When I was 12 I discovered masturbation. Even at such a young, innocent, age, my fantasies were both slightly perverted and totally hackneyed. I was a naughty, naughty, girl, and my teacher wanted to punish me for not handing in my schoolwork on time. Irony is, I was a very naughty girl at school who’s teachers frequently did want to punish me for not handing in my schoolwork on time, but sadly only with pages and pages of lines and incredibly boring cleaning details.

For 6 years I relied on the cruel, terrifying, sexy, dreamland teacher in my head, and then I met the person I would lose my virginity to: Tony. The first few times we had sex it was exciting and a little uncomfortable, but I just couldn’t get there. I thought about how much I loved him, and how totally, ridiculously, super hot this was, and still, nothing. And so I started to imagine Dream Teacher again and it hit the spot perfectly. It took a while to sync up the drama to the right moments, as I wasn’t alone giving it a rub, but eventually I managed to work out what got me there quickest and how to incorporate it with Cosmo’s position of the month.

That tightly scripted play in my head worked perfectly with only minor changes (the teacher became a boss the minute I left school) for over 10 years. It worked through dozens of beds, back rows of cinemas, pub toilets, armchairs, and rugs. It saw me through 2 vibrators and a whole herd of one night stands. It was totally, utterly perfect…. until it wasn’t. I can’t remember exactly when masturbating became a rote tired affair, but after 10 years of endless re-runs I can’t say I was surprised. I just couldn’t get there.

No matter how fun or freaky things got I was still floating in a place just before an orgasm. That place feels a lot like the day you spend waiting for the broadband guy to come over and hook up your internet: the pacing, the waiting, the constant feeling of “Is this it? I think this is it! Oh my God! This is so it! Oh, it’s not it.” It’s unbearable torture, but not in a fun BDSM way.

So I started to mix shit up, I figured out a new scenario that worked, I figured out a couple. I auditioned moments in my mind, thought of porn that had turned me on, watched a lot of strange videos on XTube, and bought a new vibrator or two. Then I shut my eyes and went in for it. Over time I worked out another perfect scenario with a dozen or so interchangeable parts, adaptable for any occasion. I knew that no matter who I was with or where I was, once I imagined XXXX sticking it in XXXXX as he XXXXX my XXXXXXXX I could set the whole chain reaction off and get exactly where I wanted to, exactly how I wanted to.

As time went on the fantasy became more Caligula like, there were more of us, we were all very stretchy, lube was needed, frequently. I began to worry that some of these peccadilloes meant I might be unhinged or that there was something terribly wrong with me. I wondered if I should like to act them out in real life: what they would feel like, smell like, taste like. The thing was that every time an opportunity to enact this sexual olympics came along I backed out. Part of me wanted to keep it a fantasy, because there’s nothing so delicious as wanting something you can’t have.

Then, the other day, I was with someone, I was so focused on the moment, and not falling over (don’t even ask), that I couldn’t spare any brain cells to the pursuit of my fantasy. The fun was so wonderful, so overwhelming, so totally different and bizarre, that I came so unexpectedly, wholly, and brilliantly that I lay back afterwards, in total spread-eagled silence, and just let the adrenaline, sweat, and joy wash over me in silence. It felt so magical I wanted to light some incense, and start a drum circle. A tiny bit of me missed the cast who’d accompanied me to every orgasm before then, and a tiny bit of me felt proud I’d finally made it alone.

Illustration from Hollyhocks and Tulips/Satan Magazine, and photo from Retrodoll.

In the wake of the ScarJo n00ds dramarama, I wanted to share some tips with all of y’all about how to take a picture of your genitals and not end up on Fleshbot. Here we go:

1. Don’t send them to everyone
If you’re gonna take a picture of you, or your genitals: send it to one person and one person only. Don’t send out a blanket text to a variety of people with your bits in and a “How about it?” tagline. This should be like a special club that only a select few can enter. I’m not saying you can only send naked pics to one person ever, but one person at a time. The idea is that you send it to one person, who you’re relatively well involved with, and who will be pleased to see it. Random cock shots are never good.

