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.

I’ve been called some crappy things in my time, and I’ve hurled a good few insults myself. But there’s one word that, when I hear it, makes me boil with rage.

That word is ‘psycho.’

As in:

“When I dumped her, I realised she was a proper psycho.”
“He’s got a psycho ex girlfriend.”
“She’s been stalking him on facebook like a psycho.”

Why you’re not a ‘psycho’

Let’s begin by stating that applying the word ‘psycho’ to anyone is pretty offensive. Remember Hitchcock’s classic shower scene? That’s what you’re alluding to when you use this word. Whether you’re using it to belittle your ex or to try and humiliate people with mental health problems, it’s a nasty word to use in anger.

What’s more, it’s frequently used as a weapon to make women (and ex-girlfriends in particular) feel small. Not when they’ve done things that are dangerous or troubling – I’ve seen the word ‘psycho’ applied to people because they’ve done something as innocuous as:

• asking an ex to talk to them about the reasons for a break up
• crying in a public place because they were upset about a break up
• texting someone when drunk to tell them they love them
• looking at someone’s profile on Twitter or facebook

Compare these to the ‘shower scene’ – are they really ‘psychotic’ actions? Or are they, more realistically, natural things to do if you’re in a state of emotional turmoil?

I’m not talking about genuine stalker behaviour here – none of us want our bunnies boiled. None of us want ex-partners turning up at our workplace and screaming wildly on the street “why don’t you love me?! What did I do?!” I think we can all agree that actually being stalked by an ex is a terrible, frightening thing.

But labelling someone a ‘psycho’ because they’re visibly upset about the breakup of a relationship, serves to trivialise the idea of ‘stalking’ by lumping all of this behaviour in together. If your ex is sending you threatening messages, harassing you, and making you uncomfortable, that’s a very serious thing. If they’re looking at your publicly-available information and shedding a few tears over the good times you had when you were going out, that’s quite another.

‘Psychotic’ men

I’ve rarely heard the word ‘psycho’ applied to men who do similar things. That’s not because they don’t do them – men can be just as emotional about breakups as women, it’s just that their emotions are less frequently used as a weapon with which to humiliate them. Ex-boyfriends of mine who have cried over our lost (or, more realistically, mutually abandoned) love affairs have never been skewered by my friends saying ‘oh, I knew he was a psycho’ or ‘he texted you again? What a mental.’

Guys are shamed in other ways for emotional behaviour – being expected to keep a stiff-upper-lip when they’re being torn apart inside, for one. Being told that ‘boys don’t cry’ and invited to shake off their upset by rebound-fucking their way around town, as if their emotions and their erections are just two sides of the same coin. But that’s a discussion for another day.

There’s an entire minefield of shit surrounding the way we discuss people’s more extreme emotions surrounding break ups – sobbing gentlemen are obnoxiously induced to ‘man up’, and female despair is painted as something oddly sinister. Her justifiable sense of grief is framed as dangerous instability. Guys might shed a few tears or get drunk to dull the pain, but you’d better watch out for these ker-ay-zee women – with their wailing and their texting and their unreasonable sense of sadness.

The worst thing you could do

There are those who handle breakups badly – the ones who cut up their ex’s clothes, send increasingly alarming and desperate emails, show up at their house at 2 in the morning and wake the neighbours by banging on the door and demanding to be let in. I’ll stress again for those who might have missed it – these things are unacceptable, and often downright scary.

But most of the time when the ‘p’ word is applied, it’s to behaviour that is perfectly understandable and normal: crying or mooning over your ex, or wanting some form of closure at the end of a relationship. These aren’t ‘psychotic’ things to do, in fact if you’ve broken up with someone you love, even if the break up was mutual, it would be abnormal not to be emotional about it.

The very nature of love is that it’s a powerful emotion, and when we mess with powerful emotions we do strange things. I’ve done things that would justify a fair few  insults – from getting crying-drunk at parties to mentioning a new partner in front of the ex I’m not quite over.

