I’m going to put it out there: I don’t mind if you fake your orgasm. No, really, go right ahead. What’s more, I’ll tell you that I’ve faked orgasms in the past, and if you think that makes me a bad person, or a pitiable sex-deprived creature, then you can fuck a thousand miles off.

In general, if you’re engaging in safe and consensual acts, sex positive people will cheer on your lubed-up love with an open heart and a total lack of judgment.

Unless you fake your orgasms.

Why do we think it’s bad to fake an orgasm?

This blog was prompted by the revelation today that men fake orgasms too. Cue tortured commenters screaming ‘how the fuck is that possible?’ and the inevitable smackdown by sensible people saying ‘well, duh, of course men do this sometimes – they are human.’

Whenever the subject of faking orgasms is raised, the general consensus is that it is a bad thing to do, for one of the following reasons:

• If you fake an orgasm, how is your partner supposed to know how to give you a real orgasm? You’ll be giving them the wrong impression, making them think that fumbling half-heartedly with your clit is the most surefire way to send you to heaven and back. Ergo you end up in a vicious cycle of rewarding poor performance, until your entire sex life consists of limp clit-fumbling gand your own exaggerated screams.
• If you fake an orgasm, it’s because you don’t realise that actually it’s perfectly normal for people not to orgasm. Thus, when you fake, you reinforce society’s ideas that orgasms are de rigeur, even if the shag you’ve just partaken in lasted less than the time it’d take for the kettle to boil.
• If you fake an orgasm, you are tacitly supporting the idea that orgasms are the Only Possible Goal Of Sex, and so both you and your partner will fail to spend time on the non-orgasmic things you enjoy. Like beating each other with wooden spoons or licking cream cheese from the inside of their ear canal, or whatever it is you get up to.

Faking orgasms is not as bad as people say it is

While the arguments above all have some basic merit, I strenuously object to the way they are often used, not as a piece of general advice but as an absolute decree: Thou Shalt Never Do This. Yes, faking orgasms can lead to trouble, or be symptomatic of problems if you’re doing it on a daily basis, but there’s a big difference between accepting these things and acting as if those who fake orgasms are bad at sex, and must be either pitied or corrected.

Realistically, people fake orgasms for a whole host of reasons. Some good, some bad, some practical, some habitual. You know, like many of the sex things we do. Sometimes I’m not up for a long make out session, but my partner is and I know that if I do it chances are I’ll get his hand down my knickers at some point – the jackpot I’m actually angling for. Sometimes I’ll suck a dick not because I’m desperate to get it down my throat, but because it just feels like the natural next step in a fuck I’m playing jazz with. Often we do things because they make us wet and hard and throbbing and horny – occasionally we do them for other reasons.

I’ve faked orgasms

Although the vast majority of it has been spectacular, there have still been occasions where I felt like faking an orgasm was the right thing to do. I’m lucky enough that I usually find it easy to come during a shag, and right now I’m with a long-term partner who has a thick cock and a good rhythm, and who knows me inside out, as it were. I also have a Doxy and my own two hands, should things prove more difficult on a particular occasion, so I haven’t faked one for a good long time. But have I faked orgasms in the past? Goddamn right I have.

Not because I’m tired, or because the sex is appalling and I can’t quite bring myself to say so: I’ve faked orgasms for the simple reason that coming represents the nuclear button in my sexual arsenal – when I come, he is more likely to come.

Six pints into a very late night, if we’re having an exciting fumble followed by a sticky and determined hump, it’s probably going to be tough for both of us. I’m deeply horny, and shivering with lust, but I know that it’s just not going to happen. The one thing I want right now is to feel the twitching throb of his cock pumping spunk inside me. I’m faced with a choice. Do I pull out one of my just-about-adequate sex moves? A hand gripping just the right place, an arched back, a filthy sentence or two to help him on his way? Or do I pull out my ultimate sex move – clenching my cunt nice and tight and moaning like I’ve sat on a washing machine?

Faking orgasms doesn’t make you a bad person

Conclusion of this unnecessarily sweary rant: you’re not an awful bastard if you fake orgasms – no matter what your gender or your reasons, this is a choice that you get to make for yourself. I’m not going to pass any judgment on what it says about your sex life if one day you want to twitch your genitals, roll your eyes, and Meg Ryan your way to climax. Even if you’re fucking me – if you fancy putting a bit of AmDram into it, go right ahead. I’d like to think I can tell, but wouldn’t we all? If you know the end’s a long way away, but you also know I love it when you make those moany noises, then just make the fucking moany noises already. It will, in all likelihood, bring my orgasm closer, and even if it doesn’t then at least we can put a full-stop to proceedings, albeit a jizzless one.

I care about this quite strongly because, as a young-un, I used to fake orgasms quite a lot. Almost every single time. I probably faked more orgasms than I had actual orgasms, even during a period when I was wanking so frequently you’d have thought I had eczema of the clit. I faked, and I pretended, and I loved every second of every minute of every fuck I was having. But every time I scanned an article on sex tips it screamed at me: “do not fake your orgasms! You are ruining your sex life! You are teaching your partner to do the wrong things and basing your love on a lie!” So I’d fret and I’d stress and I’d worry, and in the end I’d fake it anyway, because while I hated feeling like a liar I loved it when he came.

