Once upon a time I was sitting in a tiny greasy bar with a boy, when a rose seller came along. She had a basket full of dozens of roses, each one tied up nicely and ready to be hawked to the nearest soppy romantic.

I growled my customary ‘don’t disturb me in the pub’ growl. The boy looked interested.

Romantic acts

Romantic acts don’t have to be the obvious ones: diamond rings, flowers, breakfast in bed and the like. But these things do have a certain kind of charm, and if you want to impress someone, it might be easier to reach for a bunch of flowers than a deeply personal something-or-other that has the potential to backfire.

I have a deep and sincere admiration for people who perform romantic acts. Those who know exactly when to shower love, and in exactly what quantities, to make someone melt.

But it’s not easy. One person’s romantic gesture is another’s worst nightmare, and the success of the gesture in question all comes down to how well it’s received. I was reminded of this recently when a friend told me a story about a guy she knew: madly in love with one of his friends, he journeyed the two hours it took him by train to turn up at her house. Rather than knocking on the door and sobbing his undying love directly at her, he decided to be a bit more subtle. He knew she was a chess lover, so he left two chess pieces: a king and a queen, on her doorstep, along with a dozen red roses and a letter that explained how he felt.

“Aww,” said I “how romantic.”

“Fuck that,” said she “it’s creepy as all hell.”

The roses and the romance

I hate that this is the case, but it is, and I have no idea why. Romance is a fantastic thing, and I’m sure many of us would love to have more of it in our lives. But it seems like the main thing that makes a difference between a romantic act and an inappropriate one is something the romancer can’t always know: whether your crush actually fancies you.

If they do, you’re a hero. If they don’t, you’re a loser. And possibly a creepy one at that.

I’m going to tell you two different versions of the roses story now.

Version one:

The rose seller approaches me and the boy, and my heart is beating far too quickly, hoping against hope that this shy, nerdy first date doesn’t turn into a mush-riddled disaster. All I know about this guy is his name, his occupation, and a story he’s told me about how his sister once pushed him off a swing. I don’t know him well enough to anticipate whether he’s cheesy enough to think the ‘rose for a pound on a first date’ gambit is a good idea.

He does.

Red-faced, I accept the rose. Later that evening we part, and his post-date text seems unnecessarily gushing. We never see each other again.

Version 2:

The boy grins at the rose seller, and I whisper to him “seriously, dickhead, don’t buy me a rose. I’d only have to carry it home.” He squeezes my leg under the table, looking slyly at me in the way he knows makes me want to lick him. For the last two, three, four years I’ve alternately mocked and raged at him for his lack of romance, his lack of spontaneity.

“How much for a rose?” he asks the lady with the basket. I’m looking away now, too embarrassed to make eye contact and show that, secretly, I actually really want a bloody rose, even if it’s drooping slightly and will end up getting left on the bus. She tells him how much they cost, and there’s a long silence. Ages. Aeons. Millennia pass while I stare at the rings of liquid on the bar and fiddle with the plastic twizzly gin and tonic stick and just wish he’d get on and tell her ‘no’ so that we don’t have to eke out the embarrassment.

Years, or perhaps five seconds, later, he speaks.

“I’ll take the lot.”

And he hands over note after note after note from a wallet that’s rarely opened unless it needs to be. And I walk home arm in arm with my boyfriend of many years, drowning in roses and love.

There’s no right way to do romance

Arguing with my friend over the chess incident made me sad for the boy who’d tried so hard. For his unrequited love and his inability to read the girl’s reaction. Assuming they were both in earnest, no one did anything wrong here: it’s just a misjudged gesture and a mutual tragedy. But from my friend’s point of view, it’s a stupid guy making a desperate play for a girl who’ll never want him.

As she put so succinctly: the difference between creepy and romantic often just comes down to whether they actually fancy you.

I don’t think I want this to be true.

Autumn is one of the best seasons. Keats wrote of autumn as a season of harvests and fruits and whatnot, but to most people autumn’s delights fall mainly into the ‘Halloween’ or ‘nearly Christmas’ camps.

However, autumn is my favourite season. Partly because I spend most of the summer being uncomfortable in my clothes and yearning for the time when I can wear jeans and a massive hoodie without people staring in the street. But mostly because there are some things about autumn that I find desperately sexy. Here are three of them:

Wet men

I see wet women fetishised all the time – whether it’s the ubiquitous wet T-shirt competition, or that bit in Spiderman where Kirsten Dunst gets a sexy rainy snog in a see-through dress. But when it comes to wet men the only iconic hotness I can think of is that bit in Pride and Prejudice where Mr Darcy emerges glistening from a lake (now available as a statue!).

In short: wet men are underrated. There are not enough pictures of wet men. But now that autumn’s here, the rains cometh. And with the rains come the tousled shaggy locks of scruffy hipster boys, the raindrops glistening on the heads of hot bald guys, the clinging t-shirts on the men who got caught in the rain.

And best of all, the drips of water running in rivulets down their faces and onto their necks, eventually trickling below the collar line and making me want to lick them.

Men in jumpers

This is probably not even sexual. I just fucking love a good jumper. Not a tacky ‘look how ironic I am’ Christmas jumper, but a big, shaggy bury-your-face-in-my-chest jumper. I’d never dictate to a man what clothing he should wear, but I can reveal that despite my aversion to hugs from strangers, I am far more likely to want to press myself up against you if I can guarantee that the hug will feel like falling into bed.

I take it back: it probably is a sexual thing.

