A friend of mine is a nice guy, in fact I’d say he’s one of the most caring, thoughtful people I know. Spending time with him is always one the highlights of my week since he is as hilarious as he is lovely. When it comes to romance though, he’s a dick. For the last few years he’s been in an on off relationship with a girl who is crazy about him and yet who he couldn’t care less about. He doesn’t fancy her, will never call her his girlfriend, and doesn’t see any long term future for them. She on the other hand thinks the sun shines out of his arse, and evidently thinks if she keeps hanging around eventually he’ll realise how wonderful she is, and they’ll dance off into the sunset together.

I didn’t used to think that the way someone acted while they were in a relationship was any of my business. What they did or didn’t do with their partner was something I tried not to get involved with. In fact it wasn’t until I read the following quote from a Dr Phil column in last month’s Oprah magazine that the lightbulb went on over my head. “I have a friend who’s been looking for a job… a position opened up at my company and I recommended her… [however] recently I discovered she slept with our mutual friend’s boyfriend which makes her seem like an unethical person… What should I do?” At first I laughed, “What the hell does that have to do with their suitability to do a job?” But later I found myself returning to the piece, over and over again.

“I’d never judge someone for how they act in a relationship.” I told myself piously. Then I thought about my friend, and how I hadn’t seen him for months. Clicking around on Facebook I saw reference to their relationship and closed the browser window in a huff. Dr Phil’s moonface was staring at me next to my laptop. “Damnit.” I threw the magazine across the room, “Damnit, you’re right.”

No-one’s perfect in a relationship, everyone hurts someone’s feelings one way or another, I’m not a total idiot. But the people who’ve hurt me the most, the cheaters, the liars, the dick-er around-ers, have always turned out to be be asshats through and through. It takes a certain kind of person to go out and treat someone else like crap and feel only marginally guilty about it. Does that spill over into the rest of their life? How can it not?

For those of you pointing out that it is those without sin that can cast the first stone, obviously I am not innocent. I once dated a guy who had a girlfriend, I’ve slept with a married man, and on a less dramatic note I’ve broken up with the odd fling by just ignoring them, all things I think are despicable. So what makes me worthy of friendship? What if I were to tell you that I’ve changed? That I’ve realised the error of my ways? That since starting this blog and constantly evaluating my relationships and sex life I’ve realised there are a lot of negative habits I am guilty of. Like I said, no-one is perfect, least of all myself, but those people who don’t care, who won’t change, the serial cheaters and abusers among us, deserve to be friendless, regardless of how fun they are at parties.

Illustration from Hollyhocks and Tulips, photo of Courtney Love and Drew Barrymore from Nikki Lipstick
Blog Title from Bitches Leave by Be Your Own Pet

- Men should wear socks with their shoes

- Where do all these blonde thin girls with fluffy hair and lots of eyeliner come from and what did they do before they dated these guys who don’t wear socks?

-  If I got a job in PR and was able to stop hating everyone and pretend that I rilly rilly like herbal teas would I date a man with a tan who had a house in the Costwolds and buy Louboutins and would I enjoy that kind of life? Would it be preferable to wearing my pj’s all day and never going beyond zone 3 on the tube?

-  I need to learn how to control myself in the presence of free booze.

- What I also need is an intern

- In my next life I will be lactose tolerant, two inches shorter, have bigger boobs, but a smaller arse, and one of those little doll faces, and really thin wrists, and I will be able to wear high heels without snapping my ankles, and I will probably be a minor heiress and have a boyfriend in a pea coat.

- How do you walk that line between “I am great and hilarious and this booze is just putting a beautiful sheen on the awesome prize that I am” and “There was a…. how…. where’s the…. is that my face?”

- How do I become one of those Miranda July girls who no-one really knows what they do but they never have to wear ripped clothes unless it’s intentional?

- Bunches make me look older rather than younger

- Watching men dance is kind of scary

- Smoking is fun, but it will kill me, also I don’t like the taste, but I feel like I can’t function without the action and ritual of smoking. Does this mean I’m addicted?

