Category: Sex

“And I’d give up forever to touch you

‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow

You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be

And I don’t wanna go home right now”

On our second date she drove me to a country pub, a few miles from her parents’ house. We ate dinner in the sunshine, then, after it got dark, we found a quiet place to park the car, and had sex on the front passenger seat.

We’d tried to have sex after our first date, on a grassy verge lit up by the moon, but I was anxious and clumsy, and couldn’t stay hard for long enough to put on the condom. I worried about it for days afterwards, certain that she wouldn’t call. Worried as she pulled out of the pub car park after dinner. Worried when she unbuttoned my jeans and pressed her lips against my cock.

Stopped worrying after that.

It was a warm, clear night, and there were no other cars on the road, so we stayed there for a couple of hours. We stared up at the sky and listened to the cassettes she had piled up in the glove compartment. At some point we had sex again, on the back seat this time, and after another break we finally abandoned the car altogether to fuck on the grass, under the stars.

“And all I can taste is this moment

And all I can breathe is your life

When sooner or later it’s over

I just don’t wanna miss you tonight”

It was well past midnight by the time we pulled out onto the narrow, bumpy lane and drove back to her place. Neither of us spoke, because there was nothing that needed to be said. I closed my eyes and allowed my body to unfold into the seat, the memory of being pinned to it by her body still gloriously fresh. The stereo was just loud enough to be heard over the car engine, and I listened to her sing along to what was playing. Her voice was soft, and just a little off-key, but at that moment I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard anything more beautiful.

I left her house just as the sun was coming up. Her parents were sleeping and the stairs creaked, so we’d had to improvise. The living room floor. The dining table. Outside again, one last time, aching and spent on the soft pillow of her front lawn, her face slowly coming into focus above me in the creeping daylight.

It was a 50-minute drive back to my hometown, which I did in 40. I felt giddy and cum-drunk as I flew along the country roads, my senses heightened by physical exhaustion. Her scent was on my skin, in my hair. I could taste her kisses each time I drew breath. I didn’t turn on the radio, because I didn’t need it. In my head, I could still hear her voice, singing to no-one but the night.

“And I don’t want the world to see me

‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand

When everything’s made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am”

~

Singing is one of those things that I love, regardless of how badly I suck. That list is pretty short: like most people, I get frustrated when I can’t do something well, and generally choose not to do it as a result. Singing is different though – dancing too – and I enjoy the activity itself so much that the output is irrelevant.

It wasn’t always that way. I have two very musical siblings, who as children could pick up just about any instrument and make it sound good. They played the piano and the violin. They sang in the church choir. They joined the country orchestra.

I am less musical. After three years of wrestling with the cello I had yet to be put forward for my Grade 1 exam, and was finally persuaded to pursue other hobbies. I tried to join my primary school choir, but was one of only three pupils to actually fail the audition. When I sang at home, my parents covered their ears in mock-horror – which turned to actual horror once my voice started to break and a degree of unpredictability was added to my previously consistent mediocrity.

For a long time, I found it hard to sing in front of other people, unless I felt completely comfortable around them. Or not hard – I just didn’t feel like doing it. Even now, singing is enjoyable precisely because it’s such a liberating, unguarded activity. If I’m not relaxed, I don’t want to sing – the guard stays in place.

Rightly or wrongly, I assume the same is true for other people. When I listen to a partner singing along to the car stereo, or to the music playing in her head as she showers, or just in those quiet moments at home, when the silence is broken by a murmured snatch of song, I feel a warmth and happiness that I can never really articulate. It’s an intimacy small and simple enough to feel completely spontaneous; a way of signifying physical comfort without even touching me. Of letting me know that she feels good.

I really love those moments. I cling to them afterwards, greedy for the flush of contented satisfaction they press onto my heart. The tender ache that blooms and bruises, and never really fades.

In my apartment yesterday afternoon, I heard the first few bars of Iris float out of my laptop speakers. Immediately I closed my eyes and remembered that drive back to my parents’ house, 12 summers ago, when I was 22 and in love – even if I didn’t know it yet. When the road blurred and swam in front of me, and all I had to keep me going was the sound of her voice in my head. I listened to the whole song, and then I went back and listened to it again. The second time I sang too.

