I’ve heard it said that one should never kiss and tell. But I disagree. Naturally. If this were a universal moral truth there’d be no discussion of sex other than as an abstract concept, and certainly no sex blogs for us to get wet and sticky over.

Because I am not a weapons-grade arsehole, I don’t just blunder around writing real-life sex stories without regard for the ethics: I think you can kiss and tell in a way that’s fair. In a way that not only maintains respect for your past partners but also enables you to be open about the more sordid things you’ve done with them.

What the men on the train are saying

“I was slapping her arse and everything, mate.”

As I write this, I’m sitting on a two hour train heading back to London. As on all weekend trains, the token group of obnoxious loud people (in this instance a group of twenty-something guys) have made a beeline for my carriage. On the surface it sounds like they had a pretty hot time this weekend. Yet strangely, if it weren’t for all the guttural guffaws of laughter, if I actually just listened to the words they used, it would be impossible to tell whether they enjoyed themselves or not.

This weekend they either met and shagged some women who fancied them, or made selfish sexual use of some sub-human creatures who made them want to vomit: I cannot tell which.

“She was going at me so hard. I’ve never had so much attention.”

They’re dissecting the sex they had. I believe (although you’ll appreciate I’m relaying this story third hand) that one of them got a blow job.

“I thought there’d be blood, mate, she was so gaggin'”

“You fuckin’ nasty bastard.”

At one point, at least, the two women acquiesced to their request to ‘lez off‘ so they could watch.

“They were going right at each other’s minges, mate. It was fucking disgusting.”

I know that one of these gentlemen believed a certain girl’s exertions to be too much:

“I could smell her tit sweat, man, it was rank.”

And that at least one member of the group had concerns about the effect that their sexual shenanigans might have on his reputation.

“We’re keeping this to ourselves, are we? Because it sounds like you’re telling every cunt.”

Where’s the enjoyment?

Fascinating though this conversation is, I’m hoping it’ll stop soon. Because it makes me want to tear things to shreds.

There’s nothing wrong with having a gang-bang with a few women and a selection of your most obnoxious chums. In fact, I’d say it might be one of my ideal weekends. I imagine I might play the part of the lady who was not only ‘gagging’ but also getting fairly sweaty, because I find sex is a bit more fun if you put your back into it.

But the problem here isn’t that they’re dissecting the hot time they had, it’s the fact that at no point have any of them suggested that it was something they wanted to do. Something that they enjoyed. The braying, raucous laughter hints that it must have been quite fun, but their words imply it was an unpleasant thing that just happened to them. As if, while minding their own loudmouthed business, they were suddenly jumped by a pack of ‘desperate birds’, who they kindly deigned to fuck despite the girls’ ‘grotty tattoos’ and obscene desire to fellate them.

The caricatures that they draw with their tawdry, disdainful words make the girls look awful, desperate, ugly and pathetic. The sex itself sounds miserable and grotesque.

We all have the capacity to be bastards

Of course this isn’t just a male thing. Women don’t always dissect sexual activity with a shy smile and a neutral ‘well, to each his own.’ Each and every one of us is capable of being cruel and dismissive of ex-lovers, of telling tales that paint our past fucks as grotesque and regretful accidents.

“Tiny cock.”
“Crap shag.”
“Didn’t put any effort in.”
“Smelled like a brewer’s arsehole.”

These statements might be true, of course. Not everything is perfect, and to expect all sex to come with roses, romance and volcanoes of orgasmic fluid would be naïve to the point of stupidity.

So, in order to be nice, do we just avoid talking about the bad fucks? Of course not. One of the best ways to let a new partner know that I don’t like it when guys bite me is to tell him about the time a guy kept biting me and it was horrible. Likewise if a guy asks how his cock measures up to previous partners, I’d be a fool to pretend that they were all hung like a stud donkey.

But as everyone’s parents know, and have told us all repeatedly: it’s not what you say, its the way you say it.