“Did you miss me?” That question. That huge, stupid, stinking question. The one you throw out into the air and watch fall, flat on the ground every bloody time. I asked someone it the other day. And not with an Elizabeth Taylor cocked eyebrow but earnestly, really wanting to know the answer. And what can the answer be? It can’t be ‘no’ because then the whole game’s up. That’s it, go home, the end, the person you are asking didn’t miss you, isn’t thinking about you, doesn’t list you in their top twenty favourite things, what’s the fucking point? And yet if they say ‘yes’ there’s always the idea that they’re just saying it because it’s the right answer no matter what the truth is.

There are half a dozen or so stinking questions: “Do I look prettier with or without my glasses?” “Would you love me if I was horribly disfigured?” “Do you think we’ll always be in love like this?” and so on and so forth. They’re all vile, saccharine, disgusting things. The kind of questions you only ask when you’re knee deep in if not love, then hardcore full on so good it makes you feel sick crush. I am, unfortunately, prone to these kind of questions. Part of me wants the brutal honesty that I look better without my glasses on, but then I want to hear the sugar coated “You look beautiful all the time and in every single thing, even that ratty Garfield t-shirt covered in hot rock burn holes that you cut the neck off and ripped a hole in under the stained armpit.” and I want it to be meant even if it is in the most insipidly earnest way ever.

Can it ever be like that? Is love ever really that wholesome and all encompassing and Disney like? Is there anyone in the world who genuinely thinks that even if their lover lost their face, wore a misaligned dirty wig, and starting voting Tory that their love would remain in that sun dappled golden blossom place that is was in the first few months? Are they sane?

Obviously in an ideal world everyone is missed, horribly, terribly so, and they would look ravishing in and out of make-up, and the person they are with would love them with a devotion so unwavering and intense it would be almost frightening, but not quite, and actually rather charming when you thought about it. But then, ugh what a sugary world! If I’m honest with myself I live for that moment between asking the stinking question and that split second you wait, that hover in the air, heart in your throat when you think they might actually admit, that no, they didn’t miss you, and then the relief, the wash of chemicals through your body when the rote answer comes: “Of course I missed you!”

Images by Jon Whitcomb, and who the hell knows, but it’s from Grottu’s Tumblr. Title, obviously, from the most needy yet romantic song ever 21 Questions.

It’s difficult to explain exactly what is bugging me at the moment because I don’t want to sound like a big headed bitch. It’s probably best to just throw it out there, as is, no bullshit, and see how it goes. The problem is this: everyone keeps flirting with me. Now, before you roll your eyes too hard, it seriously is a drag. It’s got to the point where today, at a zipline thing with my preteen sister and parents, the instructor flirted with me so hard even my mother commented on it. I did nothing at all to warrant this, I was even wearing green trousers with an elasticated waist and he still wouldn’t let up. I’m in a harness climbing on a fucking metal wire strung between two trees and he’s saying “Aww you’re mean”. Mean? Dude I am looking after children. Go away.

Fuck it man, I can’t even write this. What the hell am I thinking? This is a temporary glitch, a buzzy moment in the matrix where everything is good, and I am a Simon Templar sex beast. What the hell am I whining about? Knowing other people find me attractive is so lovely and ego inflating it’s insane, but equally, Jesus fucking Christ it’s tiring. I mean I’m not Helena Christensen, I’m not Shia LeBoeuf, I’m me, a kinda hot, kinda silly girl with enormous hair and a squishy nose. I’m just not used to it. How do super mega buff girls with shiny legs and bouncy hair deal with this? Do they ever just deliberately smear a bit of mascara down their cheek and rub dirt into their fringe?

I keep wanting to justify this with stuff like: “I mean obviously I don’t get hit on at the shop” but it depends who’s serving. “So not everyone in the entire world is hitting on me” well duh, I don’t think you all thought I was that fucking vain. Of course there are a million caveats, because even though I seem to be man-nip right now, I’m obviously not to every single person in the whole world’s fucking tastes. At first I thought that maybe I was just going out more (true), talking to strangers more (true), and probably just being super gregarious but the zipline guy has blown those theories out of the water.

