Category: Sex

I have, at best, a mixed relationship with pain when it comes to sex. My own appetite for it is very low – I can tolerate, and will sometimes even enjoy, a good spanking, but anything beyond that just does nothing for me, either physically or psychologically. I am not a masochist.

I’m not a sadist either. I am more willing to inflict pain, but even that is guided largely by my partner’s desire for it; beating someone’s arse till it’s bright red, then repeatedly slapping her face while we fuck (for example), is not a sequence of activities that I find intrinsically pleasurable, but if it makes her happy then I have absolutely no problem incorporating it into our play – after all, the more aroused and stimulated she is, the better the sex for both of us.

Still, I will never be an impact play expert, because it’s not really where my heart lies. If someone needs pain to be a regular, structured part of their D/S dynamic, I am probably not the guy for them – and I’m ok with that. I’m much more comfortable when power and control are used and expressed in other ways, and perhaps foremost among those is denial.

I’ve written about denial before, specifically in the context of orgasms. Telling my partner not to come, and then watching that agonized struggle play out on her face, is one of the single hottest things I ever get to do; likewise, having to respond to that demand, when it’s made by someone who knows just how (and how far) to push me, hits all of my submissive sweet spots…and then some.

That knowledge is crucial, because at its best denial is an unavoidably (inter)active process. One of the biggest sins anyone can commit during D/S play is to conflate submission with passivity. I don’t want to fuck someone who is passive when we’re together – who merely wants to lie there and be done to. When I top someone, it’s important to me not just to take something from her, but to make sure I take something she really, really wants, whether that’s an orgasm, or my cock, or her freedom of movement…or simply the permission to do whatever it is she’s craving at that particular time.

I was thinking a lot about that the other day – about those “oh pleeeeeease” moments, when my partner is so desperate for something that she will literally beg me to give it to her. It’s intoxicating in a way that makes me wonder whether I am a sadist after all, though ultimately I think I get off less on her pain than on the anticipation of the noises she’ll make when I finally relent. That’s how I know I’m doing it right – those fucking incredible noises, and the way they hit me somewhere so deep that I want to forget about whatever it is we’re doing and just pour myself into her.

Moments like that can be triggered by all sorts of things. The one that prompted this post – the denial I’m unbelievably hot for right now – is what I guess could only really be described as the literal form of topping from the bottom. And it goes a little bit like this…

—

Your thighs are visibly trembling as I hold you in place above me. I look up at your body, stretched and somehow incredibly vulnerable – though maybe that’s more a function of the way you’re staring down with parted lips and a question in your eyes that we both know you don’t need to ask out loud.

But eventually will.

Your position is superficially dominant – you have the high ground, gravity is on your side – but you retain only the illusion of control. My hands cup your arse in a way that feels at once casual and fiercely proprietorial. They are loose and relaxed, bouncing you gently as if they’re simply weighing you up. Taking your measure.

I have different options. I can settle under your buttocks like this and merely take whatever weight you try to push down on me, in an effort to get to my cock. Or I can take a firmer grip on your biceps, and make it more of a tussle, as I have to almost lift you up in order to keep you in place. Either way, you understand that this is all about my hands now – my arms too. What they will and won’t let you do. Where they’ll push and pull your body, as you wriggle and fight against them. There’s a physicality to the way we grasp at each other; it’s dominance that I have to actively assert, and which flows directly from the greater strength and weight of my body.

If I feel like it I can lift you away from my cock to straddle my face, where any initial whine of disappointment will taper off with each soft stroke of my tongue. I’ll jam my thumbs into your skin and brace myself into the mattress, allowing my lower back and thighs to take some of your weight as my arms hold you in a vice above me. I could make you come like this, almost against your will; you want to squeeze and shudder around my cock instead, and it’s only when you’re close that you start to waver, start to grind down impatiently as my tongue slips over your clit.

Denial is most effective when you make someone believe – even for just a second – that despite all previous evidence, it really is going to be this easy. That’s why I want you to feel the orgasm building. “Yes,” you’ll say, your voice shaky, “oh yes, please, just like that”, and I’ll nod up at you, my hands giving a little under your arse, letting you press harder against my mouth.

The further I push it, the more of a struggle it is for both of us when I stop – by this point, I’m almost as hungry to feel you come as you are. You clutch at the headboard, fingers scrabbling for purchase. I don’t want it to hurt, not really, but it’s hard not to be turned on by the anguish on your face as I wrestle you back towards my lap.

Fucking you like this would be so easy now. I could hold you open and thrust up hard, the muscles in my arse flexing and driving my cock a little deeper each time. With my hands on your hips, I could fuck you as hard like that as if I was kneeling behind you. Or I could fan my fingers out across your stomach, applying enough pressure to tilt your torso as my other hand supports your lower back; at that angle, depth won’t really matter, and I can almost just massage your cunt with as much or as little of my cock as I like.

