When I was young, my family used to be big followers of soaps: Neighbours, Eastenders, Coronation Street. I can’t remember what else there was to do on evenings in the nineties besides yell things at the telly as ludicrous fictional characters cocked up their lives in ever more creative ways. Perhaps this is testament to how my Mum raised me, but when I watched soaps, the thing that got me most irate was how terrible people were at just fucking talking to each other. 

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Many years ago I used to write for a website called The Debrief: a magazine-style site run by Bauer Media that has since disappeared. Thanks to my recent sex blogging anniversary (I’ve now been doing this for ELEVEN YEARS!) I’ve been taking a few trips down memory lane and contemplating how lucky I am to have spent so long making a living from what I can only describe as ‘this horny bullshit.’ The Debrief gave me a great start in freelance writing, and my editor allowed me the freedom to do some pretty awesome stuff: writing sex position guides which were entirely gender neutral (a practice that was rare in 2014, and which often got sub-edited back into ‘he’ and ‘she’ if I submitted similar pieces to other magazines); smashing stigma around things like period sex and discharge; writing articles about how to wank in front of someone without feeling like a complete tit; even getting to interview fucking STOYA. You know Stoya? Off of porn? I met her in real life! We chatted for ages about the problems with tube sites and I learned so much from her. I had a blast, that’s the point. And I got paid £100 per article for doing it. All the stuff I wrote for The Debrief disappeared along with the website, but it still exists in my email. And as I’m feeling nostalgic, I thought I’d share one of my faves. This is a piece I wrote in 2014, when I emailed a bunch of my ex partners and asked them to review my performance in bed. You’ve met some of these people on the pages of this blog, and I’ll catch you up on who’s who at the end. Here’s what they thought of my shagging skillz when I popped into their inboxes ten years ago to ask their opinion…

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I told this story briefly, while at the festival last year: ‘I sucked a dick at Glastonbury’, I tweeted, with undertones of ‘achievement unlocked.’ The response was a combination of welcome high fives and entirely unwelcome shame: eww, blow jobs? At a festival?! I hope you used wet wipes first! Some people are so weird. But to each their own. I don’t tell sex stories without knowing that sometimes I’ll press people’s shame buttons. Some people’s instinct to say ‘eww’ when they hear that some random slag got facefucked in a field in Somerset is as natural as my instinct to brag about it in the first place. I sucked a dick at Glastonbury last year. And as I pack my bag for this year, I’ve decided now’s the time to tell that story.

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When I tell my sister this story, she snort-laughs and tells me ‘we really need to do something about the low expectations you have of men.’ I’m front-loading this because I suspect that’s what the man involved might say himself. He used to be quite baffled by how pleased I was when he did little thoughtful things, as if little thoughtful things aren’t worthy of note. As if kindness is incidental, instead of – you know – everything.

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When I saw the fabulous Emilia Romero pop back up on social media after an absence (follow her on Mastodon here!), I was over the moon, and then even more excited when she pitched me this beautiful, vulnerable guest blog. She’s written here before about kink, camming, and what happens when you discover Doxy, and her writing is always so stunningly heartfelt. Today’s post is an exploration of friendship and trust, via the medium of a good friend she met at a survivors’ support group (so note, there will be brief but non-detailed references to rape and sexual assault). It’s so wonderful to have you back, Emilia.

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