The vast, vast majority of the time, I am a loser. A lank-haired, jeans-wearing, slouching drunken loser. With a cider in my hand, a chip on my shoulder and a face like a bulldog chewing a whole hive of wasps.

I say this only to counter what’s coming next: right now I am hot.

I’m hot because I’ve had my hair cut – it swishes in that shiny way that some people achieve daily, but for me comes round only twice a year when I go for my biannual hack. I’m hot because I’ve spent the last week doing more exercise than I normally would and – although there’s no immediate visual difference – I feel stronger and livelier and readier to bounce around like a puppy on MDMA. I’m hot because I’m wearing knickers that cup my arse comfortably, and because I’ve been doing DIY in hot pants and getting dirty and sweaty and wet.

We need to deal with your high self-esteem issues

I’m British, of course, so writing the above paragraph was torture – it took me a good ten minutes to bash out just a few sentences without tagging something self-deprecating on to the end. I’ve been trained, through years of TV, magazines and friendly banter, that to talk about the things you actually like about yourself is a social crime. Like eating steak with the fish fork or passing a joint to the right.

Most of the time this makes sense. After all, we’d all be excruciating and insufferable if our conversations started not with “how are you?” but “how hot am I!?” We’d barely get beyond introductions before we were hurling into buckets at the appalling displays of self-love.

No, instead we must only ever speak of the bad stuff, while desperately hoping that other people notice the good. We’re trained to make the best of ourselves, so we spend hours primping and preening and picking out just the right kind of shoe only to shit on all that effort later on by replying “no, really, I look awful” when someone says something nice. It’s a reflex gesture, and one which makes sense most of the time. When the hard-earned compliments come, we bat them away with great force, because self-hate is a much more attractive quality than arrogance.

Start fancying yourself

I’ve got nothing wrong with light self-deprecation, and on an ordinary day I’m far more likely to make a tedious aside about my weight than to bounce into a room and shout “Look! Aren’t my tits brilliant?!”

But not today. Because, fuck it, I don’t always feel good. And on the rare occasions that I do, I want to start making the most of it. In fifty years time I’ll be yearning for the chance to wear this arse again, to sit in hot pants on a stepladder sugar-soaping walls and enjoying not just being me but looking like me too.

You should do it too – go on, do it. Fancy yourself a bit. There are bound to be bits of yourself that you’re not a fan of. But isn’t it bizarre that it’s these disliked bits that get all the attention? Hours in the gym toning a stomach that you hate. Days in front of the mirror shaping eyebrows or facial hair in some sort of damage limitation exercise. Weeks spent traipsing around shops that make clothes for people who always seem to be a different shape to you. All that time spent rectifying or changing or enhancing – how much time do you actually spend appreciating?

You don’t have to take pictures of yourself in sexy poses and pin them on the fridge, or give yourself cringeingly awkward motivational pep-talks about how beautiful you are. Just give yourself a bit of time to appreciate the things you fancy. The things that your partners will go primal for. Stand in front of a mirror if you like, touch yourself if you want to, put on or take off the clothes that make you feel best, and just revel in a bit of self-lust.

Because no one else can love you like you can.

Every now and then Twitter goes on a nostalgia trip – everyone starts using the hashtag #TweetYourTeenageSelf to dispense wisdom their real teenage self would never have listened to.

But I’d have liked it, I think. Even if I didn’t take the advice. We’ve all got wisdom we’ve love to impart to our younger, less knowledgeable selves. And I’d certainly pay big bucks now to hear from GOTN aged fifty, and find out what I should or shouldn’t do in the next twenty years to avoid being a spectacular fuck-up.

This post is a bit saccharine, bordering on the cheesy, but anyone who has read my book will know that although I come across as a sex-crazed harpy, there’s an emotional romantic underneath. She’s just quite deep underneath.

So, in no particular order, here are the top five things I wish I’d known as a teenager.