While I’m here rambling: can I tell you all a story about being called gregarious? Of course I can, it’s my blog! I can do what the fuck I like! So I was at this Christmas party thing in a pub, and there’s this creepy guy staring at me all freaking night. And he keeps coming over and trying to talk to me, but his eyeballs are kinda huge and bulgy, and the staring thing kind of freaks me out, so I’m not best keen on a chat. Being drunk me and my friend Hannah start dodging him all over the crowded pub until I’m hiding under a chair, hidden by a coat, which is being guarded by my friend Dennis. Mr Eyeballs grabs Dennis and says “It’s…. very…. important you tell your friend… that…. she’s becoming… gregarious.” And then on that bombshell he leaves the pub. Straight out, no goodbyes, just leaves. Firstly, I didn’t know what the hell gregarious meant. Nor did anyone I was with. Secondly: What??? That’s what you were eye stalking me all night for? I’m gregarious? You need help mate. Best thing is: five years later I met him again and dated him. He’s the lean-er! There’s no moral to this, although if I had to find one it’d be: don’t date guys who stare a lot.

Where were we? Oh yeah: people keep flirting with me and it’s freaking me out. Really, what I want, is one super awesome person to flirt with me and make out, and hold hands and fly in a cotton candy sky with, because at heart, I love being monogamous; it is for me, the best thing I can imagine. However right now it seems every cool person I meet and want to be friends with at some point starts pawing at me, and then everything feels shitty, and like the only reason they’ve been laughing at my jokes is because they want to get their end away. It makes everything feel really cheap and shitty. It’s nice to feel wanted, but rather than feeling flattered that they want me that much, I just feel fucked off that they can’t look at me as anything other than clunge in a nice dress. Obviously I can’t stop people wanting to fancy me, I just wish I could. Because there’s nothing worse than someone howling themselves silly at your anecdotes to find out that they’ve been thinking “Skip to the end, I’d like to see your tits please.”

Illustration by Hellen Jo

Once upon a time I was in a relationship with someone I thought was possibly rather nice. After six months we had reached that wonderful stage where 90% of the awkwardness has subsided and you can finally exhale. I was sitting on his bed, waiting for him to come back with some take-away when I did something stupid. I read his diary.

You read that right: I read someone’s private, personal diary. I did the most horrible, invasive thing I could imagine. Reader, forgive me. In my defense I thought it was a notebook, and it was open, but I shouldn’t have done it. I should have just flicked through a magazine or written in my own damned notebook. But I didn’t. I was so high on oxytocin and fizzy feelings of possibility that I threw caution to the wind. At first it was fine, the page I opened on was just random jotting that barely made sense to me. Then I turned the page and saw these words ‘I think my girlfriend might be the Shoreditch bike’. And that was when the floor dropped out from underneath me.

As I struggled to catch my breath I put the book back where it had been, exactly in place. I sat down on the bed and looked out of the window. Even now, thinking about it, I can feel the physical pain of that moment. Just that one sentence was enough to bring my whole world crashing around me. The only things I could think were that I should leave, I should break up with him, I should just go and never ever come back. But I didn’t. I sat there, numb with shock, and later when he returned I ate dinner with him, pasting a smile on. What I didn’t do is confront him. I was scared, I didn’t want to know why he thought it, or how it made him feel. That sentence stayed with me until the end of our relationship, and sometimes it still creeps into my mind now.

A few months later I found Tracie Egan Morrissey’s now defunct blog One D at a Time. For those of you unfamiliar with it, she wrote a blog about her personal and sex life, that was at times terrifying but always funny and pithy. As I read it I was in awe: here was someone smart, funny, beautiful, and totally without any shame about her sexual habits. Later on I came across Slutever, and while I sometimes read it with eyes as wide as saucers I was again enraptured. Then, a few summers ago, I was discussing the idea of starting a blog up, and a friend said I should talk about sex and dating since I had a whole host of opinions on it, and a dating history full of freaks and geeks. And I did. While I don’t think I could ever be as graphic as either Tracie or Karley, I am English after all, I’ve always tried to be honest, even if sometimes it comes across as painfully twee.

In being honest I’ve tried to avoid hurting people’s feelings, even when they’ve been arseholes, by either skimming over the finer details, or by just not talking about them. It’s easy to forget that even though this blog is, in places, incredibly personal, it is still only one side of my life. There are hobbies, dramas, and conversations, that even though they are relevant may never make it here because there are things I prefer to keep to myself. Not because I’m ashamed, anyone who knows me in real life will attest to the fact that I’m a real oversharer on and offline, but because there are only so many things I think people would be interested in. I mean do you really want to hear about the 10 minute long screaming tantrum I had when I found out I didn’t win a writing prize last night? No. You don’t.

