If you’re not British, you might not be familiar with Marmite. It is either:

• a delicious brown substance created during the brewing process, which you spread on toast with butter before having a mouthgasm OR
• diarrhoea brewed in the anus of Beelzebub.

For me it’s the former, for others it’s the latter. I pick Marmite because not only is it a great example of something that has divided a nation (their literal slogan is ‘you either love it or you hate it’) but also because there is no moral value in either liking or disliking Marmite: you’re not a better person if you choose to try it. However, you are a bit of a dick if you try to sneak it into someone’s breakfast without them noticing.

Pretty much all sex acts are like Marmite. Oral sex? Some love it, some don’t. Probably a larger group of the former than the latter, but whatever. Likewise hand jobs, using sex toys, doing anal, bondage: any act that two or more people can take part in.

Here’s where sex acts diverge from Marmite: sometimes you really want your partner to try something. No one really cares if I like Marmite or not. It won’t break my heart if Jon Hamm announces, on our wedding day, that he won’t be eating any of the brown stuff. Sex, on the other hand, is something you can enjoy with your partner, and so if you have a particular kink and your partner’s not keen, that can be pretty gutting. If Jon Hamm tell me that he really hates spanking, I’ll be very upset (as well as surprised, tbh, given how much he loves spanking in all those dreams of mine he’s shown up in).

Anyway, given the Marmite nature of various sex acts, I can see why people often ask me the following question:

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It took me a long time to work out what subspace really was. When I first started going to kink events I heard so much chat about it – how people would go spacey and woozy during a beating, on a blissed-out high caused by the pain. How afterwards, their dominant would wrap them in blankets and bring them coffee or Coke, and they’d recover slowly, having the fuzzy feeling kissed and stroked away by wet lips and warm hands.

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Somewhere, a guy has a photo of me sitting topless in an office chair. Not just an office chair, in fact: the chair he sat at from nine til five, every day for over two years. My face, turned slightly away from the camera, is grinning with post-coital happiness.

How long after you’ve fucked someone in their office can you publish a blog about them without worrying they’ll get fired? Should you wait until they’ve left that job and moved on to another? Until long after you’ve broken up? Until after they’ve given you the go-ahead? Perhaps all three. Perhaps just one or two. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, because here’s one of my favourite sex stories…

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It’s a question I’ve asked myself frequently. While it’s possible (and, indeed, hot as all hell) to watch yourself fucking in a mirror, there are some angles that are impossible to achieve, unless you happen to be shagging inside a circus attraction. What’s more, videoing something and having a permanent record of your shag, which could easily be copied/accidentally uploaded to whatever The Cloud is, isn’t always something I’m keen on doing.

So how do you do it? Well, here’s what we did.

For starters, we had three things: a phone, an iPad, and a raging horn. We set up the iPad and the phone to facetime each other. This tactic can be used not just for watching yourselves fuck from new and improved angles, it can also be used to watch one person having a wank. I know, you may prefer to be in the same room, but if like me you want to get as close as possible to the sensation of watching someone who doesn’t know you’re there, then setting up a phone in the corner of one room while you perv furtively in another can be a truly excellent bet. The other person has to know it’s there, obviously, but if they concentrate hard enough they can try and forget: making sure they’re focusing on their own pleasure rather than playing to the camera.

So, facetime. The only realistic way I could find out what I looked like getting fucked from behind, without having to actually record it. He held the phone, and I propped the iPad on a pillow in front of me before getting on my hands and knees…

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Do you remember the kids’ fable of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch?

I’ll refresh your memory: Brer Rabbit was a bit of a dick, and Brer Fox decided he didn’t like him much. He made a trap in which to catch Brer Rabbit, and Brer Rabbit walked straight into the trap. On catching him, Brer Fox (who thought he was cunning) wondered aloud what he should do with the rabbit now he’d caught him. Brer Rabbit shouted:

“I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t throw me in the briar patch!”

“Anything?” said the fox, and at this point I think he could have benefited from a few lessons in critical analysis and not trusting sources with a huge vested interest. “You’d really want me to do anything rather than throw you into the briar patch?”

“Yes,” said Brer Rabbit. “Hang me, shoot me, eat me, just don’t throw me into the briar patch!”

So our hapless fox, who I remember feeling intensely irritated by as a small child, did the opposite of what the rabbit had requested, and he hurled Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit, who was also a bellend, danced for joy. Burning all of the bridges marked ‘potential future escape scenario’, he crowed that the briar patch was actually his favourite place to be.

“I was born and bred in the briar patch! Hahaha!”

What the fuck has this story got to do with flogging? I’ll tell you.

I rarely play the ‘briar patch’ game. Leather belts, canes, anything whippy with a biting sting is not to be trifled with. I’ll be up-front about my limits, and clear as day when I give feedback. If I’m being bratty and getting playfully punished, a thin cane gives a genuine reprimand. I’ll grit my teeth, bare my arse, and bite back yelps with each stroke.

The flogger, though? It’s my briar patch: I wasn’t born and bred with it, but ever since I started loving BDSM, it’s always been my happy place. My favourite flogger is heavy and thick – purple suede (obviously), with enough fronds that it falls like a thud. There’s a sting if you place it in certain ways – with the tails whipping round to catch me on the hip rather than the bottom. But if you can place it perfectly, right in the middle of one of the cheeks, I will moan and squirm like you’ve just kissed my clit.

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