Listening between the Lines

I live with a couple – a very nice couple who are each other’s polar opposites. We all get along swimmingly. Hamish is as burly as bedamned. He’s like a big bold dog – loyal and lovable, but liable to eat the postman. Jane is a quick witted English Rose – she has beautiful manners, and could drink a shipfull of sailors under the table. I’m very fond of them both.

If you met Jane and Hamish for the first time you’d be likely to think ‘how on earth does she handle him?’ I know I certainly did. But having lived with them for about a year and a half now, I realise that there’s a lot more going on than what’s on the surface.

The other day Hamish came home from the pub, where he’d been having a pint with his soon to be married mate Arnie. He was a bit put out because Arnie had been pressuring him to go to the stag do in Bratislava. Now if you or I or the monkey’s uncle were a bit put out, we’d probably pull up beside the fire, have a quiet bevy, and gently unburden ourselves of our woes to our nearest and dearest. Hamish being Hamish, he began to deliver an animated oratory at a deafening pitch from centre stage in the living room. Jane and I watched from the sofa as he stamped and gesticulated.

‘And what I don’t like’ said Hamish, ‘is how he finks he can make me feel guilty, when it would cost me a thousand bloody quid for the weekend! Flights’d be four hundred. There’s a recession! I’m a builder mate – he knows my job is touch and go. Where does he fink I’m going to get a thousand bloody quid from?’

‘Could you turn down the volume please’ interjected Jane from beside me.

Hamish proceeded in a fractionally more hushed tone for approximately half a sentence:

‘A thousand quid? As if I’d spend a thousand quid on a lad’s weekend away in Eastern Europe. And he knows we’re planning to go to Japan, me and you love, as soon as we can afford it. Eastern bloody Europe for a bloody sleazy stag weekend. Not exactly original, is it? It’d be disgusting. It’s his brother booked it. If Arnie booked it he would’ve come up with somefing a bit more imaginative than ‘let’s all go off to Eastern Europe and have fake tits bounced about in our faces while some greasy jack in the corner is skimming hundreds off our credit cards.’

‘And what does Charlene think of it?’ I asked

‘She doesn’t know what it’d be like. If she knew the half of it she’d be having none of it. And she wants me to go, of course. ‘But you’ve got to go Hamish,’ she says. She finks I’d keep an eye. Like I’d be able. I can fink of nothing worse. Load of boozed up lads, forking out cash they can’t afford for plastic tarts. Girlfriends at home. And I said that to him, I said, I’m the only one with responsibilities. I have the house. They all think they’re still in college – Daddy’s paying for everyfing. They’re not living in the real world. And then for Arnie to have the cheek to try an make me feel guilty. What utter bullshit. What utter fucking bullshit’.

‘Well I’m sorry you’ve rowed darling’ said Jane, ‘it would have been much nicer if Arnie had decided on something more inclusive.’

‘It’s his brother you see,’ reiterated Hamish ’spoilt little shit. He’s a right wanker.’

‘Yes’ replied Jane, ‘he is a bit. And it’s not very fair to expect all of Arnie’s friends to have the means or the inclination to jet off to Bratislava.’

‘It’s pissed me right off, is what it’s done,’ concluded Hamish, storming out of the room and out the back door to perform some task or other with all his enraged masculine energy.

Jane and I were silent for a moment in his wake.

‘You wouldn’t have let him go, would you?’ I asked.

‘I most certainly would not’ she said.

Distance Doesn’t Care

It was the night before he left. I was upstairs in the study marking papers; he was downstairs having a glass of wine with my flatmate. I couldn’t concentrate. Why was I wasting time marking papers when I only had him for a few more hours? I went down to the sitting room. ‘Are you coming to bed?’ I asked. ‘Sure’ he said, ‘I’ll just finish this glass’. I went on up to wait for him. I stripped down to my underwear and got in under the covers, cocooned and contemplative, propped up by pillows. The door creaked open and in he came. I watched him take off his shoes and his t-shirt.

