Drew Barrymore once said at the end of Never Been Kissed: “To write well, you must write what you know.” Sex is central to relationships, and disastrous relationships seem to be a trend in my life, so it seems only fitting to write about less-than-ideal sex.
There is so much pressure to have a fulfilling sex life these days; it is the never ending subject of my fashion magazines, rubbed in my face during Gossip Girl (when I realise that I may never have passionate sex with Chuck Bass) and even in my 18th century French literature class, when it becomes clear to me that even lesbians in convents were having better sex than me.
Is it me? Am I just one of those women who will never achieve the “never ending orgasm” that my weird-sex-obsessed friend has promised is possible?
Upset, Confused, Lost, I stumbled across an article in GLAMOUR magazine that would give me answers to the questions I hadn’t dare asked. Then it all became clear - It wasn’t me. It was HIM. It was all the men I had ever slept with. Out of the 8 key problems identified, ranging from “what if he tastes weird?” to “he’s HUGE”, I could identify with most of them. I had experience a range of mishaps from the sexual spectrum of bad-sex inducing problems. Yup, I had had the too big, the quite small, the silent type, the hurling monkey.
I feel like the article failed to tackle some important issues – for example, how should you prevent yourself from laughing if an elbow is being used to massage what he thinks is your clitoris but is actually your pee-hole? Is it okay to shout at your boyfriend if he throws your back out during sex in the shower?
Even when it came to the more general questions, I felt GLAMOUR didn’t offer the right answers – what if I didn’t feel like making a sex video to show my partner that his sex face turned me off? What if I didn’t feel like waking up at 6am to make avocado smoothies to alter the taste of my boyfriend’s semen?
If you think about it, it is undoubtely the man’s fault. Of course, the woman could, if she wished to do so, improve the quality of the sex but can’t fundamentally do anything bad. That’s why I think “Virgin Schools” should be compulsory for all young men; a nice, healthy environment where they could look an accurate geography of the vagina and learn to be selfless lovers.
Until that happens, I guess we’re all screwed. But what’s so bad about bad sex? At least its entertaining and let’s face it, it can never be that bad. Maybe the magazines were wrong – why should I go on a special diet to help tone my pelvic floor when I’d rather eat my own weight in Reese’s Cups? I’m not sure any sex could justify the torture that would be a month of steamed fish and red cabbage.
When I think of myself, alone in a world full of good-sex-Nazis pressuring me to try adventurous sexual positions and use scary looking sex toys, I comfort myself by recounting a saying said to me by one of my best friends - “The most overrated thing in the world is sex, and the most underrate thing is a good bowel movement”.
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
No, I won't be yours.
That time of year had come again and this time, there was no escape. It was everywhere. Couples were kissing in front of me in the queue at Starbucks whilst I waited for my quadruple shot latte, disgusting teddy bears holding “I love you” hearts were replacing my beloved chocolate raisins in the confectionery aisle at the supermarket, flower stools were springing up on every corner.. There was no escaping Valentine’s Day.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not one of those Valentine’s haters, I’m just merely someone going through a crazy i-hate-love/couples/relationships stage and so obviously, am not enamored with all the commercial bullshit that goes with it. Having said that, I still checked my mail in case there was a cheeky card waiting for me from a secret admirer – there wasn’t. Instead, there was a card addressed to my 50 plus, married mother, which I obviously opened. It wasn’t even one of those grotesque sexual cards, with tacky slogans such “let’s do the naked tango” or “I love all the bones in your body, especially mine” splashed across the front that I had seen polluting the aisles of Paperchase. Nope, it was an anonymous card, with a flower on the front and a hershey’s kiss inside. Unbelievable.
I did, however, have a date that evening. Feeling like a traitor to my firm relationships-are-the-anti-christ beliefs, it was short and sweet, flowerless and of course, sexless.
The Wednesday before was the setting for a much funnier event. The date had been very planned – this guy was super posh, not a hair out of place, the kind who wears a shirt skiing. We were supposed to go for shisha, then a bar, then finally onto a club. The fact that he was clearly a Nazi when it came to organising dates significantly put me off. So we met for shisha, had some silly banter about the correct way to pour tea and whether having backlava with shisha should be outlawed, then moved on to a pub, then to a club nearby.
All was going fine, except for the minor blip when a man shouted abuse at me for wearing a fur coat – I think “animal killer” were his exact words. 1am, my phone rings. It was a phone call from a friend who was staying with me, and who was standing outside my front door. It was -5 degrees, she had open toe shoes, it would have been criminal to keep her waiting, right? I inform my date of the problem, and strangely, he starts getting angry. How strange, I mean fair enough if he was pissed off that he clearly wasn’t getting a goodbye kiss let along a shag, but how pathetic to display emotion so blatantly. I probed him about why he was being quiet, and he tells me I was using “the classic girl excuse” to get out of our every-second-planned soiree. He walked me home but I was still outraged. This goes against all rules of dating etiquette.
The next day I received a text from him and feeling quite guilty, I replied, short and sweet.
