thing where you hide in your flat in your pants, crying to old episodes of Scrubs and eating cheese until you almost stop liking cheese. It was pretty serious. My life was never going to be good again and everything was awful and I couldn’t see myself doing anything at all because he wasn’t by my side.

Then my Mum called.

She told me to pull myself together and stop moping and all those comforting things that Mums are supposed to say. She told me I was beautiful and that I’d find someone else in no time if I wanted to, but that I didn’t need a man to complete me and yada yada etc. I cried some more, because all of this stuff was just clichéd and obvious bullshit which was instantly swallowed by the pit of my misery. I wanted something practical. Something useful. Something I could go out and do rather than just repeat to myself as a wishy-washy happiness mantra.

“Say yes,” she explained.

“Yes?”

“Yes. Say yes to every single thing you’re invited to from now on. Evenings in the pub, trips to the theatre, weekends away – everything.”

“Why? To meet someone else?”

“Don’t be a tosser,” she replied. “You do it because it will make you that ‘fun’ person: the one who always says yes. The one who gets excited about life and wants to join in with things. The one who’s always got something exciting on the go.”

“Will it win him back?” I asked, like a pathetic loser.

“Who gives a shit? You’ll be too busy rock-climbing or something.”

So I did: I said yes to everything. And so followed one of the most enjoyable three months of my life. I was skint, of course – all this socialising gave my wallet a thorough hammering – but by God I was having fun. A few weeks after she gave me this advice I was having dirty tent sex with a hot guy, and drinking vodka with strangers on a beach. Thanks, Mum.

Dating tip 2: approach people you fancy

We focus so much on how to ‘capture’ the man or woman of our dreams, and how to entice other people, that frequently we forget that the whole point is that we should like each other. I’ve heard a few variations on this piece of advice before, but none so brilliantly put as that posted by @ArchedEyebrowBR yesterday. In her post – online dating tips for the fat babe – she laid down some pretty significant wisdom that I think is relevant to everyone:

Don’t be at the mercy of everyone else: ask out the people you fancy, not the people you think will fancy you.

Hell yes. Something I have repeatedly and miserably failed at for most of my adult life, in part because I see so many things that give me pause for thought. He won’t like me – I’m too tall. He’ll probably think I’m too common. He goes for blondes.

Why is this stuff in my brain? It didn’t fall in there by accident – it’s there because I’ve had experience with similar guys that has led me to be wary of a particular reaction. It’s also partly down to the media constantly telling us what we need to be like, and down to my youth, during encounters at school which made me believe that like should stick to like. Goth kids with goth kids, fat kids with fat kids, clever kids with clever kids, and God forbid you should have a boyfriend who plays rugby when you’re a glasses-wearing sportphobe.

Anyway. Sometimes this stuff will be true – sometimes the person you fancy really will turn you down because you’re too tall, or whatever. But that is because they may well be a douchebag. And how much fucking better to know that you’re picking from a pool of people you have a genuine attraction to, than ‘settling’ for someone you think you might be able to get because you’ve always been told you can only have one thing?

Imagine if you were vegetarian and you’d been told that the buffet was 90% meat. You arrive at the venue expecting to be fobbed off with some crappy spinach and ricotta bullshit and a measly side-salad. Then you discover, to your delight, that the meat is actually cheese and you can have your pick of anything on the table.

ArchedEyebrow has literally just announced that, but for dating – tuck in.

Dating tip 3: you will never be happy ever after

Please don’t think ‘oh God what a depressing tip to end on’ – this is actually one of the most positive and uplifting pieces of advice I have ever been given, and it applies to LIFE as well as dating, because dating is basically part of life and is not some special expert subject on which only people who tell you to ‘play hard to get’ are qualified to comment.

This advice was given to me by the amazing Justin Hancock, who is wise. He was explaining mindfulness to me, and talking about being present in the moment. I’m not an expert on mindfulness, but this bit really struck home (I’m paraphrasing):

We often think of happiness as this big end goal – like we’ll get to a point in our lives and we’ll be happy. We’ll have a nice home, family, job, whatever, and by that point we’ll have reached peak happiness. Then we get sad about something and think OH NO I’VE RUINED IT and WHY CAN’T I JUST BE HAPPY. But it’s normal: happiness comes and goes, and we’ll never reach this ‘peak happiness forever’ – it’s a myth.

