Things that turn me on

A while ago I wrote a piece about blowjobs, and why I’m not generally a fan. It occurred to me this week that it would be good to write something to sit alongside that about some of the things that I do like.

I like:

1. Kissing. This really should go without saying, but I recently met someone who told me that she’d never enjoyed it, and she’s presumably not alone in that. After I wrote about my ambivalence towards receiving oral, I realized that one of the most common reasons why we don’t enjoy things is that we think we’re no good at them; that’s certainly true for me with blowjobs (or used to be, anyway – I think I’m improving…), and it was also a big contributing factor to her dislike of kissing. She worried that she was bad at it, so couldn’t relax enough to take any pleasure from it herself. Anyway, I love kissing: not because I think I’m especially talented, but because the more you do it, the more you appreciate how simultaneously simple and subtle it can be. Everyone does it differently – it’s the sexual equivalent of a snowflake – and it serves a variety of purposes: as a signpost to how a new partner might display the rest of their sexual repertoire; as a wordless way of communicating your own lust, or passion, or tenderness; as a slow build into something more, and as part of the afterglow from it; as everything or nothing, basically.

One more quick story. Not too long ago, I spent the weekend with someone I’d chatted up at a conference a couple of months earlier. We didn’t know each other very well, but she’s apparently the spontaneous type, and pitched up in my apartment for a couple of days of fun. After we jumped into bed on the first evening, she turned to me and said that she only had one rule: no sex on the first night, just kissing. It was the first time someone had said that to me for a long time, and while I wasn’t thrilled at first, it added a greater intensity both to that night and to the one that followed.

2. Intimacy. I had a conversation about this with someone a few weeks ago, who told me that I ‘do intimacy well’. The implication – subsequently made explicit – was that intimacy is a cloak that you can consciously wrap around yourself, and around others. We talked then about how the physical connection between two people does not depend on a wider emotional bond for its strength; intimacy can be compartmentalized, and achieved equally with someone you met that day or with someone you’ve loved for decades. Anyway, I like sex to be intimate, in the sense that I want to feel like I’m actually with the other person, rather than lost in my own world; that doesn’t mean it has to be gentle, or vanilla, or any of the other words often associated with intimacy, but it does mean that I like to be able to touch the other person’s face, and look into their eyes, and kiss them with feather-softness as well as greedy passion. Some people don’t want that in a one-night stand or a casual partner, which I think is a shame.

3. Submission. It turns out I know quite a few brilliant women, because it was over a bottle of wine with another of them that I managed to articulate my strong preference for the ‘BD’ half of BDSM. As I’ll write about in the second half of this post, I’m not a pain enthusiast; I will willingly inflict it in moderate, carefully-managed doses, but I gain no pleasure from genuinely hurting someone, and in a sexual sense my own pain threshold is pretty low. However, I have always enjoyed playing with power in the bedroom – exercising it, surrendering it, fighting over it, and batting it back and forth. Sometimes that involves nothing more complicated than the understanding that one of you is calling the shots, and the other’s role is to follow without question; on those occasions, restraints aren’t required, because the control is all contained in the way you communicate with each other. On other occasions, the cuffs, ropes, belts, scarves, or whatever else is to hand, add something stomach-churningly thrilling to the process of taking or relinquishing power.

Through both choice and circumstance, I usually find myself cast in the role of the dom, and I enjoy that very much. I just wish my sex life wasn’t skewed quite so heavily in that direction, and that I knew more women who were as comfortable (or more comfortable) taking charge. It’s almost certainly why I fantasize as much as I do about being dominated, and why I tend to get so much more of a kick out of it when it happens: I have to pour all of my desire for submission into sporadic, one-off encounters, which always feel super-charged as a result. That infrequency also ramps up my kink levels and my sense of adventure, because I never know when I might next get the chance to explore that side of my sexuality. For that reason, submission goes on this list and dominance doesn’t, even though considered in isolation I get just as much pleasure from one as I do from the other.

4. Anal. No, not giving it (though also YES, GIVING IT!). I find anal hottest when it’s a reciprocal thing. In some ways, its taboo status is something I wouldn’t want to wash away, because that feeling of doing something bad, something dirty, when I lose control and come inside a woman’s arse, or when I bite down on the pillow as a thick strap-on pushes its way into mine, is one that turns me on just to think about: it has a power that goes beyond the physical sensations associated with those acts. I don’t want anal every time, but when I do, I want it to be sweaty and sweary and rough and loud, and if I’m on the receiving end I want still to feel it the following day as I walk down the street.

5. Watching and being watched. Masturbate for me. Sit calmly in a chair with your clothes on and make me stroke my cock in front of you. Get me hard under the table in a bar, then take my erection out and play with it while someone in the corner pretends not to be looking at us. Video yourself sliding a toy – or another man’s cock – inside your cunt, then send it to me at work and give me 20 minutes to get-home-right-now-and-fuck-me-pleeeease. Take photos of me tied-up and blindfolded on your bed, and wank over them when I’m not there. Do any or all of those things and you will guarantee that I’ll get hard whenever I think about you.

6. Having my back stroked. And more generally the sort of full body arousal that comes from being touched and caressed by someone with the patience and skill to find all the right places. Forget handcuffing me to the bed: if you want to render me 100% pliant and immobile, have me lie on my stomach and then run your nails gently up and down my back, or through my hair. I may even start purring. Don’t be fooled though, because while it might look and sound like I’m drifting into a state of total relaxation, if you reach your hand under my stomach after a few minutes of touching me like that, you’ll almost certainly find my cock pressed hard against it.

7. Multi-orgasmic women. I’m a little hesitant about putting this one in, not least because it’s not something that most women can control – as someone who’s felt sexual and body shame for various reasons in the past, the last thing I want to do is inadvertently trigger it in others. There’s also a whiff of hypocrisy about it: on the one hand, I prefer partners who come, and then just want to keep going, ideally till they’ve had half-a-dozen more orgasms; on the other, I’m aware that as a man, I’m pretty much one-and-done, at least when it comes to penetrative sex, and am therefore deeply limited in that regard. All of that said, it remains a gloriously indulgent treat to be ridden to the point of exhaustion by someone who just can’t get enough, or to feel a woman grip my fingers hard with her cunt while my tongue is on her clit, then push my head back down between her legs and beg for more. It also reinforces the differences in sexual responsiveness and anatomy that aren’t always as immediately obvious in women as they are in men; for every woman who comes three times in the space of five minutes, there’s another who’s so sensitive after coming once that she can’t bear to have her clit touched for the next half-hour.

8. Other stuff. Sunday morning sex, pre- and post-brunch. Sex in the sunshine. Sex outside in pretty much any weather. Feeling my erection slowly die inside someone after I’ve come, but staying there for as long as I can, spooned up against her. Using toys on someone while I go down on them. Women’s bodies, in all shapes and sizes. Grunting, panting, moaning, and swearing – I’ll take them over loud, pornographic screaming any day, and no, you really don’t need to say my name or tell me how big I feel for me to know that you’re having a good time. Talking dirty…when it’s done right. Orgasm denial: giving and receiving. Orgasms generally – yours more than mine. Happy sex with people I like, and who like me.

Yeah, that last one is pretty crucial.