One day, while I was making the noises and twitching my legs and clamping my cunt down hard on his cock, it actually happened for real. The climax started and I felt hotness swell from my knees to my crotch, waves of happy-horny-oh-yes-don’t-stop-fuck-nnngggghhh-jesus-yes crashing hard up to my chest, enveloping me in pleasure and surprising the fuck out of me.

He couldn’t tell, of course, but then I don’t think I really needed him to.

It’s late, you’re tired and horny, but home is a long way away and the alleys are riddled with CCTV cameras and drunk revellers, giving one no privacy in which to administer a suck-job to an equally horny friend. At these times, the UK is ill-equipped to cater to your deviant lusts, unless you’re willing to pay a week’s rent for one night in a scummy hotel.

When it comes to impulsive sex spaces, other countries do it far better.

Korean DVD bangs

In Korea, there exist special rooms called ‘DVD bangs’. At least, there used to. It’s been a while since I was there, and they’ve probably now been replaced with ‘video streaming bangs’ or ‘Angry Birds bangs’ or whatever the kids prefer these days.

In Korean, ‘bang’ means ‘room’, and so DVD bangs were essentially just places where you’d go to hire a DVD and watch it on a big telly – the kind you either couldn’t afford to have at home or would reject because its gigantic size made it impractical for anything other than a dividing wall. You enter the complex, pick a DVD, thumb through your phrase book to work out how to say ‘how much?’ in Korean, then the person behind the counter takes your money and directs you to a room with a number on the door.

We picked something appalling and shit – I cannot remember what. Some bullshit early-90s movie that we’d seen a million times before. We weren’t there for the DVD so much as the ‘bang’, and the idea of being able to hire a private room for a couple of hours for less than the cost of a vodka and tonic was just about perfect. The room itself was small – dark and dingy and furnished with just the aforementioned TV, a sticky leather sofa and – we took this as proof that it wasn’t just for watching – a roll of toilet paper.

Japanese Love Hotels

When you mention quick fucks in paid privacy, lots of people will leap up and shout “ooh, do you know in Japan they have kitsch hotels designed just for fucking, with pictures of Hello Kitty in bondage ropes on the walls?”

To which I reply, “yeah, except there’s usually more bondage than Hello Kitty if you pick the right ones.”

As he emerged from the Subway exit I went a bit weak at the knees. This guy had swept into my life on a wave of filth and heat and the fear that our time would be short. We didn’t touch in public, but at the entrance to the station I turned him east and pointed out my favourite love hotel. A beaten-up, garish building which featured a room I’d wanted to use for a long time.

It had chains all over the bed – cuffs and collars and even some medieval stocks – positioned right at the end of the bed so you could either get in doggy with your head through the hole and be fucked in a way that wouldn’t kill your knees, or standing up on the floor, with your partner gripping your hips as you choked happy fuck noises in the other direction.

They say Japan’s got it nailed when it comes to quickie shags. To be fair, the sweaty, desperate, let’s-try-it-all-before-time-runs-out shag I had with that guy certainly put it on the leader board. But as far as I’m concerned, if you’re wandering the streets late at night with a horny partner, there’s one place that hits the perfect spot.

Amsterdam sex booths

It stinks in here: sweat and spunk and sorrow. A thousand lonely wanks by a thousand lonely people crouched in this wipe-clean booth. We bundle in, hoping we snuck past the guy on the front desk without him realising there were two of us. We huddle together on the damp bench, push the door closed. There’s a mirror on the door and a TV behind the bench – an awkward way to get round the problem of space.

When you put a Euro in the slot something filthy starts playing, and you watch the reflection in the back of the door while you wank yourself to a climax.

Unless you’re us. If you’re us you smoosh as close as you can together, pushing fingers and hands inside each other’s clothes. Rubbing, kissing, crushing forearms against mouths to prevent any noise. You pause – one beat, two beats – hearing tinny music from outside and the oh-so-dirty shuffling from the booth next door. The rhythmic shuffling of a guy on his own.

I press a button, flip the porn, browsing the five or six available channels to find one that isn’t awful. Two women. Three women. A gaping ass. A gang bang. Mascara-streaked, sobbing, guilt-inducing shit. Ah, better: a fuck. All we really want.

I drop to my knees and start sucking him – the smell of his shower gel mingling with the musky post-jerk-off spunky scent of others. It’s like being in that sex cinema all over again – the ghosts of wankers past linger through the fluids they left behind. He pushes my head down onto his cock, puts another Euro in the slot. Reclines.

I turn around, face squashed against the door of the tiny booth, barely room to move. Yet somehow I manage to get my knickers down just far enough that I can sit on it. Squish. Slick. He lets out a muffled cry and I bite my lip. At least one of us has to remain quiet. Quickly, silently, I fuck him with hard strokes, trying not to touch the walls too much, struggling to keep time as my legs start to tremble with arousal. I slip.

