Tag Archives: sex

Witty but woebegone

If 2016 was the year of celebrity deaths, 2017 was surely the annum of celebrity downfalls.

Sparked by the toppling of one of Hollywood’s most prolific alleged sex pests Harvey Weinstein, an entire balustrade of power-wielding, pussy-grabbing men has come tumbling down in recent months; Kevin Spacey, Louis CK and Brett Ratner head up a very lengthy list. Of course, the most powerful man on the planet has had many a finger pointed in his orange direction, but so far, to no avail…as has another wormy, smarmy, self-obsessed star.

Continue reading Witty but woebegone

A newfound respect for my boobs

After a recent break up with my boyfriend of 6 years, aside from looks of pity from my friends and questions about grandchildren from my mother I got a new sense of freedom and a surge of creativity. I therefore decided to pack my shit and move to a place that could offer both inspiration for my writing and fun for my young spirit – London.

Now, it hasn’t really done much for my writing – and I’m starting to believe that spending my days stuffing my face with Doritos and watching old episodes of The Walking Dead might have something to do with that – but it managed to not be a disappointment in terms of fun. I spent the first couple of months pub crawling and talking to pretty much anybody who would reply to my semi-drunk ramble (met some nice people, we still keep in touch). Cute guys, free drinks and a newfound respect for my boobs. What’s not to like? I even managed to land my first one-night stand (do I still call it that if it was morning?)

It eventually became exhausting and quite tedious. Simple as it may sound to those of you who aren’t connoisseurs of the nightlife or simply aren’t female, it is a far from simple process.

The most excruciating part of it is shaving. Who the fuck came up with the idea that women – and ONLY women – should go through beauty rituals alarmingly similar to torture methods in order to be redeemed acceptable for mating? Far from being a flower-power Charles Manson loving and shower hating hippie, I strongly disagree with the idea that the female half of our species should have to pour hot wax on their body for the sake of having a (usually) very hairy male counterpart cum too early while not even bothering to notice the lack of pilosity on the lassie’s limbs and nether regions before passing out with a look of unmitigated bliss on their unshaven face. As if exuding hormones is not enough anymore.

Thus, here I was, in a seemingly hopeless situation until, out of nowhere (seriously, I have no fucking clue as to how I stumbled upon it) here comes my solution – Tinder. Oh yes, the mystery world of online dating was opening its gate to me through this little app on my phone, with a shortcut icon shaped as a flame. Because nothing burns stronger than desire (they should use that in the commercials).

Having Tinder is much like ordering a takeaway. No need to put on fancy clothes and drag your fat ass to an overpriced restaurant with a name you can’t (or won’t) say out loud; a few clicks and swipes and you have whatever you want delivered to your front door, so to speak (seriously, don’t invite complete strangers to your house). I’ve saved time, that I can spend instead with Norman Reedus, and money, to buy anything that’s not hot wax with.

The first thing to remember about Tinder – it’s a hook-up app. Dreaming about finding a boyfriend on Tinder is like putting on a von Trier movie and expecting unicorns who fart rainbows and Sean Bean characters who get to live for the entirety of the film. It’s not going to happen. – the sooner we accept it, the better.

The app is perfect for someone who enjoys single life and just wants to make it easier. Hey, it’s free sex without the pre-mating ritual of drinking shots until he looks like the lost twin of Ryan Gosling. Doesn’t get easier than that. Not to mention the luxurious option of un-matching him right after (thus shutting his mouth for eternity), rather than explaining you can’t stay for breakfast because your grandmother’s neighbour’s cat died and you must absolutely be there for them. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

That’s because it is. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with society? Apparently, men have to fit two criteria if they ever hope to be matched with someone: write down their height (absolutely must be taller than 6ft) and have a photo of them next to a tiger or other exotic animal. Alternatively, they can replace the animal with a cool sport or a photo of a headless six pack floating freely in the virtual universe of hormones translated as megapixels.

One of the two will get them a girl with a cute face. That’s it, really, because the fat ones only take selfies from shoulders up; if they won’t even show their shoulders, it’s bad – they probably have a double chin (no offence, but I’m not all about that bass). Also, out of all the men I talked to on Tinder (most of them in their late 20s/early 30s) not one got my references to music or film, which has me believing that men nowadays are stuck listening to Skrillex and watching The Hangover 3.

