Author: Exhibit A

Categories
Sex

On Cheating

Late last year, I got an email from someone who reads my blog. That happens on a reasonably regular basis: people have questions and comments, which they’re not always comfortable posting publicly, or they just want to say hello and have a bit of a chat.

One of the advantages of being a male sex blogger is that I’ve never felt threatened or creeped-out by that sort of attention; the people who contact me are always polite, friendly, engaging and articulate, and I’ve been able to respond to them without any real fear of the consequences.

Occasionally it’s clear that they want to do more than just talk. When that happens I have to decide very quickly whether to let things play out or whether to back off and steer the conversation in another direction.

Amy’s intentions were not difficult to decipher, and the first paragraph of her email was intriguing enough that instinctively I wanted to know more.

“I’m 30, live in North London with my husband, and work in the City. I’ve been following your blog for a few months, after finding it via Girl on the Net.  Every time I see you have posted I have a little buzz of excitement.  Your writing is very entertaining and at times deeply arousing…perfect for a dreary autumn day.  Sometimes when I walk or sit on a bus down Upper Street I find myself playing a little guessing game about who you are and where you might live.”

We exchanged a few messages, and I quickly learnt that Amy’s husband knew nothing of her online activities, and certainly wasn’t aware that she was sending increasingly explicit messages and photos to other men. Four days after her first email we met for a drink in a local pub, and within a couple of hours we were hurrying back to my flat, where we barely made it through the door before ripping each other’s clothes off.

Amy made no attempt to hide either her intentions or the motives behind them. Over the second glass of wine, she told me that she loved her husband very much, and that she was certain they’d spend the rest of their lives together. However, they’d been a couple since university, and over time their sex drives – and sexual interests – had diverged to the point where she was no longer happy with that side of the relationship. He didn’t want an open marriage, so she’d made a conscious decision to spend 12-18 months ‘having adventures’ without him.

“This way I get to experience all the things I know I’d otherwise miss out on, and hopefully end up with a bunch of memories I can still wank over when I’m 90. It would hurt him too much if he found out, but in the long run this will work out best for both of us.”

I was impressed by how clearly and calmly she’d thought things through, even if I didn’t find her solution wholly convincing. Illicit sex is thrilling and addictive, and the idea that she could just stop at a given point felt counter-intuitive – or at least at odds with my own experience.

Back at my place, Amy was everything her words had suggested she might be: enthusiastic, energetic, curious, and a lot of fun. We had terrific sex that night: she fucked with the intensity of someone trying to squeeze every drop of pleasure out of the time available to her, and I allowed myself to be swept along by the sheer joy of making her come again and again. When she left, I spread myself out on the soaked sheets like a starfish, and laughed at just how unexpectedly magnificent life really was.

We met up a few more times after that, with equally spectacular results. Because she wasn’t ashamed of what she was doing, time with Amy felt comfortable both in and out of bed; we could fuck for a couple of hours, then head to the pub for a drink and a chat, with no awkwardness or recriminations. Amy was happy to talk about her marriage, and I enjoyed listening to what she had to say – even as we lay naked in each other’s arms, her wedding ring resting against my skin. It was obvious not only that she loved her husband, but that she genuinely saw this period in her life as finite and precious; as something to secure their future together, rather than jeopardise it. In that sense our time together felt unwaveringly honest.

Not least because for all the warmth and intimacy of our various encounters, Amy was always very clear about the limited role I played in her life. She compartmentalised in a way that I found both familiar and admirable. She didn’t comment on my blog or interact with me on Twitter. We didn’t swap phone numbers. We didn’t make plans. We weren’t friends. We communicated by email, and when she wanted to fuck, she told me.

When the time came to draw a line under things, she told me that too. I emailed Amy one day to suggest a hook-up, and got the following response:

“Remember I told you when we first met that I thought my adventures were going to come to an end soon…well I’m there now. I don’t regret any of it, but it’s time for me to stop and focus on my marriage.

I’ll continue to read your blog with interest and occasionally wet knickers!”

Of all the words she said or wrote to me, the only one I ever resented was ‘occasionally’…

~

Amy was not the first woman I helped to cheat on a partner, and there’s every chance she won’t be the last.

There was the woman who discovered just before her wedding that her fiancé was still sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, and decided to even the score three days after walking down the aisle.

The woman whose husband hit her when he was drunk, and who took revenge by sucking my cock in the marital bed.

The woman trapped in a loveless marriage, counting down the months and years till her kids were old enough to see their parents separate.

The woman whose relationship was stuck in a rut; and the woman who didn’t yet realise how wonderful hers would be.

The woman in a long-distance relationship, who simply missed the physical intimacy; and the woman with a boyfriend recently returned home after two years abroad, who mourned the sudden loss of her emotional independence.

People cheat in relationships for all sorts of reasons. They always have done. They cheat because they’re angry, or lonely, or jealous, or bored. They cheat because they long to break free, and they cheat because it’s the only thing that will help them to hold on to what they’ve got. They cheat because they’re just plain horny.

Some of them have good reasons – some of them don’t. Some of them are clear with both themselves and others about why they’re doing it – others lack the self-awareness or the courage to recognise and confront whatever impulse drives their actions.