2. Only send it to someone you are at least 85% sure won’t send them to anyone else.
Because let’s be honest, you can never be 100% sure. We all get into tangles with people who are a bit sketchy or a bit stupid, but we don’t have to be sending them pictures of our batties no matter how hard they beg. String them along with promises/protests of shyness if you have to, but if you can’t trust them with your key you can’t trust them with boob snaps.

3. For the love of God make sure you look nice and nothing weird is happening in the background.
The looking nice thing is obvious if you’re going to allow your face to be in the photo, natch, but the other seems to need a bit of explaining. So here it is: don’t take a picture in the bathroom if you haven’t flushed the loo, don’t take it outside and get photobombed, don’t have a baby, pet, pack of sanitary protection, cuddly toy, or loofah anywhere fucking near you. The last one’s just because I have a mortal fear of loofahs.

4.  Delete them from your phone, camera, computer, and email outbox.
Especially if you are going to be allowing someone else to use/repair these things. Ok so another person has a copy and obviously in the modern age that copy can be reproduced a thousand times but if you followed tip 2 then they’re probably going to just look, be like “Oh, sweet!” and then move on/reciprocate. And if they reciprocate and then leak your pics then you’ve got dirt on them too.

5. OWN IT
If you feel confident enough to send a picture of you licking your own nipple/knob to someone then fucking own that shit. Be a bad bitch and style it out if you get confronted with it unexpectedly. If your picture ends up doing the rounds, just chalk it up to experience, know that you are looking your best, and wait for the phone calls to roll in offering you decent sex from people who appreciate your finest assets. Then meet up with the person you sent the photos to, take a deep breath, and start screaming at them so loud their eardrums burst.

P.S If any of you have Tom Fords n00ds my email address is vanessa@nightmaresandboners.com thank-you.

Maddalena: I love you Marcello. I want to be your wife. Be faithful. I want it all: to be your wife, and enjoy myself like a whore.
Marcello: Tonight, I don’t know why, I felt like I loved you, like I needed you.
Maddalena: Really?
Marcello: Really. I’m not sure if you’re being serious tonight, or playing games with me. But it doesn’t matter. I love you. I want to be with you always.
Maddalena: After a month you’d hate me.
Marcello: Why should I hate you?
Maddalena: Because no-one can have everything. You can’t have one thing or the other. You have to choose. And I can’t choose, it’s too late. I have never wanted to choose. I’m a whore, there’s no cure. I’ll always be a whore, and I don’t want to be anything else!

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s complicated, subtitled films in black and white. Give me The House Bunny over Les Bonnes Femmes any day. This is partly because I have bad eyesight and mostly because I’m an uncultured cretin. However I speak Italian fluently, so I can just about stomach watching Cinecittá’s 60s output, and last year I discovered La Dolce Vita. Just so you know, in no way am I qualified to even begin explaining the beauty, sadness, and the frustration that watching La Dolce Vita inspires. There are people with whole dissertations based around the dead fish washing up on shore, or Marcello’s stupidly beautiful face. All I want to talk about is the above conversation, because for the last few months it’s been on my mind.

It’s obvious that men love whores, I mean someone’s got to be fucking them or they wouldn’t be whores, but there is the idea that marriage or a long term relationship involves some kind of subduing: that you have to be a ‘good girl’. That is to say that men adore whores, but only when they stop being whores. Even though I tell myself someone who wants to change me is not worth my time, when I am in a relationship I tend to feel the urge to curb my drinking, stop shouting in clubs, or dancing on tables, and to make more nice dinners, because that’s what you do, right?

And even though nice dinners are well, uh, nice, I’ve decided that the next time I somehow fall into some kind of relationship I will not try and be the good girl that society tells me to be, and that I don’t have to make a choice. After all, why did they fall for me in the first place? Because underneath my chatty Cathy exterior lies the quivering heart of a good homemaker? Unlikely. No, they fell for me because I am a gobby tart, and if I’m honest with myself ‘I’ll always be a whore, and I don’t want to be anything else!’