I’m not sure you care which way I do it – not now, when you can feel the shaft sliding against you, thick and hot, and your hips are twisting jerkily as you try to manoeuvre me inside. This might be the bit I enjoy the most, and you know that, because I can never wipe the smirk off my face when I tease you with the tip, or force your fingers down to your swollen clit. The pre-fuck anticipation, mixed with the thrill of watching you suffer and squirm on top of me, is what will stay with me afterwards, and what I’ll wank over when you’re not there.

And no, I’m not afraid to let you know that I need this as much as you do, especially right now, with your cunt so wet that you’re almost sticking to my skin. I want you to know that – to feel me twitching against you, my arms straining and my stomach tense, just from the effort of holding back and denying you this thing that both of us now crave. In this position it’s impossible to feign indifference, so instead I’ll let you drink in the desire on my face. I’ll hold my breath each time my cock threatens to slip inside your cunt, and each time you’ll clench just a little harder, certain that I’m finally going to crack and give it to you.

There’s an intimacy in being able to see our different struggles mirrored in each other’s eyes. At its best, denial has a two-way cost; this shouldn’t be painless for me. Showing you the toll it takes will make it easier for you to be even more vulnerable in the future, I think.

Because it’s different when you’re spread out on your knees in front of me, waiting for the touch that might never come. That is power in absolute form; symbolic as well as material. There you are blind, and bereft of contact or reassurance. You cling greedily to every word I toss down towards you; to the seductive, agonizing brush of my velvet cock head along your slick cunt. I am omnipotent, God-like, and the sight of you prostrate in supplication only makes me want to deny you even more. I can wrap your hair in my fist as I tease you, or make you yelp with sharp smacks of your upturned arse. I can edge you with a vibrator as I ease the first inch or two of cock inside you, and when you ask to come, when you fucking dare to beg me for it, I can pull away completely, leaving you open and gasping with need.*

Here though, we are too closely entangled for that – too connected in every sense – and my control of events feels looser, more contingent. Here there will come a point where I simply can’t deny you any longer, because to do so would be somehow inhuman.

You have no mask when you’re on top of me like this; I can see what every careful touch and movement does to you. It is that which finally forces my hand, I think, and again it’s less sympathy than it is an impatient, almost gleeful desire to see the look of relief on your face, and to hear that long, low moan as I pull you slowly, firmly onto my cock. You toss your head back, eyes squeezed shut. Your thighs lock against mine, as if you’re afraid this might be a trick – that I’m going to lift you up and make you beg for it all over again – and I stroke your shoulders, your sides, in silent reassurance.

I’m still in no rush to make you come, but with the weight and heat of my cock inside you now I’m not sure you are either. You’re no longer frantic – it is easier to relax and submit like this, even while my hands continue to conduct your movements from their anchoring points at your hips and tits, your waist and throat. Depth and pace suddenly feel like secondary concerns. The ordeal is over, and you know that an orgasm is just around the corner.

You know it.

You think you know it…

—

*Just so we’re clear, this is also awesome.

I’ve been thinking a lot today about how much I love first dates.

First dates are an entirely separate, unique category of human interaction. They come with their own success criteria and are governed by their own set of rules, which are often contradictory and confusing – not to mention understood differently by different people. They act as a sort of gateway to what we might describe as conventional dating, but can also re-route us to a host of more (and less) interesting places, sometimes when we least expect it.

As a result, it is possible (preferable?) to assess first dates in isolation, rather than making any verdict on their outcome contingent on subsequent events; which is just as well, given how intrinsically rich they are in data and detail. They are fascinating, maddening, and occasionally just a little terrifying, but done right they constitute some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on…at least to begin with…

Anyway, perhaps counter-intuitively this sudden burst of affection was triggered by a message I received yesterday afternoon from someone cancelling the second date we’d scheduled for later this week. Let’s call her Lydia.

“I’ve been seeing someone fairly casually for a while,” she wrote, “and over the last few days we’ve decided to make it a bit more serious and exclusive. As a result, I think it’s best if we don’t meet up on Thursday – I’m quite sad about that, and I’m sorry to mess you around! I’m sure you’re not fussed, but I wanted to explain because I had such a nice time last week.”

As rejection goes, that definitely sits at the milder end of the spectrum. Lydia was honest, kind, and thoroughly decent about the whole thing – and frankly, having got to know her at least a little bit over the last couple of weeks, I’d have expected nothing less.

Still, I was pretty bummed. Like her, I’d enjoyed the previous date a lot. It had all the right elements: good food, good wine, excellent conversation, and a chemistry that simmered just below the surface all evening, before bursting up through it right at the end.

For the most part, I like to keep first dates pretty simple, especially if I don’t know the other person very well. Cinema and theatre are obvious no-nos, along with anything else that essentially makes conversation impossible. Likewise, I try to avoid arranging first dates where the activity is likely to be the main focus; anything too elaborate can obscure and confound the central purpose of the date, which is to get to know each other and establish whether there’s enough of a spark to make it worth meeting up for a second time.

On this occasion, we opted for an early dinner, and squeezed into a cosy Italian place in Hoxton, which I’d walked past over the weekend. I discovered quickly that Lydia was sharp, considered, lively and self-aware; generous with the details of her own life, and curious about those that made up mine. Drop-dead gorgeous too, for whatever that’s worth (ok, a lot – it’s worth a lot). Nothing about her felt forced or artificial; she seemed like a person comfortable and easy in her own skin, and relaxed enough to let a relative stranger see that.