There are times when I read this blog back to myself and wonder what impression I am giving of myself. My last few months of posts have been all over the shop: I’ve soared from loved up, to bummed out, to dumped, to poking around at the idea of being single again, and recognising that I’m a miserable bint. You probably think of me as some kind of sex starved Liz Jones figure, rutting against men in the street, and shagging tramps behind the wheelie bins while necking a white wine and lemonade out of a plastic pint glass. A friend of mine said that she would understand if someone who was dating me was a bit shocked and possibly freaked out by reading this blog. I guess I would be too.

It scares me that someone I like might find this blog by mistake (or by Googling my real name), read it, and get an impression of me that is so warped and twisted as to be terrifying: that I am some man eating fuck monster who shags anything that moves and is desperate to get into a relationship at any cost. They’d think the person I am in real life was a cover, a sneaky facade of snark and floral patterns meant to cover the batshit crazy sex fiend underneath. On a lesser note I worry they’ll read this and think I’ve slept with hundreds of people when I haven’t.

Worst of all I think about what I read in that diary. I worry about how someone who didn’t know half the things I’ve written on this blog could come to that opinion of me. Over the years I’ve been told about all the reasons I’m difficult to date: I have too many tattoos, I don’t have a real job, I hate The Rolling Stones, I’ve slept with more than X number of people, I didn’t graduate from uni. The odds are apparently stacked against me. It seems that no matter how nice I am in person, once these facts get out I’m suddenly too much hassle to bother with.

As I sat down to write this I tried to think about what kind of revelation would turn me off someone. I told myself that if someone liked me they’d like me no matter what I’d done in the past. In my heart of hearts I’d like to think that it’s true. After all the only secrets that would make me reconsider a relationship with someone were pretty big: raping someone, killing someone in cold blood, being a Tory. Almost everything else I considered (having a child, sleeping with 100s of people, having a criminal record of any other kind) I reasoned was pretty negotiable: sure it would make me think differently about someone, but not necessarily in a negative way.

And I so I would like to think that if someone I liked stumbled across this blog they would not come to the opinion the boyfriend I referenced at the start of this post did. I’d like to think they were able to distinguish between the me I am on this blog, and the me I am when I watch tv in bed with my Cabbage Patch Doll. That is to say that I would like them to know that I am who I am, with or without this blog, and that I’m pretty fucking awesome even if I doubt myself frequently, and that if I’m letting them into my life that they’re pretty fucking awesome too. Awesome, and lucky, because I don’t do that to just anyone. No matter what this blog might make you think…

Photos from Retrogasm and The House of Self Indulgence via Radioactive Lingerie

Since the age of 18 I have managed to hold down 4 year long relationships. Written down, that looks pretty good, I mean that’s the better part of ten years leaving me single for only 2/3rds of my adult life. Out of those 4 relationships I’d say 3 were cruddy and one was pretty fucking awesome. If you were in one of those relationships with me, then uh, sorry – it was probably a crap one. As I write this I am starting to wonder what the hell my fucking problem is and why I’m about to spiral into whinefest 3000 – but indulge me. It’s what I do best ok?

Most of my evening are currently spent, as I am utterly single, either lying in bed, bag of Doritos on my chest watching X-Files in a cheese dust induced comatose state, or wondering aloud to anyone who’ll listen why it is I cannot get a relationship past that year marker. If I was to try and calculate how many people I’ve tangled with have made it to a second date, never mind a third, well, firstly I’d be good at maths, and secondly, it’d be pretty fucking depressing. I’ve tried everything from pretending I liked straight edge, through writhing naked with someone and telling them all the filthy stuff I’d do to them… another night, to um, actually, I can’t tell you the last thing – but it involved swearing, lube, and things I’d be hard pressed to find names for.  At the end of the day they all lead me here: to my newly rediscovered single life. Woo!

It is incredibly easy to pick apart why many people I’ve encountered are douchebags. There were people who didn’t want to call me their girlfriend, people who smelled, and people who were just fucking strange. My Mum once described the people I date thus: “There has to be some kind of ‘nice loser’ element to them. They’re all good looking, sweet, charming, but they all have some crap reason as to why they can’t get their lives together and you fall for it every time.” Damn her. Damn her insightful ways! Almost every man I’ve kissed has indeed had a glaring fatal flaw that I have all too willingly overlooked. Or has he?