This whole Tinder issue says a lot about us as a society. The internet made it all easier. We have everything delivered to our door: groceries, appliances, books, clothes, boxes of shit (those cards really ARE against humanity, aren’t they?) And now sex. Simple and uncomplicated. Or is it?

In the end, on balance, pub crawling’s not so bad compared to blind first dates. (Remember that 6ft six-pack issue I was telling you about? Yeah, people lie about that.) Also, I’d rather run into my future “some guy I met” in a place I know and like, which will mean we at least have something in common. Not to mention I know where to start looking for him a few weeks later to tell him he gave me herpes or a baby.

Without breakfast

Roses are red, violets are blue, if you can’t hack ‘single’ then fuck you.

A month in the life of a serial dater:

I love John so much. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

I cannot fucking believe he cheated on me, the prick, what do I do now?

I’m so glad I’ve found Steve, he’s actually my life, he means the world to me.

If this looks familiar to you – the same people posting soppy statuses about different partners in the space of a few weeks – then you must sympathise with me here. You have to because, quite frankly, it’s fucking pathetic.

I don’t know if people have always been like this, or if Facebook has made it a million times worse by rubbing it in our faces, but why do some people have to be so needy? Why do people – particularly women in their late teens and early twenties (sorry to generalise) – feel as though they’re nothing unless they have a partner on their arm? They jump from partner to partner and, dare I say it, bed to bed, all the while trying to convince themselves that time alone is useless, and time with a partner, any partner, is better than the alternative.

Look, don’t get me wrong, I know. I know there’s a time limit on things, ladies. Your clocks are ticking – we can practically fucking hear the things echoing through your Facebook posts – so you want to find Mr Perfect to knock you up, take you down the aisle and change your light bulbs. That’s great. But why does it have to be now? Why, when you have the whole world at your feet, do you feel as though you need to settle down and find the partner who you’ll be with for the rest of your life?

They say life’s short, but if you’re with the wrong person, it can feel very long. Rushing into saying I Love You, Will You Marry Me, and Shall We Skip The Condoms is the relationship equivalent of hitting someone on the head with an iron bar and being sentenced to life inside. Fine – date if you have to. I’m a modern girl and casual sex can be great fun, but that doesn’t mean I have to marry the guy! In fact, usually, it’s for the best that I don’t.

Another newsflash – you don’t have to be head over heels in love to have sex. It’s just sex. Okay so I’m sure it’s great with a soul mate, but it can be just as fun as a one-off with the kinky fucker from that local band, too. And trust me, once I’m done with the kinky fucker, I’m happy to send him on his merry way. Without breakfast.

You have so much life to live, so many lessons to learn. Have fun, live a little. Don’t spend so much time looking for love that you can’t see what’s there to be enjoyed right in front of your eyes. Most of the time love catches you when you least expect it anyway, so you’re pretty much wasting your time looking in the first place.

Possibly worse than those always on the lookout for love are those who are looking whilst already in a relationship. You know he’s not perfect, but you don’t want to be alone, so you’ll stay with him until someone better comes along. Bitch, that’s not fair. You might not love him, but you never know – to him, you might be ‘the one’. You’re stringing him along when you know you want something more (whatever ‘more’ might be), yet he knows nothing about it. If you know you don’t want to stay with him, quit while you’re ahead, before you have a ‘little accident’ that ties you to him for life.

Have fun, get fucking wasted, you’re young. And if love comes along great. But do me a favour – stay with him at least long enough to get to know him before you label him ‘the best thing ever’.

Cats and dogs dressed up like cakes

There’s so much shit going on in the world it can be hard to stay on top of it all. I am concerned about the shit stuff, like the wars and famines and so on, but I can’t spend all day every day reading about it. I have to find something more light-hearted to drag me through the endless minutes of what can feel like an interminable day at work.

This regularly leads me to stories about animals. I can spend hours looking at pictures of cats and dogs dressed up like cakes, or other animals, or in people-uniforms. I know the animal isn’t complicit in the decision to wear fancy dress, so I do know on some level it’s a bit cruel. It’s a moral conflict I regularly choose to ignore, going in favour of kittens in cardies and dogs in clown outfits over finding out any more about the Islamic State and whether or not Cameron and Obama are going to get all up in their faces or not.