My extended family is huge: I have approximately 20 cousins, a dozen or second cousins (or cousins once removed for all you pedants), and then some other relatives like my mother’s cousin’s daughter’s kid, and that guy who’s not really my uncle but I call him uncle, and the kid of my cousin’s husband from his first wife’s kid. At least half of my cousins have had a baby when, to put it politely it might not have been a great idea. You know what I mean: they got pregnant and the guy flipped out, called her a whore, and then left her, never paying child support again. Or they got knocked up when they were dirt poor and now are working ten jobs and resentful of their child. Or they knocked up someone after two months of dating and were surprised when the relationship didn’t last forever ever.

Now I get it, pregnancies can happen when you least expect them and are extremely unprepared for them. However there is always another option, aka abortion. Because if you really really don’t want a baby you don’t have to have one. The end. However if you decide despite all the not so good elements in your life that you want to have one, then good luck to you. I think you might be a bit mental, but hey, someone’s got to have kids and I guess as they say there’s no right time to have one. But this blog post isn’t about you lot who’ve decided to spawn, it’s about us who haven’t.

Parenting is fucking hard, no two ways about it, but you know what else is hard? Not getting pregnant. At first it seems easy: condoms. But then there’s that whole thing that they suck and are fiddly and they chafe sometimes, and I believe they can be uncomfortable for the person with the penis, and anyway they’re not 100% reliable with a ‘typical failure rate’ of 15%. FIFTEEN PERCENT. Are you freaking out yet? Because I am. So you think I’ll back this shit up, I’ll use hormonal birth control, because drenching my body in synthetic hormones is fun fun fun, and that’s something I feel happy and safe about doing.

So you try the pill, but the first one you take makes your boobs swell till they’re 4 cup sizes bigger and so tender just breathing hurts. The second pill gives you spots so bad they’re inside your freaking nose. The third give you ‘breakthrough bleeding’ for month: aka you bleed, like your period, for an entire fucking month. Yeah that’s right, a whole fucking month. What’s the fucking point of that? I mean it’s not like you’re going to be having any sex when that’s happening so you might as well just not be on the pill at all.

And so you think about the coil (it seems kinda scary and painful, though some people say it’s fine), the injection (your mum grew a ‘tache), and the implant (your mate ended up in hospital after an allergic reaction). Promptly you consider celibacy but what with having urges and a partner, that seems kind of redundant, so you just use a condom, or the pill, or a sponge, or a femidom, wait, have you ever used a female condom because if so: I want to know about it, they seem, well…. odd? Like they would rustle or be strange or noisy or you know: just confusing. But anyway, you find a method and you stick to it and you cross your fingers each month and pray that you’re not up the duff and what do you get? Where are your congratulations cards? Where’s your moment at the family function when someone says “I’m so proud of you”?

Until now, there was none. You were languishing away in smoker’s corner, even if you don’t smoke, and feeling resentful. But no more. I proclaim today and every 15th of August from now, on HAPPY YOU DIDN’T GET YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE PREGNANT DAY! It’s a little cumbersome, but you’ll get used to it. Send a friend a card and tell them how proud you are of them successfully navigating this treacherous maze of contraception and lust. Thank a childless friend for not popping another baby out onto an already overpopulated planet. Or just hug your boyfriend and blow all the cash you would have spent on nappies and teething gel on getting proper wrecked and doing karaoke. Those of you with babies get all the credit, and you’re welcome to most of it, but it’s time to start sharing, because damnit, it’s time we non-breeders got some of the cake and bunting too.

Still from A Slightly Pregnant Man and photo by Dash Snow

Although I’ve been reassured over and over again by the internet and various male friends, I can’t help but feel there’s something a bit odd about thinking of someone you know when you masturbate. Obviously there are scales of strangeness: thinking of your parents is very very wrong, thinking of your boss is debatable, and your boyfriend is probably quite reasonable. However for years I just couldn’t do it. Whenever I shut my eyes and tried to imagine someone I knew getting filthy with me, in a variety of athletic positions, I got coy, and felt embarrassed about the whole thing. Maybe it was because as a kid my mum told me your ear would ring if people were thinking or talking about you, and the last thing I wanted to do was wake someone up at 1am because I was trying to involve them in a sexy version of Eyes Wide Shut.