Actually, happiness is always a temporary thing. It’d be weird if it was just a climbing scale and, at a certain point, we reached a state of irreversible bliss. Even when we achieve our ‘dream jobs’ we’re not stagnant – we’re usually not content to just turn up from 9-5 and work to rule every day for the rest of our lives: we have ups and downs, fights with colleagues, deadlines that are unreasonable or realistic, new ambitions or needs or desires.

Likewise with dating: you can meet someone you love so much you want to lick their used socks and snuggle so hard into them that your face becomes melded to the crook of their neck, and still you won’t be happy forever. That person will eventually piss you off, and you’ll piss them off, or you’ll have to go for Christmas lunch with their parents or something and you’ll be miserable because their dad makes shit gravy and doesn’t do the sprouts properly.

The point is, no one will ever be happy ever after. Knowing that makes me much happier today.

Today I have a BONUS GUEST BLOG. I know. It is literally more excitement than I can handle and I have had to go for a lie-down. Luckily, I can hand over to the more-than-capable TNW, who is here to talk to you seriously about nude selfies.

I didn’t write anything about the recent ‘Fappening’ because, in all honesty, I found the whole thing so miserable that I just wanted to cry, and then punch internet twats, and then cry again while punching internet twats. As someone who has taken nude selfies before, and been torn with the panic that ‘oh God someone will find them’ as well as banging the drum of ‘it’s your right as an adult to take pictures of your body if you wish‘ I just couldn’t bring myself to wade into the murky mire of sex shame surrounding the debate. However, TNW has picked up the mantle, and written a comprehensive breakdown of just what is wrong with the ‘fappening’ and some tips for your own nude photos.

Editor’s note from GOTN: I don’t agree with his third tip, but that’s only because I have received so many cock shots in my time as a sex blogger that if I sent as many as I received I’d be the most documented person on the planet.

How not to be a dick about nude selfies

When I was 19 years old, I used to send off my camera rolls to a company who would process them, and post them back. They would send you a normal print, and a smaller print attached. My then partner and I decided to snap ourselves whilst having sex and we could split the photos like trophies with each other.

With some considerable pride, we got our photos back with a warning slip, which flatly stated that some of the photos we’d taken were illegal to send in the post, as it was tantamount to the developers “distributing pornography.” That was trophy enough for two little show-offs like us.

Later, with a different partner, we took some dirty photos and brazenly got them developed at the local camera shop. On picking them up, the developer winked “you might want to get a couple of those enlarged.” The absolute cheek. We later bought a Polaroid.

Of course, people wanting a record of their sex, proof they were good-looking or just the thrill of wanting to do something risqué, is nothing new. A lot of people have indulged in their exhibitionist sides, from sending photos to Reader’s Wives or fucking outdoors on the promise that there’s a chance they might get caught. People go dogging or attend sex parties. It’s all great if you’re into it and tutting in disapproval just makes you a shit-wipe.

The element of being caught has been a titillating thrill since someone invented shame.

When digital cameras became commonplace, things changed. People were now allowed to have some fun without the need of getting caught. There was no need to include anyone but yourselves. Computers with webcams, phones with camera’s built-in – there was now a whole new crop of people wanting to get naked and shoot the results.

Soon enough, everyone had an email address and rudimentary photo-editing skills. While many still hide under the bedsheets and fuck with the lights off, there’s an entire generation of people who now completely accept that naked photos are part of a healthy sexual life. You can now creep off to the toilets at work, take a naughty photograph and send it to the object of your affections through Snapchat or WhatsApp without anyone noticing you’ve been away from your desk. Couples can now make short movies with their phones and watch them back together.

Naturally, some of the more shy people get a flash of panic at the very idea of it, which is fine. Nothing is mandatory. The more conservative will wag a finger of disapproval at anyone who dare mention that they might indulge themselves in this way. Quite why, is something to scratch your head over.

It is with the latter that things get ugly.

With the ‘Fappening’ that took place recently, where a lot of young, female celebrities had their naked selfies stolen from them, there was an idea that they were somehow to blame. “If you don’t want people seeing them, don’t take them in the first place!” Of course, no-one ever applied that judgemental, dim-witted logic to having your money stolen from your bank account. “If you don’t want people stealing your money, don’t get a credit card – you should hide all your money under your bed where only you can get at it.”

What is particularly odd about this kind of Mary Whitehouse response is that there’s an incredibly positive thing in all of this. People are much less Catholic than ever, no longer believing that they have to be chaste and pure for no good reason. People are getting more and more expressive with their sexuality, which can only be a good thing.

There’s millions of Tumblrs where people proudly show off what their momma gave them. Some stay anonymous by leaving their faces out of shot. Other men and women don’t care – they’re proud of what they’ve got and are Teflon to any potential leaks because they were public all along.