‘I don’t want to be Batgirl’ I said. ‘Okay’ he replied, understandably disappointed that the skin tight polyester would be remaining in the wardrobe. ‘Are you alright,’ he asked, after his disappointment had abated. ‘I am sad because you’re going’ I answered. ‘It wont be long til next time’ he reassured me. I knew that. He took off all his clothes and got in under the covers. We pulled close and kissed. He started to touch me gently with his right hand, while feeling around for wherever that little vibrator had rolled to with the other. He found it and turned it on; it purred as he pressed it against me.

But my head was full of the wrong thoughts. I tried to ignore them and roll with the pleasure, but they would persist. My body struggled to hum, while my head screamed all the resentment and anger that I feel when the person I love has to leave. The buzzing stopped. My lover had clicked the vibrator off. He reached across me and put it on the dressing table, saying ‘I don’t think this is what you need right now’. He curled me up in his arms and I laid my cheek on his chest. ‘I think this is what you need’ he said. I fell asleep.

The next day he left. The next night I couldn’t find what I needed anywhere.

Anal Beads

Ooh-err Missus. Anal Beads? Yes. Anal Beads. Daring, aren’t I? Don’t knock em til you’ve tried em.

So, I read a post over on metanotherfrog.com by the trés charmante Elizabeth Rose about the various bum toys stocked at Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium. And I thought to myself, there’s something I’ve never tried before. Sh! were offering metanotherfrog’s readers a nice little £5 discount on anal toys and lube, so I decided I’d take the plunge and buy some risqué equipment for my sex toy arsenal.

I had a browze on the Sh! website (which is full of deadly things) and, after much deliberation, picked out these funky looking bendy beads. Things got off to a bad start because the discount code wouldn’t work. I decided to get the beads and some lube anyways because my lover was coming and I wanted to have treats for us to play with. But then I got an e-mail saying that the beads were out of stock and I wouldn’t have them for a few weeks. My pre-menstrual hormones kicked in and I wrote the Sh! ladies a ratty note to the effect of ‘Raa! No discount! Raa! I paid for three day postage for a reason! Raa! I’m not happy! Raa! I’m not telling the people who read my blog about you. So there! Raa Raa Raaaaar!’ Which, upon reflection, wasn’t very patient or nice of me. But anyways, the Sh! folks were really great and wrote back with something to the effect of (the stuff in brackets is the stuff I would’ve said If I’d been them): ‘Dear Cherished Customer (Miss Velociraptor), we are sorry about the discount code. (Shit happens.) Here’s your (measly) fiver back. We have managed to get the beads from our suppliers (which was a headache none of us needed today), and the moment they arrive we will send them out to you by express post (you impatient harpee). We hope this is okay (as we’d hate for you to die of anal bead deprivation).

Verdict on Sh! customer service? Excellent. They are way nicer than I would be if I ran a sex toy shop.

The beads arrived at noon last Saturday. I bounded downstairs from my love-nest in a hastily fastened dressing gown to relieve the postman of his smutty cargo, then bounded back upstairs to unwrap and examine. I found the Sh! girls had even thrown in a little prezzie for free (they’re waaaay nicer than I would be if I ran a sex toy shop). The anal beads are, although my choice of adjective might seem incongruent, lovely. They’re a pretty purple colour and feel all soft and silky. They’re silicon rubber, but there’s no weird chemical smell off them. Basically, they look and feel like they’re high quality. They’re made by a German company called Fun Factory and they come with a little sachet of lube and some leaflets about other Fun Factory products, which all look so colourful and cool that you’d be tempted to keep them on the mantlepiece. On the front of one of the leaflets, entangled in a loving embrace, is the most German looking couple ever. My lover and I did their voices: ‘Ja Helga, these anal beads are the romance’, ‘Ja Fritz, it is gud I had the enema thisen morgen’. And we laughed. Because we’re not big or clever.