Maybe, and I feel like I might be making a quantum leap here: maybe I’m the douchebag? Maybe, just maybe, it’s me not them. Could it be? I mean, obviously, I’m pretty fucking awesome. My tits are spectacular. I’ve made people laugh till they cry. I make a lemon drizzle cake so good it’ll make you want to get down on your knees and thank baby Jesus even if you don’t believe in Him.* That said, I can see why maybe, just maybe, you might not want to date me. I’m a chatty Cathy, I like really really crap films, my hair is so frizzy I look like Krusty the Klown in the mornings, I need constant compliments and reassurance. Is it me? Am I the one who needs to change? If so, how? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself and I have no idea how to answer it. On the one hand I want to believe that I’m so mind blowingly great that in time someone will be swept away by it but on the other, in 10 years it has yet to happen; and ten years, by anyone’s standards, is a fucking long time.

My plan so far is thus: keep on being a giddy, moody bint, and wearing supportive bras that lift and separate my boobs, and if in ten years I’m still drifting aimlessly in a sea of meaningless one night stands and blind dates, think about a full frontal lobotomy and a membership to eHarmony.

Photo from Arrested Development.

*Really you ought to be thanking Nigella for the cake, it’s her recipe. God, she’s great isn’t she?

Has anyone ever told you that they are a ‘people person’? Have you ever met that rare breed of person who thinks that the world is full of wonder, light, and people who are ready to love you and open their arms wide with happiness? If you have, then I’m sorry. I feel your pain deeply. Because, as you may have guessed – I am not one of those people.

Once, a long, long, time ago, I told a friend, “The difference between you and me is that I like the general public, and you don’t.” A moment of silence followed and then he replied “You hate the general public!” and suddenly the veil fell from my eyes. I do hate the public. I hate most people in fact. All through my teenage years I wanted people to like me and did everything I could to gain their acceptance. However as I have begun approaching the fine old age of 30 I have started to realise that I don’t give a flying fuck what most people think, do, say, or eat. I just don’t like many people.

As a newly single girl this is proving to be rather problematic. I recently reactivated my OkCupid profile and, it seems, my hatred for almost everything under the sun. Pseuds. People who like Mogwai. MOGWAI. Ugh. Long hair. Earnest people. Buffy superfans. Closet racists. Men who don’t wear good shoes. Cat haters. ‘Nice’ guys (if you think you’re a ‘nice’ guy, you’re not – you’re a twat). I’m enjoying writing this list way too much so I’ll stop, but you get the point – I hate a lot of stuff and it’s the kind of stuff that most people seem to love.

Most people on OkC are looking for someone to sit in a fair trade ecological cafe with on a Sunday so they can read The Guardian together. I can imagine nothing worse. They want to go to gigs where they stand up all the way through and listen to the droning sound of live music. They will probably wear fleeces when they get to 37. They might even like subtitled films. Why do you want to read when you’re watching a film? Get a book! They probably want to be there in the room with me when I give birth to their earnest potato faced child. (Note: I am very much against my future baby Daddy being in the room with me when I give birth, don’t know why, I just am). It’s all too horrible to think about.

Now don’t get me wrong I like a lot of stuff too but it’s stuff that is pretty polarising: 60s fad dances, Russ Meyer films, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Garth Mahrenghi’s Dark Place. Not exactly the kind of stuff that normally engenders a lively and stimulating discussion. In fact most of the time when I attempt to talk to men about the things I’m interested in their faces either glaze over very quickly or they pat me on the head and say “You’re so cute!”. Let’s get one thing straight: DON’T FUCKING PAT ME ON THE HEAD. What is with this? I’m not short, I’m not sweet, and I don’t look like a small animal. Yet almost everyone I fancy tries, at some point, to pat me on the head. I hate it! I’m a twenty-seven year old woman! Is it my penchant for Peter Pan collars?

People who hate people aren’t generally people who end up being in happy relationships. They end up bitter, alone, and writing angry emails from their suburban flat above a hairdressers. And I don’t want that, I don’t. I’ve tried to like the kind of things that nice, normal people like. But I can’t. British Sea Power bring me out in hives. Artisan bread makes my eyes water. Square toed shoes get my gag reflex going. I tried. I really did.