I’m ashamed of and angry at myself for doing these things, and if you were to call me a ‘bitch’ or a ‘hypocrite’ or a ‘cold-hearted bastard’ you’d be bang on the money. But the word ‘psycho’ says so much more than that.

It says ‘you’re not normal’ in a way that is coldly calculating. It says ‘you’re hysterical, you’re overreacting, your pain is not significant as you think it is.’

Above all, the thing that makes me shudder and cringe: it tells someone that their affection is not only unwanted but repulsive. That the most unacceptable, horrific thing this person has done is to love you.

I am not a weak person. I am a loud, angry, Siberian tiger of a woman who will tear you into a thousand rhetorical pieces if you even think of implying that I am incapable.

But people have power over me: men have power over me. Most of the time the power of men is used for good – men I love make me tremble and cry and beg with passion. Unfortunately, some men have the power to make me weak with fear by simply saying hello.

Men – do you know you have this power? I suspect a lot of you don’t. I suspect this because I have good friends, who would never knowingly terrify someone, who occasionally do things that they shouldn’t: loudly chat up girls at bus stops at 2 am. Push things a bit too far in a pub, and speak loudly and crudely to women who are shying away. Insist on hugs from women they barely know, who wince at the touch of an over-familiar stranger.

The other day a man said ‘hello darling’ to me on a night bus, and it became apparent that I am not the sabre-toothed bitch that I’d like to believe. The rational part of my brain was telling me that he was a perfectly nice, friendly guy. He didn’t mean me any harm. He was just being sociable, and I should be flattered by his attention. Then he got off the bus at my stop, and my heart beat faster. I put on my cold face and picked up the pace. He didn’t follow me – he’d never intended to. He wasn’t a rapist or a bastard – he was just a friendly guy who did not understand that by approaching me in the middle of the night he was wielding a certain power.

A long time ago…

When I was 16 I had a job at a corner shop. I’d spend Saturday evenings selling lottery tickets to drunk men, sweets to children, and cigarettes to any teenager with enough swagger to persuade me they didn’t need ID. At 8:30 we’d shut up shop and I’d head to the bus stop, and home.

The bus left at 8:55, but it didn’t usually feel like a long wait. In the winter it was cold and dark, but I was never afraid – I’d sit huddled in my denim jacket reading books and watching people go by. Occasionally, drunk youths would run past, taunting each other and shattering cheap bottles of alcopops on the pavement.

But I was never afraid.

One night a man came to join me at the bus stop. He was old – perhaps 40, perhaps 50, I’m not sure – all grown-ups seem ancient to a teenager. He sat at the opposite end of the bus stop bench and said hello. It was 8:35.

I said ‘hi’, and went back to reading my book. At around 8:40 he tried again. ‘So, what are you doing here by yourself?’

‘I’ve just finished work.’

‘You seem too young to be working.’

‘It’s just a part time job, in that newsagents on the high street.’

‘Oh, that’s good. Do you enjoy it?’

We chatted. It was fine. He was a friendly, lonely guy making conversation at the bus stop. I was polite. I put my book away so as not to seem rude, and we continued chatting. I checked my watch and it was 8:45. I wasn’t afraid.

I asked him where he was off to and he said he was visiting his son. His son had just had a baby, and he was going to see it. He paused. He shuffled a bit closer to me on the bench.

‘You’re very pretty.’

And all it took was that one short sentence, those three words, and suddenly I was afraid. I didn’t want this man to think I was pretty, I didn’t want him to talk to me like that. I didn’t want him to say things that I couldn’t respond to politely. I didn’t know how to not respond politely. So I said ‘thanks.’

At that, he shuffled further along the bench, so he was sat within about a foot of me. He slid his hand along the plastic seat and he touched my hand with his little finger. Just a slight touch, then a stroke. He was smiling. It was 8:50.

‘You’re very pretty to be on your own.’

In time honoured tradition, I told him I was off to my boyfriend’s house. He slid his hand on top of mine, and kept stroking. My hand itched and burned and I wanted to pull it away. I wanted him to stop touching me, but I didn’t want to be rude. I told myself it didn’t matter – it was only my hand, for crying out loud: not my tits or my arse. He hadn’t said anything sexual.