Me : “Thanks for last night! Hope you’re well x x”
Him : “I’m very well thank you. Are you well?”
I am pretty sure I don’t need to explain myself any further. There will be no future dates. Next!
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not one of those Valentine’s haters, I’m just merely someone going through a crazy i-hate-love/couples/relationships stage and so obviously, am not enamored with all the commercial bullshit that goes with it. Having said that, I still checked my mail in case there was a cheeky card waiting for me from a secret admirer – there wasn’t. Instead, there was a card addressed to my 50 plus, married mother, which I obviously opened. It wasn’t even one of those grotesque sexual cards, with tacky slogans such “let’s do the naked tango” or “I love all the bones in your body, especially mine” splashed across the front that I had seen polluting the aisles of Paperchase. Nope, it was an anonymous card, with a flower on the front and a hershey’s kiss inside. Unbelievable.
I did, however, have a date that evening. Feeling like a traitor to my firm relationships-are-the-anti-christ beliefs, it was short and sweet, flowerless and of course, sexless.
The Wednesday before was the setting for a much funnier event. The date had been very planned – this guy was super posh, not a hair out of place, the kind who wears a shirt skiing. We were supposed to go for shisha, then a bar, then finally onto a club. The fact that he was clearly a Nazi when it came to organising dates significantly put me off. So we met for shisha, had some silly banter about the correct way to pour tea and whether having backlava with shisha should be outlawed, then moved on to a pub, then to a club nearby.
All was going fine, except for the minor blip when a man shouted abuse at me for wearing a fur coat – I think “animal killer” were his exact words. 1am, my phone rings. It was a phone call from a friend who was staying with me, and who was standing outside my front door. It was -5 degrees, she had open toe shoes, it would have been criminal to keep her waiting, right? I inform my date of the problem, and strangely, he starts getting angry. How strange, I mean fair enough if he was pissed off that he clearly wasn’t getting a goodbye kiss let along a shag, but how pathetic to display emotion so blatantly. I probed him about why he was being quiet, and he tells me I was using “the classic girl excuse” to get out of our every-second-planned soiree. He walked me home but I was still outraged. This goes against all rules of dating etiquette.
The next day I received a text from him and feeling quite guilty, I replied, short and sweet.
Me : “Thanks for last night! Hope you’re well x x”
Him : “I’m very well thank you. Are you well?”
I am pretty sure I don’t need to explain myself any further. There will be no future dates. Next!
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Where it all went wrong.
Thinking back, the cataclysm that would be my sex life had been predicted long ago. My first sexual experience – boy on top, two thrusts, ejaculation, him crying, me walking out – should have sent alarm bells ringing in my head. Somehow, I was an idiot and slept with him again.
A line from Sex & the City rings very true here, and rather encapsulates how I felt then about the experience: “Fuck me badly once, shame on you. Fuck me badly twice, shame on me.” I should have listened to Samantha Jones. After such a disaster, things could only get better, right?
Wrong. This tragic event was followed by another year of abstinence, only briefly punctuated by a brief flirtation with a boy who not only had a penis so small it made me feel like I was molesting a child, but who was so concious of his tiny willy that he once said to me, “If you don’t touch my bollocks, I will feel like they are too small.” Obviously, that was it and it was over there and then.
I then met a guy that I, as a young, silly girl, was convinced was my soulmate. Our first date was in a piano bar, and to this day is still the only time I remember kissing someone and being so wrapped up in it that I was oblivious to everything else around me. We kissed for hours, and danced in the middle of this tiny, dark, basement piano bar even though no once followed our lead. I thought I had finally found my prince charming (albeit a bit early as I wasn’t even close to being out of my teenage years); that’d we’d get married in a huge castle in Scotland with a marquee , a bagpipe band manned with men in kilts and sporrans, go travelling around the world reading beatnik prose.. but no.
He turned out to be a complete bastard. He had had another girlfriend the entire time.
Heartbreak ensued, but I didn’t even have time to look for a new man who wouldn't be a cheating arsehole on match.com/at the gym, as my rebound turned out to be the guy I would be with for the best part of four years. It wasn’t love at first sight; in fact, after meeting him, I remember telling my best friend that if I were forced to be in a room alone with him, I would kill him, then kill myself. So, as you can see, not the best first impression. I found him boring, pompous and too serious for me; but he found a way to change my mind and I discovered that he was a truly great person.
We had good run, but after a few years it became obvious it couldn’t work anymore – we had lived in different cities for the past year and would theoretically have to do so for another 3, and realise that long-distance just wasn’t for us.
At this point, an intelligent decision would have been to pick any of the 300 horny teenage boys who lived in the same university halls of residency as me, which would have, quite frankly, helped me get over myself. Instead, I made the catastrophic decision of entertaining the possibility of going for my male best friend. Classic mistake.
And this is when the shitshow started.
A line from Sex & the City rings very true here, and rather encapsulates how I felt then about the experience: “Fuck me badly once, shame on you. Fuck me badly twice, shame on me.” I should have listened to Samantha Jones. After such a disaster, things could only get better, right?