1. There’s no such thing as ‘good in bed’

Really. I used to believe that being ‘good in bed’ was like having decent hand-eye coordination: a skill that you either had or didn’t. The nervousness that accompanied my first few fumbling shags was made more terrifying by the knowledge that This Was It – the time when I would find out whether I was part of team Goodshag, or team OhChristThatWasShocking.

It turns out that’s not the case at all: one person’s Goddess is another’s Godawful, and there’s no one holding up scorecards when you’re lying in a postcoital sweat. Sex isn’t a skill that individuals have or don’t have: it’s a skill you learn together.

2. People you fancy rarely notice the things you hate about yourself

I say ‘rarely’ because there are some things – being overweight or excessively tall, for example – that have attracted the odd comment from guys I’m attracted to. But in general, the worries I have about my appearance are things that my loved ones only notice if I point them out myself. For instance, I’ve got a slightly dodgy tooth that prevents me from smiling too often, but people are far more likely to notice that I’m not smiling than the reason for my grumpy face.

So, I’d tell teenage me: there’s basically nothing wrong with you, because there’s something different about everyone.

3. Your cunt is actually something straight guys like looking at

Ah, youth. That period of time when all the things about your body that are usually hidden under clothes suddenly become fixations for your own self-disgust. I remember being quite unnaturally scared of what my cunt looked like when I was younger. It looked a bit like the cunts in porn, but not exactly the same, even when I tried to shave it so I’d look more grown up.

The first time a guy went to go down on me I leapt away in terror, begging him to turn the lights off lest he see the actual lines and curves of it. I’d probably have enjoyed teenage sex more if I could glimpse the future: a future in which I’m lying on a bed in my own grown-up flat as a boy I love runs his hands over it and tells me, for the millionth time “you’ve got a pretty cunt.”

4. Those douchebags don’t actually care what you wear

Like most people I know, I had a fairly rough time in school. I was tall, broad, scruffy, and not very good at makeup. What I’d loved to have known is that the people who laughed at me for being a goth didn’t actually give a flying fuck what I wore. I could have come in dressed head to toe in designer gear, with hair dyed blonde and swishy, heels that rapped a sexy rhythm as I sashayed down the corridor – they’d still have said the same old shit.

Because real life is nothing like an American teen movie. No one changes their place in the hierarchy just by getting a makeover, because the cool kids’ disgust has nothing to do with what you wear or look like – those are just easy things to get bitchy about. Their opinions are actually founded on some arbitrary moment in the past where people were divided into cool and not-cool. These labels stuck

But don’t worry – your label will expire the second you leave the building.

5. There is more than one love of your life

That guy you’re head over heels for? He’ll go. Then there’ll be another, and he’ll go too. Then there’ll be more who – you guessed it – will go. And each and every time it’ll feel unjust and impossible. You’ll want to scream and cry and tear the world apart because you just loved them so much and you’ll never find someone like that again and oh God how can you survive this pain? This misery feels utterly unbearable.

But don’t worry: you’ll bear it.

We’ve all got things that we fantasise about which, were they to happen in real life, would disgust or annoy us. Things that might get our genitals throbbing but which cause the moral part of our brains to rebel, and give us a post-fantasy stern talking to.

My most embarrassing fantasy isn’t sexual – it isn’t even exciting. But it’s the one I have spent the most time on in the last week. I close my eyes, block out all the things I should be thinking about, and spend a few minutes on my idle dream.

What’s my most embarrassing fantasy?

I dream of being saved. Not in a knight-in-shining-armour way: it’s far more tedious and practical than that.

I retreat to this shameful fantasy when I’ve had a bad week and everything seems to be going wrong. When I end every day miserable and exhausted and knowing that the next day will be the same. When I sit at my laptop, babbling nervously into a to-do list and panicking about all the things yet to be crossed off, I dream that – corny as it sounds – my prince will come.

He won’t marry me and whisk me away to a suburban idyll, he’ll just come to hold me, let me sob dramatically and unnecessarily on his shoulder, before making a few phone calls that melt all my troubles away.

