The internet is a dark and dangerous place – it hides far more of your secrets than you think, and with infinite time even a monkey at a Mac could collate a dossier of your drunken, mis-typed shame.

So why put more of it out there? Why start sex blogging, and wash your torn, jizz-stained knickers for the world, his wife and your mother to stumble across when they’d rather be watching the iPlayer? Why write not just a few blogs about love, Valentine’s Day and HuffPo’s shockingly bad advice on dating but the more sordid things too? Piss-play, swinging, getting spanked by hot boys, etc. For many people the idea of posting sexy things makes their blood run cold, but I’m obviously happy to do it, and here’s why:

Everything you do can be watched, recorded, put online, commented on, mocked, and forgotten next week. Your nearest and dearest might not be able to follow you into a swingers’ club but there’s always a slim possibility they’ll be sitting in the back room, cock in hand, when you show up. Everything you do has an element of risk. Send me an email? I could copy it. Take a picture of your dick? Someone could steal your camera. Have a wank on a train? Those electronic door locks might just fail as a horrified fellow commuter walks in for a pee. You take calculated risks every day.

OK, so writing down my exact thoughts on masturbation, and the majority of my past sexual history might be an unnecessary risk. The problem is that the benefits – being able to be open and honest about things, share stories with people and have them share theirs with me in return – feel like they outweigh the risks. As with everything in life, it’s a judgment call. Risk getting diseases from a hot guy because you haven’t got any condoms? Fuck no. Risk letting my parents find out that I like to do dirty things? Hell yes. The absolute worst that could happen is that they find out a bit more about me than they want to, and what’s a freaky sex life between blood relatives? They’d be more upset if I had a drug problem, or a terminal illness.

Why are we so much more worried about people knowing the sexy secrets of our life? Why are we supposed to be ashamed? These questions are rhetorical – I know why we’re supposed to be ashamed. It’s because sex is gross, it’s freaky: it’s something that women in particular shouldn’t admit to a need for. It’s a tool for advertisers to make us purchase things and a currency with which we might want to buy affection but it can’t be something we enjoy just for the hell of it.

The thing is, I’m not ashamed – I tell people. Probably more people than any of my partners think. I tell people because I’m proud, and horny, and because shagging two guys at the same time is one of my life’s happiest moments. I tell people because every now and then I get high-fived. I tell people because sometimes the boys I’m fucking like me to whisper stories in their ear.

If we’re talking about shame, I’m more likely to cringe when I remember times I’ve lied, or deliberately hurt people, or growled at tourists who stand on the wrong side of the escalator.  Over the past 29 years I’ve done many things that are cruel or stupid or misjudged – things that have upset complete strangers, made friends miserable, or hurt the people who care about me.

With all that sadness sitting guiltily on my shoulders, why would I ever be ashamed of the love?

I wrote this blog to explain the subtitle of my book – My not-so-shameful sex secrets – because really, given all the awful things we humans can do, sex is a hell of a long way down the ‘shameful’ list. Here’s how the book begins.