When the animal pictures run out, more often than I care to admit I find myself immersed in stories about the moderately well-known as I traverse the countless pages of crap that are slowly unpicking the very fabric of society: the celebrity gossip pages. I know this is wrong on just about every level. People are being blown up for no good reason, children are dying of hunger, innocent people are suffering day in, day out. The world is going to shit and, instead of reading about it so I can at least make that last sentence sound in some way informed, I’m reading about Paul Ross.

It’s been quite a turnaround for one of daytime TV’s faves; he’s been having a bit of the other behind his wife’s back and getting off his tits on Meow Meow the whole time.

I’m not a drug user. Not in a smug “my body is a temple” way, because I can and do imbibe my weekly allowance of alcohol units several times over, several times a week. I’ve had the occasional flirtation with some chemicals but it has never appealed to me enough to make it a regular thing. It’s expensive and the days of suicidal thoughts that followed my rare indulgences have proven enough of a deterrent to keep me on a straight and narrow, albeit slightly wobbly, binge-drinking path.

Although my experience with drugs is limited, I’m fairly certain of one thing, and this is where I think Paul has got more than a little bit confused; drugs don’t turn you gay.

If I wanted some Meow Meow I would have no idea where to get it from. I would have no idea how to take it (snort it? smoke it? eat it? shove it up my arse?) and I would have no idea what to expect, side-effects wise. However, if street drugs came with labels, I very much doubt they would come with something like this: “Warning: may cause episodes of sodomy and long-term homosexual relationships”.

You cheated on your wife, Paul. And of all the fucking unpleasant things you can do to someone that doesn’t involve causing them actual physical harm, that’s pretty high on the list. The fact you cheated on her with a man really is neither here nor there, so trying to blame the homosexual nature of your infidelity on the drugs is just pointless.

It’s the shaky, pointy finger of blame that comes out every time. I’ve used it myself. Alcohol has been cited as the reason for most of my misdemeanours. Most recently at a wedding when a classic 80s Madonna song came on and a friend and I apparently launched into the kind of synchronised dancing that looked like we’d been practising a routine for weeks. The quantities of white wine we had knocked back had imbued us with such appalling confidence and our uninhibited minds became as one. It was because we were drunk, Paul. Never in a sober moment have we managed or even attempted to recreate a pop video.

But it was done and dusted in a night, Paul. Sure, we’re both embarrassed and wish it hadn’t happened. We don’t want people thinking that as women in our thirties we’re going home and choreographing moves to pop songs and then Skyping each other to practice. But in the end no-one got really hurt.

The clear difference is this: none of my drunken mishaps have lasted for 14 months. Because if you’re doing something for 14 months, there is at least a hint of autonomy going on, whether you’re prepared to admit it or not.

I don’t doubt it would take an enormous amount of bravery to come out. Daytime TV doesn’t strike me as the kind of place to nurture and coddle an individual wrestling with some heavy-duty emotions. The viewing public want their presenters straight and married, and the world remains a homophobic place. I don’t envy you, Paul, but for fuck’s sake take responsibility for what you’ve done.

Being gay isn’t a crime. Well, it is in some repulsively narrow-minded countries, but it’s not here, thank Christ. Be gay or be straight; be whoever you are, which can sometimes be the hardest thing. Just don’t be a cunt to someone who trusts you and then blame it on some party drug.

If only I was as concerned with world affairs as I am with Paul Ross. Ah screw it. I’ll stick with the cats in costumes from now on.

Glorifying grubby slavery

I don’t hate porn because I’m some upstanding moral guardian. Those kinds of people secretly love the stuff and only pretend to disapprove of it. I hate porn because, despite having the lowest production values, the least talented crew and the worst acting of any entertainment medium, it somehow sees fit to take itself so fucking seriously.

“Oh baby, yeah! Yeah! You’re so good! How do you get to be this good? You’re so big, baby! Much bigger than anybody watching this shit! I can’t believe you’re doing things to me that no self-respecting girl would ever, ever, allow to happen to her body in a million fucking years! Oh yes! Give me those unrealistic expectations! Harder! Harder!”

Sex is not meant to be taken seriously. If you take sex seriously it’s either because you’re not getting any, because you feel inadequate in some way or another, or because your relationship is in trouble. The best sex any of us will ever have is the jolly, farcical fucking that puts one in mind of trying to adjust a television aerial in a bad 1970’s sketch show. “There! Right there! Hold it! Hold it!”