No matter how hot I found someone or how fun a time we’d spent together it was just impossible to imagine doing anything further than holding hands. I could say the words out loud, feel the feeling of wanting someone horribly bad, maybe even relive a fumble while daydreaming on the bus, but making up new situations was behind a brick wall I couldn’t scale. That isn’t to say I was wanking over disembodied robots or just shutting my eyes and giving it a rub with nothing in my head at all. In fact it was the complete opposite. My fantasies were full of people, characters I held over from scenario to scenario, with names and back stories, and specific personality traits who just waited to be called into service as the guy who held the bullwhip, or the one who wore a nice suit and took me to dinners in fancy restaurants where they turned out the lights and… well, I’m sure you can guess the gist of that one.

Then recently I got bored of making up elaborate scenarios with interchangeable players. So in the interests of keeping it fresh I threw in someone I was crushing on and it was surprisingly enjoyable. Then I assembled a cast of people I knew and fancied, mixed with celebrities who seemed kind of dishy, and it was great! It was I imagine even better than fucking half of those people because they didn’t complain and were totally ameanable to all my wishes. “Put this here? Why of course! I’ve always wanted to!” That sort of thing.

It does, as I figured it would, feel kind of odd seeing people who you’ve wanked about sometimes. It’s a bit like when you’re in crush with someone and you daydream about your whole life together and then when you see them you feel this super deep connection and they don’t. But less deep, obviously. I’m still hazy about the ‘telling them’ thing, because if you’re not dating them it could seem invasive and creepy, and if you are it just seems desperate and lame. Like “Hey, I’m crazy and wild and when I think about you I touch myself…” WINK. WINK. SUGGESTIVE LIP LICK. WINK. It’s not like you can ask someone else if they’ve been thinking about you either. Really if you’re seeing them on the regular they should just say yes to shut you up, but when in the past I have asked (of course I’ve asked, I’m vain ok?), I’ve found the answer is generally no. One time the answer was “Only when you’re with your best friend” which wasn’t half as flattering as I think he meant it.

The best course of action seems to be think about people, put them in any goddamn position you want, but keep schtum unless asked so as not to seem like some kind of greasy Austin Powers wannabe or a sex offender. So er, if you’re reading this (Hi!) and you think that I might be thinking about you if that’s something that you think might happen then well, er, cough, well, you’ll just have to ask, if you want to know. If you don’t think that’s likely to be happening, then, well, don’t ask because then it’ll get all awkward and surely you don’t want that? I’ll just shut up now.

Pictures from Playboy by Russ Meyer (Yvette Vickers aka Miss July 1959) and an illustration from a 40s issue of Esquire via Vintage Gal’s Tumblr

At the age of 17 I walked into my local Wetherspoons, sat down next to my friends, put my hands down on the table, took a deep breath, and said “I need to tell you all something.” They went silent. I took another deep breath, “I’m bi.” There was a pause. Then another pause. Then my friend Susan looked at her boyfriend who looked at back at me. “Is that news?” and then everyone laughed. I was so crestfallen it hurt. This was my big reveal! My lightbulb moment! And they’d ruined it by guessing my secret months before.

While at that time I had done no more than dream about kissing girls in a semi-innocent fashion, I made up for lost time fairly quickly. There was an incident during my first week at uni that could have been straight out of a Russ Meyer film: me and most of the hockey team in a ladies bathroom. It was just as fun as I thought it’d be because how couldn’t it be? Tits! Snogging! Nudity! Hands in places! It is a situation I have returned to mentally over and over again, with some slight stylistic improvements. It is also a situation a boyfriend of mine made me relive ove and over again until it became a Caligula style orgy situated in a bath house with roses and only swimwear models for company. Tsk. Men. This is why I don’t talk about it much, it becomes this whole raised eyebrow thing where everyone says “Oh really?” and you sound like Katy fucking Perry trying to get some attention from a douchebag propped up on a bar, and it’s not about who you are and what you like it’s about some dickface’s purile fantasies and I really need to end this sentence because it’s run on too long and I’m getting kind of angry.