In the last two years I’ve posted here a little over 200 times. I’ve posted stories, essays, photos, interviews, and contests. I’ve posted stuff that people have loved, stuff they’ve hated, and stuff they’ve barely noticed at all. I’ve challenged and even scared myself with some of the things I’ve put up here, but I’ve also learned so much about writing, about sexuality, and most importantly of all, about myself.

Among the things I’ve written that seems to have resonated the most was this post, from all the way back in September 2013, on why I don’t like blow jobs. I wrote it at a time when blogging felt a little like keeping a diary: I had very few readers, and certainly didn’t feel part of any sort of sex-writing community. More than anything, I was trying to work through my ambivalent response to receiving oral, and to confront my inability to discuss that ambivalence openly with partners. A useful exercise for me personally, an interesting read for anyone stumbling across it, but really, I kind of thought that would be that.

To my surprise, however, the viewpoint I expressed back then continues to come up regularly in conversation, especially when I enthuse about oral sex to a new partner who’s read my blog, and even from time-to-time when I build a piece of erotica around sucking cock.

“But you’re the guy who doesn’t enjoy blow jobs,” people will say. “I read that thing you wrote. You don’t like receiving head.”

And while I think my perspective was a little more nuanced than that, they do kind of have a point. After all, this is how I concluded that post:

As a stand-alone act, I think I’ll always feel slightly ambivalent about the blow job, and will continue to suffer – with new partners at least – a level of performance anxiety that I’m mercifully spared in all other aspects of my sex life. That makes me a little sad, especially as I know it’s almost exclusively a result of my own failure to readjust and articulate my view of the role it plays in my sexual enjoyment [. . .] Maybe that’ll happen more in the future. Maybe this is one hang-up that will just melt away completely. Until then, I’ll continue to feel just a little bit shy about admitting that when it comes to giving head, I’d much rather be the one on my knees.

Here’s the thing though: sometimes people change.

I’ve alluded a couple of times since that first post to a shift in my attitude to having my cock sucked. I even wrote about the woman who, in the course of one incredible blow job, had me coming harder and faster than I have at just about any point either before or since. Still, for all my dancing around the subject, what I haven’t done is come right out and say it…so here goes…

…I fucking love blow jobs.

That doesn’t mean for one second that I’ve done a complete 180 on everything I said two years ago. I still don’t come often or easily from oral alone. I still (just about) prefer giving to receiving. I will still always get more physical and emotional pleasure from intercourse than I will from being sucked off. However, what I’ve learned since then – what I think I realised just through the process of writing that post, in fact – is that none of those things really matter.

Convincing yourself of that is the key to beating just about any hang-up – and of course, it’s much easier with some things than with others. Worried that your dick is too small? That your tits are too big? That your teeth are wonky or you have hair in a ‘weird’ place? Worried that you can’t come from penetration alone – or that you can only come from it? None. Of. Those. Things. Really. Matter. If you can embrace that notion – that realisation – it will become gloriously self-fulfilling; the more you believe it, the more true it will be.

As amazing as she was, Florence the cock-sucking machine did not make me fall in love with receiving oral. In fact, one of the reasons why she was able to suck me off with such terrifying speed and intensity is that by then I’d already started the process of getting over that mental hump. When I wrote that post, and especially when I put it out into the world, I forced myself to confront my fear, my anxiety, more directly and honestly than I’d ever previously done.

Specifically, I realised that my hang-up persisted because I was clinging onto unrealistic, externally-imposed expectations of how a blow job should be enjoyed; as a result, I often felt unable to communicate my own desires and preferences to my partners, in a way that would help them to give me an experience that I would enjoy. If I was frustrated, it was because I never just relaxed and allowed myself to enjoy what was going on – instead I lay there and worried about why I couldn’t come, or whether I was making the ‘right’ noises, or a million-and-one other crazy, crazy things like that.

99% of us are better at giving advice than we are at taking it. If a friend of mine had come to me and presented all the ‘symptoms’ I described in that blog post, I think I’d have found it very easy to set him on the right track. Relax, I’d have said. It doesn’t matter whether you come. It doesn’t matter what noises you make. There is no predetermined outcome to oral sex. Enjoy it for what it is, rather than what you think it should be, and don’t take it all so seriously! Above all, have a little faith in your partner. Don’t assume that she’s going to be hurt if you actually tell her what you want – I bet you really like a bit of direction when you’re going down on someone, don’t you? Communicate, don’t stress, and everything will be just fine.