Wrong. This tragic event was followed by another year of abstinence, only briefly punctuated by a brief flirtation with a boy who not only had a penis so small it made me feel like I was molesting a child, but who was so concious of his tiny willy that he once said to me, “If you don’t touch my bollocks, I will feel like they are too small.” Obviously, that was it and it was over there and then.
I then met a guy that I, as a young, silly girl, was convinced was my soulmate. Our first date was in a piano bar, and to this day is still the only time I remember kissing someone and being so wrapped up in it that I was oblivious to everything else around me. We kissed for hours, and danced in the middle of this tiny, dark, basement piano bar even though no once followed our lead. I thought I had finally found my prince charming (albeit a bit early as I wasn’t even close to being out of my teenage years); that’d we’d get married in a huge castle in Scotland with a marquee , a bagpipe band manned with men in kilts and sporrans, go travelling around the world reading beatnik prose.. but no.
He turned out to be a complete bastard. He had had another girlfriend the entire time.
Heartbreak ensued, but I didn’t even have time to look for a new man who wouldn't be a cheating arsehole on match.com/at the gym, as my rebound turned out to be the guy I would be with for the best part of four years. It wasn’t love at first sight; in fact, after meeting him, I remember telling my best friend that if I were forced to be in a room alone with him, I would kill him, then kill myself. So, as you can see, not the best first impression. I found him boring, pompous and too serious for me; but he found a way to change my mind and I discovered that he was a truly great person.
We had good run, but after a few years it became obvious it couldn’t work anymore – we had lived in different cities for the past year and would theoretically have to do so for another 3, and realise that long-distance just wasn’t for us.
At this point, an intelligent decision would have been to pick any of the 300 horny teenage boys who lived in the same university halls of residency as me, which would have, quite frankly, helped me get over myself. Instead, I made the catastrophic decision of entertaining the possibility of going for my male best friend. Classic mistake.
And this is when the shitshow started.
It wasn't meant to be like this.
Let’s make it clear; I never intended to be practically re-virginised at the age of twenty.
Things seemed to be going well – I have fantastic friends, a gorgeous house in London, a wardrobe full of clothes.. but a distinct lack of a sex life. Of course, it hasn’t always been like this – I did have a boyfriend of 3 years but after we called it quits last february – nothing. Weeks turned into months, and after I could no longer pass off my embarassingly asexual existence as a pretend vow of giving up sex for lent, I decided to see if I could a whole year. I never thought of myself as a nymphomaniac, but I certainly never imagine that 12 months would pass and not one opportunity would even present itself.
I’m sure the general assumption will be that I’m some sort of repulsive troll with back hair and no teeth, but I’m actually alright looking. I just seem to attract very unusual people. I guess it must have something to do with my penchant for ‘quirky’ looking geeks. I have actually been seeing someone for the best part of six months, but so far, its been the most dysfunctional relationship known to man – the most fitting word to describe it, although crass, would definitely be “shitshow”.
Of course, I recognise that I’m not perfect – I’m just a little bit dramatic, quite traditional (although others would just describe me as a prude, I stand by that intimacy with a stranger freaks me out) and very indecisive. I have made catastrophic dating mistakes over the past year, but need to change my ways, rise from my ashes as in six months time I will be moving to the middle east – if I can’t get laid in London, I have no hope of doing so in Arabia.
I will blog my dating horrors over the past year and obviously, tell you of any that should arise in the near future. I’m confident that there will be many, my life seems to be punctuated by excruciatingly embarrassing moments.
Things seemed to be going well – I have fantastic friends, a gorgeous house in London, a wardrobe full of clothes.. but a distinct lack of a sex life. Of course, it hasn’t always been like this – I did have a boyfriend of 3 years but after we called it quits last february – nothing. Weeks turned into months, and after I could no longer pass off my embarassingly asexual existence as a pretend vow of giving up sex for lent, I decided to see if I could a whole year. I never thought of myself as a nymphomaniac, but I certainly never imagine that 12 months would pass and not one opportunity would even present itself.
I’m sure the general assumption will be that I’m some sort of repulsive troll with back hair and no teeth, but I’m actually alright looking. I just seem to attract very unusual people. I guess it must have something to do with my penchant for ‘quirky’ looking geeks. I have actually been seeing someone for the best part of six months, but so far, its been the most dysfunctional relationship known to man – the most fitting word to describe it, although crass, would definitely be “shitshow”.
Of course, I recognise that I’m not perfect – I’m just a little bit dramatic, quite traditional (although others would just describe me as a prude, I stand by that intimacy with a stranger freaks me out) and very indecisive. I have made catastrophic dating mistakes over the past year, but need to change my ways, rise from my ashes as in six months time I will be moving to the middle east – if I can’t get laid in London, I have no hope of doing so in Arabia.
I will blog my dating horrors over the past year and obviously, tell you of any that should arise in the near future. I’m confident that there will be many, my life seems to be punctuated by excruciatingly embarrassing moments.
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