So for a few years it was girls and boys and fun and hands and places. And then, I somehow got back into men only mode. That isn’t to say I stopped finding women attractive more that I just moved into a mode where I stopped finding moments where I was with a woman who wanted to make out with me and maybe even spend some time with me afterwards. To be honest I stopped finding those moments with anyone for a while, but anyway, that’s a whole nother kettle of fish.

These days I don’t know where I fall on the Kinsey scale. Could I imagine myself spending the rest of my life with a woman? Sure. With a guy? Sure. It’s like Patrick Wolf said, ‘In the same way I don’t know if my sixth album is going to be a death-metal record or children’s pop, I don’t know whether I’m destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man. It makes life easier.’ That said I’ve always hoped, personally, that I wouldn’t end up with the horse. It seems like it could get kind of awkward. Not to get all Ming the Merciless judgemental on you, but I cannot imagine looking at another attractive person of any sex and not thinking about how much I’d like to just rip their clothes off and fuck now, on this busstop bench.

It’s like the way I feel about food: I love food so much I cannot imagine excluding a single food group. Why would I deny myself the pure, beautiful pleasure of cheese? Or pie? Or crayfish dipped in breadcrumbs and slathered in sauce and eaten from my fingertips which are covered in grease? So why would I deny myself the pleasure of any kind of person? Boobs are so fucking good! I want to lie in a big disembodied pool of boobs and just feel my way out. The same applies with men’s bums. Clean bums only please. Maybe this just brands me as some kind of sex obsessed nympho but it’s not just about sex, it’s about that cheesy bullshit of connecting on a deeper level, and much as I claim to hate people, the ones I love I love so fucking hard that it’d be impossible for me to pick just one gender, much like I could never decide between Gruyere and Asiago.

Photos by Ryan McGinley and Playboy (Miss July 1958 Linné Nanette Ahlstrand)

A few days ago it was 1am and I couldn’t sleep, so having exhausted all my usual options, I decided to watch some porn. I also decided to ‘liveblog the experience’. However, thankfully, between the tonsillitis, some cortisone shots in my hip making me unable to move, and a magical cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics I didn’t get as far as hitting the ‘publish post’ button. Until today I had actually forgotten that I’d written any of this, so I must have been a lot more whacked out than I thought I was. Here are the edited highlights:

1.02am: I can’t watch porn in my clothes. This feels all wrong.

1.05am: It was too cold to be naked, and I got caught up retweeting Jenny Holzer. Everything she says is so shouty! DON’T ALLOW THE LUCID MOMENT TO DISSOLVE.

1.08am: It’s too cold and too bright in this room. Also I’m listening to If I Knew You Were Comin I’d Have Baked A Cake.

1.09am: It is silent and I am now in a nightdress and under the covers. My Cabbage Patch doll Veronica, who has been nursing me through my illness, is off the bed. I think her looking at me would be the biggest buzzkill ever.

1.22am: Does anyone watch porn all the way through without fast-forwarding it?

1.23am: Why is this girl talking in such a squeaky voice? “This means I’m hor!ny!” well no shit Sherlock, you’re in a porno. I fucking hope you are because if not this is going to be a real drag. If James Deen wasn’t in this whispering at me (not you Squeaky Lady, me) I would have stopped watching long ago.

1.25am: This lady has a really bad manicure. Her eye make up is amazing however. It reminds me a bit of this picture of Elizabeth Taylor:

1.29am: Ooh! My friend’s just emailed me. Seeing as Squeaky’s crawling around on the floor right now I can probably reply without ruining the whole buzz. Mainly because there is no buzz.

1.32am: Email replied to. Guess I should unpause this, though Squeaky looks quite funny caught mid pose.

1.33am: Oh for fuckssake. I unpause it and now she’s tonguing a glass dildo? Is that hot? James just told her to choke herself, and she looks like she’s doing a Mariah Carey hand to the throat. She’s in quite an odd position though, it must be hard to choke yourself and tongue a glass dildo, so I’ll give her credit for trying.

1.35am: Do all porn stars do yoga? They must.