I’ve been all of those people. I’ve blogged before about my own infidelity, with far more honesty than I often gave to the partners on whom I cheated. I’ve learned not to judge ‘adulterers’ like Amy, because if there’s one thing the last 12 years have shown me it’s that our relationships are really fucking complex, and no two are ever the same.

Plenty’s been written about the Ashley Madison cyberattack over the last couple of weeks. Unfaithful spouses make easy targets, and I’ve read a lot of gleefully nasty commentary as a result. ‘They had it coming’ seems to be the prevailing opinion – on social media, at least.

I find it hard to share that viewpoint. Without doubt, there are terrible, dishonest people who use sites like Ashley Madison to betray their partners – but to view every single user in cold, judgemental black-and-white is to ignore the reality that stares us in the face. All of us have either cheated or known someone who has. All of us have lied to a partner at one time or another. Even if it didn’t involve sex, all of us have done something to betray a partner’s trust.

Blanket condemnation achieves nothing. The more we try to paint infidelity with broad, monochrome strokes, the more we reduce our chances of understanding the individual choices that people make. Maybe most of those will still appear bad and selfish, but there will be others that many of us can understand – can even empathise with – if we open ourselves up to that.

When someone decides to cheat, they’re faced with three potential lies. The lie they tell their partner, the lie they tell the person they sleep with, and the lie they tell themselves. Like most things in life it’s far from perfect, but with Ashley Madison – as with Amy – at least only one of those lies gets told.

Categories
Erotica

Eroticon 2015: Meet Exhibit A

One of the things I found both interesting and helpful in the run-up to last year’s Eroticon was the chance to read through all the meet-and-greet posts. Not only did they offer a bit of insight into my fellow attendees, they contained loads of little nuggets on the conference itself, which gave me a much better idea of what to expect when I arrived.

For that reason, I was really glad to see a page go up on Molly’s blog for this year’s posts, all of which are worth reading if you’re planning to attend. Here’s my contribution:

NAME (and Twitter name if you have one)

Exhibit A. My real name should be on my name badge, and if it’s not I’ll happily tell you when we meet. On Twitter, I’m @EA_unadorned.

Is this your first time at Eroticon? If No, what is your favourite memory from a previous Eroticon and if Yes, what are you most looking forward to at Eroticon 2015?

I had my Eroticon cherry popped in Bristol last March. The whole weekend was fantastic – one of those where you get home and immediately start looking forward to the next one. Some of my favourite memories should probably stay between me and the people I shared them with, but a definite highlight was the impromptu after-party I held in my hotel room, late on Saturday night. Really interesting, enjoyable conversation with a handful of total strangers, over a couple of bottles of contraband wine, at 3 in the morning: it was what I imagined university would be like, before I went there, and was very much in keeping with the warm, collegial atmosphere of the weekend as a whole.

Which 3 sessions have you already earmarked as definitely going to?

I’m leaving a fair amount of flexibility in my schedule, so I don’t have much set down in stone, but I think Saturday morning’s keynote session on the future of erotic publishing is one that no-one with a stake in the industry should miss (unless they don’t make it out of bed in time…ahem…). Otherwise, I plan to see Girl on the Net and Stella Ottewill do their thing – and then to sort of take it from there.

What drink will you be ordering at the bar on the Saturday night?

Between the end of the afternoon session and the cocktail party I have to run 10 miles, so I plan to reward myself afterwards with several large glasses of wine. One of the really nice things about last year’s event was the way everyone mixed and mingled at the bar on Saturday night, regardless of whether they were teetotal or deep in their cups, and I’m sure the same will be true this year.

If you wrote an autobiography what would it be called?

This blog is as close to an autobiography as I’ll ever get – and lends itself far better to the mix of truth and fiction that I’m comfortable putting out into the world.

Where are you writing this post and what 5 things can you see around you (not including the device you are writing on)?

I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed, watching the rain fall outside my window. My room is extremely cluttered at the moment, but within touching distance I can see the following…

…otherwise known as everything you could need for a lazy Sunday morning, plus the reason why I’m too sore to have a more active one.

And the last one… If you could go out to dinner with any 5 sex bloggers or erotic writers, regardless of whether they are coming to Eroticon or not who would they be?

That’s a question with far too many valid answers! Since Eroticon 2014, I’ve met so many great people from the writing/blogging community, and had dinner with them as friends, lovers, or just exceptionally pleasant professional contacts. Narrowing that list down to five would be virtually impossible, so I’m going to take a leaf out of Molly’s book and pick from the people I haven’t yet had the opportunity to meet (and won’t see at Eroticon this year):

All five would be fascinating company, I think…for a variety of reasons!

Categories
Erotica Sex

The Swimming Pool

One of my dirty little secrets is that I’ve actually read very little classic erotica. I have some Nin on my bookshelf, and I checked out the rude bits in Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a horny 16 year old, but for the most part my tastes have always been pretty lowbrow: I like smut that will get me off, first and foremost, and that drives most of my reading choices toward the functional and direct, rather than the flowery or subtle. As long as the writing isn’t actively bad, I don’t need it to do much more than just carry the action along (though that is, of course, a skill in itself).