So, the anal beads in hand, we had to decide who was going first. I volunteered my lover. This was only fair, as he puts things in my bottom all the time. The following statement is often true: straight men are frightened of putting things in their asses, but then when things are put in their asses they really quite like it. The answer to the conundrum this poses is lots and lots of lube and gentle warm-up finger action. I bought a big bottle of Maximus from Sh! too. It’s made by liquid silk and it kicks, um, ass. I recommend.

What you’re supposed to do with anal beads, for both boys and girls, is slide them gently in as far as is comfortable, and then pull them out slowly as you’re coming. For guys, apparently, this stimulates, in waves, the prostate and the nerve responsible for ejaculation. For girls it stimulates all the sensitive nerve endings back there and is, y’know, just damn kinky. I like to combine anal play in general with a vibrator on my clit. There’s just something about the two sensations that makes me shake til I short-circuit.

I have to say that for my lover and I, adventurous sorts that we are, the anal beads are a winner. They really heighten sensation and add an intensity to our sexual shenanigans. If you’re feeling experimental, give them a go. You might have fun.

Great in Bed

The other day my lover and I were sipping cocktails in Brick Lane with a good friend of ours, when said good friend asked an unfortunate question: ’so how did you two hook up?’ I usually answer this with ‘he got me drunk and took advantage’, and this time was no exception. ‘HEY!’ said my lover. ‘Hey what?’ said I. ‘I did not get you drunk and take advantage. You got yourself drunk’. Fair point. Leaving only the accusation that he took advantage. ‘I did not! I was a perfect gent’. Hmmm. I’ll tell the story and let ye decide for yerselves.

So myself and my future-lover had been great friends since college. On some level or another I might have known there was a bit of a spark, but I never in a million imagined anything would happen between us. He was, by the standards of my 20 year old self, ancient, and was a father of two and had a long term partner. And anyways I was busy shifting all of the hot boys and most of the hot girls in Galway. He was brilliant for animated debates in the college bar, but not exactly someone I thought of in romantic terms. Although I’m sure wrecking homes is great craic altogether.

By the time he broke up with his long term partner I’d moved to Dublin and found myself a boyfriend. The boyfriend was an asshole. I could not help but notice that my future-lover was jealous when I introduced them.

By the time I broke up with the asshole it was nearly time for me to move to London, but I went on home to Galway first for a few weeks first. My future-lover was, as usual, one of the first people I called for a pint when I got there. I knew he’d been looking forward to having me home for a bit. He’d texted a few weeks before to ask how long I’d be around for. I texted back ‘Three weeks. You’ll be sick of the sight of me’. ‘Pass the lucozade’ he replied. ‘Uh-oh,’ I thought.

Anyways, I was having a crap time in my parents’ gaf because my Dad was after trying to kill himself and you could have cut the air with a razor, so I stayed in my future-lover’s place some nights. And then one day was particularly crap and I texted him and said ‘I could do with a drink’, so he came and picked me up from the sticks and I proceeded to get hammered on whiskey. It was class. Lots of good folks around the town. We went for a boogie in the Róisín Dubh, and I slagged my future-lover off for being utterly unable to move his elbows. Then we got chips and went back to his and sat up on the couch drinking whatever there was to drink (I might not remember what it was, but I know I didn’t need to be drinking it).

Some of you at this point might be thinking – she goes back to his house, bolloxed on whiskey, she’s sitting up with him, all cosy on his couch, getting more bolloxed – he hardly took advantage, there’s obviously a reason she’s there. But, in my defence, it always ended up being the two of us staying up and getting hammered, and I often crashed in his gaf, so nothing seemed out of the way or unusual. Nothing, that is, until he said:

‘Do you want to ruin our friendship by sleeping with me?’