1.40am: I am so bored. I want to get into this I do. I really do. But this seems about as fun as GCSE Maths camp.

1.42am: I’ve said goodbye to James Deen, and am watching Audrey Hollander instead. She looks a tiny bit like Fizz from Corrie, so if that’s your thing you’re in luck. (It’s not my thing.)

1.45am: This guy kissing Audrey Hollander’s bum looks well made up about it. That’s kind of sweet really.

1.47am: What even is this? Everything looks like meat.

1.55am: Everyone’s getting up and changing positions so regularly it feels like musical chairs. Musical cocks.

1.57am: Did you know there’s an insect that plays music with it’s cock when it wants to attract a lady mate? Imagine if men’s penises did that.

1.59am: Having thought about this, I’d like penises to play The Archers theme.

2.06am: The other guy in this scene looks like The Situation. I’m not really cool with that. For once I’m glad the director’s keeping his face out of shot because it’s kinda offputting.

At this point I must have given up because when I woke up in the morning, surrounded by blister packs of pills and copies of Vanity Fair, the computer was playing Daria on a loop. This was almost as sexy as a visit to the dentist’s. You’re welcome.

Photos from A l’intérieur du Jardin Secret, and Ilyinichna.

You’re probably reading the title thinking, “Yeah right!” because 99% of the things I’ve written are all “Wah wah wah my vagina is dry. Wah wah wah I hate flavoured lube.”. Thing is it’s way easier to moan about the shit bits than to wax lyrical about all the good bits. I mean what’s funnier: someone falling over, or someone sitting in a chair reading a book and smiling? Exactly.

Since I became single in February I’ve had awesome, mind blowing, oh my fucking God how are you doing that it is so good, sex, as well as some mediocre times. Once, my ears rang. Another time I blacked out for a second. And yet another time it was so good I almost cried. To give a specific example, a few weeks ago I found myself in a situation where I said the immortal words “It’s very important I take my dress off now” and then made out in (and out of) a lace bodysuit for the next few hours. It was amazing! Mind blowing! Filthy! Painful (in a good way)! Messy! My hair looked like a tangled mop head after! I loved every second of it.

The reason I keep going back even after the crap sex, and the pina colada lube, is because when sex is good it is the best thing in the whole universe. When I come and it’s good, not just “Woo!” and done, it’s the best feeling in the world. It’s like I’ve become the size of Godzilla and I’m naked, flying through the universe, looking at the stars and feeling like I could do anything. It’s like having a moment when the whole galaxy’s on mute and all I can feel is love and joy and oxytocin flooding my body. Everything, you, me, the bed, Hackney, floats away and I am buzzing off a feeling so pure that nothing can touch me. I wish I could live in that moment where everything seems quiet and far away, just me and stars and bliss. This has probably made me sound like a hippie but fuck it, I don’t care.

When I first started having sex I thought that shuffling around, hinting, and wishing, would make it good. I figured that a guy would go through his arsenal of moves, eventually pull out one I liked, I’d non-verbally communicate I was into it, and we’d have a good time. That did not work. Gradually over time I realised my assumptions that detailed directions and admitting to my specific peccadillos would not freak anyone out. Well, they freaked a couple of people out, but they were douchebags anyway. The point is, rather than being boner killers they made sex better. Learning to let go, turn a light on, get on top, and do what I wanted opened up a whole world of fun. The sex I thought had been so great now seemed like MacDonald’s next to The Ritz. I started opening my eyes during sex which for me was a big fucking deal and realised everyone looks batshit crazy, but in a kind of sexy way, so I stopped worrying and let myself get into odd positions and pull any face I damn well wanted. I also learned that sometimes you’ve just got to put yourself first, especially if someone else isn’t going to.

