If I’ve lubed you up and spread your legs, and held your hips steady while I slide something deep into you, there are plenty of things you can do to let me know you appreciate it. Make that face that’s a cross between surprise and pain, grunt a guttural moan at the back of your throat, or place your hands somewhere on me and squeeze tightly while I move. But when I’m fucking you – whether I’m pegging you with a strap on or sliding a butt plug deep into your ass – there’s one thing I want you to do above all others: push back.

Push.

Back.

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The evening I lost my virginity I lay awake in bed staring at the wall, willing myself to feel special. I assumed that with that magical penis-in-vagina moment, something fundamental about me would change. I couldn’t put my finger on what, exactly – I didn’t expect sparks, or revelations, or for the world to burst into glorious technicolour like it did in the Wizard of Oz. I just thought I’d feel… different.

I didn’t, and looking back at that moment as an adult that’s a blessed relief. Imagine if there really were a significant change bestowed upon someone just because they happened to have completed a particular sex act. If it shone out of them like a traffic light, blinking ‘green’ for ‘has fucked’. It’d be quite disturbing, not to mention really awkward over breakfast with your family.

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I’m pretty obnoxious and annoying sometimes. I can be far too loud in some situations, and far too quiet in others. Sometimes I sit nervously in a corner checking my phone because I’m too shy to introduce myself. At other times, I drink a couple of pints in rapid succession to calm my nerves and end up saying things I wouldn’t say if I was sober. Both of these traits, along with many others, have caused me to miss out on opportunities to get laid. But none more so than one thing: smoking.

I smoke. And I kind of want to add ‘too much’ to that, but realistically smoking at all is usually too much when seen through the eyes of a non-smoker. When I was dating, the sheer number of people who’d write ‘I can’t stand smokers’ on their dating profiles, or tick the boxes that say ‘smoking is a dealbreaker’ means my pool of potential shag buddies was severely limited.

But smoking has also helped me get laid. Not because men see me across a crowded beer garden and go ‘oh look, her who’s too pissed to light the right end: she’s the one for me’, but because for the best part of my formative years, smoking was considered cool.

Which means that I have a really fucked up relationship with smoking and sex.

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Something really awesome happened in the men’s rights arena recently. A change that will benefit millions of prospective fathers in the UK: the parental leave rules changed.

Let’s take a minute to celebrate what this means. In the past, it was always assumed that the person who gave birth to a baby would be the person who’d be the primary carer in its first year. So mothers usually got maternity pay, and it’d be assumed that – beyond the statutory two weeks of paternity leave taken shortly after birth – dads would be the ones working in their child’s first year, while mums took on the lion’s share of childcare.

Obviously this explanation is pretty basic, and doesn’t take into account a whole bunch of stuff – same-sex couples or non binary people who give birth but wouldn’t identify as a mother, for instance – but those were the general rules, and they had a huge effect on UK workplaces. Now, though, thanks to rules on Shared Parental Leave (which came in at the beginning of April), apart from a compulsory statutory two weeks, which must be taken by the person who gave birth, parental leave can be split.

So: Dads are no longer assumed to be the ones working through the first year, missing out on things like their child’s first steps, or the chance to join baby yoga classes or hand-wash tiny babygros that are covered in weird yellow vomit – both parents get to decide how the work/childcare split happens. This is pretty fucking awesome.

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We’re grown-ups now: it’s not the done thing. You can’t fuck in a crowded room at a sleepover and expect to get away with it. We have more fun, don’t we? Those group sex parties and swingers’ clubs and all the places we can legitimately fuck in the open? Except we don’t, not always. And sometimes the delight of having secret sex in the dark is overlooked in favour of open sex with an audience.

I used to do this a lot. When I was young, I mean – not now. Now we have money for hotels, and big houses, and far far fewer friends. And – what’s that other thing? – oh yeah, restraint. There’s little need now to pack horny couples into a living room and hope their sex doesn’t jog the couple shagging on the pillows next to them.

That’s either a shame or a blessing. If you think it’s the latter, then please don’t read on.

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