Sex is where you lose your inhibitions. You don’t care what you look like or how you’re doing it. Sex is fun and cheerful. Sex is a laugh. Sex should not scare or intimidate you and if it does there’s obviously something seriously wrong.

And yet the sex in Fifty Shades of Grey, both book and film trailer, looks pretty damned intimidating and scary to me. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t because it’s BDSM. I had a friend who was into BDSM once and they told me the key to the scene is that those who submit do so willingly and without fear. Let me emphasise again: without fear.

And yet from what I can gather the entire book and film is dominated with serious issues regarding depression, insecurity, vulnerability and a load of physiological crap that posits to be an in-depth study of the human mind, when in reality it’s just another grubby little soft-core porno made even worse by delusions of grandeur and a highly suspicious borderline sex offender as the main character. And who in the hell goes to watch a porno to find out why the main characters want to fuck?

It is true to say most feminists are not a particularly sympathetic bunch. Recently the male-hating militancy has become more and more virulent as individuals attempt to blame their ageless, sexless failings on their being of the supposed gentler sex, and I cannot help but think this has driven most reasonable women away from the movement. Nonetheless I find it very hard to believe that a single badly written book and inevitably worse film has suddenly had most of the female population yearning to be transformed into simpering, beaten slaves controlled by a sloany little yuppy who seems, to all intents and purposes, to be the lovechild of Patrick Bateman and Margaret Thatcher.

Perhaps Fifty Shades is a rebellion of sorts against the modern feminist movement that seems more interested in dictating to women than empowering them. Perhaps it is a woman’s way of telling these people that they have the right to choose to submit to a man just as they have the right to raise their children themselves or stay at home whilst their husband works. Perhaps it is all about choice.

But Fifty Shades of Grey is a lousy book that completely misunderstands the very concept of mental illness and ends up glorifying total, willing slavery, something no novel has attempted to do for over a hundred years. A sure sign, if ever one was needed, that we should be careful what we wish for.

Magaluf Girl

A week ago Britain was draped in red, white and blue. People filled the streets waving coloured cloth in support of the armed forces. Folks stood cheering and saluting as tanks filled with bombs drove by.

“Quick, get the cameras ready, fighter jets are about to fly over. Look at the way they sore majestically through the clouds.” I only ever see planes flying like this on special occasions. Think how lucky Afghan children are, they get to see planes like this ever day and they’re filled with bombs. Lucky, lucky bastards. I will never get to see a carpet-bombing in real life.

‘Thanks to our brave boys and girls’ was trending worldwide. The nation joined in support of the soldiers fighting in a war the country didn’t want. We love the pawns fighting on the chessboard of the military-industrial complex we pretend to hate. What they do is “moral, brave and courageous. They sacrifice their life for you so you can live in freedom and safety.”

I don’t really give a shit about the war. People like to kill people, it’s a fun old sport. Paintballing is enjoyable but hearing that gunshot explode and seeing a head get blown up is way more exciting. What I have a problem with is the way people justify this with bullshit language.

An example: this week a young British lady was on holiday in Magaluf, a perfect place to be when you are young and single or not single. It doesn’t matter if you have 157 partners back home waiting for your return. You are in Magaluf and the energy is pulsating. The sun is beating down, the drinks are 40% proof, priced at £1. Fuck missing that alcohol induced opportunity because you’re 2 grams through the most potent MDMA, you are pure ecstasy, the world is love and you are too. Sex is raining on the roof, sex is dripping down the walls. You are fucking. You are fucking like an ox on steroids, no man or machine or god is stopping you from coming. Be you male or female you are pulling the vinegar face of happiness.

So this young lady I will now be calling Magaluf Girl was embracing this craziness. But the CCTV of modern life captured her in this moment; someone filmed her on a smartphone and posted a video online of her living the madness. Now the world has seen two minutes of her existence where she’s sucking the flaccid dicks of strangers for a cocktail drink.

1) Fuck that asshole for putting it up. He is a fucking creep. I’m pretty confident Magaluf Girl wouldn’t have wanted that.
2) Fuck the papers for making it a national story exploiting a woman’s right to do what the fuck she wants or in this case the want she fucks.