Writing about my oral hang-up turned out to be the equivalent of giving myself that pep talk. Once it was all down on paper, I was forced to confront how silly and self-defeating I was being. How unfair both to my partners and to myself. That realisation – even more than Florence – was the first big step towards getting over it.

So yes, these days I’m not only a fully paid-up member of Team Blow Job, I’m basically the Head Cheerleader too.  I’ve come far more from oral over the last 18 months than in the previous 10 years combined; even on the many occasions when it doesn’t lead to orgasm, I now feel happy and confident enough to really enjoy having my partner’s mouth on my cock, and to make it a more natural, sexy, intimate experience for both of us.

I love it when something I write has a positive impact on the people who read it, but like most people I know, I started blogging about sex because I wanted to better understand myself and my own sexuality; when I look back and realise how posts like that one have enabled me to change and improve such a fundamental aspect of my sex life, and to become materially happier in the process, I know for a fact that this has all been worthwhile.

So this afternoon I spent a very pleasant hour or so at the Wellcome Collection’s Institute of Sexology. The exhibition is fairly small, but they’ve managed to gather all sorts of fascinating items and documents, from ancient phallic icons through to video footage of the work done by Masters and Johnson in the 1960s/70s.

I really loved the table of sexual partners meticulously compiled by one woman (whose name I forgot to note down) in the early 1970s. She noted the duration of each relationship, and catalogued the nationality, penis size, profession, proclivities, passions, and performance of each of the men she slept with; if they managed to bring her to orgasm orally or penetrate her anally, that was also recorded. It was all very thorough.

However, the most interesting bit of the whole project is definitely the sex survey. Even just watching other people fill it in was something I could have sat and done all afternoon, regardless of the fact that I couldn’t see their answers. Their body language; the way they interacted with their friends or partners as they scribbled; the time they spent agonising over individual answers, their pencils pressed against the paper; all revealed something about our complex responses to some of these big, sex-related questions.

The answers are aggregated on an ongoing basis by the Institute, and will ultimately generate both a robust analysis of our current thinking on sex, and a huge archive of our individual sexual attitudes and experiences.

On my way out, I nabbed a blank copy of the questionnaire. You’ll find photos of its 8 pages – and the 25 questions it (currently*) contains – below the jump. Just click/zoom to enlarge.

At the Institute, all surveys are submitted anonymously, but if you fancy answering some (or all) of it in the comments section, I’d love to read what you have to say, and to get people’s thoughts generally on the way the questionnaire has been constructed, and the value of this as a social experiment. Either way, if you live in London make sure you get yourself along to the Wellcome Collection before the exhibition closes on September 20th, to check it out properly!

At Eroticon 2014, Molly Moore and Stella Ottewill (then Harper Eliot) ran a session on labels, and on the positive value attached to finding specific ways to describe ourselves sexually. After explaining their thinking, Molly and Stella invited us to share some of the labels we might choose to apply to ourselves; without giving it more than a second or two of thought, I stuck my hand up, and went with ‘magpie’. Why? Because when I see something shiny, I invariably want to pick it up and play with it.

~

At this year’s Eroticon, I sat in Remittance Girl’s brilliant session on jouissance, and thought about the magpie label again. I also thought about the end of Mad Men, platonic dates, and the woman I kissed in an East London park the previous week. I’ll get to those later.

I don’t take many notes at conferences. That’s either arrogance or laziness, or maybe a mixture of the two, but it also stems from a desire to focus on the whole message, and on the speakers themselves, rather than dutifully jotting down each individual point they make. What I do like to record is the nuggets: the little gems that somehow perfectly capture a thought or an idea – or which just express it better than I ever could.

In RG’s lecture (for that is a more appropriate way to describe it), I found myself scribbling (and tweeting) those nuggets, those gems, every couple of minutes. For example:

“People who like edge (play) are really seeking jouissance: they’re almost frightened to orgasm, because it will curtail that fantasy of the beyond-pleasure.”

Or:

“The problem with fantasy is that it’s so perfect – we never construct imperfect fantasies – so consequently phallic jouissance is never perfect. It’s always lacking, because while it’s good, it’s never quite right. You may think ‘oh that’s disappointing, that’s so depressing’, but no! Because if you ever got it exactly right, you’d never seek it again!”