How not to be a dick

I know there are a couple of guys (and girls) who will read my blog (or even my book) and cringe in anticipation of a poor review. People I’ve slept with once or twice and then never again, who’ll be hoping that I don’t write something contemptuous on page 73 about their mouse-cock or post-orgasmic sobbing.

I, in turn, hope that no one will read their story and be upset. That although there might be truth spoken, there’ll be no barbs thrown unnecessarily, no casual scorn, and no ill-judged disdain for those who’ve been generous enough to bestow their fuck upon me.

For what it’s worth, I try to follow these rules:

1. Keep them anonymous.

An anonymous lover can always step forward and claim credit if they want it, but once you’ve named someone they can never erase the association.

2. Speak well of them.

You don’t need to lie, or pretend someone rocked your world when they only tickled your funny bone – you just need to treat your past fucks like real people: with emotions and flaws and the capacity to be so pierced with shame that they want to curl up and cry forever.

This second rule is the most important not just so that you can avoid making people unnecessarily miserable, but because it’ll make a big difference to any fucks you might get in the future. If, when you’re telling me about a previous shag, it sounds like you did it with a vague sense of hatred for your hapless partner, then I am spectacularly unlikely to drop my knickers and let you screw me with a similar degree of contempt. Being angry is fine, if they gave you cause to be. Being upset is OK too. But being outright disdainful? Spewing bile because someone had the audacity to have sex with you in a way that either wasn’t as you expected or that you later came to regret? That’s cruel. And it’s not them that looks bad when you do that: it’s you.

I’m a fan of honesty, but you have to be honest about everything. Don’t tell people that so-and-so was an appalling shag without explaining what it was about him that made you want to fuck him in the first place. Don’t tell people some ‘slag’ was ‘gagging’ for your cock and miss out the crucial detail that you asked her to suck it. At the very least, it should be possible for the person you’re telling to understand that the sex was something you did willingly, something you expected to enjoy.

And as for me, I know I’ve had crap sex with some people. I disappoint men on a worryingly regular basis, and I’m more than happy for them to discuss my flaws. Tell people I was lazy. Tell them I was crap. Tell them I make stupid whining noises when I come and that I pull faces like I’m competing in a gurning contest at an ugly convention. But remember that somewhere within all of these truths is a real person with feelings and desires. A person who, once upon a time, you desperately wanted to fuck.

We’re all squeamish about certain things – some people hate the sight of blood, others can’t cope with injections, or the possibility of disease, or unclean kitchen worktops. There’s nothing wrong with a certain amount of squeamishness, but I’m surprised at the number of people I’ve met who are – to one degree or another – squeamish about sex.

Sex, by its nature, is quite messy. Even at the most basic level (quick missionary hump for the purposes of procreation) both of you have to emit certain juices and fluids: sweat, jizz, quim – even saliva, if you’re feeling particularly romantic.

And so, unless you have a lot of equipment and a shedload of wet wipes to hand, when you fuck you’ll get dirty.

Ultra-clean sex and a tip for Dommes

If you want to avoid all possible sexual juices, the only way I can think of is to cover your partner head-to toe in a plastic sheet (ensuring that he has a suitable mouth to breathe through but, crucially, maintains a safe distance so that you can’t kiss each other) then stick his cock through a carefully-cut hole in the middle (protip: cut hole before cock is anywhere nearby), slip a condom on him, and hump away. Not particularly sexy, but it essentially eliminates almost all skin-to-skin contact. Were I a dominant lady I would certainly consider using this during sub play – you can have this idea for free.

However, although it’s excellent for people who have a fetish for sterile sex, it’s not great for those of us who revel in the smells and juices and general slipperiness of the whole scenario. To be honest, it’s not great for any of us if we don’t happen to have plastic sheeting in our sex toy drawer.

The point I’m trying to make is that we have to go to extremes to make sex un-messy, so any squeamishness we have about the exchange of particular fluids necessarily needs to be laid to one side if we want to really get on and enjoy things.

Let’s talk about menstruation

Number one (that number, for new readers, denotes the first guy I slept with) did not like shagging while I was ‘on.’ A couple of tentative attempts while I was bleeding lightly went OK, but an energetic, doggy-style hump during my heavier days proved disastrous.