We hadn’t planned anything beyond the restaurant, but eventually found ourselves snogging in the corner of a slightly grotty East London boozer. We were both a little flushed with alcohol, though far from drunk, and I held my breath when I kissed her for the first time, staying as still as possible out of sudden fear that the moment might dissolve around us. Later, as I walked her back to the station, there were more kisses: we snatched them from each other, hotter and a little frantic, our hands roaming more liberally than they had in the pub. Whenever we disengaged, bursts of slightly giddy, rambling chatter filled the space, serving mainly as a shared filibuster; each word took us a little closer to her train, and held at bay the prospect of full-on public debauchery. It felt intimate, but in an easy, almost conspiratorial way.

In other words Lydia was pretty much the perfect first date – and in my head, that will remain the case, regardless of the fact that there now won’t be a second. There will be no revisionism here, and certainly no regret; the date itself was excellent, and sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that has to be enough…

That’s perhaps one of the biggest differences between the person I am now, and the one I was 10 years ago. For a long time, I found it really hard to relax and enjoy first dates properly; I was nervous beforehand, tentative and reserved while they were actually happening, and deeply self-critical in their immediate aftermath. The built-in failure rate appeared dauntingly high, especially given how infrequently they came along in my early 20s. What’s more they were capricious; for someone who likes to be in control of things, the unpredictable nature of those initial encounters was difficult to swallow.

Like anyone with bad early romantic experiences, I feared rejection, but more than that it was the fatalism I struggled to accept. I would chew over the date for days afterwards, second-guessing conversational choices and berating myself for my many social and physical failings – real and imagined. Rarely did I stop to consider whether or not I’d actually been attracted to the other person; low self-esteem typically relegated that to a secondary consideration, as I instead fixated on their obvious lack of interest in me.

Thankfully those days are long gone. I’m much happier at 34 than I was at 24, and that’s reflected in pretty much every aspect of my outlook on sex and relationships, first dates included. My glass is half-full, not half-empty; for all my cynical moments, I am at heart a positive person, and at this point in my life that extends to cover the way I see my own value too.

That shift in outlook has enabled a further, crucial change in the way I approach dating. In a nutshell, I’m no longer obsessively outcome-focused. Instead, it’s all about enjoying the process and the possibility. Each time I go out with someone new, I do so simply because I’m curious or excited to spend time with them; to soak up their company and conversation, and to offer mine in return. Anything on top of that is a bonus – a lesson I wish I’d taken to heart many years earlier.

A first date isn’t just the means to an end. It’s actually its own gorgeous little moment in time; something we can only ever do once with any given person, and which we should treasure and value accordingly. Sometimes, like last Monday, that moment will be awesome, but even when it’s not – even when it’s downright terrible – I rarely wake up the next day and regret investing the time and effort required to create it.*

I’m sure there will come a point where I slide naturally back into monogamy, or at the very least a less open form of polyamory, whether with an existing partner/partners, or with someone who hasn’t yet crossed my radar. When that happens, I guess I’ll miss the thrill of fucking other people, but if I had to put money on it now, I’d say it’s the pleasure and possibility contained in those warm, rich evenings with someone new that will feel like the biggest loss.

—

*I realise that a lot of this post is written from a position of privilege. For one thing, as a man I have the luxury of going on first dates without having to worry too much about assault, abuse or harassment, and I want to acknowledge that here. Not everyone can afford to be so carefree or positive about dating, and as a result, this is very much my perspective on it – it’s not intended to come across as any sort of manifesto for how others should feel.

A few weeks ago I tweeted a link to this excellent post by Hyacinth Jones, on her love of big dicks. I thought the way she described her preference for well-endowed men was straightforward, honest, and wonderfully unapologetic; there was nothing spiteful or mocking in what she wrote, and as a guy of relatively average proportions I was turned on by her passion, rather than put off because it happens to exclude me.

Later that day, I talked to Malin James, who agreed with my take on Hy’s post, but wondered aloud whether it would be possible for a guy to write something similar about vaginal tightness without being crucified for it. Both of us could imagine the response to that sort of piece, even in what is generally a very tolerant and open-minded sex-blogging community; it wouldn’t be pretty, and any man brave or foolish enough to put something like that out there would take a lot of heat, regardless of how straightforward or measured he was when making his case.

Of course double standards often exist for a reason. While it looks like apples and apples, the reality is that women are routinely shamed for the size and general appearance of their cunts – not to mention the way they smell and taste, and the frequency with which they enjoy having things inside them. Cock size may be the subject of a few crude jokes, and I’m sure it must feel genuinely awful to be on the receiving end of one, but the way men talk about cunts is far more toxic – and laced with misogyny. It’s also rooted in a profound fear of female sexual agency, and in the pretty gross belief that virginity has value: abusing women for not being ‘tight enough’ is really just another form of slut-shaming.