And honestly, I wrestle with this whole area a lot.

I took a first stab at explaining it to someone in the bar on Sunday evening.

“I have this friend, right? And she’s really hot. We go on dates every now and then. We flirt. I want to fuck her, but at the same time I don’t. It’s like the end of Mad Men…you understand what I’m getting at?”

The wary look on her face said very clearly that I needed to find a more coherent way of framing it. As I tried to do that in my head on the train home, I kept coming back to the whole magpie thing, and to the more general impact of curiosity on who and how I fuck.

~

At some stage, I’ve thought about having sex with each one of my female friends. With a lot of my female colleagues (and a fair few of the male ones too). With just about every woman I’ve spoken to for more than about a half hour, in fact.

That doesn’t mean I’ve sat there picturing them naked, or dreaming up detailed scenarios and fantasies. It’s usually just an idle thought at the back of my mind. The mental equivalent of cocking your head and looking at someone in a different way, just for a moment. “Huh,” my brain says. “I wonder what that would be like.”

I don’t imagine I’m unusual in that respect. Sexual curiosity is just one dimension of our general desire to know people. We want to turn them over in our hands and find out what makes them tick, or to feel like we’ve pushed past the face they show the world and teased from them something real or profound. We want them to open up to us, in whatever way – we want to be invited in.

If I find someone interesting, I want that connection. I’m not sure intimacy is the right word, because it’s often so fleeting – more like a glimpse of what intimacy would look like. Either way, I find that it often naturally takes a sexual form. I’m just as likely to find myself getting curious about how someone tastes or what sounds they make as they’re being fucked, as I am about the music they listen to or the things they’re afraid of. All of it – each little detail – goes into shaping who a person really is.

Of course the opportunity to satisfy that curiosity rarely presents itself. For one thing we’re socially conditioned to frown on (what’s presented as) promiscuity, even now, and that can make it hard to initiate those sorts of conversation. Asking someone whether we can go down on them is also just not the same as asking to see their Spotify playlist – and maybe that’s a good thing. As Remittance Girl also alluded to, if we entirely remove the transgressive element from sex, we risk stripping away much of the excitement – to some extent, I want to feel like there’s something riding on it when I ask that question. I want to feel my stomach knot, just a little bit, while waiting for the answer.

And sometimes I want the answer to be ‘no’. Not because I only want what I can’t have, or bullshit like that – but because sometimes it’s better not to find out. Reality can disappoint; even when it doesn’t – even when it’s fucking fantastic – it can rob you of the curiosity that proved compelling enough to risk asking the question in the first place.

~

<Spoiler alert – next three paragraphs discuss the end of Mad Men>

My first response to the closing scene in Mad Men was to slam down my laptop screen in disgust. That’s it? That’s fucking it?? Seven seasons of emotional investment, and all we’re left with is Don Draper sitting in a field doing fucking yoga?! It didn’t feel like a resolution. All it did was leave questions unanswered. Questions about the past and the future; about who this man really was, and whether he could ever truly be happy.

I thought about all those things in the hours after the episode finished. I cursed Matthew Weiner for not playing to the crowd and giving us proper answers. I tried to piece it all together in my head, and construct the ’10 years later’ scene the episode never gave us. The more I did that – the more I obsessed about it – the more I was grudgingly forced to accept that maybe the whole thing had been pitch-perfect in its build-up and execution.

Weiner held his nerve and did one of the hardest things – he let his audience take over and paint their own pictures on the canvas he laid out. We could decide for ourselves whether Dick Whitman lived out the rest of his life in a hippy commune, or whether Don Draper went back to New York and made that Coke ad. By not having our curiosity satisfied, we were given the opportunity to indulge and enjoy it.

~

The point I was trying to make in the bar last Sunday is that there are times when I’d prefer to hang on to my curiosity. Meeting up for drinks with my friend’s sister every couple of weeks has turned into a sort of expanded version of edge play: we’ve taken a mutual attraction and stoked it over a series of ‘dates’, till it glows with an intensity that I’m almost afraid to burn off. Not because it can’t live up to expectations, but because by finding out I’d lose something that may be even more valuable.