Smooth, eh? What’s a girl to reply to such a suave and witty proposition? Well, looking back I can think of all sorts of clever things I might have said. I might have said ‘oh hell why not, the last five years haven’t meant that much to me anyway’. I could have said nothing, but swung myself onto his lap, grabbed his face and kissed him. But, as I think I may have mentioned, I was baloobas. So I said:

‘Yay! Free hugs.’

Sexy. Not what he wanted to hear. Upon deliberation, I decided that I would sleep in his bed with him, but only if he gave me tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt, and only if he turned around and looked at the wall while I put them on. The next thing I knew it was morning and I woke up very warm and comfy in his trackie pants, t-shirt, and hairy arms. ‘Uh-oh,’ I thought.

Upon sensing my burgeoning consciousness, my future lover requested that I turn around. I thought this over for a while, and figured that it couldn’t make the situation a whole lot more complicated than it already was. I turned around and there was his face and he kissed me. I got a bit freaked out and turned away again. So he asked me to turn around again. I thought this over and figured it couldn’t possibly make the situation even more complicated. I turned around and there was his face and he kissed me and said ‘I want to make love to you’. ‘I want to wee’ I replied.

In the en suite, weeing, I decided that I would go back to my future-lover and explain to him that I did not think it was a good idea for us to sleep together because our friendship was very important to me and I was too hungover. I flushed away the far too yellow contents of the toilet bowl and returned to his bedside. ‘Water’ I said. He pointed. I gulped the full pint noisily and returned the glass to the floor. He was looking up at me, confused, amused, hopeful. I pulled off the tracky pants and t-shirt and got back into bed.

There’s this concept that some people are just great in the sack and others are libido-less loafers, but I reckon that no one’s good in bed really, rather people learn to be good in bed together. The first time we ‘made love’, neither myself nor my lover could’ve been honestly described as ‘great in bed’. Or even ‘mediocre in bed’. In fact, I think ‘terrible in bed’ might be the most fitting turn of phrase. Never let it be imagined that I do not think my lover is smokin’ between the sheets (and in the back of the car, and over the side of the couch). But the first time we had sex? A disaster. Maybe some folks fall lust-crazed into bed for the first time with their future-lovers and have their minds utterly blown by skillfully channelled raw animal passion. Me, my head was full disparaging diatribes like this: ‘he’s very fast. Very fast. Does he think he’s Roger Rabbit I wonder, or he is going for the most thrusts a minute entry in the Guinness Book of Records? I want to make love to you indeed. I have run out of matches and I want to start a forest fire, more like.’ Quizzed about the Formula One approach at a later date my lover sheepishly explained ‘I thought you’d like it.’ For my part, I suppose I just lay on my back looking somewhat annoyed and trying not to vomit.

Afterwards, his ex-partner rang and I had to pretend I wasn’t there. We got up and had scrambled eggs and I worried that I had cystitis and made him drive me to the local pharmacy to pick up some cystopurin just in case. When he was dropping me home he asked me if he could take me out to dinner a few nights later. I said yes. A sucker for punishment evidently. Or maybe just a little bit in love.

So what’s the verdict? Did he a) take advantage or was he b) a perfect gent? Would it sway the balance if I admitted that I had a strong hunch I’d end up sleeping with him the day I got the ‘pass the lucozade’ text message? Either way, ours is not the most romantic of hook up stories. It’s hard to decide what anniversary we should be celebrating. He reckons we should celebrate the time when we started ‘properly’ going out, but I think our sexiversary constitutes a marginally more romantic memory than him ultimatuming me into being his girlfriend. (‘This is not an ultimatum,’ he said, ‘but if you don’t dump that other fella you’re seeing then I will be ending this.’ ‘I think you’ll find that is an ultimatum actually’ I pointed out, before dumping the other fella.) At any rate, he has just left my arms and I am massacring packs of malteasers and missing him, and remembering the awkwardness of our bumbling beginnings has made me laugh to myself and miss him just a little bit more.