It also means that once I find something I like, I return to it over and over again. At university, I used to print out my favourite Literotica stories in the college computer room and keep them on the table next to my bed. Before that, it was “readers’ letters” dog-eared (and carefully not spunked over) in the porn mags I nicked from the local newsagent as a teenager; or steamy scenes in mainstream novels (Birdsong, Disclosure, the Jean Auel series) that I could borrow from the school library and wank to in the toilets.

If a story or scenario turns me on once, I know it will probably do so on a regular basis – and that the more I read it, the more vivid the accompanying mental images will become, till I reach a point where my eyes only really have to skim across the words themselves.

All that said, the first erotica for which I actually paid good money was an anthology that wore its literary credentials with pride. The Erotic Review’s Bedside Companion, edited by Rowan Pelling, was published in 2000, and contains contributions from Alain de Botton, India Knight, Auberon Waugh, and David Aaronovitch, among others. Of course I didn’t cotton on to the implications of that until it was too late: never one to heed conventional wisdom, I’d completely ignored the rather daunting list of authors and judged the book purely by its cover.

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The initial result of my oversight was disappointment. As I lay in bed and flicked through the first few stories, my pulse failed to quicken and my cock resolutely refused to stir. I was entertained and amused, but in no way aroused, and it felt like I’d been tricked somehow as a result. I persevered nevertheless, determined both to find something better suited to my tastes, and to tease out the erotic potential that I’d clearly missed in the stories I’d already read.

Eventually, 75 pages and 18 stories in, I came across The Swimming Pool, by Justine Dubois. To this day I couldn’t tell you why it hooked me, but I do know for a fact that it was the first time I was conscious of being turned on by something I could clearly identify as erotica, rather than ‘just’ sex. It’s only a short piece – no more than 1200 words – but the author uses sex to tell a story and to draw her characters. There is a symbiotic relationship between the dynamic they have and the way they fuck: each feeds into and reinforces the other.

It’s also pretty filthy.

“He again lifts the black elastic to one side to reveal the pink honey moisture glistening between her flurry of pubic hair. As he does so, he also lifts the long loose leg of his swimming trunks and, taking his erection firmly in hand, strokes it up and down the length of her groin, up and down, a melting lubrication between them. But he does not enter.”

At that stage I’d never felt that ‘melting lubrication’ between my body and someone else’s. I’d never allowed my finger to “delve between the corrugated folds of [her] flesh”, as the male character does in the next paragraph, or entered a woman “unhesitantly, following through in one swift movement to the core of her.” For some reason though, the writing was evocative enough that I could shut my eyes and imagine each of those things. It made me hot and shivery, no matter how many times I read it, and without fail it made me come.

My reading tastes and habits have evolved and expanded over the years, and that anthology has gathered dust on various bookshelves as a result, but I thought about it for the first time in a long while on holiday the other week. My last three nights were spent in a gite about 30km east of Bordeaux. It was part of a converted farm, and was surrounded by hot, dusty fields and vineyards, as far as the eye could see. My apartment (one of three) had a lovely little terrace, but the main relief from the soporific heat came in the form of the swimming pool, available for all guests to use and surrounded by wooden decking and a handful of sun loungers.

The woman who runs the place is Australian and in her early 40s. She’s been living in France for 16 years, but still had that air of someone who’s conscious of being an outsider. I chatted to her a few times over the course of the three days, and she was perfectly friendly in the sort of slightly detached way that people often are when talking to paying guests, but I didn’t really notice her until my final afternoon, when she walked out from the house to the pool area as I prepared to enter the water.

“They sit on a low stone wall by a swimming pool. Music filters through the stillness around them, emanating from the kitchens of the big house. Their hostess approaches, crossing the lawn, her body at a slight tilt as she weaves her way amongst the miniature army of sun loungers . . . She takes off her dress, a simple construction, much like an old-fashioned pinafore, made more elegant by the delicate printed silk of its gauze-like texture. Beneath it she wears a black swimsuit, cut high at the legs. She is tall and slim of build, with high rounded breasts, her legs long. Her figure is that rarity, it looks better undressed than dressed. Had her face not worn such a look of anxiety, she, too, would be beautiful.”

From behind my shades, I watched Simone peel off her summer dress and stretch out on a lounger. I took in the simple, elegant lines of her swimsuit and of her long, slim body underneath it. She applied sunscreen slowly, methodically, a frown of concentration on her face as her skin glistened in the afternoon light.

I waded slowly into the water and immersed myself fully, conscious of the way my cock was starting to thicken and throb inside my trunks. That whole scene came back to me with startling clarity. I remembered not just the words themselves, but the feelings they evoked in me and the things they made me want.

I resurfaced on the other side of the pool and basked in the shimmering heat for a few seconds. I felt sun-kissed and horny, but I didn’t look back over to Simone for further inspiration – instead I focused on details I thought I’d long forgotten. The way “he raises her onto his now-kneeling lap, wrapping her legs around his waist like a scarf.” Or how “he takes off her glasses, exposing her pale blue eyes, and almost without preamble places his tongue in her mouth.”