How do I know this? Well for one thing, I have never – literally never – heard guys discussing cunt size when a woman isn’t around. It just doesn’t happen. I’ve listened to (and participated in) endless locker room conversations about so-and-so’s tits, or the cracking arse on some bloke’s girlfriend/sister/mum/etc. I’ve sat through detailed descriptions of blow job technique and prowess. Of sexual appetite and preferences. Of kinks and fetishes. Men chat a lot of shit to each other about a lot of things – and clearly not all of those conversations were beacons of sex-positivity and kindness – but not once have I had someone complain to me about the tightness of a partner’s cunt. It’s just not something we care about – except, apparently, when we want to make women feel bad about themselves.

Over the years, my own experiences have backed that up. I´ve fucked virgins and mothers of three; women in their late teens and women in their mid-40s; women of pretty much every different height, weight and skin colour under the sun…and not one of them has had a cunt that I wasn’t fucking delighted to be buried inside. I could honestly count on one hand the number that were memorably tight, and I wouldn’t need any hands at all for those that weren’t tight enough.

There is certainly no correlation whatsoever between tightness and sexual performance, nor has it ever had a material impact on my enjoyment of a particular partner’s body. 95% of the time, I’m not sure I even notice either way. The preference for bigger dicks obviously has an aesthetic element for a lot of people, but cunt size only really becomes apparent during penetration, whether with fingers or cock. At that point, there’s generally too much good stuff going on for minute differences in tightness to cross my radar, and I’m much more likely to get excited by how wet my partner is, or how good her skin feels pressed against mine, than I am to worry about whether she’s squeezing me as hard as the last woman I fucked.

The only exceptions have been the handful of partners who were so tight that I found myself having to really focus on not coming too quickly. That’s a bit of a mixed blessing, clearly; while that sort of intensity is very exciting, especially at first, it can also mean having to pick between a shorter fuck and one with occasional breaks to calm down. Both of those can be great, but there are times when I don’t really want either of them; and I’ve been on the receiving end of enough eye-rolls to know that the women involved were often similarly unenthusiastic about having to make that choice!

The bottom line is that cunts are magical things, and I’ve yet to meet one that I wasn’t instantly in love with. They’re supple, flexible, warm and soft in all the best ways, and always, always tight enough to feel wonderful around my cock. Malin was dead right, a heterosexual man sharing the equivalent of Hy’s big dick post probably would get slated – rightly so, given the wider context – but I also really struggle to believe that anyone out there would actually want to write it.

Guys might get hung up on all sorts of weird things, but I’ve seen no sign that we give a flying fuck about cunt size. Any nasty, sneering evidence to the contrary will always have far more to do with a wider hatred of women or with male insecurity than it will actual sexual pleasure.

Yesterday someone tweeted a link to something I wrote over 18 months ago now, about sex and periods. I don’t generally enjoy re-reading old blog posts, in the same way I don’t like listening to recordings of my own voice, but in this case it was useful for two reasons.

On a very basic level, it was good to realise that I still stand by every single word of something I wrote right back at the time I started blogging in earnest. I know for a fact that there are posts from early 2014 that I’d probably write quite differently now, but that isn’t one of them.

More importantly, reconsidering period sex nudged me to act on a conversation I had recently about other areas of sex and sexuality where a positive male perspective might add value or challenge conventional wisdom. Male desires and sexual attitudes tend to be represented in mainstream media in a way that ultimately harms both men and women. It’s simplistic, reductive, and laced with misogyny – I’m also pretty sure it’s wildly inaccurate.

That’s something I’ve thought about quite a lot over the last couple of months, especially after doing the dick pic interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel in August. I’ve always been wary of writing anything that implies I speak for all (or even most) men, but at the same time I recognise that sex blogging is not an area rich with male voices – and that as a result, there is a pretty healthy appetite out there for more insight into how and what men actually think about sex, about their own bodies, and about women’s bodies too.

That appetite is evident even in the search terms that people use to find my blog. Over the last 12 months, I’ve had countless hits from people clearly seeking information or just trying to satisfy their curiosity about men and sex. ‘How men feel about nudity’ is one that I see on a fairly regular basis, as are variations on ‘men who enjoy showering together’ and ‘male attitudes to oral’. More recently, my heart ached when I saw that someone had felt the need to ask a search engine ‘what does “you’re too wet for me” mean?’ – if that person is reading this post, let me tell you right now that it probably means you’re sleeping with the wrong guy…or at the very least, one who has a few things left to learn about how this whole sex business actually works.

These two posts about cock rings were sort of an initial attempt to dip my toe back into more informative/revealing waters. I’ve got one other thing sitting in my Drafts folder, waiting to be written up, but I’m also curious to know whether any of you have suggestions for topics I could pick up and run with over the next few weeks. Perhaps there’s a sex myth you want exploded (or confirmed), or a question about men’s bodies that you’re tired of getting the same, boring Cosmo answer to. Maybe you just want to know more about how guys masturbate, or what it feels like when you finger us during oral.

Either way, this isn’t just a lazy way to get other people to supply me with blogging material – I’d genuinely love to hear from anyone who has a ‘thing’ they’d like me to write about. If that’s you, just pop me an email, or leave a comment on this post, and if I think I can do your suggestion justice I’ll respond to it here at some point very soon!