This isn’t to say that I hate other people wanting those things, or that you should all be clammed up inside if someone wants to go to a Stephen Malkmus gig (I’ve been to one – it was… uh… it was ok…) because if those things make you happy then that’s wonderful! It’s not like you’re kicking puppies or taunting old ladies – these things are good, normal, natural things to like. The people who like them are good, normal, wonderful people. But I don’t want that. I want my Richard Burton. I want someone who makes me feel like I’m riding in a fast car shooting guns at mailboxes. For once I want to feel an emotion that makes me so, so, something, I haven’t quite figured out what, but so something that I’ll puke. I want my Tallulah Bankhead. I want it all! I want someone exceptional! Someone who makes me feel like I’m on fire! Someone who wants to set the world alight with me. And I can’t do that while reading the style supplement.

There’s no moral to this blog post: I wish I could tell you all that I believe that there is someone out there who hates everyone else but loves me, but I just don’t know if that’s true. I wish I could tell you that in time I will start liking things that other people like, but I won’t. I just want to know there are more people out there, people who look at everything they’re supposed to want and feel ill, because if there’s someone else out there who feels as cantankerous as I do then I guess I’m not really alone.

Photos from Girl With A One Track Mind’s Flickr and Tavi’s Tumblr.

Pubes are, it seems, a touchy subject. Some women want to rock their hair out till it touches their knees and others are keen to go with a more streamlined look. Whenever there’s a discussion about it words like ‘prepubescent’ and ‘disgusting hairy minges’ get thrown about with gay abandon until someone freaks out and mentions ‘hygeine’ and then all hell breaks loose.

Until recently I hadn’t given my bikini line much thought, that is I wasn’t think about the semantics and deeper meanings of it’s length and breadth – just getting rid of the excess, so to speak. Then I started swimming. While I love the fuck out of my swimming costume it’s kind of high cut – see? And so the great bikini line dilemma started. While I am in awe of those who have the chutzpah to go without shaving their bits I just can’t do it. I mean I really can’t. If my legs are hairy I feel so awkward, painfully awkard, and as though everyone’s going to be staring at the tiny specks of hair on my pins and freaking the fuck out. Someone could drown after seeing my armpit stubble. I could be responsible for that, and I don’t need that shit right now.

When I first got the swimsuit I was kind of disappointed to have to change my bikini line routine, hell I was annoyed that I needed to have a routine at all. I attempted to canvass for opinions on pubic fashions, subtly, but really, it’s almost impossible to do that subtly, and what information I got back was terrifying. Suddenly my pubes no longer felt like a loving throwback to the 60s but a terrifying jungle which I was cruelly forcing my boyfriend to hack through. Of course I didn’t dare admit that my nether regions weren’t as well manicured as Kew Gardens – would you? And so for a few weeks I worried about the state of my pubic hair.

As I write this I am already feeling the need to tell you that I do do something to that whole area but why? Why am I so worried about what other people think what’s inside my pants? I mean, you’re never, ever, ever, not in a million years, going to see that (no offence), and your opinion shouldn’t matter one iota. But it does. Right now, I’m worrying about what you, sitting right there, are thinking about what my pubes might look like. Please don’t, honestly, don’t. Whatever you’re thinking, you’re probably wrong.

There just seemed so many options, but all of them seemed so severe and time consuming. A landing strip looks to me, like a Hitler moustache above your labia, a triangle looks, well it looks fucking odd, and there’s no way someone as lazy as I is going to get rid of it all. I did that once, cried my way through a waxing appointment, got home, showed my boyfriend who said “Oh, nice. That’s nice.” then continued playing Looney Tunes Racing. So that was out of the question. My pubic situation was starting to freak me out. It felt like I was letting my boyfriend down by not keeping up some kind of swimwear model level of bikini line topiary. What if he’d just been being polite and pretending to  enjoy sleeping with me? Was the very fact that I was in possession of some of my pubes, more than a centimetre wide strip, a repulsive evil thing?

Just as my fears reached fever pitch I remembered a picture I had seen of Sasha Grey in Penthouse. Looking it up I was strangely happy to remember that she did indeed have hair down there, and I could find no reported cases of spontaneous vomiting upon sight of her bush. With a sigh of relief I remembered that these were my goddamn hairs and I’d do anything I bloody fucking well liked with them, popular opinion be damned.

