When I fuck up, I apologise. The apologies are always heartfelt, but rarely ever sufficient. I’m sorry anyway.

I’m sorry that I am a desperate, horny, sexually incontinent bastard. And I’m sorry that I am apparently incapable of saying ‘no’ when my blood’s up and I’m pissed. That the voice in my head which tells me ‘this is wrong’ whispers so quietly next to the roar of the voice that says ‘touch me touch me touch me oh please touch me.’

There’s no excuse, because there’s never an excuse. There’s something horrible and bad inside me that encourages me to do awful things that will hurt guys I love, and I’ve come to the rather worrying conclusion that the bad thing is just ‘my personality’. I am just the sort of person who does bad things: a bad person, if you will.

I did some bad things. I didn’t fuck anyone, blow a guy in a doorway, or get into the exact kind of trouble I’ve been in before, but I did things bad enough that they required confession and flagellation.

I confessed because – like all naughty schoolgirls – I know that if you lie about something it makes it worse. Because I’d promised never to lie about this… this ridiculous inability to say ‘no’ when a certain type of guy asks if I want to sneak off to a quiet place with him. Because there was a boy I liked and, Christ, he was hot and hard and needy and strong and had big hands and wet eyes and all the things I can’t resist.

And we did stuff. Like teenagers covering up for the fact that, underneath the playful euphemism, there was a very real and potent lust, I’m going to use the phrase ‘did stuff’. Clumsy, awkward, unspecific, slickly wet and angry. Stuff.

When to beg forgiveness

There’s a certain level of idiocy that I don’t have to confess. For instance – I got pissed and told a guy I wanted to suck him dry: textbook, easy, and powered by the clumsy and inappropriate section of my brain. Fell down a staircase. Wanked on a train. Said someone’s dick was pretty. Held a friend too long in a hug because he smelt so fucking good and I just didn’t want to let go.  Ate the last Creme Egg. Wanked in the shower. Put this guy’s boxers on my face and breathed in until I felt lightheaded and wet.

These things don’t require confession because the confession would be met with an eye roll. A “fucking obviously” that recognises just how much of a cunt-dribbling sexual glutton I always am. But other things do require it, because they involve much more than me. They involve me, and someone else, or two other someones, or three, doing stuff. That exclusive, behind-closed-doors sweaty betrayal of things that are far more important than my brief pulsing lust.

I know what I have to confess: it’s the things I know I don’t really want to tell him.

Why am I such an incorrigible twat?

I’m not addicted to sex, I’m not smashing relationships like someone else would smash windows and nick box-sets to sell for crack. I just… choose sex. I do it because it’s more fun than not doing it. I’m not making a selection between two different kinds of soup – I’m choosing whether to eat or not, at just the moment my stomach starts growling. Because some fucking random guy says ‘can I slap you?’ and my immediate answer is ‘oh God yes please’.

These are the things that require confession: the things I do that no amount of joking or playing will render unsexual. The things that he wouldn’t want me to do on the grounds that I so desperately want to do them. The things that require actual willpower to stop.

So I confess. And I tell him. And in telling him I break his heart a bit, and hate the heartbreaking more than I hate the deception that would have come otherwise. And he says thanks, and that it hurt him, and that I’m not a bad person. He strokes my hair and sits next to me, and chokes down the pain so he can make jokes and pretend it’s OK.

Worst of all, worst of fucking everything – when I confess to him that “I did bad things” he responds with a calm and measured:

“I thought you might have.”

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck me for being such a pathetic horny slag. And fuck me twice for being so depressingly predictable.

He’s not angry: just disappointed. But I’m angry. And although sackcloth and self-flagellation might feel punishingly good against my skin right now, it won’t stop me from doing it again. Because, as noted, I am predictable. And angry. And horny. And… fuck.

 I’ll get letters about this, so just FYI – when I write stuff that’s super-personal like this I usually leave a big gap between when it happened and when I publish. The guy involved has given his consent for me to write it.