Once he’d come, he pulled his dick out and made a slightly high-pitched squealing noise.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you OK? Oh Jesus, are you having a miscarriage?”
“I’m fine – what’s up?”
“You’re bleeding!”
“Of course I’m bleeding, I’m on my period.”
“But this is worse than that.”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s… it’s… it’s got chunks in.”

I calmed him down with tea, a cuddle, and a long explanation of the fact that yes, sometimes it has chunks in. We never did it again, and I spent a good few years avoiding sex during my period, worrying that the guys I shagged would react with similar horror upon discovery that menstruation isn’t just the occasional leaking of a thimbleful of blue water, but often a gushing onslaught of not just blood but genuine, honest-to-goodness gore.

It’s totally fine to be utterly disgusting

So what changed my mind? Because, of course, my mind has been changed: I’d no more refuse sex during my period these days than I’d give up wanking for lent. Period horny is the horniest type of horny. About halfway through my red week I’m jiggling my knee and rubbing my thighs together and picking the bumpiest seat on the bus. What changed my mind about relieving this urge the old-fashioned cock-based way (as opposed to the ‘frantic clit-rubbing under a duvet’ way) was a couple of other guys I met.

Poor number one was quite naïve about periods, and a few other things for that matter – he didn’t like the idea of kissing me after a blow job (unless I’d brushed my teeth) or even giving me head.  But his horror at the more slippery aspects of sex was by no means a benchmark for how every guy would feel. Although I have met guys since who aren’t keen on period sex, or oral, or indeed anything that might require a deep clean afterwards, I’ve met far more who could give less than an iota of a fuck.

In fact, for adult men, ‘on’ fucking has proved to be much the same as ‘off’ fucking, only with a towel put down to catch the drippiest bits. One guy went so far as to remove my tampon with his teeth during a particularly feisty session. I appreciate this. I don’t have a particular fetish for sex that’s blood-drenched – apart from anything else I simply don’t have the time or inclination to soak that many bedsheets. But I love the ‘I don’t give a fuck about your menstruation’ attitude that means I can stop panicking that the guy will get his dick covered and run out of the room squealing ‘why can’t you just be clean and sweet-smelling like the girls on telly?’

So if you’re squeamish, especially if you’re a teenage boy with limited knowledge of the mysterious workings of the female uterus – I understand. But I’d love it if you could lay a bit of your squeamishness to one side when you’re stripping down and getting naked with someone. What prompted me to write about this was a bit of browsing on ’embarrassing bodies’ forums, and other related sites. There are a hell of a lot of young girls and boys howling desperately into the online wilderness: ‘am I weird?’ ‘am I wrong?’ ‘am I grotesque and disgusting?’

The answer is almost certainly no, but it can be bloody hard to hear that answer sometimes. The sixteen year old version of me would have given anything to experience the genuine liberation that comes from realising that these juices I leaked and these noises I made and these weird spots that insisted on growing in seemingly random places on my body and subsequently leaking juices of their own: these things were pretty normal. Let’s embrace the leaking, juicy, weird bits of ourselves, love the leaking, juicy bits about other people, and commit to having some thoroughly messy sex.

Addendum, because I know I’ll get emails: if your period is especially painful, or you’re experiencing a significant change in blood loss and/or consistency, speak to a doctor.

“What do you want?”
“A gangbang”
“No, really, what do you want?”
“A gangbang.”
“OK. Let’s try again. Within the realms of what I can realistically achieve in the next 24 hours or so, what do you want?”
“I’d like to watch another man sucking your dick.”
“…”
“…”
“I’ll see what I can do.”

It’s not easy persuading straight guys to have their dick sucked by another guy. Luckily for me the gentleman in question was not so much ‘straight’ as ‘elegantly curved’, and willing to bend in any direction that gave him even a hint of a hard-on.