When I’m down, and sad, I dream of a man who can do all the things I just don’t want to do. Ringing insurance companies, rewriting my CV, replying to emails that have languished unhappily at the bottom of my inbox. My prince: the pragmatic multi-tasker.

Because of all the things someone could ever give me – money, power, a nice thick cock and a regular eye-rolling fuck, the most valuable thing they could ever give me is time.

Why is this an embarrassing fantasy?

I am a capable, reasonable, competent human being. Honestly. Last year my boiler packed up and I managed to get a replacement without either

a) getting ripped off

b) leaving it so long I had to shower in freezing water or

c) sobbing wildly on my kitchen floor shouting “why won’t you just WORK you dogshit arsewipe pile of metal bollocks?!”

OK, maybe I did a teeny bit of c).

I’ve made it twenty nine years so far with only the occasional need of outside help – someone to show me where the stopcock is, the odd spider that I just can’t handle, that sort of thing. And yet despite my pathetic pride and determination to do nearly everything myself, I occasionally let my mind wander off into dreams of men who’ll do these things for me. Bleed radiators, clean kitchen cupboards, instruct solicitors and other such tedious bullshit.

I feel dirty and wrong for this, not because it’s sick or unusual in the way that many of my fantasies are. Not because it’s demeaning or degrading, but because I feel like this makes me a bad feminist. I mean, it’s not very independent, is it? The Suffragettes didn’t go through hell just so I could get a man to deal with my paperwork when I get too flustered. It goes against principles that mean a lot to me, and much of what I’ve worked for.

But still. When things get tricky, and I find myself wading through the mountain of DIY, admin and “please hold for an operator who can explain to you why we’ve suddenly doubled your gas bill” I’m not wishing for more internal strength, but for someone who’ll be strong on my behalf.

Fantasy vs reality

I’ve voiced this fantasy a few times – usually over a pint or two of gin and one of those terrifying crying attacks where your friends either cuddle you so no one can see the state you’re in or push you into the toilets to ‘get it out of your system.’

And occasionally, when I confess my fantasies of being saved, people have commented on the fact that it’s at direct odds with what I actually want in life. That if a guy came through for me on this kind of fantasy – if he cleared up my messes and cleaned my to-do list and took hold of the reins of my life, I would scream blue murder and banish him forever.

To which my reply is: of course. Of course. It’s a fantasy. Just as I don’t really want guys to beat me – I want them to spank me in a very specific way, with a very specific degree of pain, to the point where it’s hot and sexual but no further – I also want them to support me to just the right degree without ever taking away my own agency.

The most enjoyable thing about many fantasies is that if you really wanted to, you could make them come true: as with this one. But I haven’t made it come true – I just like to wallow in it. I like to sit and think and dream of my practical prince, while eschewing any kind of assistance that might make me look less than competent. So by thinking this I get to find out what my little heart actually desires – the difference between what I actually want and what I think I want.

He can still do the washing up though. There’s no shame in letting him do that.

Here are two apparently conflicting statements. I would like you to read both of them and decide which one is true:

• Heterosexual women are incredibly complex and almost impossible for men to understand.
• Heterosexual women all share an identical dream of the man they would like to be with.

Well done to anyone who said ‘neither’.

I don’t like dealing in absolutes. Unless we’re talking about pure mathematics, we’re pretty much bound to be wrong. All women are not X, and all men are not Y. Yes, we’re all pretty complex, but pretending that one particular gender is impossible to understand is like claiming we can never know what someone’s favourite colour is.

The only way you could go through life believing the opposite sex (or, indeed, any arbitrary subset of human beings) to be incomprehensible is if you refuse to ever speak to any of them.

So that’s number 1 dealt with. On to number 2 – the ‘ideal man’ scenario.

Every woman’s dream

Today the Sunday Times published a list entitled ‘Every woman’s dream‘ – a handy checklist for straight men on what sort of person they needed to be in order to proudly wear their ‘Mr Right’ badge. I should point out that the addition of words such as ‘straight’ and ‘heterosexual’ are mine, and added for clarity. According to this Sunday Times list, women who identify as anything other than ‘straight’ either don’t exist or were not consulted when their clearly thorough and painstaking research was conducted.