My thighs were tense and a bit shaky as I hauled myself up onto the decking. I turned as I did so, to make sure she couldn’t see my erection, and hurriedly wrapped a towel around my waist. After a final glance over my shoulder, I dashed across the grassy lawn and gravel drive, back to the cool, dark safety of my apartment. I felt like I was 19 all over again, desperate for something I still needed other people to describe to me. I didn’t even make it to the bedroom before yanking down my shorts and wrapping my hand around my cock.

In the end, it’s that loosening of self-control that I crave when I read erotica – or smut of any kind. I want to feel it in my stomach, as well as between my legs, and I want to be halfway to orgasm before I give in and actually touch myself. With Eroticon now just a week away, it was good to be reminded of what that feels like – and of the impact it can have.

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Erotica

Meantime

We sway horizontally, caught in a jumble of East and West; of night and day. I see you in soft focus, shining and blurred around the edges, where your red-eye meets my red eyes – our last flickers of light before we finally crawl into the improbably seductive embrace of a cheap motel duvet.

In the city that never sleeps, we are united in our treachery – our muffled sigh is success, not surrender, and when we drift off together for the first time, it feels like something we’ve already been doing for most of our lives.

Hours later, sunlight floods through the paper-thin curtains, bringing with it disorientation and a numbing fatigue. I roll into you, but the jut of your hipbone limits me to a half-turn; defeated for now, I lie there, beached, and you push fingers through my rumpled hair. I close my eyes again, happy to let the waves wash over me.

I clear my throat, not trusting my voice to carry unaided.

“Last night was…”

“…yeah! Not just last night. From the moment you kissed me in the diner downstairs…”

Suddenly I want to play back every single memory while it’s fresh. I’m greedy for them – it’s impatience that should take months to build, but as I scroll through each mental image in turn I’m struck once again by the way our time seems to warp and flex around us, drawing forward nostalgia and extending out to some invisible horizon the impact of your lips on my skin.

Lost in mental hypersensitivity, it takes me a few seconds to circle back and notice your hand sliding around my cock. When you whisper in my ear, I don’t have to open my eyes to see your lips curling up at the corners.

“Well one part of you seems to be on New York time…”

It didn’t feature in any of our long-distance phone calls, this close-range hand job. It’s not that first fuck yesterday morning, or the way you made me strip for you beforehand, exposing myself to your poker player’s gaze. It’s not the way we spilled out of our taxi and up the stairs a few hours later, foregoing dinner to make my bed rattle against the wall for close to an hour, with sweat pooling and shimmering around us.

No, this feels more like the sort of ordinary, pre-dawn ritual that we might have in another, extraordinary life together. I don’t even marvel at the easy skill with which you touch me; it’s clear that you knew my body well before you first spread your hands across it. I focus only on breathing. I try to match my cadence to the rhythm of your fingers on my cock, sucking the air deep into my lungs as you stroke up over the head, before letting it out again each time you squeeze back down to the base.

I have no idea how long it lasts. Time feels immaterial, even as its final precious grains continue to slip away from us. Your fingers are light and slender, but they grip my cock with a strength and purpose that I find inexplicably arousing. The coaxing is cosmetic – as I’m jolted closer and closer to orgasm, I feel helpless to slow what turns out to be a single-minded, surgical assault.

The room is locked in a lazy spin. It swings back round as I start to thrust into your fist, and locks in place a few seconds before I coat your fingers and my stomach in cum. I watch my cock twitch in your hand, and struggle to remember how it felt not to do that with you.

I pull you close to me and we lie in silence for a while. There is everything and nothing left to say, but with the sun rapidly chasing us towards a premature farewell, we opt to let the warmth of our bodies speak for us. We pour ourselves into each other, charging and colouring the memories that will help to keep us in sync, long after we’ve stretched the physical bond between us back to its 6,000 mile length.

Later I’ll walk away from the hotel, letting it play out a few feet at a time. I won’t look back.

I won’t need to.

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Other photos Sex

Reflect

I arrived back at the office to pick up my stuff two hours after my evening run. Central London was muggy tonight, and I’d never really managed to bring my body temperature back down to its resting level. The ten-minute hop on the Tube from Hyde Park to Holborn had only made matters worse.

I deactivated the burglar alarm and quickly gathered my things. The office was mercifully cool. I fought the urge to linger, allowing myself only to gulp down a glass of water and strip off my cotton t-shirt. As I walked from my desk back to the front door, the air seemed to kiss my skin.

It was only when I got in the lift that I noticed myself in the mirrors. Pale and sweaty, but happy too. The sort of exhausted satisfaction that can become addictive very quickly. I also became aware of how sexual I felt, exposed like that and reflected all around the tiny room. Of how much I wanted to be seen.

running2

Of that sudden, slightly unsettling rush of lust, which sweeps away tiredness and leaves only fidgety hunger in its wake.

I like that feeling.

** And yes, this is mainly just a shameless way of plugging my marathon sponsorship page in a shorter post! It’s for a really brilliant cause though, and one I feel great about promoting here. Shelter do great work – click here to help them do even more of it in the future. **

Categories
Erotica Sex

04:09:03

“Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—-and for me, for writing as well.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

First, a story*.