So after I wrote this piece of (NSFW) whimsy the other night, a couple of people got in touch with more serious questions about cock rings. Questions like “hey, I don’t really understand cock rings – what exactly do they do?” And “ouch, that looks painful – is it painful??” I would never pretend to be a sex toy expert, but as this is one area where I have a reasonable amount of experience, I thought I’d answer their questions (and hopefully a few more) in a blog post.

First, the basics. A cock ring, as the name suggests, is literally a ring that goes around (the base of) the penis – and usually the testicles too. Typically made from leather, rubber, silicone or metal, it either stretches to fit over your genitals, or can be adjusted and tightened once it’s in place. Guys with especially large (or small) dicks may find they have to go for one of the adjustable options, and these do tend to be a little pricier, but for most men the stretchy rings will work just fine. I own one of each at the moment, both of which I’d happily recommend. You can see photos of them in use here and here (both links super-NSFW, obviously); if you want to know more about the specific models and where to buy them, just hit me up via email or Twitter.

Cock rings work by constricting blood flow out of the penis. This means that blood stays in the erect penile tissue for longer, keeping everything nice and firm and ready for action. Unsurprisingly then, they’re great for guys who have trouble maintaining erections – or who just want to stay hard for a really long time.

There is also evidence to suggest that they can help prevent premature ejaculation, though solid research on this is hard to come by. When worn over the testicles, the ring puts pressure on the ducts that carry semen to the penis, potentially restricting the ability to orgasm; on the other hand, the increase in sensitivity and sheer, horny stimulation can easily have the opposite effect (trust me on this…), so I’m more cautious about endorsing that particular theory.

Either way, for all their practical value, the real joy of using a cock ring definitely lies more in all the fun, filthy ways you can incorporate them into your play, whether on your own or with a partner. Here are just a few of the reasons why I’m a fan…

1. They do just make everything look – and feel – bigger. My dick, my balls, the whole lot. When I’m wearing a cock ring, my erection is almost painful in its intensity, as if the skin and veins are being stretched to bursting point. If huge, visibly throbbing erections are your thing, cock rings are the happy shortcut to getting them. When my dick is that hard, I can sometimes see the excitement on my partner’s face as she wraps her hand around it, or takes the extra girth inside her, and that obviously gets me even hornier too.
2. All that trapped blood definitely does make my whole cock more sensitive to the touch. It doesn’t matter whether I’m stroking my hand firmly over the head, or just brushing a finger along the shaft, I notice the difference immediately; when someone else is touching me, it becomes even more achingly apparent.
3. The contrast between that heightened sensitivity and the slight restriction on my ability to come, makes cock rings perfect for edge play and orgasm denial. I frequently use one of mine when I want to have a long, teasing solo session, sometimes coupled with a butt plug for a bit of additional prostate stimulation. Between the two, it doesn’t generally take long before I’m a squirming, sticky mess – my cock smeared with lube and pre-cum, and almost ribbed in texture, so prominent are the veins. It’s sometimes more than I can bear; the pressure gets more intense each time I coax myself closer to the edge, and eventually my whole body tingles with the need to let it all come flooding out.
4. Of course, that kind of set-up is even sexier when it’s someone else calling the shots, whether in person or via phone/Skype. In a long-distance relationship, adding a cock ring to cyber sessions gives my partner an extra bit of visual stimulation, but it also enhances the dynamic whenever we decide to play around with that kind of voice control. The impact it has on my desire to come is very difficult to hide; even when she can’t watch my face screw up and my hands ball into fists, I know that the tension in my voice is enough to betray how riled-up and desperate I am.
5. If my partner is in the room, more options open up. It’s a huge turn-on watching someone fit the ring around my cock and balls, for example, especially if she tells me while she’s doing it that I’m not allowed to come until she gives me permission to do so. That command might be followed by a long, teasing blow job, with every smooth swirl of her tongue its own little act of torture. Or maybe she’ll straddle my thighs and reach down to hold my cock perpendicular to my body, so she can just rub her cunt and clit over the tip for as long as it takes to make herself come, while I silently beg her to sink all the way down onto it.
6. Then there’s the orgasms themselves, which as well as being more intense, also somehow literally feel hotter when I’m wearing a cock ring. It’s as if all that blood has raised the core temperature of my dick, so when cum pumps up through the shaft it reaches the surface charged with that extra warmth and energy. Again, that has a further, visceral impact on how my orgasms look. I shoot further and harder with a cock ring – spunk that might normally land on my stomach ends up on my chest or neck, if I’m coming on a partner’s face or body there’s apparently a greater ferocity to the way it spurts out over her.
7. Finally, rather than softening shortly after orgasm, my cock will stay hard for a long time with the ring still tight around the base. As a result, if we’re fucking and she’s not ready to stop, leaving it there also gives us the option to carry on until she’s finished.