Things don’t always reach that stage, of course – that’s what I mean when I say I wrestle with it. The magpie in me wants the shiny new adventures too, which is why the curiosity balloon usually gets popped before it can really start to soar. That’s rooted in a different fear – the fear of missing out on opportunities. When I kiss someone I’ve just met, I’m mainly doing it to find out what sort of reaction the chemistry between us will generate, but I’m also trying to make sure I don’t have cause to regret not kissing her. It doesn’t much matter whether that leads to something more or not – the experience itself makes the decision worthwhile.

In the case of the woman in the park the other week, a perfectly pleasant date had led us to the point where an experimental kiss felt like the natural next step. Or, more to the point, like a natural next step. Taking it was an active choice, but not one I made with any thought of what might follow the kiss. There was no weighing up of pros and cons – no wider context. I kissed her simply because I wanted to know what it would feel like to do so. That desire – and the tingly anticipation that precedes the kiss itself – is often why I go on dates like that in the first place.

Making that choice is not always the right thing to do. There are times when curiosity can hurt other people in your life, and times when the short-term rush of adrenaline can give way to other kinds of regret or remorse. Occasionally it’s just flat-out disappointing. I’ve got it wrong plenty of times, I know that much, and I’m sure I’ll get it wrong in the future too.

Those failures won’t stop me trying though. I agree that when it comes to the gap between fantasy and reality, we should celebrate imperfection rather than allow it to weigh us down. It’s what keeps us curious, and what gives us the impulse to go out and make connections with people.

~

The two Eroticon sessions, 18 months apart, helped me to frame and unpick a tension within myself. A tension between competing and contradictory impulses: the need to know (to touch, to taste, to kiss) and the fear of what that knowledge might cost me – of what I might lose in its acquisition.

Over the last few years I’ve learned to live with the (false) perception that I’m basically a massive slut who will jump into bed at the drop of a hat. I’m not ashamed of who I am, and will never apologise for wanting to indulge my curiosity, but after a lot of thought I’m no longer sure the magpie label is quite right.

I imagine I will always want to swoop down and pick up the shiny thing – it’s just that these days I also have a better (and calmer) appreciation of the value of staying in my tree. Not least because it’s only from there that I can watch the sun dance brilliantly over its surface, simultaneously hiding and illuminating what lies beneath.

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.

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.

I exchanged a handful of friendly emails the other day with an ex-fuckbuddy. Those sorts of conversations make me very happy – it’s always nice to find that you can talk easily and naturally to someone you used to get naked with – and in her case we saw each other recently enough that just the act of chatting over email was enough to revive some pleasant (and pleasantly vivid) memories.

However, it wasn’t just the various mental images of her in my bed that distracted me from what, by then, was a wedding reception in full swing. There was also this, dropped casually into her first message:

“I’m at a hen do today. In the afternoon a very friendly guy came and took all his clothes off for us so we could draw him. He clearly enjoyed his job. As we all stared intently at him, his cock twitched and grew until he stood there, fully erect, in front of 10 giggling hens.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that my cock also twitched and grew simply as a result of reading that description. It’s a scenario that ticks so many boxes for me: exhibitionism, public nudity, CFNM, being controlled…and the blurring of whatever line that exists between uncontrollable arousal and a deep, burning shame.

It was also very well-timed, because this is something I’ve been meaning to write about ever since someone reminded me of an old blog post last week. That first experience of posing naked for someone  – all the way back in 2003 – was highly formative, it would seem; ever since then, I’ve got off on that feeling of being exposed, whether or not there’s a camera between me and my audience.

It can also be terrifying, of course, but that tends to be just another part of the appeal. I don’t get aroused by pain, but its close cousin, fear, can inject adrenaline in a way that goes straight to my dick. That kind of exposure taps into the same vein as things like exam pressure, or the feeling I used to get just before going on stage in school plays, or while warming up for my first match in county badminton tournaments. It’s the strange sort of performance anxiety on which I’ve always thrived.

That was certainly the case a few years ago, when I decided to take the plunge and volunteer as a life model for a class in Oxford. I was working through some body confidence issues, and rather than taking a practical, patient approach to resolving them, I pretty much decided to go hard or go home. Literally, as it turned out.