I don’t always feel good at the end of a run. Sometimes I feel downright awful. My hamstrings bark, my back tightens up, and the rev counter on my internal motor flickers down around zero – barely enough to propel me back up the stairs to my apartment.

On those occasions, I don’t feel sexy either. I go an unpleasant shade of red and my cock shrivels to the size of…well, you get the idea. I’m an assault to the senses: the way I look, feel, taste, smell, and even sound is fundamentally unattractive.

Every now and then though…

Her house was at the top of a hill on the other side of Oxford. I ran there under duress. “Your training plan says you have to do five miles today anyway,” she said. “You might as well come here so I can feed you at the end of it.”

I didn’t really want to be fed – and I certainly didn’t want to cap off a five-mile run with a hilltop finish – but Emma was insistent. As I puffed my way up towards her front door, a sulky, resentful voice started to whisper in my ear. Stupid girlfriend, with her stupid sodding house, on a stupid sodding hill, it muttered.

I was prepared to keep up the self-righteous grumbling for several hours, but the look on Emma’s face when she saw me on the doorstep put an immediate stop to that impulse. She pulled me close and gave me a deep, hungry kiss, her hand on my arse. When she stepped back again, her smart work blouse was dark with the sweat from my t-shirt. To my eyes, she’d rarely looked sexier.

I followed Emma to the kitchen, my aching body struggling to adjust to the unexpected surge of endorphins and the sudden, slightly primal arousal.

“Dinner will be another 20 minutes,” she said. “You want a cup of tea?”

I nodded, and watched as she reached up to the cupboard to fish out a mug. Her top rode up, and I had visions of her naked body under mine on the living room floor, legs wrapped around my waist. I couldn’t wait that long though. Emma half-turned to look back at me, but I was already close behind her, my hand sliding round her throat to hold her head in place.

I kissed her with the same ferocity she’d shown in the doorway. With my other hand, I gripped her wrist and guided her to the bulge in my running shorts. She slid her fingers inside the waistband, peeled my boxers away from hot, damp skin, curled them around my cock and squeezed…

Somewhere upstairs we heard her housemate walk across the landing to the bathroom, but both of us were past caring about social niceties by that point. I yanked down her knickers and pushed her skirt up around her waist. She braced herself against the cupboard, legs spread.

“You want it? Are you wet for m…”

“God, I’ve been wet ever since I looked out of my bedroom window and saw you running up that hill. Just fuck me already.”

I reached under Emma’s top as I nudged the head of my cock inside her. My hand pressed against her stomach, the fingers sweeping out and inching upwards to nestle in the crease under her heavy tits, already slippery with sweat.

Before I could move any higher, she batted my hand aside and pushed back hard onto my cock. Braced against a solid surface like that, she was able to match my thrusts; it was less a smooth fuck than a series of ragged, violent collisions, as I fought a losing battle to hold her in place.

My knees buckled just seconds before hers, nearly sending both of us flying. Instead we collapsed onto the cold granite floor, and she rolled onto her back so I could slide back inside her cunt.

We eventually found our way up to Emma’s bedroom, where everything slowed down. The lactic acid started to work its way into my muscles, and my slightly shaky, adrenaline-fuelled hunger settled into a more normal level of desire.

Emma rode me without breaking eye contact, a half-smile on her face; it faded only as she clenched hard around my cock, and at that point I became entirely too distracted to notice it anyway.

~

Every now and then, I think of that fuck. I think of it when I run in the buttery sunshine of a midsummer evening, and I feel sexy, regardless of how awful I look.

~

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

I was 28 years old when I decided to run a marathon. It was August 2009, and my 30th birthday was 23 months away. “I should have a ‘thing I’m going to do before I’m 30’,” I said to my friend in the pub one night. We batted a few ideas back and forth, and eventually settled on running a marathon because, hey, why not?

The following September, we lined up together in the cool drizzle of an autumnal Sunday morning, ready to join 40,000 other people on a 26.2-mile slog around the streets of Berlin. Neither of us really knew what we were doing – I had trained in a gleefully amateur fashion, while he was there only because I’d bullied him into joining me – but the whole thing felt like an adventure, so excitement broadly outweighed trepidation. Just about.

And until I reached the 34km marker, that remained the case. I’d nearly choked on an energy gel pack after about 15k, but having regained my equanimity I’d floated serenely around the course, swept along by the sense of occasion, and by the crowds of runners and supporters who swarmed together to help shield me from the reality of what I was pushing my body through.

At 34k though, something inside me just crumbled. Long-distance running ultimately boils down to the battle between mind and body; to the tipping point at which your brain waves the white flag, and stops resisting the double whammy of muscle/joint pain and aerobic exhaustion. At 34k, my race was run; I closed my eyes as the final wave swept over me, eroding the last of my willpower and slowing my legs to a begrudging, heartbroken walk.

I don’t remember much about the next 5 kilometres, because even at the time I tried to ignore their passing. I ran and walked in equal measure, setting myself little targets each time I found a new energy reserve. “The next corner,” I’d tell myself. “The next corner – then you can walk again.”