As for whether they’re painful? That’s an easy one – no, they’re not…if you know what you’re doing. Like all sex toys, cock rings need to be used in a safe, responsible way, and that means reading up on some of the dos and don’ts before you jump right into playing with one. I’m not going to list those, but there is plenty of guidance out there on how to choose and fit a cock ring, so please do check it out if you’re curious – Google is your friend on this one.

So there you have it: Cock Rings 101! If you have a question I haven’t answered, or there’s something you’d like to add that other people might find useful/interesting, please do leave a comment under this post – I’ll then edit and build on it accordingly.

One afternoon last August, mired in a bit of a writing slump, I sat down and rattled off this post, on all the memories and fantasies that had been turning me on over the previous 24 hours. Like most people’s, my sexual imagination is a bit of a kaleidoscope; over and over it turns, new images flashing up as the old ones disappear – however temporarily.

As I sat on the sofa this morning, my leg jiggling uncontrollably and my fingers drifting down to brush over my cock every few seconds, I thought about that list, and decided that the best way to break my current writing slump was to write a September 2015 edition. I grabbed a piece of paper and started to scribble down all the thoughts that have been getting me horny since I woke up yesterday morning…

• Waking up at 6am, just as the first watery light starts to push its way through my curtains. Feeling her soft, warm arse press back against my hard cock; the sleepy sigh as she moves her legs just far enough apart for me to guide it between them, into her cunt. Falling asleep again afterwards, sticky and satisfied, my face buried in the damp hair that falls down around her shoulders.
• This story. Always this story. What it would be like. How I’d feel. The variations on it… A more traditional hen party in a weekend cottage somewhere. I know one of the bridesmaids, and it’s a game we’re playing together. I’m the ‘stripper’, or the ‘life model’, and she sits watching her friends watch me. They’re loud…excitable…oblivious. Later she’ll walk me back to my car and I’ll fuck her on the lush grass, under the stars, both of us too worked up to last more than a minute or two. Or she’ll sneak me up to her room and I’ll wait there for her. In the morning, she’ll make sure someone spots me as I leave, and after that she’ll always be ‘the one who fucked the stripper’ – it’ll turn her on every time someone reminds her.
• Corridors and stairwells. Pushing her back against the wall before the door’s even slammed shut behind us, my hands already under her skirt, or squeezing her tits. The pause before she scrambles down onto her knees and tugs at my belt. Rips at the buttons on my jeans. Eating her out on the stairs, her legs spread wide, boot heels digging into the carpet to keep her from falling. Lifting myself up above her, and the look of expectation on her face as I thrust inside.
• My new fucking machine! The endless possibilities. On her knees, perhaps, the dildo filling her from behind. Slowly at first, then faster, faster. “Don’t make a sound,” I say. “One word out of you – a noise of any kind – and I’ll fuck that disobedient mouth of yours till you swallow my cum.” She looks me in the eye, smiles, and moans theatrically.
• Things that I didn’t know were hot till I tried them. Years ago now: “I want you to jizz on my cunt.” I frowned at her, unconvinced, but after she came all over my cock I knelt between her legs and pressed the tip between her labia, stroking furiously before relaxing my grip and letting the cum just spill out onto her skin. We watched it trickle down together, her Cheshire Cat grin one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen. After that, I didn’t need to be asked twice.
• My friend’s sister. My former colleague. Two others who might be reading this. All the women I’ll never fuck, but who make my stomach clench with arousal whenever I think about having them in my bed – which means, of course, that I think about it all the time.
• Blow jobs in public places. They appear more often in my fantasies these days, especially in summer. Meeting for a drink after I’ve been running. You’re waiting at the bottom of the beer garden when I arrive, idly stirring your drink at a wooden picnic table. I’m in shorts and a vest top; a sheen of sweat covers my shoulders and makes the tufts of hair at the top of my chest glisten in the sunlight. You pull me towards you and reach inside my shorts – I’m semi-hard before your fingers even make contact with my skin. It’s a quiet, weekday afternoon, and I can feel the sun on my skin as you take my cock in your mouth. I come in your cleavage and you rub some of it into your skin. When we leave, you hold open the swing gate at the side of the pub and kiss me as I walk past. “Now we’re both salty,” you say, and neither of us can hold it together for more than a couple of seconds.
• This story too. Fucking her after she’s fucked someone else. Maybe we’re not a couple at all, and it’s just a casual thing. A different dynamic. No jealousy or humiliation – instead just the giddy, gleeful note to her voice as she sits on my cock and tells me how much she already aches from having his inside her all night long. The way she staggers to the bathroom afterwards on shaky legs. I watch her cross the room, and pick out the bright red marks my fingers left as they dug into her arse – scattered among the darker bruises he gave her hours earlier.
• Voice control. All the ways to speak softly…and carry a big stick. Making her wait just that little bit longer, till she’s right on the edge of her comfort zone, and nervous about how much further I’m going to push. The relief on her face when I finally relent and give her what she wants.
• Hotel sex. So many private, secret moments in a building full of hundreds of people*. I love having a big hotel bed all to myself, but at the same time it always, always feels like a waste.
• Stolen kisses. Full-on teenage snogs – the kind I never had as an actual teenager. Sometimes just to find out what it’s like to do that particular thing with that particular person. Hurriedly straightening our clothes again after we disengage; trying not to laugh when we get caught.