It’s easier on the floor. Squatting in front of the bench I can grip his thighs for balance, feeling the wet lust dripping into my knickers and the twitching of his arousal in my mouth. He puts in another Euro and whispers “please. Please. I’m going to come.” So I suck him harder, I push my head as far down on his cock as it will go so I get to feel the pressure as the jet of spunk hits the back of my throat.

His legs tense up, and he presses the button – flicking quickly through all the channels. Two girls. Three girls. Gaping ass. Gang bang. A montage of porn that he’s no longer really watching, just a visual collage to hammer home the seedy, desperate nature of the booth itself. As he comes in the back of my mouth I close my throat, collecting his spunk there while I breathe in through my nose.

Sweat. Come. Guilt. Sadness. Lust.

All for just three Euros.

The average adult reads at 250 words per minute. That means that the average person will read this blog post in under three minutes. As you’re reading that online, most of you will naturally read faster than you would if you were reading print, potentially skimming through a few sections of text as you skip ahead to particularly fascinating subheadings.

Frantically rubbing my clitoris

As you read this post, I want you to imagine the stage you’d be at if you’d started masturbating at the beginning. During the first sentence you opened your fly, pulled down your pyjama bottoms, or lifted your skirt and yanked your knickers to one side – whatever best fits your own masturbatory routine.

By now you’re about ten to twenty seconds in. For some of you, you’ll be in the ‘early arousal’ stage – just starting to get wet, or hard, or tingly, perhaps licking your fingers or reaching for the lube to speed things along.

Others might get there a bit more quickly – you’ll have graduated beyond the initial fumblings and be furiously frigging yourself, making all the delicious slick-wet or dry-rub noises that you most associate with this pleasurable past time.

If you read at the average speed, we’re now about thirty to forty seconds in.

If you’re me, you will have come already.

Speed wanking, and why I’m a bit odd

As a child I was a big fan of the film Grease. Big songs, big hair, and John Travolta in a tight leather jacket – what’s not to love? Somewhere in that film there’s a line about sex taking “just fifteen minutes.” Because I was young and inexperienced, I took this not just as a casual joke but a cast iron biological fact with the result that, during my teenage years, I was beset with occasional bouts of intense worry. I thought that either:

a) I wasn’t doing wanking right, because it was taking me between 30 and 45 seconds to come, and that if I kept doing it for longer I’d experience a ‘proper’ orgasm. This didn’t work too well, because too much wanking post-orgasm caused me much sadness and occasional intense pain. So the only other possibility was that:

b) I was a biological anomaly, and when I eventually got into bed with a man he would scream and run as soon as the first waves of orgasm twitched around his totally normal, 15-minute-ready dick.

The grass is always greener in someone else’s pants

Now that I’m an adult, I’m pretty used to my personal body quirks, and although things naturally take me a bit longer when I’m shagging, as a general rule my wanking has remained pretty quick. Thirty seconds, give or take.

I don’t usually think about it but the other day I had a conversation with a guy in which he told me – in exquisitely growling and lustful detail – about evenings he spends treating himself to extended masturbation sessions. These are the opposite of 30-minute wanking sprints – they last from when he walks in the door after work to when he finally ejaculates at bedtime. Porn, more porn, toys, slow rubbing on the sofa, frantic bouts of near-orgasmic frotting, pausing just before he comes, breaks for coffee, cigarettes and phone calls. Everything you’d do if you had all the time in the world and nothing but your genitals to play with.

I’m sad that I can’t ever really enjoy the kind of extended sessions guys like him have told me about – edging for hours until they’re ready to spurt at the lightest touch, or calmly stroking themselves to a plateau of not-quite-coming as they enjoy a particularly horny video. But even when I try to do this I fail miserably. If I watch porn (which I do, although probably not as often as people who are conoisseurs of it) I’ll watch it for about five minutes, find a section that I really like, then immediately initiate the frenzied clit-rubbing that’s so speedy and loveless I can almost hear the Countdown theme tune in my head.

It’s not that I hate wanking and need it to be over as soon as possible, or even that I’m biologically incapable of drawing it out. I wonder if it’s because when I’m alone and horny,  spending longer than is strictly necessary feels like a disgraceful and guilty indulgence. If it took me half an hour to come I’d feel that was half an hour well spent. But if it only takes 30 seconds, spending longer on it might seem a bit excessive. Like preparing a gourmet meal when I’m not hungry, or wearing high heels to do the gardening.

How long does it take you?

It’s a nice trick most of the time – I don’t know many people who could pop the kettle on then guarantee they’ll have frigged themselves to orgasm by the time the water’s boiled – I’m not complaining as such. I just wonder if I’m the only one. Perhaps I’m walking through a world where most people spend two to three hours a week on masturbatory self-care, in which case I’ll kick myself for being the overly-efficient robot who bashes them out in less than a minute, never stopping to truly enjoy the build up.

If you made it to the end in less than three minutes: congratulations on your reading speed. If you went back to the beginning and started wanking to see if you could finish before the last full-stop: well done, and I’m sorry it didn’t contain more filth. And if you managed to both read it and orgasm in less than 30 seconds, perhaps we should start a league.