Author: Exhibit A

Scene One (6 hours)

She is en route from Boston to Tehran and has a layover in Amsterdam.

“I could come and see you,” I say.
“You’re crazy,” she says. “I’ll be in England in a week!”
“I could come and see you…”

I leave West Oxfordshire in my car at 10pm, snatch 45 minutes of sleep on the ferry, and rock up to the airport at 10.30 the next morning, punch-drunk and aching with tiredness. Seeing her energises me in a way that a thousand Red Bulls never could. We have our Kodak moment: I spot her just as she drops her bag at her sister’s feet and runs towards me; she leaps into my open arms and lets me spin her around and around, our lips glued together like neither of us can quite believe that we’re here.

We fuck. Of course.

It nearly doesn’t happen. We’re both new to Amsterdam – we don’t know its quiet corners and secret places – and neither of us can afford to check into a hotel. Instead, we ditch her sister and go exploring. An invisible clock ticks above our heads. Five hours till she has to be back at the airport…then four…then three…

We walk through the red light district and eat pizza from a hole in the wall. We huddle and shiver together in a doorway as the grim, grey October weather beats away at our euphoria, one icy raindrop at a time. We stand firm though, even when I give in to fatigue and fall asleep on a bench in De Bijenkorf: she covers me tenderly with her coat and takes photos to stick inside my Christmas card, but when I wake up 20 minutes later, panicky and confused, she’s there to plaster me with kisses and bury her head in my shoulder.

We spot it on our way out. She grabs something – anything – off the shelf and tugs me towards it.

“Help me try this on?”
“It would be my pleasure!”

It’s more of a pod than a proper changing room. Pill-shaped, with two small, curtained-off spaces separated by a central wall, it sits in the middle of the sales floor, metres away from one of the checkout desks. Still, it’s our best shot and we both know it.

She hurries inside and I duck in after her, two hangers clutched convincingly in my hand. She closes the curtain behind me and I toss the clothes to one side – this has to be quick, but after six weeks apart we both know that won’t be a problem. I hike up her suede skirt as she yanks at my belt. She never wears knickers when she flies to see me – we both value easy access in those first, frantic minutes on the bus, or in a dark corner of the airport car park – so I win that race. My fingers find her cunt straight away and I push two of them inside her, knowing how wet she’ll be.

She finally frees my cock, the clink-clank of my belt buckle echoing loudly as my jeans slither down my thighs. A giggling fit bubbles up dangerously close to the surface. This is madness – wonderful, glorious madness – but there’s no time to think about that, not when her mouth is already on my cock and…oh…no, not like that, stop, stop!

I pull her up and spin her round till she’s facing the mirror, one arm braced against it as she teases her clit. I nudge her legs further apart, and she thinks I’m teasing, thinks I’m holding back, but I’m not and I can’t and I wouldn’t. I take her like that, both of us hoping the cheery, piped pop music will prevent the people outside from hearing our gasps and moans. I look at her face in the mirror – cheeks flushed, lips parted, eyes open wide – and she stares right back at me.

We come together. We’ve learnt to do that by then, though this time it’s happy, serendipitous accident, rather than any sort of design.

“I should buy some underwear,” she says, as we rearrange our clothing. “Can’t turn up in Tehran with my thighs still sticky from your cum.”

We walk out of the store looking tired and triumphant: just-fucked, thank you very much. I drive them both back to the airport. Her sister is bored, and impatient to get on with the journey.

“Where did you guys go?”
“Oh, here and there.”

I drop them at Departures and we kiss goodbye. I don’t get out of the car. An hour later I stop for petrol and check my phone. One text.

‘On second thoughts, who needs underwear? Can’t wait till next week…x’

Scene Two (22 hours)

Three years have gone by. We’re older and sadder; we carry around the pain we’ve caused each other and the bitter aftertaste of something that used to be so sweet. She no longer comes to England with her suede skirt and absent knickers. I no longer drive all night just to see her. There are no more Kodak moments.

Still, when it’s time to visit Iran again, she gives me a call.

“Are you seeing anyone at the moment? I have another layover in Amsterdam next month. I thought…”

I book my flight that afternoon. A hotel too, because I want to do things properly this time. It’s just sex – we both know that – but it’s sex with someone whose body I know even better than my own. Sex that feels like slipping into a hot bath at the end of a long day.