Magaluf Girl, this is a wonderful thing if this was something you wanted to do. Magaluf Girl, I celebrate it, you are young and beautiful and have the right to bring joy to the 20-odd men you blew as long as it brings joy to yourself. If it was something you wanted to do it was a great way to display happiness and love. We should all feel confident enough to take off our clothes, party and go balls deep into a stranger without feeling shame or hate from others. Magaluf Girl, your next cocktail is on me. Just please don’t let the bastards grind you down.

But the press and people of the Britain, like the vultures they are, have picked apart this moment and have slut shamed her. Calling her “cheap, sickening and immoral” and this is where I get back to bullshit language. We live in a culture where it’s ‘moral’ to be a hired killer for a government that drone strikes the innocent of other countries because they’re brown and don’t follow “our” agenda. It’s ‘moral’ to fire bomb and set villages ablaze. It’s ‘moral’ to stack people against their will naked in pyramids but it’s ‘immoral’ to express love with your lips wrapped a throbbing cock in a club with a buzzing DJ set.

The way humans talk tells us everything we need to know about us shaven apes. We have a lot of evolving to do.

Rear-ended

Driving is undoubtedly one of the most frustratingly enjoyable things to do in life, right up there with anal. Amazingly fun for you, the driver; perhaps less fun for the person in the seat beside you.

I love driving fast. I love taking a sharp corner at just the right speed so you don’t roll over, feeling just a touch of a rush. Passing that car in the 200m straight with a semi barreling down on you in the other lane. Just because I can. Like anal, it’s pretty great, almost all of the time, for one of us.

As with the other thing though, people inevitably have to go and ruin it. For every great story about anal, you’ve got 10 friends that tell you about the time they got shit on their dick and it was gross, the girl just wasn’t into it, you didn’t know how to prep an anus, and she cried, or you cried, or you both cried together.

You then never want to even try anal, and that’s a shame because it’s really quite great. Sure it takes some doing, but trust me, you’ll love it, she’ll love it, and your landlord who finds the tape when you moved out will love it most of all. It’s the same with motherfucking driving. You’re just dealing with a lot more assholes.

And that’s aside from the fuckers on the road, we’ll get to them in a minute. You’ve got to deal with all the motherfuckers at home, or at work, in your family, and worst of all in the passenger seat telling you what the fuck to do. “Hey I saw you leaving work yesterday, you just blew through that yellow, it’s much better to just stop and wait for the light.”

It doesn’t ever fucking stop. Everyone and their mother is a great driver, they all know what’s best. Why then does your car have a dent in the rear bumper? Oh, you got rear ended? Was it because you stopped for the fucking yellow? It was! Really not your fault you say, it was the asshole in that black M3 who was going too fast. Oh I see, he thought you’d run the yellow and you didn’t because you can’t fucking drive.

Seriously, get a fucking bus pass. You can’t park, you can’t signal, your car’s so shitty you can’t even get up to speed to merge into traffic properly. It doesn’t corner well so you go slow as fuck on my nice mountain roads. Maybe it does play the latest Skrillex song well since you dumped your welfare into a “Sick fucking sub brah”, but you still can’t fucking drive.

Yes mom, I’ll drive home carefully. Yes mom, I wear a seat belt. Yes mom, I use my lights at night. Now really those things are just common sense – it’s dark, you need to see, turn your goddamn lights on. I like being alive, so when that other asshole hits me I want to be strapped in.

This is what gets me though: drive carefully. Okay yeah, I’ve made mistakes on the road, though not many. Never crashed, never injured anyone, myself included, never caused a wreck and left before I saw any damage. Of course I drive carefully, because I fucking love it.

I do go fast. Really fast. I’m always at the speed limit, and sometimes I’m over it. Usually. Because of this speed though, I have to pay even more attention to the goddamn road and the assholes on it than you sitting in the left lane going 60 when the posted speed was 80.

And please learn to deal with rain. I live in a city that sees a solid six months of very cold winter, every year. We deal with snow, ice, and Asian drivers constantly, and yet rain turns the biggest man in his new Merc into a blubbering baby. Ice scares me so much more, as does snow, yet rain is what makes my city crawl. It’s just water. If you know how to drive, which since you’re on the fucking road you should, you can deal with a little hydroplaning.

So as far as I can tell driving is amazing, the same as anal. It’s great for you, most of the time. Everyone else is just out to ruin a good bit of fun for you. So drive, as fast as you want, in whatever lane you want, with or without familial advice and fuck that asshole, ‘cause fuck you.