As I went over Potsdamer Platz, with a little under two miles to go, I rallied. Someone in the crowd waved at me, and called out my name (they’re printed under your race number). “Go on, C___!” she shouted. “Not far to go now – you can do it!” I remember looking round to try and see her face, but between my blurred vision and the dense crowds lining the routes the noise seemed to come from every person I passed. It felt for just one moment like the whole of Berlin was cheering me on.

Four hours and nine minutes after crossing the start line, I staggered past the line of volunteers handing out medals, dispensing water, and guiding confused, wobbly finishers towards the changing tents. Even though I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to vomit, I felt nauseated – as much from the disorientation and mental fatigue as from the physical pain.

Heading back to the hotel (without my friend, who finished 20 minutes later) I twice took the wrong line on the U-Bahn; it was as if my brain was struggling to process the 360 degree world around me after four hours spent focusing only on the road ahead, and on my own increasingly fragmented thoughts.

Two days later, I posted this photo on Facebook.

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Two days after that, the blackened nail on my right pinkie toe fell off; it would be another six weeks before the same finally happened to the nail on my left pinkie. I flew back to England still in considerable pain, compounded by several days of trudging up and down steps at U-Bahn stations across the city (not sure ‘disabled access’ has a German translation…).

I looked down over the city from my window seat as the plane circled round to the west, and whispered two words.

Never. Again.

~

It was when the numbers disappeared that I started to consider it again in earnest.

People often ask me about my green wristband. They assume I must be showing my support for a particular charity, and I sometimes feel awkward explaining that no, I wear it only because it helps to remind me of that day. Of a time when I said to myself “I’m going to do this thing,” and then went ahead and did it, albeit in slightly half-arsed fashion. That’s been important over the last few years, especially at times when I’ve fallen short of other goals I’ve set myself.

I had the numbers stamped into the wristband the day after the marathon. 04:09:03, they said, and I looked at them most days over the months and years that followed, until they finally faded away. The nine minutes and three seconds nagged at me for a long time. They seemed emblematic of failure; of the 5km in which my body had let me down, sabotaging the loose goal I’d set myself when I woke up on the morning of the race.

That’s the good kind of failure though, because it ultimately inspires you to push past the bad memories and past the awareness of just how much it’ll fucking hurt. Without that sort of infuriating inspiration, most of us wouldn’t achieve half of what we ultimately drive ourselves to do. We wouldn’t explore those outer edges of our individual limits, and we certainly wouldn’t fully exert ourselves within them.

~

I was 33 years old when I decided to run my second marathon. I’ll be 34 when I line up in Berlin, ready to feel the pain once more and to decide how much I’m willing to suffer. How close I want to get to my limit.

I’m both more and less confident this time. My training will be more structured, and it’s certainly started much earlier. I know my body better, I think, which makes it easier to know when to push and when to ease off. On the other hand I was completely injury-free back in 2010, which feels like a minor miracle in hindsight, given my rather haphazard approach to the whole project. I’m also older, not that five years ought to make such a difference at this point in life. Not physically, at least.

~

“As I run I tell myself to think of a river. And clouds. But essentially I’m thinking of not a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Someone asked me recently what I think about when I run. Like Murakami, I enjoy the way ‘nostalgic silence’ often descends upon me as the miles pass under my feet. It feels like a very pure way to achieve total mental relaxation, and there are times when I value that more than just about anything else in life.

I can’t always do it though, and I’ve learned to accept that too. To embrace it, in fact. As I ran around my home town on Saturday morning, I felt restless and twitchy; my attention wandered off every couple of minutes, and became progressively harder to rein back in. Instead of getting anxious, I decided to harness the unexpected hyperactivity. I forced myself to go back to that 34km marker in 2010; to visualise running past it, with strength still in my legs and a clear sense of purpose. I broke down the last 8k almost stride-by-stride. I even allowed myself to see the finish line, and to imagine the relief I’d feel if I crossed it with the number 3 still shining bright on the left-hand side of the electronic clock.

Sometimes we need to open ourselves up to that pain – to the ‘optional suffering’. Without it, we wouldn’t know how much we wanted to go back; to reassess our limits, and find a way to push ourselves out towards them.

—

* A fundraising expert told me last week that storytelling was an effective tool to use when trying to attract sponsorship. I think this is what she meant.

I’m running the Berlin Marathon for Shelter, which is an AWESOME charity that needs way more love and support than it currently gets. They do great work to help people struggling with housing issues and homelessness, and I’m proud to be doing this on their behalf.

It’s sobering to think that if I hit my target and finish in just under four hours, another 26 families back in Britain will lose their home while I’m out on the marathon course. That fact alone makes me super-motivated not just to hit my £750 fundraising target, but to smash it.

If you’d like to sponsor me – and to contribute to a thoroughly worthwhile cause – you can do so here. Thanks for reading 🙂

Categories
Erotica

Smudge

The green ink was smudged and faded against the pale skin of her inner arm, with its light dusting of freckles and delicate veins. It was a fat, sinuous vine, wrapped around – well, I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was wrapped around, because just as I leaned in to get a closer look she twisted away and whipped my pint glass out from under the tap.