I arrive at 9pm, eight hours before she’s due in. I get the hotel shuttle and kill time at the bar. I drink, because I know I won’t sleep unless I’m at least a little buzzed, and I listen to another British guy tell me about his food services business, while keeping a close eye on the group of Scandinavian air hostesses in the corner.

Back in the room, I prepare for her arrival. I shower, and trim my beard. Condoms get scattered all over the nightstand; lube too, because she wants me to fuck her arse again (“I can’t find anyone else who will!”). I’ve brought some of the food she likes, and this goes under the bed, hidden away, to be produced with a flourish whenever she gets hungry.

I set the alarm and try to sleep. I wake at 2, and at 3, and again at 5, when she’s due to land. The text comes half an hour later. She’s just missed a shuttle, and I shower again, too distracted to read or sleep, but in need of something to pass the time.

I meet her downstairs at 6.15. Just under six hours till we have to check out. We fall on each other in the lift, and against the wall outside my door. I disentangle one hand for long enough to swipe the keycard, then kick the door shut behind us.

We exchange very few words in that hotel room. We fuck and we sleep: once, twice, three times. She knows how to get me hard again, even groggy and jetlagged from the redeye out of Boston, and I devour her body like it’s the first and last time I’ll ever feel it against mine. For one morning, nothing in our lives has changed. There’s no sadness, no pain: it’s sweet and tender, filthy and familiar, in a way that neither of us has found with anyone else, and as noon approaches I try to push that thought deep down inside me, so I don’t choke on it when we say our goodbyes.

I go with her to the airport, but my flight isn’t until 7, so I wave her off at the security gates, and she waves back with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. I catch the train into town. I was so sleepy the last time I walked through the streets that I barely remember them: a building here, a church there, but nothing to grab onto and anchor myself against.

I do the Anne Frank House and the red light district – dreadfully incongruous, but I’m too distracted to care about that. I revisit De Bijenkorf, but our changing room has gone, and I don’t need new underwear that day. I eat a wonderful meal on my own, with a good book, and I begin to feel myself again. I realise that I want to stay, at least for the evening, to see what Amsterdam is really like. I send a text for her to read when she lands.

‘We should do this again some time! Maybe make a weekend of it…’

I pay the bill and get the train back to the airport. This is not yet a city that makes sense without her.

Scene Three (2 hours)

I’ve broken a promise to myself, and bought an indirect flight when a direct one was available. I check my watch and Google transport options. Yes, it should just be possible. I hustle from the gate through Schiphol’s vast hallways, and out into Arrivals. God bless Schengen!

I buy a ticket for one of the big continental express trains. It takes 15 minutes to hurtle through the suburbs and into Amsterdam Centraal. The air is cold, but I am warm, relaxed and content. This feels like a palate cleanser. I buy chips from a stall outside De Bijenkorf – I don’t need to go in this time – and I sit on a bench by the canal to eat them. I make eye contact with a hooker in one of the windows above the street. It’s lunchtime and business is clearly slow, because she smiles at me and points at my chips, then rubs her belly in mock satisfaction. I smile back, but when she pushes her tits towards me I shake my head apologetically. I’ve had some great sex in Amsterdam, but these two hours are not about that. They’re about seeing something else in this city, and about knowing that I’ll be back one day to enjoy it properly.

I’ve had a couple of conversations over the last few days that made me think it was time to write this post. The first of them started with a question:

“So what is it that turns you on about being dominated by a woman?”

It’s something that I suspect male switches (and submissives) get asked more frequently than their female counterparts. Aided in no small measure by FSOG, female submission is seen as a profoundly ‘natural’ urge, and one that requires explanation only in terms of how it’s expressed; a woman who voices her desire to be dominated by a man may face challenges and questions around its more extreme manifestations, but is likely to have fewer people trying to understand the root cause of the desire itself.

That is in itself problematic. The assumption that women are sexually submissive by nature is lazy and sexist, and feeds into all sorts of other unpleasant notions about gender roles in the bedroom. However, it also means that when people find out that as well as taking charge, I really enjoy being controlled and dominated in bed, their first question – rather than ‘how?’ – is generally ‘why?’