Here’s what the Sunday Times thinks ‘every woman’s dream’ man does:

“He has a well-developed protective instinct, as in the arm flung across the passenger seat in the event of a sudden stop.”

Protective? Or just a bit odd? If he was both protective and sensible he’d have checked that I was wearing a seatbelt in the first place. Moreover, I have survived for twenty nine years on this planet without men flinging their arms around me, shepherding me across the road, or cutting up my fish before I eat it lest I choke on a stray bone – I can protect myself fairly well, thanks.

“He can carry off fur trims, designer flip-flops, hair ties and hairbands, jewellery, cashmere hoodies and a man bag.”

There might be some women who dream of a man with a honed sense of fashion, but some of us couldn’t give a Fcuk. I’m happy if a boy is capable of putting his trousers on before we leave the house, and sensible enough to wear a coat if it looks like it might rain. And as for carrying a ‘man-bag’ – I despise the arbitrary inclusion of gender with this particular accessory. He does not eat with a ‘man-fork’ or wash in a special ‘man-bath’. My dream man just carries a ‘bag’.

“He is not scared to buy you underwear in M&S in an emergency – but will not step inside Farrow & Ball in any circs.”

I don’t know what Farrow & Ball is, but my dream man certainly doesn’t use the word ‘circs’.

“He considers the dustbins his department, but can also put flowers in a vase in a crisis.”

A man who considers the dustbins ‘his department’ is likely to be the sort of man who considers the hoovering to be ‘my department’, and is therefore probably an utter prick. My actual dream man considers all household chores to be a tedious waste of both of our time, but something we might as well do together to finish them quickly.

“He can buy presents without consulting his secretary/sister.”

Interesting. That’s true – my dream man is capable of doing that. But I wonder, dear readers, why the word ‘secretary’ was so casually thrown in here. Could it be possible that the author is assuming a) quite a few men have secretaries, because we are after all still living in the 1950s and b) all secretaries are women, hence why a man might turn to one in order to seek help with a gift?

In reality, men are perfectly capable of choosing gifts for people they know. Present-selection is a simple task, along the lines of ‘buying one’s own clothes’ and ‘paying the gas bill’ – it is not a rare skill possessed only by women and the crème de la crème of masculinity.

“He can look after three kids on his own.”

This, Sunday Times, is not ‘dream man’ material. This is ‘absolutely fucking basic’ material. If you have three children with someone and they are incapable of looking after them without you there to supervise, it’s not a shame: it’s an outright tragedy and one on which you should probably seek advice. Men are not bumbling, child-fearing buffoons – they are grown adults. And, like women, they produce and rear children.

“He drinks but never gets drunk.”

This dream man has a liver that surpasses our current expectations of human biology.

“He is open to yoga and meditation, Pilates and hypnotherapy…”

Because women are, naturally, obsessed with exercise techniques and borderline woo.

“He can do basic DIY and plumbing.”

Fair enough on this one, to be honest. My dream man can do this. But that’s because my dream man is a human, and I think it’s quite important that humans are capable of carrying out basic household tasks without crying in a corner.

“He finds strong women sexy.”

I’ll finish on this point, because it’s the most outrageously contradictory of the lot.

My own ‘dream man’, as it happens, does find strong women sexy. But then I’d bloody well hope he would because I am a strong woman, and if he didn’t find me sexy then he’d no more be my dream than he’d be a carton of cottage cheese. Clearly what this means is ‘your dream man should find you sexy’. A tautological statement if ever I heard one.

But if he finds strong women so sexy, why on earth is he insisting that the bins are ‘his department’? If he thinks I’m strong, he should realistically understand that I’m capable of emptying a dustbin without being permanently traumatised. I’ll be honest, Sunday Times, not only does the notion of a ‘dream man’ belong firmly in the dustbin that is ‘his department’, but the guy you’re describing sounds like an incomparable, inconsistent prick.