I took it from her without comment, focused only on directing my gaze somewhere other than her cleavage. Her curly hair was a damp frizz, and a warm flush spread down from her neck, fanning out into the dip of her collarbone. She wore a khaki vest top, cut low; it clung to her, as if the adhesive perspiration pinning ringlets of hair to her forehead also coated her torso.

I dumped a handful of coins onto the counter, my mouth dry. At 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night, the chain pub was cool and quiet; its bright midweek sterility brought to mind a dentist’s waiting room or the lobby of a high street bank. The only source of heat was the barmaid’s skin, where beads of sweat caught the light and glowed in sequence as she moved towards me.

Moved past me.

Moved to the end of the bar, where she lifted a hatch and ducked underneath it.

Her shorts were a light brown to match the khaki. I watched them shift and pull tight across her arse with each step she took across the empty lounge. She had almost reached the cellar door when she looked back over her shoulder.

“Come on,” she said. “We don’t have long.”

I pushed myself up from the bar. Coarse denim pinned my erection to my upper thigh; as if mocking my prudish refusal to stare, she held my eyes with hers, then dragged them slowly down till I felt my cheeks burn. I flexed my fingers, fighting the urge to shield my crotch from her unnerving appraisal.

Spreading my hands apart in front of me, I followed her through the doorway and down a set of wooden steps. The hair on my arms fluttered in the cellar’s damp chill. She turned to face me, her face slashed by the shadow of a single lamp. In one smooth, liquid movement, she peeled the sweat-soaked vest over her head, and leaned back against a tower of crates.

I dropped to my knees in front of her. Before I could slide my hands around to cup her arse, she popped open the button fly of her shorts; we tugged at them together, stopping only when gravity took over and sent them slithering down to the floor. I pressed my fingers flat against her belly. She spread her legs further apart, almost luxuriating in her newfound freedom. I could hear only my own shallow breathing as I brushed her clit with my lips; only my own thumping heart as I parted her cunt into two soft, swollen banks with my tongue.

It was when I sat back on my haunches to look up at her that I finally heard it. One long, shuddering sigh; a percussive wave of energy that seemed to flow out of her overheated body to warm the air around us. I settled back between her legs, and let the scent of her arousal drift through me, bringing with it a calm, clear sense of purpose.

Such a funny thing.

I don’t even like tattoos.

Categories
Sex

Giving Head

A few weeks ago, Malin James posted this really interesting, nuanced, sneaky-hot piece about her ‘blow job spectrum’, and the way her attitude to sucking cock has evolved and shifted across different men and different experiences. We were chatting about it the following day, and she challenged me to write something on oral sex from a male perspective – and specifically, on how my feelings about going down on women have changed over time.

I have to admit, my first instinct was to challenge the premise of the brief. “They haven’t changed,” I wanted to say. “I’ve always loved giving head.” And it’s at least kind of true. I’ve alluded to this briefly in other posts, but I suffered from fairly bad ‘performance anxiety’ in my first few sexual encounters, which affected both my ability to get hard and my level of confidence when it came to actually fucking someone: being asked to eat them out instead was almost a relief, even if I basically still had no idea what I was doing (at that stage it was a bit like asking me to defuse a bomb, or repair a car engine – I’d give it a go, but any success I had would be both accidental and surprising).

Ultimate outcome aside, penetration and oral involved different challenges. Oral was an activity to which I could apply my brain, rather than having to rely on my body to step up at the right moment – something it often seemed stubbornly unwilling to do. It gave me time to think and relax; to slow things down and enjoy the moment, instead of feeling like everything was happening at 100mph around me. I loved it because it felt unrushed and unpressured, and offered at least the illusion of control over things. It wasn’t threatening in any way; instead there was almost a soothing intimacy to it. Even if I didn’t know how to lick someone ‘properly’, it still seemed like something I couldn’t fuck up too badly; at the very least, a soft tongue felt like an aid, not an impediment!

Around the time I learned to trust my body enough to enjoy penetrative sex as well, I started a relationship with a woman who craved being eaten out like very few people I’ve met since. That had two major impacts: it actually made the sex itself easier for me, because she was very clear about the fact that it wasn’t ultimately her main source of pleasure; and it forced me to up my oral game, just to keep pace with the level and frequency of her demands.

It quickly became a bit of a personal quest to make her squirm and swear and moan as uncontrollably as I could. I learned to vary things like pace and pressure; to take away the stimulation at just the right moment, till she begged me to lick her again; and to read the way her body built up to orgasm, so that I could coax her towards them or dictate their timing with at least a reasonable success rate. Let’s face it, as much as the ability to climax repeatedly over a short period of time benefits women overall, there’s something magical about being the person who induces that staccato series of orgasms just through the steady, implacable rhythm of soft tongue on swollen clit.

In short, I reaped the benefits of a long(ish)-term relationship with someone who simply couldn’t get enough of my tongue. And it was brilliant. Not only did she transformed my view of oral – of its role, purpose and power – she also taught me the inestimable value of listening to one’s partner. Somewhat counter-intuitively, it took 10 months with one woman for me to learn that there was no ‘one way’ of doing things – no magic formula for being good in bed.