Maybe he was just confused, maybe he was just friendly.

Maybe I should just let him keep stroking my hand and then the bus would come and everything would be OK and he wouldn’t touch me anywhere else and oh God I was wearing shorts and I didn’t want him to touch my legs and I just wanted the bus to come.

It was 8:55.

‘The bus will be here soon.’ I choked a bit on the sentence and shifted away from him slightly – like I was making myself comfortable – I didn’t want him to think I was being rude. Above all – more than the fear of being touched – I didn’t want him to know that I was disgusted by him. He moved a bit closer – the side of his hand touched my thigh and I leapt up from the bench.

Never in my life have I been so pleased to see a bus.

I paid for my ticket and got on, sitting near the front in the well-lit section by the driver. The bus was my sanctuary and my safety, the driver had mirrors to look out for me behind him, and nothing bad could happen to me now that the bus was here. I breathed a ragged sigh of relief in that moment – I thought I was safe.

But then the man came and sat next to me.

He’d obviously misunderstood the point of the bus – for him it wasn’t a sanctuary, but an escalation – an opportunity for him to sit even closer. He touched my legs, he stroked the exposed upper part of my arms. He whispered in my ear that I was beautiful, and he kissed my shoulder. I, in the seat between him and the window, trapped in silence by my own misguided sense of politeness and shock that no one on the bus realised this was wrong, cried.

I sat there, mute. I let him touch me and kiss me and I cried.

You’ve got the power

Why did I write this? This blog is supposed to be sexy, ranty, and occasionally vaguely amusing, not an outlet for ancient, emotional stories that I should have got out of my system years ago.

But I wrote it because it’s clearly not out of my system. As I said at the beginning, a man said ‘hi’ to me on a night bus recently. Friendly, smilingly, he asked me how I was and where I was off to. And when I said ‘home’ he said ‘where’s that?’ and my stomach froze inside.

I’m old enough now to have learnt how to brush someone off, or where to run to if someone follows me. Most importantly I’m old enough to know men – I’ve known hundreds, I’ve fucked a fair few, and I’ve loved a couple too. And I know that the vast majority of them are good, and kind, and sweet. No man I know would ever deliberately give anyone that fear.

But the world isn’t divided into good men and bastards. There are the good guys, the bad guys, and then all of the real people somewhere in between. And as surely as I know that the original bus guy was a bastard – not just a bastard, a criminal – I know that there are men who say ‘hi’ on the night bus and mean no more than that.

I’m confident that the man the other night meant no harm – he was drunk, and keen, and friendly, and when I brushed him off he backed away. He got off the bus at my stop not because he was stalking me but because that was where he lived. He walked in the opposite direction, not knowing that I was looking over my shoulder every ten seconds to make sure he wasn’t on my tail.

Don’t be that guy

I don’t want to shame all the men in the world for the mistakes of the many and the evil of the few. I refuse to believe that a significant number of people are sexual predators – deliberately and carefully setting out to make women feel the way I felt on that bus.

But I have known men who, despite wanting to place themselves firmly at the ‘good guy’ end of the spectrum have, unthinkingly, done similar things. Pushed things a bit too far, approached women when it was late at night or when they were vulnerable. Insisted on a touch when they’re too pissed to notice that the girl is grimacing.

You have a certain kind of power, and you need to be aware of what that means for you: if you don’t listen, if you don’t look, if you don’t try to understand how the person you’re approaching feels, you have the power to turn into that guy. That creepy one.

It’s hard for me to admit that people have this power over me. If you corner me in the pub and ask whether I’d put up with being groped on a bus I’d laugh and tell you I can handle myself – I’d scream, or fight, or call the police. I’d invoke a tidal wave of righteous anger to sweep away any man who fucked with me.

But in reality I don’t know if I could. Because whenever men say hello to me on a night bus it’s 8:55 on Saturday and I’m sixteen again. I’m sitting stock-still under fluorescent lights while a man kisses my shoulder. I’m cold and alone and scared and mute, shuddering with silent sobs and waiting for someone to save me.