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.

Communication: it’s bloody hard, right? You just never know what’s going to offend people and whether your words will be hurled back at you in a storm of rage and misery, leaving you cowering in a corner nursing your hurt feelings.

The above is only semi-tongue-in-cheek: I know that words – while they’re sometimes our friends, are often crude tools with which we dig ourselves a massive hole into which we accidentally spew things that we probably shouldn’t have said. Hence: communication’s important, but we all get it wrong sometimes.

It’s hard to give advice to people on the right things to say – although plenty of Pick-Up Artists will try, and tell you that there are specific rules and lines that are scientifically proven to impress strangers. However, usually the only thing anyone can advise is to try and be empathetic, listen to the other person, and for the love of God don’t say anything awful like this. To cover this last category, I’m handing over to the excellent @halfabear, who has some very strong and hilarious opinions on the questions people ask about her sex life.

Sexual questions

Since becoming paraplegic I’ve become very used to being asked questions about my health; friends asking how I’m getting on and if I’m in pain, strangers gently prying and trying to find out what’s wrong and how it happened. Nosey but innocuous questions that I generally don’t mind answering, providing that it’s not done insultingly and they understand I won’t answer if a line is crossed. I’ve been quite endeared over the years by the sensitivity that people have approached the subject with.

Well, most of the time.

There is one subject where it appears that all boundaries and sensitivity go out of the window in a heartbeat. Be it friend or stranger, it’s a subject which arouses such curiosity that no answer is simply not good enough, and there really is no way to tread carefully. Sex.

Read about awkward sexual questions, and the hilarious answers she gives people, over on her own blog…

As I might have already explained, I’m deeply impatient. So impatient, in fact, that if foreplay lasts longer than ten minutes I am liable to cry. I was once mocked by a guy, who was far keener on build-up than I was, because apparently the only thing I ever said in bed was “pleasepleasepleaseplease.” I don’t know what he was upset about – it’s certainly better than “mehmehmehmeh.”

Anyway, because I love guest blogs, and particularly guest blogs from people who have a different perspective to me, the following excellent post by Helz captures perfectly her delight in making someone wait. And wait. And then…

Antici….pation

Okay, yes, I did steal this title from a Rocky Horror lyric. Shoot me. It’s very apt though.

What is almost better than a conquest is the magnetism, the frission, leading up to it. It’s something organic between two people that can’t be forced, you both have to want to rip the clothes off and melt into each other so badly and you both know it. No one has made the first move yet and all you have is heavily layered conversation where you can barely focus on the words because even talking to each other makes you wet, and you’re zoned in on her mouth, her lips…her skin and her eyes, boring into yours and you both know that you’re going to see a lot more than each other’s eyes later on… but not yet. That anticipation, that mutual magnetism, is pretty rare yet so delicious. The excitement, and the wonder that you might be mistaken, that she might not want you and it’s all in your head and the electricity that zaps right down through you at the thought of her is what makes the whole exchange magical.

I like to, whilst making out with someone, draw back. Make them wait for our lips to meet and shrink away from their touch. Soften my gaze and my body, make it look completely touchable, mutely draw them in with my eyes, then refuse them. When your lips are centimeters away from mine and you can actually feel my warmth, but you’re unable to touch me because I keep drawing away… I know that you really want me. I like making you want me. The frantic, hot, hard kisses and touches you give me after that after being denied for so long show how much you crave this, crave me…

Before I eat out a girl I like to make her anticipate it for a very long time. I love the downy inner thigh which leads up to your cunt, and I love to linger on it for as long as I possibly can, giving your butterfly butterfly kisses and softly kissing, licking and stroking your thighs, occasionally giving your lower lips some very, very light touches or kisses, and I do this until I know that you are biting your lip to mask your croaks and moans, so hard that it could draw blood, until you’re dripping with ladyjuice and until you’re rolling your eyes upwards, as if you’re praying to some Sapphic goddess. I know you’re tingling with desire all over and I kiss your lower self harder and harder and slloooowwwly work my way to your cunt and start very gently, just when you think you’ll get some form of release I stop and kiss your pelvis and your stomach, then work my way down again until you quiver and your knees buck…

You like the anticipation, sometimes, more than you like the actual sex act, and the fact that you want it, me, so much makes me horny as hell and gives me almost as much satisfaction as if you were giving it to me.

Then it’s my turn.

You’re all brilliant. I mean it – you’re gold-plated, top-of-the-range fantastic and I love you all. A month ago I asked people to have a go at describing their orgasms, in the form of some sort of competition (I haven’t decided the prize yet but trust me it will be highly desirable and worth at least a tenner).

There are still two days left to enter, so if you want to have a go, please leave a comment below describing your own orgasm (or do it on your own blog and send me a link so I can link to you, or email it to me if you’re shy), and I’ll include it in the final roundup. We’ll give people a chance to vote/comment on the final roundup then I’ll pick an overall winner. Finally, we will throw a street party in their honour (or, more likely, just have a bit of a love-in on the social network of their choice) and I’ll send them an awesome prize. Join in – you know you want to.

Describe your orgasm entries – round two

Rosa’s entry is an excellent place to start…

“I start to become really sensitive and twitch beneath my own hand, and I don’t know if I can handle such an intense sensation. It feels as though I am about to die, or come alive, or explode.” You can read the rest of the comment here.

Mal explains how hers almost always come from penetration…

“It begins as a series of long, sharp prickles around the clitoris, or as this unbearable hot sensation in my g spot and then, if it’s a gentle orgasm, feathers out delicately and I sigh and enjoy it with a soft smile.” Read more to see why she feels like she’s falling off a cliff.

The always-excellent N.Likes hits the ‘moment’ nail on the head:

“The first sensation was of a momentary vacuum of pressure – it was like that moment when you’re on a swing set and you reach the absolute peak of your arc: the swing isn’t going up any more, but it isn’t falling yet – it’s just hanging, suspended, momentarily immune from gravity or momentum.” His full description is worth a very thorough read.

Self-described ‘penis user’ (I love this phrase) Nick gives an incredibly vivid picture of how ejaculation feels:

“If you want to know what it feels like to ejaculate the best image I can give is to think of blowing bubbles into milkshake through a straw. That delightful welling up and out with occasions where you blow too hard and get it down your dress.” He then goes on to explain what makes the magic happen.

Ian’s got the build-up down beautifully:

“Something inside that makes me more sensitive, that makes every movement filled with a little more joy, and in amongst that an urge for something more: to increase the pressure, to keep increasing it, with each increase feeling better and better, until you reach the point where the only thing that would feel better than holding this delicious pleasure is releasing it.” Read the rest of his comment here.

Simon took a slightly different route and tried to describe a female orgasm:

“Those quiverings and tightenings deep within

The warm tingling that you can notice down below

As the hornier you get, the more this heat spreads

Imagining a fire burning deep inside you” His entry was submitted via email, but you can read the full thing here.

Inspired? Enter the orgasm competition

There’s still time to enter – I’ll close the comp for entries at midnight on the 26th of July. Leave a comment below, post your entry on your own blog, or email it to me hellogirlonthenet at gmail dot com and I’ll add it anonymously.