Once I’d fully taken that on board, my confidence levels rose dramatically. I no longer worried about doing it right, because I was able to see that ‘right’ varied so much from person to person; instead of blundering around in search of a perfect set of sexual techniques, I focused on understanding what individual partners liked and wanted. Unsurprisingly, sex became a lot more enjoyable for all concerned as a result.

As time has passed I’ve enjoyed giving head more and more, and I think the variety of experience is fairly central to that. It’s maybe a stretch to say that no two women like the same thing – some broad principles do hold true in most cases – but discovering someone’s body with my mouth is still one of the most rewarding (and occasionally surprising) bits of sex with a new partner. Equally, building on that initial discovery, and understanding more and more of what makes her tick, is one of the best things about seeing someone more regularly. And in the same way that I prefer giving presents to receiving them, witnessing – or inducing – pleasure in another person is always so much more rewarding on a mental and emotional level than focusing on my own. My own orgasm rarely changes, I suppose, whereas even after being with someone for a while, I feel like there are always things to discover about how they respond to different types of stimulation.

Of course the response is not always positive, but that’s fine too. I’ve written before about some of my own difficulties with receiving oral, and I’m always very conscious of them when I’m eating someone out for the first time. Above all, I’m aware that there’s a vulnerability and a loneliness to opening oneself up to another person in that way; not everyone enjoys it, and the initial reluctance can’t always be overcome. Generally though, I try to make oral as interactive as possible. I want her fingers in my hair, or her nails digging into my shoulders, because it establishes a connection that extends beyond just the visceral pleasure of my mouth on her cunt.

It’s also worth mentioning that as a man, giving head is not an entirely unselfish activity. There are times when I’m having sex and an orgasm slowly creeps up on me with a sort of irresistible momentum; I reach a point where I know that I’ll have no choice but to close my eyes and give in to it…unless I find a way to slow everything right down. If I want to prolong the fuck, scooting down and spending a few minutes with my face and fingers between my partner’s legs can act as a bit of a palate cleanser; not quite pressing the reset button, but certainly a way of letting water that’s threatening to bubble over return to a gentle simmer.

It’s also, frankly, an ego boost. Like most people I thrive on positive feedback, especially when it comes to sex. Reducing someone to virtual incoherence with my tongue is just about the best way to make myself feel better about life, because it feels like a very clear cause-and-effect. I did that to her; I made her writhe and stiffen in that way; and if I did those things, maybe there’s a bunch of other great stuff I can do as well – in and out of the bedroom. Even at 33, I sometimes need validation like that to shore up my confidence, or to balance out more uncertain or ambiguous experiences.

All of which sort of brings me back to the original question. My attitude towards giving head has changed over the last ~15 years, and that change broadly comes down to one word: control. I’ve had conversations with two different 23 year olds recently about the difference between life at their age and life at mine; in both cases, I came away envying their self-awareness and sophistication – and painfully conscious of how lacking I was in either quality 10 years ago. That bled through to my sex life, and ultimately to the way I gave and enjoyed oral. I was clumsy, shy, and tentative – in control of neither myself nor what I was doing. As a result, I focused only on trying to get specific things ‘right’, rather than understanding – and enjoying – them as part of the wider process of connecting with my partner.

These days I enjoy everything so much more than I used to, because I feel comfortable and secure in who I am. Cunnilingus is a big part of that: it’s now such a natural and easy thing to do, and for sheer catlike satisfaction I don’t think anything will ever beat the feeling of someone coming all over my tongue. It actually gives me the shivers just writing about it, so you can imagine the effect it has in real life – and that’s one thing that I certainly don’t see changing any time soon.

Categories
Erotica Uncategorized

Search Term Story: Redux

It’s coming up for six months since I wrote this post, sharing some of the weird and wonderful search terms that bring people to my blog. I also asked people to vote for the term they most wanted me to use as the title for a story; it’s fair to say that ‘Lust Fish’ would not have been my preferred option when polling began, but it won a landslide victory, and accordingly made it on here a few days later as this piece of M/M filth.

Last night I had another trawl through the search terms section of the WordPress stats page*. The first half of 2015 once again brought a mix of the sublime, the ridiculous, and the downright terrifying. I remain heartened by the number of people apparently interested in getting down’n’dirty in the Tiergarten, but kind of hope that whoever was looking for ‘very dangerous’ or ‘mad bad’ porn settled down a bit and stuck to the more regular stuff.

As in December, I’ve put together a list of my 10 favourites from the last six months, and whacked them into a poll, which you’ll find below. One important change from last time is that I’m not promising to use the winner as a story title – some of them clearly aren’t suited to that – but I will make it either the title or the theme of an erotica short.

I’ll keep the poll running for a while, as I won’t be in a position to write up the winner until the back end of June. If there’s a search term on the list that you’d like to see me turn into a story, you know what to do – and if there’s one that you’d like to use as the title/prompt for your own piece of erotica, go right ahead and do so…I’ll link to whatever you come up with when I pick this up again in a couple of weeks!

 

*Ok, new dashboard, I’m slowly warming to you.