I’ve written quite a lot about the how. I’ve written about orgasm denial, and how hot it is when someone tells me not to come. I’ve written about strap-on play, and how much I love being bent over and fucked by a woman who wants to use my arse. I’ve written about being restrained, and about face-sitting, and about women who want me to strip for them while they watch: all things that turn me into a whimpering puddle of lust whenever I allow myself to spend time thinking about them.

I’ve also written about how that submissive streak ties in with other areas of my sexuality (the subject of this week’s second conversation). How when I think about being with other guys, it’s always within the context of female pleasure and control: I’m not just sucking someone’s cock, I’m sucking it because she tells me to, or because it gets her wet to watch me do it. When I fantasise about threesomes, and about being fucked, I’m never the one directing events. Instead, I’m spread out on all fours with his big dick in my arse, while she holds my face between her legs; or while she looks me in the eye and touches herself, aroused by the sight of me taking it like that – taking it for her.

What I’ve never really stopped to explain here is why those things turn me on. I think that’s generally a good thing: the reason why I don’t feel the need to analyse or scrutinise the submissive side of my sexual personality is that it’s something with which I’m both happy and comfortable. I don’t worry about it, and I certainly don’t feel ashamed of having those tendencies: if anything, I’m frustrated that I don’t get more opportunities to explore and enjoy them.

Still, when I was asked that question the other day (and not for the first time this year), I forced myself to think about it in a bit more depth. What does turn me on about submission? What do all of those ‘hows’ have in common? Is there a way to join the dots that can explain why I like to be tied up, and teased, and used, and – yes – maybe humiliated just a little bit?

The answer is that of course there is, because when it comes right down to it, male submission is no more complex or special or out there than its female equivalent. I submit because it brings me an inner peace and calm that empties my mind and allows me to truly experience the things that I’m doing…or that are being done to me. I’m not a masochist – actually, anything beyond mild pain is an active turn-off – but I am a man who enjoys surrendering control to someone I know will not only wield it responsibly and imaginatively, but will derive genuine pleasure from using that power. The last thing I want to do when I submit is to top from the bottom; I want to set limits and discuss turn-ons in advance, then to trust the person I’m with to guide our play, rather than prompting or pushing them to do things a certain way.

I always shy away from describing myself as a control freak, but it’s certainly fair to say that in most situations I like to have at least some influence over what goes on in and around my life. I don’t enjoy feeling helpless, or at the mercy of things that are demonstrably outside my control. It’s an exhausting – and often confusing – way to engage with the world, especially on the occasions when I’m reminded just how flimsy and insubstantial my grip on events can be.

Sex, on the other hand, is a safe space for me in that respect. I can give up all of that control, all of that power, and know that I’m not going to be hurt or damaged as a result. It’s an incredibly relaxing, satisfying experience, and one that leaves me feeling healthier mentally. Even if it only lasts for an afternoon, or a night, the inner calm associated with sexual submission is a cleansing force: a five-star holiday for my body and my brain.

Submission both forces me and gives me license to be silent; to be still. That then becomes the foundation for everything else it enables. I don’t have to think about what I’m doing: I can give myself up to physical pleasure, both mine and that of the person I’m with. I can allow that person to guide me through my own desire, and to shape and sharpen my focus on hers, in whatever form that might take. It cuts through the chaos and makes life suddenly, tremendously simple. There are instructions that I have to follow. There are things that will be done to – or by – me, over which I have no control. Whatever I want at that time, whether it’s my own orgasm or something else, will depend not on my choices, but on the agenda and desire of my partner; regardless of how much I crave it, or beg for it, I won’t be the one who decides when (or even if) it happens.

I have neither the discipline nor the desire to be a ‘lifestyle sub’. I’m a switch, whose submission will always be situational and, at times, opportunistic. I need it less often than I need to have that sexual control, and certainly less often than I need sex generally. I still need it though. I need it in the same way I need to escape London sometimes and go walking in the hills; the way I need a weekend at my parents, or to completely lose myself in a good book. It strips everything in life down to the basics, and for that I will always value what it gives me.

—

For those who are curious, I took the title for this post from a scene in She’s All That, for reasons that should be fairly clear to anyone who’s watched the film. I wear my love of cheesy Hollywood teen movies on my sleeve, and make no apology for it!