Sexual Obsession

Strange as it may seem, this post is about my Granny. And indeed, if you were to meet my Granny, whose face bears a startling resemblence to a used tea-bag that’s been left overnight on the side of the sink, it would seem stranger still. My wizened old dear of a Grandmama, God love her, has looked 80 since the age of 30, and was never any beauty, even in her youth. I’ve seen yellowing black and whites of her twenties. She was skinny as a whippet and stylish as a turnip; she had teeth that’d eat an apple through a letterbox; her already greying black hair was tied into a heavy bun above a face of sharp and irregular angles. But, if the old crone I know is anything to go by, she most likely had eyes that danced.

My Grandad, on the other hand, was by all accounts a fine looking man. I never met him, as, in the great tradition of Irish Grandads, he had died of booze and fags before I was born. He played the accordion and was shy, and it’s not hard to understand why Granny was soft on him. Her parents, comortable farmers, didn’t approve of the match. But the two were in love, and they got their way. Grandad bought a farming plot somewhere in Roscommon and whisked Granny off away from her big family in County Galway. Again, my Great-Grandparents weren’t happy. I think she must have been a bit of a favourite.

They couldn’t make the place in Roscommon work, and, Ireland being what it was in the late 1940s, there wasn’t a lot to be done to put food on the table. Granny would have been 24. She had two little girls, and another one would soon be on the way. Grandad decided they’d have to emigrate to England. He went on over ahead of her to find a job, and said he would send for her soon. My Great-Grandparents told her not to move a muscle – she was fine where she was, and couldn’t her husband send money home to her? Grandad found work in Corby, a steelmill town in Northhamptonshire. He sent for his wife. She dug in her heels and refused to go.

My Grandfather was a jealous man. And not just a wee bit jealous – very jealous. And what nobody could have known is that his jealousy was slowly descending into a sickness, an obsession. He was convinced that my buck toothed and skeletal Granny was the most beautiful and desirable woman who had ever walked the earth, and, more worryingly, that she was carrying on behind his back with every Páid, Seán ’s Micí who wanted a crack. He wrote a letter to the priest in their Roscommon parish intimating that he had reason to believe his wife was having relations with other men. The priest sent her packing off to England. She was heavily pregnant and didn’t feel able to take the two little girls. She left Mary, the youngest, my Mother, at home with her parents. My Great-Grandparents never gave Mum back. I think she must have been a bit of a favourite.

My Grandad’s obsession didn’t wane when he had his wife with him in England. It got worse. He would drink and rage and accuse her of all sorts with any sort. Sometimes he’d skive off from the steelmill and follow her to the cleaning jobs she worked while their ever ballooning numbers of kids were at school or with the neighbours. If he saw her so much as say ‘good morning’ to a man he would be waiting, boozed up and belligerent, when she got home, to give her a piece of his mind and a whack of whatever else. My aunties and uncles say she was pretty good at whacking back though. I’d believe it.

He lost his job at the steelworks and started working on building sites. The other builders soon sussed that there was one good way to wind him up. For the craic and the badness they’d tell him they’d seen his wife with this fella and that fella – that she’d looked really nice, had a little short skirt on her. If you saw my Granny, who dresses like a nun and always has done, who thinks that a bit of cold cream on a Sunday is a shameful indulgence, who has had none of her own teeth for nearly sixty years now, then you’d be laughing along with the lads on the site at the unlikely joke. But Grandad wasn’t laughing.

He spied on her. He accused her of spending money he’d given her for food on liasons with city gents. He wanted to know what she was doing with every penny of her cleaning money. As if ‘raising eight children in a three bed council house’ wasn’t account enough. My Mum, ignorant of all this, saw her family on their rare visits home. She grew up quite happy with her grandparents and aunties and uncles on the farm, and at the grand old age of 18 – provided with the select choices of getting married, becoming a nun, or going nursing – she went off to England to train at King’s Cross Hosptial. On some of her weekends off she’d go to visit her family in Corby, and so she finally got to know her Mum and Dad and eight brothers and sisters.