However, for those more reluctant, there’s a very real worry. While the ‘Fappening’ was dismissed as only a problem for the famous, and celebrities deserve everything they get (they don’t), there’s been a dreadful rise in ‘revenge porn’. Sites are dedicated to bitter exes or flat-out arseholes who completely betray the trust of someone by sharing their naked bodies with anyone who wants to look.

Predominantly a problem among young men, there’s a competitive element to gathering naked photos. They’ll bark at people with sex Tumblrs, saying exactly what they want and throwing hissy fits when they don’t get it. They’ll slut-shame someone for not spreading their holes open, when they should’ve been grateful for the photos they did get. They’ll try and amass as many naked selfies as possible, rather than getting turned-on by the few who wanted to send them.

See, it isn’t the naked photo that’s a turn-on. We’ve all seen enough nude bodies online to be desensitised by that. The real thing that gets your blood moving more quickly is that someone actively wanted to send you a naked photograph. There’s many people who have a folder of pre-taken photos ready to send, because sharing cheeky photos is so commonplace in 2014. However, the thing that makes your heart leap and your groin tighten is when, after the initial flirt, they take and send photographs just for you.

Sadly, in all of this, a lot of men have an attitude that is utterly dumbfounding, and it goes like this:

“You’re a slut for sending naked photos and you get what you deserve if someone sees them and you’re a bitch for not sending me a photo of you out of your underwear and I’ll share these photos online if you piss me off… but please, please, please, please, I’m begging you, please, please send more nudes.”

One of the most fulfilling things about sharing naked photos together is the exchange of trust. I know that, should someone send me nudes, one of the things that makes me dizzy with excitement is that they trust me enough to do so. I won’t betray their trust. Partly because I’m a decent human being, but if I’m being brutally honest, I don’t tear their trust apart because I’m greedy. I’m greedy for more photos from them. I’m excited and want to send more back. I’m absolutely consumed by the experience. It’s foreplay. It’s the tease. We might never even meet up in real life, but there’s this thrilling, abstract intimacy with someone wanting to show me their tits or dicks. Two people, showing themselves off to each other. It’s incredibly exciting and no-one should ever be burned by it.

Through this, I’ve developed amazing relationships with people. With that trust comes bucket loads of other amazing things. Sometimes there’s a hook-up. Sometimes you end up being much closer to someone that you imagined you ever would. Often, because they trust you with their naked body, they’ll also load you up with enviable or embarrassing sexual anecdotes.

Sadly, the ‘Fappening’ has underlined that women are still treated with a huge unfairness when it comes to sex. Women are still not allowed to own their lust. Even in 2014, you’ll be drowned in clucks of disapproval from all sides. Women shooting other women down for having the temerity of being sexually confident. Men laughing along at a woman being violated, even though it actually makes them feel uncomfortable, but they’re blighted by an old-fashioned masculinity that really needs to die off now. Some of the men who have laughed in the face of women during these photo-leaks are the same shits that send ugly, badly-lit, unsolicited dick pics through Tinder. If someone shared those with their parents, you imagine they’d be suddenly more reflective of the whole thing (but alas, women are so weary of these types of messages that they simply delete them because getting revenge on them would be a full time job).

Collectively, humans have always wanted to show off to each other. They’ve always wanted reassurance that they’re vital objects of desire. The only difference now, is that the process and technology has changed behind it. For the most part, people play nice and quietly get off on each other without fucking it up. Sadly, for the Fappeners and the Dick Shot Crew, they’re taking the whole process two steps back. People will never stop taking nudes – I know I won’t – but sadly, we’re in a situation where it is going to take twice the reassurance to actually enjoy the process.

Here are some tips for nudes:

• Be grateful for what you receive and don’t pester someone for more than they’re comfortable sending.
• Never, ever, ever, ever share them with anyone under any circumstance. Seriously. There’s no reason where it is acceptable.
• Try and send as many nudes as you receive. It’s only fair. Don’t demand a dozen when you’ve only sent one.
• Only send sexual photos to someone you’ve struck up a rapport with and even then, ask. Sending unsolicited photos is akin to walking into a pub with your junk on show and saying “GET SOME OF THIS!” If you think that’s funny, try it in your local and see how long you last without someone smacking you in the mouth.
• Don’t shame anyone if you don’t get your way. Life doesn’t work like that and something as delicate as sex certainly shouldn’t. Tantrums never result in anything good. What are you? A baby?