There’s probably not a huge amount left to say about our idiotic new porn laws. Over the last 10 days they’ve been skewered – eviscerated – by everyone from Girl on the Net to Stavvers, Malin James to Myles Jackman, and I don’t disagree with a single word that any of them have penned on the subject. The amendment to the 2003 Communications Act is, at best, tragically and damagingly naive; and at worst another shining example of the kind of regressive, ignorant, and sexist legislation that this government has imposed upon us.

So what can I add to what’s already been written?

11 months ago, around the time I started blogging in earnest, I wrote a post about the lack of male nudity in mainstream media. It’s a subject about which I feel pretty strongly: partly out of solidarity, but also because, as I said in the post, men themselves will benefit if we ‘normalize the idea of male nudity, and…remove the lingering stigma from the idea of straight dudes looking at other dudes’ genitals.’

When I read through the list of activities that the BBFC will no longer deem acceptable, I experienced a similar wave of frustration and sadness. In a direct sense, it’s largely women who are the victims of these new regulations, but again, a big part of that unavoidably lies in the way that men will be prevented from learning about, enjoying, and engaging with activities that reference or prioritise female pleasure.

Sex education in the UK is so woefully deficient that most teenagers rely on porn to fill the gaps – to show sex as it really is. As we get older and more curious, porn provides an introduction to kink, and reassures us that the things we fantasise about, the things we want to do, are safe and normal. That we’re normal for wanting them.

If the new law means that young men will no longer get to explore their nascent desire for face-sitting, fisting, and female ejaculation, all of us will suffer. Female pleasure will be sidelined and marginalised, as will the men who get off on it, or who want to make it a central – a normal – part of their sexual experience. We become better than we are by educating ourselves, and through exposure to that to which we ought to aspire – in other words, if we want men to prioritise their partners’ sexual agency, it’s fucking stupid to consistently feed them the message that the ways in which that agency is expressed are dirty, dangerous, or wrong.

For those of us who are no longer quite so impressionable, the regulations are less pernicious and, at the same time, equally offensive. I fucking love it when someone sits on my face, whether it’s a loving and tender act, or a forceful and dominant one. I want to see it on screen, and to be trusted not to equate consensual D/S play with dangerous, reckless violence. I want to be able to watch a guy come on a woman’s face, but I also want to see a woman squirting uncontrollably all over her partner; hell, I want to be that partner, so of course I want to see it, and I’m not willing to accept anyone shaming me for finding it hot.

I don’t believe in completely unconstrained freedom of expression. There are images to which we ought to be denied access, and there is ‘pornography’ that should be criminalised, stigmatised and suppressed. One of the many reasons why this law is desperately ill-judged is that it dilutes our view of what falls into that category. If we start to treat complex and psychologically-driven scenarios involving consenting adults in the same way we treat images and videos that involve actual abuse, we will make it harder to take effective action against the genuinely harmful stuff out there.

Effective pornography legislation focuses on the production, not on the audience. It starts by preventing the exploitation of children and women; and in the long run it ensures that performers are physically safe, fairly compensated, and respected for what they do. If that involves missionary sex by candlelight, that’s great. If it involves watersports, or fisting, or weapon play, or any one of a dozen other things that I’m really not into, then that should be fine too. I can watch Daniel Craig be tortured in a Bond film, without wanting to strap my next-door neighbour to a chair and lay into him with a knotted rope – why can’t I watch a responsibly-shot spanking scene and be trusted not to attack my partner with a paddle or cane immediately thereafter?

There are millions of ways in which we can offer women better protection from sexual violence and mistreatment. The amendment to the Communications Act not only fails to meet that standard, it actively restricts and inhibits the expression of female pleasure and agency, thereby contributing to a culture in which men think of women as second-class sexual citizens.

Porn should not replace sex education. However, it would be stupid to pretend that it doesn’t play a formative role in the way that many young men view sex and sexuality. Instead of drawing arbitrary, hamfisted red lines around specific acts, we should be encouraging guys to seek out porn that emphasises consent, equality, and female pleasure, while clamping down on the material that’s genuinely abusive.

As a man, I want to see the full spectrum of female desire represented in the porn I watch, because that’s what turns me on. As an adult, I want my government to treat ‘extreme’ sexual content in the same way it does violent movies or video games, with an emphasis on safety, production standards and age restrictions, rather than crude, blanket censorship. On both counts, the new law is a resounding failure.