Some things don’t change – I still think about kissing a lot…

—

*Full disclosure – I stole this line!

I’ve alluded at various points over the last three months to the positive impact marathon training has had on my body. Running 30 miles a week has not just helped me to lose a bit of weight, it’s firmed up my arse and legs, flattened my stomach, and increased my stamina in all respects, including sexually. None of that will last, of course – I’m not nearly disciplined enough to keep that half-stone from finding its way back onto me somewhere – but it’s been a nice, temporary reward for all the hard work, as well as an alternative to my spreadsheet as a way to track progress.

Of course, putting the body through this sort of exercise regime isn’t all rainbows and lollipops. I’m lucky enough to have feet that don’t easily blister, but the damage has steadily built up in other areas. Micro-tears in my left hamstring and calf. Sore, swollen nipples. Knees that creak and groan whenever I go up or down stairs. More body hair. Bad skin…

At 34, it’s always quite depressing to find a new spot taking root on my face or back. When I was a teenager, and actually taking Roaccutane because my acne was so bad, I used to dream of the time when I’d never have to worry about my skin again. Turns out that time never really comes. Instead, I’ve spent my 20s and 30s discovering all the different places where blemishes can appear – and just the other week, I found a new one. My cock.

I feel gross just typing that. I got a zit on my penis. Right smack bang in the middle of the shaft, between two veins. The sort of thing that would look ugly enough on my nose, but on my dick? Ewwww. Seriously – I’d post a photo of it, but some of you might be eating while you read this.

So yes, the bastard just appeared one morning, unannounced and definitely uninvited. I poked and prodded it for a while, then tried to squeeze it, in the hope it might magically disappear. It didn’t. For the rest of that day and all of the next, I examined it periodically, hypersensitive to any change in appearance or size, and worried that at any moment another one might come along to join the party.

It took a little more than 48 hours from the moment I noticed the spot for me to call the local sexual health clinic. It had been six months since my last check-up, so making an appointment was already on my ‘to do’ list; the presence of something that might or might not be a symptom merely bumped it up to the top.

Later that day, I was waved into one of the examination rooms at the Mortimer Market Centre, where a friendly young doctor listened patiently as I described what I’d found.

“I think it’s just a spot,” I said. “It’s right on a hair follicle, and I’ve been doing a lot of exercise lately. A lot of sweating. I know one thing for certain though – it’s not a Molluscum. I’ve had one of those before.”

~

My Dad is scared of dentists. His generation grew up at a time when dentistry was a more brutal, less forgiving area of medicine, and the psychological scars have never really healed. When he reached his late 30s, he started to ‘forget’ to book his half-yearly check-ups; my Mum decided not to press the issue, and after a while he just stopped going altogether. It was only in his mid-50s, after a particularly painful bout of toothache, that he decided to risk going back, and the results were…well, predictable. Predictable and very expensive.

I am not scared of dentists. As a child, check-ups merely meant an opportunity to get a new sticker for the side of the bath, and when I needed my first filling at 21, it was embarrassing rather than painful – as if my lazy brushing was a personal affront to the nice man who had to fix the damage I’d caused. Even the root canal surgery I needed last year to repair a fractured tooth wasn’t scary; boring and costly, yes, but never more than vaguely unpleasant in physical terms.

On the other hand, the first time I went for an STI test I was terrified. I was 24, and in a relationship that was just starting to get serious. She’d suggested it, and I hadn’t been able to think of a reason to say no. Even though I’d been sexually active for over three years by that point, it had never occurred to me to get tested – because I hadn’t done anything wrong. As far as I was concerned, you only went to the GUM clinic when you’d fucked up: maybe you’d slept with someone who was a ‘bit of a slut’, or got drunk and done it without a condom. You definitely had to have a rash of some kind, or maybe a sore, or a weird discharge. Just by walking through the clinic door, a cloak of shame would wrap itself around your shoulders, and the whole world would swivel to stare and point. To mark you as dirty.

The fact that I still believed those things at 24, and that I had such a crappy attitude towards sexual health issues, is tied pretty closely to my gender, sexuality, and limited experience; but like my Dad with the dentist, it also says a lot about the time and place in which I grew up. Sex education in the late 80s and early 90s was a complete mess – even more than it is now – and both the fear and the stigmatisation of HIV/AIDS were deeply embedded in most cultural narratives about sexual activity. There was no internet and certainly no social media, so what I learned about STIs came directly from teachers, friends, newspapers and TV. By the time I went to university in 1999, I’d heard of diseases like Chlamydia and Herpes, but knew enough only to think of them as scary things that happened to other people. If you caught them, you were in serious trouble – and if you got HIV, you were dead.

That first visit to the clinic in Oxford did little to change my preconceptions about STI testing. I was so nervous and defensive that every part of the process felt laced with humiliation and judgement. I couldn’t look the doctor in the eye, and I certainly didn’t want to talk to any of my fellow patients, most of whom I felt sure must be carrying a disease of some kind. Leaving the clinic felt like being released from prison, and when I got my negative results the following week I practically waved them in my girlfriend’s face, as if to say “Look! There’s nothing wrong with me! Why did you make me go to that place?”