Mum remembers copping on to my Grandad’s jealousy very slowly. She was visiting Corby for one of the first times, and Granny asked Grandad for some money so that she could take her long lost daughter shopping and treat her. Grandad cornered Mum in the hall and said ‘I have given her the money now, but don’t think ye’re fooling me with your lies. I know the money isn’t for you at all, but for her to spend on one of her fancy men’. Mum was baffled and speechless. Granny stormed in, an angry mass of jagged knees and elbows. ‘What are you saying to the child!? What are you saying?’ She told Mum to pay him no heed, and shooed him and his nonsense away.

Over the many visits to Corby that followed Mum pieced together the bizarre tale of her parents’ marriage from things her brothers and sisters, the youngest not quite school age, told her. She found my Grandad’s obsession, as most people found it when introduced to its object, funny. She didn’t puzzle over it too much I suppose. She had a brand new life in London, and a brand new handsome boyfriend. Bruce had a sports car and was rather well to do. Some weekends he’d drive her down to the dive that was (and is) Corby – the steelmill now closed, the Irish immigrants unemployed and ghettoized, drugs and teen pregnancies creeping in. He loved it. Seeing how the other half lives I suppose. Mum remembers him roaring with laughter when her little sisters Bernie and Pauline called him upstairs and Bernie said ‘Bruce, Bruce, Pauline farted on my head’.

Granny didn’t like him though. ‘Mary’ she said, ‘you must be very careful of a jealous man’. And she was right. Bruce slowly and systematically stopped my Mum from seeing her friends. He lectured her on what she was wearing (miniskirts of course, it was the sixties!) until she eventually only wore things that she knew would please him. He threw sulks if he saw her giving anybody, even her girlfriends, any attention.

In the meantime, Granny was fighting her own battle. Grandad, in a drunken, jealous rage, pulled a knife on her in the kitchen. She pulled one back. There was blood and screaming and little ones around. In defiance of the church doctrine that she believed in so fervently, and hoping that her devout mother at home in Ireland would not find out, she kicked her husband out of the house. Still, he stalked her around the town. She broke another unwritten Irish rule, and told the British police. Eventually, Granny’s people back home said they would pay for Grandad to be brought to Ireland and taken to the mental hospital in Ballinasloe for treatment.

He was there for a few months before she left the little ones in the care of the big ones and went home to visit him. She took her sister Chrissy and Chrissy’s big burly husband Jim, both of whom were very fond and protective of her. When they got to the hospital, a nurse came out to meet them. ‘And where is Mrs. Hardiman’ she enquired politely. ‘I am Mrs. Hardiman’ said my Granny. The nurse, without blinking said, ‘But where is his wife?’ ‘I am his wife’ said Granny. The nurse, my Granny remembers, paused blankly for second, then looked down at her feet and tried, unsuccessfully, not to laugh. Granny laughed too, realizing that the poor young one was expecting a dolly bird in skin-tight lycra, slathered in red lipstick and clouded in perfume, not a prune-faced old biddy. Big Jim, though, Big Jim would have killed him.

When my Great-Grandmother died, Granny got a legal seperation from Grandad, and not a person in her pious diasporic society passed any judgement. Everyone loved her, and knew she’d been through hell. Grandad died in his fifties of lung cancer and drink.

Now that I’m an emigré, I go down to Corby for a weekend when I can, to Granny-sit and give my aunties and uncles some time off. Granny is madder than Bedlam and quite quite wonderful. She can dress herself and that – but she likes someone in the room with her all the same. A great woman for company. I sit on her bed and watch her as she puts on her shirt – the ridge of her slow dinosaur back, the creak of her lopsided shoulders. I imagine my Grandad, lying where I’m sitting and looking at her, thinking ‘My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. My wife, any fool can see, is the most beautiful woman in the world’.