Sex to warm up

You know how it is: October rain, a chill breeze blowing through the house. You can either turn the heating on and line the pockets of BigEnergy Co, ensuring fatcat profits for their shareholders and a slightly crapper Christmas present for your Mum this year… or you can fuck to stay warm like the cavemen used to.

I prefer the second option.

Cold hands running over my clothes, feeling almost painfully intrusive when they eventually reach my goosepimpled skin, then the gradual warm up as your hands get hotter and are allowed further down my body. Running my own hands inside your big sexy jumper to feel the heat of your back, your chest, your stomach, and then the moment when they finally get warm enough that I can place them on your dick without you yelping.

The ultimate beauty of autumn sex is that while you’re pounding and I’m straining and gasping and gripping you tight with my legs, neither of us notices the cold. It’s only afterwards that we realise, as you lie panting and hot beside me, and I can feel the droplets of your sweat cool far too quickly on my chest.

I’m a girl of my word. And if I promise a prize for someone who writes an amazing description of their orgasm then by the God whose name they scream when they have it, I shall deliver a prize.

A while ago I encouraged people to write a description of their orgasm. For two reasons, really:

• it’s an interesting challenge for any erotic writer, and I wanted to see if people could do it better than I could (spoiler alert: they definitely can)
• I like reading about other people’s experiences, especially if they’re beautifully and sexily different to mine.

So, I’ve finished sifting, re-reading, and generally wanking myself raw, and was utterly bowled over and delighted by all of your entries. There were some stunning things in there, and if you’ve got time I’d strongly recommend you read the past entries.

Orgasm competition – top 5 entries

Because I don’t like the idea that my opinion comes top purely because I’m the one with the blog, I’m going to ask you to help me narrow down from the top 5 to the winner. I’ve chosen the five that – in my humble opinion – felt like the best ones, and that give an idea of the range of different feelings and sensations people described. I’m really sorry if yours isn’t in there – I would utterly love to have given a prize to everyone. All you need to do is read some entries and rate the ones you read on a scale of 1-10. Those scores will be averaged with the scores I’ve given them, and the winner will be sent the amazing trophy pictured above. I can take no credit for the amazing “Veni, vici” (Translation: “I came, I conquered”) joke – that was suggested by @Aug24 on Twitter.

(I’m not yet sure if he’d like to be credited, so if he wants to be I’ll add a link to his Twitter profile above)

But there you go – five very hot and very varied descriptions of people’s orgasms. Please do peruse them, rate and share with your more open-minded friends. The more people who do it, the better idea I can get of which ones people love the most.

Voting closes this time next week (6pm GMT Sunday 11th August) – have at it!

Editor’s note: I know that it’s often possible to game competitions that include voting, but I don’t think that will happen here: I have access to the back end of the system, so if I see someone’s rated everything low except one, those votes won’t count. It’s uniquified based on IP address, so you can technically vote and rate more than once via a proxy if you give a massive and substantial shit about winning. However, I’m working on the basis that most people who read this blog (and those who entered the competition) are lovely enough not to cheat. Well, that and the fact that the prize isn’t worth much money.

As ever, I’m giving directions.

“Straight on here,” as we hit the roundabout, and he follows. A quick check in his rear view mirror to see whether anyone’s behind us. They’re not – it’s dark, late, and a much quieter road to the ones we’re used to. He lays a hand on my thigh, pushing my skirt up, never once taking his eyes off the road.

I love watching guys drive

Despite being so old that my fascination with it is bizarre, I find driving incredibly sexy. Not when I do it, of course. On the rare occasions I get behind the wheel it’s less of a journey than a slow, arduous panic-attack from A to B.

But the teenage girl I wish I still was loves watching boys drive.

The physicality of it is hot, naturally. Driving involves lots of showing-off of hands, one of the sexiest physical features. Gripping and releasing the handbrake, curving a hand around the gearstick, gently flicking accelerators and letting the wheel slide smoothly through their palms.

Not to mention that driving, much like playing Xbox, is an activity that requires so much concentration I am barely a distraction in the corner of his eye.

Most importantly, the driver is always the most powerful person in the car. The one who chooses the music, decides when you can stop, tells you to stop mucking about. The driver is the person who decides to pull over.

We’ll get back to that sexy bit now, shall we?

He flicked the indicator when he spotted a layby – behind a row of waist-high bushes, just enough for some vague cover but not quite enough to make me feel wholly comfortable. He parked the car and undid his seatbelt, reaching over for mine at the same time.

I grinned, and looked up at him in the way I imagined I would if I were genuinely nervous. I shifted in my seat, pulling my skirt up further so my naked cunt touched the seat.

“You’re a good girl,” he said, and pulled my face towards him. He was grinning too, not quite happy enough to take the power seriously.

“Do you want to show me your cunt?”

Yes. Always. I lifted my skirt higher and he pulled me forward, pushing my head into his lap with his right hand (his steering wheel hand) while his left snaked down my back and behind to squeeze me. I fumbled with his belt, feeling him rock solid through his trousers, straining to push through the zip.

“Good,” he gave me a hand with the zip, squeezing himself tight as I leant forward to suck him. “Good girl.”

Again, that power, the feeling of his hands all over me. The click as he moved his seat back to give me more room to work on him, to suck him. He wasn’t making me, but he wasn’t asking me either. This stop was just an extra bit of the journey, something he got to decide, in the same way as he’d decide the route or choose when we stopped for a piss.

Bucking slightly against the seat, he gripped the back of my head with controlled hands as he twitched mouthfuls of spunk into the back of my throat.

On the way back, we were quiet. My occasional directions half-whispered as I tasted him in my mouth, and the giggling teenager in the back of my mind squirmed with pride.

“My boyfriend’s hot. My boyfriend drives.”