And that, reader, is how I learned to love my pubes. Or at least stomach them.

Pictures from Mondo Topless, and the wonders of Google Image Search. Should you want to see my aha! moment Sasha Grey picture this is it. It’s rather Not Safe For Work, obviously so don’t cry if you click it and get fired.

My personal favourite is Rock Hudson. He was a stone-cold super fox, insanely tall, and sadly for me, gay. Obsessed as I am with his and Doris Day’s work together one of the highlights of every film is the inevitable topless shot of Rock getting dressed/stepping out of the shower/going swimming. Fanservice it may have been but who’s complaining?

Sadly Rock and Doris only made 3 films together, and Send Me No Flowers the last, is not exactly a golden era classic. In fact unless you dream of starring in your own Doris Day, Tony Randall, Rock Hudson sandwich then leave it be.

Now, just so I don’t feel like a freak: who are your top dead hunks?

This is something that I guess I keep going over on this blog: what the fuck is a slut? What does that word even mean? As I’m too much of a nerd to ask the teenagers themselves I turned to the next best thing: Urban Dictionary.

This is by far the most popular answer. A slightly confusing backhanded compliment, but hey, it’s not terrible just sort of shitty.

Things get worse however…

Leaving aside the idea that someone could disassociate from their body quite at will (can someone teach me that?) this is a textbook definition and raises so many questions. Why does engaging in sex frequently and sharing your body with more than a handful of people make sex less special? What makes someone’s sexual preferences discriminatory? What about all those girls who make their boyfriends wait and wait and wait and then get cheated on, treated badly, and dumped? Should they have worked harder beforehand? Probably not. If you give it up on the first date or after the wedding it doesn’t make a shit of difference. Some people are douchebags, some people will be horrible to you. Sometimes you can sniff them out in seconds and sometimes it takes years. The amount of time you wait between meeting them and getting acquainted with their genitals makes no damned difference.

Now for ‘meaning and significance’. I think that often sex can be likened to food. Some meals you wolf down, on the run, barely tasting them or appreciating them, others, like Christmas dinner, leave lasting memories each time it’s consumed.

Sex is the same. Sometimes yes, it has meaning and significance, the first time you have sex after you fall really truly in love with someone is magic. For me in that moment the whole world seems to stop and there’s a lightbulb over head feeling: this is it, this is me and the person I love being totally, utterly together. It’s one of the most precious moments you’ll ever have, I think. I don’t know what having a baby is like, but I guess it’s like a non sexual version of that. With added pain.

But yes, sex can have meaning it can have significance, it can be an exploration of trust, an episode of mutual discovery, and a fun filled rollercoaster ride, sometimes all of the above at once. And other times it can be like scratching an itch. An itch you just can’t let alone. Do you have to scratch that itch with someone who understands you? Who likes you? Who thinks you’re hot? One out of 3 generally isn’t bad, but no, not really. Sex is sex, a strange, heady concoction that  can be tied up with emotions and meaningfulness, but mostly is about being in the moment and something going on around your genitals.

Firstly: chill the fuck out! That guy was being nice to you, and you just pissed on his dreams!

Secondly… what people say about sluts, and by extension sex, says so much more about themselves than ‘sluts’. Here we have someone equating sex with personal validation. The intricate way that her self-view is built into her idea of sex makes me think that for her having sex is a minefield: she at once wants to be accepted and loved and sees sex as a way of expressing this, but is also caught up in the idea that to give it away means that she doesn’t respect herself. She’s trying to withhold sex in order to get sex. Confusing? You bet.

FYI ‘man’ next time you see that lady give her a hug, she needs it.

SHIT! WE’RE ALL SLUTS!!!! Not you men. Don’t worry, you’re safe.

Amen. Read it, memorise it, and if neccessary tell people it, but in a more condensed manner because it’s kind of long, and leave out the bit about nipples showing, because sometimes we just can’t help it ok?

Stop calling other girls sluts, stop judging people by how many people they’ve slept with, and stop using it as a catch all insult. If you must call someone something nasty, and sometimes you must, then get creative! Call them a slinky eyed bottom feeding mouth breather, a higgedy piled rust bucket of pity, or a banana split on a cupcake, whatever feels right!

Or just move to Sweden and start confusing people.