A few minutes on the internet and we had something – a gay but slightly bi-curious guy had published a straightforward ad offering cocksucking. He just wanted to pop round someone’s house, drop to his knees, suck for a while, then sod off home again. Straight guys were not only welcome, he promised, but his favourite.

We paused briefly, taking a silent moment together to marvel at the pervert possibilities that had been opened up by the internet, then got in touch.

Oh god even remembering it makes me a bit weak

An hour or so later I was sitting, tense, on the sofa waiting for my boy to arrive. He’d gone to the station to meet our stranger, check him out, and have a coffee. If all was well, he promised, they’d return together and I could watch whatever happened.

Nothing quite prepared me for the odd feeling of watching them begin. The boy sat nervously on the sofa, rock-solid and straining upwards, as the stranger went to work. He started by licking thickly from base to tip, smacking his lips and gripping the boy’s thighs as he moistened everything. Then he took the whole cock in his mouth, and I saw the boy tremble as it slipped in. Nervous though he was, he was clearly enjoying it – loving the skill with which the other guy was sucking him.

I sat in the corner on my knees, squeezing my legs together to stop myself trembling too. Watching in fascination as the stranger worked my boy’s dick in ways subtly different from mine. I was trying to remember, to learn, to maintain my composure. Most of all I was trying not to breathe too loudly in case it broke the spell.

It was here that we should have stopped. This was the hottest bit – the sucking, the trembling, the nervousness of the boy I knew and the casual skill of the one I didn’t. If I could have paused time I’d have kept it right there – with them both solid and happy and me sitting quietly nearby.

But we never stop in time

I didn’t want to be the one to suggest a fuck, but I don’t think I needed to. My memory grows hazy halfway through this story, but at some point the boy was lying naked, face down on the bed, with number 13 – the stranger – poised and ready to fuck him. Ever useful, I handed them a condom then retired to my position of trembling observer, watching as they went for it.

The stranger was big – not with muscle, but with beer. The boy was lithe and skinny and almost disappeared under the mass of the other. He turned his face towards me, wincing with pain and arousal as the other guy fucked him. I clasped my hands together behind my back to try and refrain from touching myself.

And then… and then things went a bit odd.

I think they felt guilty that I wasn’t joining in. I think they felt bad that, although they got to rub and lick and suck and fuck each other, I was left in the corner. I think they thought I wasn’t getting anything out of it.

I was summoned and, awkwardly, I went. I took off my clothes, and things suddenly turned from super-hot live-action gay porn to uncomfortable date – I didn’t want to say no and look like I was rude, but saying yes meant I had to fuck someone who had confessed that he didn’t much care about women.

Don’t get me wrong, fucking two gentlemen at once is one of my favourite things, and for all the weirdness of the situation, it was still nice to be at the mercy of two naked cocks. If I’m honest, I’m frequently grateful to be in the same time zone as two naked cocks. But although one of these guys was incredibly hot for me, the other gentleman was pretty damned gay indeed. He wasn’t interested in me, he was interested only in the fact that my presence kept the other guy hard.

We fucked together for a while – my boy fucked me while the stranger fucked him, and then we did it the other way around for a bit, all the while I was thinking ‘how can I get out of this with dignity?’ Watching two guys go at it makes me wet, but feeling one of them limply humping me while looking stonily into the distance, clearly thinking only of maintaining some semblance of an erection, is not exactly my cup of tea.

Awkward goodbyes

When it was finished I think we might actually have had a cup of tea. Just a quick one, the cup of tea that says ‘I definitely want you out of my house very soon, but I’m going to drink hot drinks with you to prove that I do not think badly of you as a person.’ And, to be fair, we didn’t. He was a perfectly lovely guy, and an incredibly skilled cocksucker. He was friendly and chatty and calm and experienced and easy to get on with.

He was just… you know… gay.

There are a number of morals to this story – ‘always stick to what you agreed on the internet’, ‘don’t join in sex scenes you’re uncomfortable with’, ‘be honest about what you actually like’, etc.

But the one I’ve always taken from it is that no matter how much you like someone, and how much you love fucking, sometimes not fucking is the best thing you can do.