Photo by Ryan McGinley

Let me set the scene: it’s two weeks ago and I was having a C- grade make out session with a man. The making out seemed rote, almost perfunctory, there was a sense of urgency that seemed impersonal. So as I found myself on my bed, half in, half out of my clothes, legs caught in my skirt at an unfortunate angle, I was not really ‘feeling’ the whole sex thing. He however was. Now, I don’t know if any of you have ever been in this situation but if a girl’s not ready, you can tell. Not by facial expressions or lack of reciprocation, although those are helpful, but by other more physical signs. However, a bit like a lack of an erection in no way means you are a minger, a lack of lubrication in no way means that this all has to end. In fact, it is really cue to keep going, switch things up. Don’t whatever you do try to force either a flaccid penis into a well lubricated vagina, or a hard penis into a dry vagina.

Just don’t. It’s not going to work no matter how acute an angle you lean on it, not if you hold it and jam it, not if you squidge lube everywhere. Stop it. Stop it now. Leaning has never forced a penis into a vagina and it never will. In fact I think leaning is my number 1 most hated sex move. If it starts with leaning, it’s going to end with me saying “Oh you’re done? Ok then.” Back to the point: me and this bloke, we’ll call him Steven, are making out, I finally untangle myself from my clothing and he does the lean. I shuffle about, try to focus on something hot (hi James Deen!) and make appreciative noises. But he is still doing the lean. Eventually I sit up and try to kiss him to see if it helps. In the thirty seconds we are making out nothing happens down there. Nothing. He pushes me backwards, and I think maybe this could be going somewhere fun. But no, it’s time for more leaning. By now I’m not even making noises, I’m just lying there stressed out at my malfunctioning vagina. So Steven goes down on me. Now normally this would be super hot and I’d be all into it, and there’d be tingles and jingles and exciting fireworks in my head. But no. Nothing. Because all I can think is: “IT’S NOT WORKING, NOTHING’S HAPPENING, HE’S GOING TO TRY LEANING ON ME AGAIN, ARGH WHY IS NOTHING WORKING?” And true to form, I am soon regaled with another lean.

At this point, I start laughing, because that’s exactly what everyone wants to hear during sex: laughter. He looks at me and smiles, and I say “I just don’t think that’s going to work right now, how about we…” but he cuts me off “I just really want to have sex.” Boom. Not ‘I really want to have sex with you‘ but ‘I really want to have sex’ like he wants to have sex with anyone and I happen to be here with my legs open. Even though it hurts, I think, “Hey, we’re naked, we all say silly things!” and I explain that yes, that’s nice, but it’ll take some time to get the motor running.

Soon, everything starts working, and we have sex. It is… ok. He finishes and I am nowhere near. As I realise that he thinks this is code for “Na-night!” I sit up. “Are you done?” “Yeah” He starts to lie down in a curled up shape. At this point I do something was possibly not very ladylike but which needed to be done. I grab him by the arm, fling him halfway across the bed, and sit on him. He looks at me, puzzled. I lean forward and put my boob in his mouth. “Bite this” I say in a monotone that Daria Morgendorffer would be proud of. I spend a minute or two enjoying myself. Then I hog the good pillow, the one without mascara stains on, and go to sleep, reminding myself that this, that he, cannot ever happen again.

Pictures from These Americans and HizerJason‘s tumblr. Title courtesy of Ray Charles.

Recently in Glamour magazine a hundred or so men were polled as to what they liked to see women wearing. Obviously the answer to this quandary is “Who fucking cares? I’ll wear what the fuck I want.” however Glamour were desperate to fill space and deemed this group of anonymous men’s opinions worthy of a full page spread. Although I don’t have it to hand, it’s currently sitting on a bog top in Whitechapel, I do remember the number one outfit that men liked women in: a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt.

Well pass me a party popper and a glass of cava! Let’s chuck out everything else: fuck it I’m going to walk naked to Topshop right now as I don’t own either of those two items. In fact next Saturday, at 7pm sharp, I am throwing a bonfire on a scrap of wasteland in Hackney Wick for all our extraneous garments. Give me your tired wind breakers, your poor blouses! Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free of their lycra prisons! As the flames flicker we will roast marshmallows as we join hands and sing Paolo Nutini’s New Shoes before throwing glitter into the air. Now before you all think I’m getting a bit too outraged by an innocuous page of mangled photoshopped images of celebrities across the ages wearing this ground breaking outfit, I want to explain exactly what pisses me off about this article so much.