Three weeks

The festive season is well dusted, and I’m back among the Sassanaigh. I’m sad, knowing it will be a few days before I can sleep properly without my lover’s limbs all tangled up in mine. I’m frustrated, knowing that there is no end in sight to this long distance situation. But the low is the price of the high. For three whole weeks there were slow awakenings, our hips grinding us into consciousness, our hands groping and grabbing before we could tell we weren’t dreaming. Lazy mornings fizzed into early afternoons, leaving us finally flushed and spent and smathered in each other’s juices. Breakfast. Scrambled eggs. Tea for me and coffee for my lover. Days in which I only had to turn around and say ‘kiss’ to have loving lips press mine. Hugs on demand. Always time for a quicky. Out for pints with friends – everyone beginning to take our long distance commitment with a few less pinches of salt. Watching him on the way back from the bar, all slim hipped and wolfy smiled: hypnotic. Home again, home again, tipsy and amorous (drunk and randy) for naughty treats before bedtime. Sleeping spooned. Me figiting. Him stealing covers and colonising my side of the bed. Then morning. For three whole weeks.

G-whizz, what a swizz.

The Sunday Times ran an article last weekend about a new study conducted on the G-spot. The study is the biggest ever undertaken on the subject; it surveyed over 1800 women, all pairs of twins, half identical, and half non-identical, hoping to find some conclusive evidence of the anatomical or biological reality of the famed and fabled G-spot. It found none.

There are nine pages of comments on the article, and each page is fecking hilarious. The majority of the commentors are disparaging about the results of the survey. There are lots, and I mean lots, of guys saying things like ‘I’ve had over 100 lovers and they have all had G-spots; they just didn’t know it until they had sex with me’; there’re some yanks and frenchies saying ‘yeah, but they only surveyed uptight British women’; and then there’s a few women making pithy jokes like ‘the difference between a golf ball and a g-spot is that men will actually look for a golf ball’ or ‘most women’s g-spots are in their husband’s back pockets’. You also have one or two people asking ‘if there’s no g-spot, how do you explain orgasm without clitoral stimulation?’, which is a pretty perfect logical example of begging the question.

Me, I welcome the results of the survey, and I think Dr. Andrea Burri’s instinct, to remove feelings of inadequacy or underachievement that might affect women who feared they lacked a G-spot, is sound. She’s quoted as saying ‘It is rather irresponsible to claim the existence of an entity that has never really been proven and pressurise women — and men, too’. Away back in April when I started this blog, I wrote two posts on the female orgasm that said more or less the same thing – women are fed a certain rhetoric of what they are supposed to feel during sex that doesn’t match their actual experiences, and this can lead to insecurities and frustration.

I’ve heard all sorts of rumours and raméis about the G-spot. One good friend told me that the way to find it was to insert a hooked finger into the vagina, and search for a spot of tissue that was more spongy that smooth. I did this, found what I thought was a spongier bit, rubbed it for a while, and found the sensation slightly unpleasant if anything. I read an article in Cosmopolitan about how, now that we’ve all found our G-spots, we can start looking for the newly discovered A-spots, and D-spots and fecking 10-spots and all sorts of other silly spotted nonsense. It all feels a bit emperor’s new clothes. Exponents of the G-spot claim that it is a highly sensitive bundle of nerve endings, not unlike the clitoris, that exists inside the vagina. I have probed my pussy at length and with care, on my own and with many wonderful and generous lovers of both sexes, and I can safely say that, while it feels nicer to be touched in certain places internally than in others, I have found no such highly sensitive spot.