Over the next six years, my sexual health check-ups were few and far-between – and usually at someone else’s behest. I didn’t talk about STIs with partners, because I never felt the need to do so; they weren’t a part of my world, and certainly didn’t intrude on my relationships. I was blasé about condoms, determinedly ignorant about transmission, and hazy on the basic terminology for even discussing the subject in a responsible way. It was such a big, scary thing that the best way to avoid getting freaked out was to refrain from thinking about it entirely.

Finally, in the spring of 2011, my luck ran out. I woke up one morning to find, yes, a spot on my penis. It was dome-shaped and dimpled, and while I didn´t know what I’d done to deserve something so disgusting just appearing on my dick like that, I also wasn’t really worried about it. Not at first. When it hadn’t gone away, or at least diminished in size, a week later, despite daily washing with Clearasil, I thought about going to see my GP…but the prospect of having to show that to another human being was so mortifying that I quickly dismissed the idea. Instead, I battened down the hatches, and waited for it all to blow over.

My head stayed resolutely buried in the sand for just shy of a month, before I finally admitted defeat and went to the GUM clinic. By that time I’d scared myself half to death researching all the worst-case scenarios, and when the doctor looked up from my dick and gravely informed me that I had an STI, it seemed like all my fears were about to be realised.

“It’s called Molluscum contagiosum,” he said. “It’s a skin infection. It’s not serious – you’ll be fine.”

It’s not serious. You’ll be fine. With those six words, the doctor turned upside-down everything I’d ever believed about STIs. He went on to explain that yes, the molluscum was infectious, and yes, I’d probably got it from a sexual partner, but no, nothing was going to fall off or stop working…and no, it wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

“We only get embarrassed when we talk about STIs because they involve sex. As a society we have an unhealthy attitude towards sex, which inevitably means we have an equally unhealthy attitude towards STIs. ”

It was a genuine lightbulb moment, and one I remember vividly to this day. One that materially changed me, in fact. For the first time, I was able to confront the whole issue of sexual health in a way that wasn’t guided and coloured by my own fear. With that largely dispelled, I stopped thinking of STIs as one big, amorphous ‘other’ – and as a result, stopped seeing the people who had them as damaged in some way.

~

At the Mortimer Market Centre the other week, I lay on a bed and watched the doctor run a gloved finger over the spot on my dick. She checked the texture and the colour, had a brief go at freezing it, and stood back up, apparently satisfied.

“Yep, just a pimple. I can’t make it disappear, I’m afraid, but I can give you a soap to use that should accelerate its departure. Just make sure you keep showering straight after you exercise, and hopefully you won’t get any more.”

After giving my blood and urine samples, I walked out of the clinic and got on with my afternoon. By the time the text arrived 10 days later to confirm my negative results, the spot had all but gone.

~

“We don´t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

Anais Nin.

No disease – sexually-transmitted or not – should be underestimated or taken lightly. There are STIs that really are serious and scary, and STIs that have massive public health implications if we allow them to become widespread. However, we won’t prevent that happening by fostering a culture of fear and shame around those diseases. By the same token, we won’t encourage people to have safer sex, or talk to their partners about sexual health, by treating them as social pariahs when they are diagnosed with an STI.

My Dad didn´t go to the dentist for 15 years, because he was terrified of what would happen if he did. I avoided sexual health check-ups for the best part of 9 years for similar reasons. Both of us turned what should have been a routine, practical, proactive way of managing our health into something that ultimately put it at risk – and in my case put other people’s health at risk too.

I like to think that the ‘younger generation’ – people in their late teens and early 20s – is as unafraid of the GUM clinic as I am of the dentist. That the spectre of AIDS has grown a little less menacing; the dialogue around STIs a little more open and constructive. I see some of the impressive resources available to young people these days, online and offline, and I talk to activists like the brilliant Ella Dawson about the work they’re doing to reduce stigma and improve awareness, and it gives me hope that the goalposts are at least starting to shift.

Even with all of that though, I’m not sure we’re there yet. The language we use to discuss STIs is still disproportionately charged; wider understanding of different conditions still hazy and limited. As a result, we find it extremely difficult as a society to talk about sexual health in a responsible, honest and helpful way. Where that conversation doesn’t take place, individuals will only gain understanding through their own – often traumatic – experiences, if they gain it at all.

I was able to approach and deal with the recent spot on my dick in a timely, responsible manner because I’ve had an STI before. It shouldn’t take a positive diagnosis to get people to that point, but my reluctant conclusion is that for many of us that’ll continue to be the case. As I said earlier, even writing about having a zit ‘down there’ made me feel gross, in a way that it never would if it had been on my shoulder or forehead.

Few things contribute more to the spread of STIs than our basic inability to discuss them sensibly. It seems we are culturally conditioned to treat our sexual organs – and by extension, our sexual health – in a completely different way to how we treat the rest of our body; until that changes, it’s hard to be too optimistic about the future of that dialogue.