Being alluring to someone you want to fuck is obviously important. In no way am I against luring people to sleep with you. That’s fine. Equally I can understand wanting pointers on how to do that because it’s way difficult. However there is no one answer. The abhorrent ideas in this article is that there a) clothes that are boner killers, b) that you should tailor your wardrobe to cater to the tastes of 100 men Glamour picked off the street and c) that being sexy is the greatest accolade your wardrobe can attain.

Let’s address the first issue: clothing as boner killers. What exactly makes clothing sexy? When I think of sexy clothes I think of Rose McGowan’s 1998 MTV Awards dress or a PVC nurse outfit, two items that do as much for me sexually as a boiled egg. When lads mags think of sexy outfits it looks like this. And sure, if that does it for you: great. Finding suitable porn is going to be piss easy for you: just Google ‘boobs’ and you’ll be set. However if the internet has taught me anything it is that as many items of clothing there are, as many body types that exist, as many bodyparts as God saw fit to bless you with: there is a fetish for each and every one of them. It takes all sorts to make the world go round and one man’s High Street Honey is another man’s dog’s dinner. Therefore the idea that all it takes is a white t-shirt and jeans to make someone’s pants go ping is so patronising as to be infuriating. Once, while wearing a pastel yellow dress and some white knee socks in a bar and a man bellowed “You look sexy at me!” at me before rolling away drunkenly. I turned to my drinking companion and laughed, pointing out how infantile my outfit was. “Well, the thing is, people find all sorts of things sexy and I don’t think it’s fair to say that what you don’t find sexy is unsexy per se.” he rambled at me. “Sexy is very subjective and so I don’t think it’s right to mock his idea of your attractiveness.” I believe my reply was the incredibly erudite “Er. Thanks?” He was, though totally inarticulate, utterly right. Sexy is an incredibly subjective concept, and so we are not going to discuss it anymore or I’ll start going on about how I find peacoats and a certain cut of jeans make my knees go weak and you’ll all scrinch your eyes up and get confused then stop reading.

On to point b: your clothes should serve only to bewitch potential dates. To that I say: fuck that shit. When I dress in the morning I want to look nice, cute, fun, sure, yeah all that crap. I also want to make sure that I won’t be drenched in sweat while riding my bike, or have my boobs falling out everywhere at an important meeting. There are times when I dress just to cheer myself up. I have a pastel jumper with an intarsia knitted balloon on it that does an incredibly good job of this. Other times I just want to get to the supermarket and back without dying of hypothermia. It sounds cliched to say it but I really do dress mostly for me. The way I want to look is somewhere between Betty Brosmer with her clothes on and the youngest kid out of the Narnia film adaptations, not exactly an heady cocktail of sex and intrigue but a look I like never the less. Even with such niche clothing choices I have managed to get laid. I’ve managed it more than once, and sometimes I manage it more than once with the same person. Please note: I have not worn a pair of jeans in the last 6 years. Shocking isn’t it? How ever did I manage it while also refusing to wear high heels? Maybe I should write to Glamour and ask them because I sure as fuck don’t know. Back to the point. What I want to say is that you don’t need to dress for men. Wear what you want, when you want, and as long as you’re not arrested for public indecency/don’t injure yourself, everything is going to be ok. Promise. If not, it’s probably not the clothes love.

And finally we come to the crux of the matter, being sexy is not everything. It is not even a large part of a thing. It is just something that is sometimes noticed by some people who find that sort of thing attractive. You don’t have to be sexy when taking the bins out. There is no need to be sexy when eating your dinner. And even when you’re having sex it’s ok to laugh, just as long as it’s not at someone else’s genitals. To paraphrase a cliche: sexiness is in the eye of the beholder. So if you’re wearing your white t-shirt and jeans and feel shit hot, great. If you’re wearing a flower patterened drop crotch dungaree and a tie-dye t-shirt and feel sexy, wahoo for you too. Wear what you like, feel sexy when you like, and fuck what the man in the street says: he’s not worth your time anyway.

First two pictures I don’t know where they’re from, the 3rd picture is of the wonderful Hattie Watson.