Looking back at it now is a surreal and slightly embarrassing experience, because I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I responded to an ad on Dailyinfo, an Oxford bulletin board, and quickly found myself invited along to an art studio on a Tuesday night. I hadn’t done any research, so I was completely in the hands of the person running the class, which paradoxically made me feel more secure about the whole experience.

Actually, that makes total sense within the context of my wider sexuality. I find it almost soothing to surrender control sometimes, as if the person telling me what to do is sending me on this fantastic mental holiday, where I can just relax and allow my brain to float out to sea (and yes, I have used that analogy before). When the teacher told me in a matter-of-fact voice that the class was about to begin, her clear, unambiguous assumption that I would just go and get undressed made it far easier to do just that.

The sessions themselves were equally relaxing, albeit with a dash of boredom and a pinch of arousal thrown into the mix. I think I expected my mind to race around at 100mph, and for my heart to beat its way out of my chest; as it was, the silence, and the concentration on the face of the students drawing me, induced this almost trance-like level of calm, which I struggled to shake off for quite a long time afterwards.

Twice I found myself getting erect in front of the class, and both times were the result of direct eye contact with a student. I (just about) got used to that intensity of gaze, I think; at first it was the only disconcerting thing about being there, and I actively tried not to look people in the eye, but as I relaxed into it there became something almost voyeuristic about watching people focus on their work – and on me. On the two occasions when that focus became a silent, two-way interaction, I suddenly became much more aware of my nudity; the consequent vulnerability/discomfort was intense, but also intensely sexual, just for a moment.

I imagine that a hen party generates a very different sort of environment – more giggling, clearly – so the two experiences are not directly comparable. Still, CFNM is a recurring fantasy of mine, and like most recurring fantasies it has several variations. My friend’s email revived in me that desire to be observed intently at close quarters, by multiple people, while completely exposed.

Maybe it would be an intimate cocktail party at someone’s house. Hired as the waiter, I’d be there simply to serve drinks while naked. No talking, no flirting, just a long, appraising glance every now and then from one of the guests: bold and open enough to make me blush and look down at the ground.

Or perhaps a much more casual, spontaneous thing. Two or three friends who I know well. We’re all drinking, and one of them dares me to get naked in front of them. They’re laughing as I strip, and I don’t know whether it’s my body or the situation that they find funny. They slap my arse, or take photos with their phones to show their other friends; one woman even gives my cock a quick tug, just because she can, and by that point she knows that I won’t say no.

A lot of the time there’s only one woman involved. She catches me masturbating in the office late at night, and makes me strip and pleasure myself as her price for not reporting me to HR. Or I lose a bet, so have to take my clothes off for her somewhere public, where I might be seen; she teases me the whole time, and combined with the fear of getting caught her teasing gets me really hard, till I have to make myself come in front of her.

I’m not any kind of a dancer, so there’s rarely a clear performance element to the fantasy. Or, rather, the performance lies in what’s not said, and in the lack of uninhibited movement. It’s a performance of the eyes, or the hands, or the attempt to regulate my breathing. I’m silent and still, even if all around me people are chatting, pointing, and making their amusement – or arousal – obvious. Especially if they’re doing that, in fact.

Because for me the appeal lies not just in giving up control, but in watching someone – or a group of someones – revel in taking it. In regarding me as something to observe and perhaps to play around with, like a cat with a ball of wool. The reason my fantasies in that area are so varied lies in the spectrum of intensity with which she – or they – can do that. All the way from studied indifference at one end to forensic focus at the other; my response shifts accordingly, but at each point along the way I can find something to latch onto, and be aroused by.

To some extent, that’s why I started this blog. The early posts are pretty much all dick pics because at that point I really wanted, and perhaps needed, that feeling of vulnerability and exposure. I still do sometimes. These days I’m more comfortable with the online nudity, it’s true, but in person I don’t think I’ll ever stop getting those butterflies right before stepping in front of a camera, or taking my clothes off while someone sits and watches me, glass of wine in hand. I’m not sure it’ll ever fail to get me hard either.

I don’t know whether I’ll do more life modelling further down the road. I suspect I’ll eventually want to try some variant of it, or to lift various other CFNM fantasies off my mind’s canvas and onto life’s page. Until then, it makes me happy to know that there are groups of women out there who enjoy watching a man take his clothes off and get hard in front of them. If nothing else, it makes those fantasies even easier to draw up in my head…