I am categorically not saying that women who claim to have a G-spot are faking or lying. As I just mentioned, there is a way I like to be fingered: it feels nicer to be touched in some places than in others. When I’m really turned on, there’s definitely a place, deep inside me, that I want my partner’s cock or fingers to reach (I’m pretty sure its my cervix actually, but that’s beside the point or spot or whatever). What I am saying is that what feels good in this regard is subjective. There has never been any conclusive anatomical or biological evidence proffered with regard to the existence of a concentrated spot of nerve endings inside the vagina that causes orgasm.

The orgasms I have from penetrative sex don’t follow a build and release pattern; rather, they are satisfying muscular contractions, over which I have control, that are not followed by a decrease in excitement in the way that a clitoral orgasm is. For many years, I didn’t even recognise these as orgasms, and thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t come ‘properly’ from penetrative sex alone. But I’ve said all this before. I know that lots of women experience sex differently, and that’s deadly. But I certainly don’t feel like there’s a special spot missing from my vagina, or that my body is faling to do something it shoud be doing. Unfortunately, many women do feel like this, as proved by the successful practice of plastic surgeon David Matlock, who creates artifical g-spots for the rich and insecure.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, I think that there needs to be a greater level of honesty about what women experience during sex. It can be hard to say ‘I don’t have a g-spot’ because there’ll always be some supercilious fecker saying ‘you’re just not doing it right’ or ‘there’s something wrong with your body’. We need to spend less time worrying about what we can’t find and what we are lacking, and more time doing the things that feel good. There is little more cringe inducing than having someone hammer away at your pussy for half an hour then ask ‘did you come’, and the only way to change this perception of how female orgasm works is to talk about the reality of our sexual experiences, rather than feel inferior because the reality doesn’t match the fiction.

If I worked in a Christmas Cracker factory:

How do you titillate an ocelot?
You oscillate its tits a lot.

Christmas Kink

When you reach a certain level of kink in your sex life, preparations for dirty nights in become more complicated. It’s no longer sufficient to ensure that there’s a nice buidéal, candles, and condoms. Instead you end up debating who’s going to pick up the lube, and who the various weird sized batteries for the various weirdly shaped sex toys.

I hate buying KY Jelly. It’s like walking up to a complete stranger and saying ‘Hi! I have anal sex’. Oh yes, I might be using it for something else, but I’m not, and I know that and the person I’m buying it from knows that, and when I’m embarrassed I blush rose red and bumble, and, in short, the buying of KY Jelly is only something I’m willing to undertake if I also have a trolly full of healthful foodstuffs to hide it in. Although, as a friend pointed out, that might just point to a propensity to do strange things with courgettes.

At any rate, my lover did the lube run this time. He didn’t blush in the slightest he said. Not even when the girl in Boots asked him for the 19 cents he said. But I had to pick up the batteries. ‘Why didn’t you get them?’ ‘I wasn’t going buying KY Jelly and batteries.’ Even his shamelessness has limits.

Off I went into Galway city in search of the right sized yokies for our bits. I met my friend Michellephant, and she came with me on the hunt. When I found the ones I was looking for she eyed them up. ‘Never seen batteries like those before; what are they for?’ ‘Sex toys’ ‘Deadly Buzz’. Cue snorty giggle fit. Ah quick wit, it’s what you do miss in England.

We were passing by the haberdashery in the Eyre Square centre (the Squenter to locals), when I thought of more equipment that might be needed. ‘Can we pop into Hickeys for a minute Michellephant?’ I asked, ‘I want to pick up some ribbon’. She had no objections. We sauntered in and I scanned the rolls and reams of silky stuff for ribbon of the right width and texture. ‘What are you buying ribbon for anyways?’ asked Michellephant. ‘Sex games’ I said, aware that a pattern was developing. ‘Oooh, what about this?’ she suggested, holding up a roll of blue with tiny embroidered pink elephants on it. ‘I don’t know what kind of sex games you do be playing’ I said disparagingly, before settling on a metre of soft black satin. Michellephant bought some of the elephant adorned blue anyways; I hope she’s not going to tie it anywhere it might chaffe.

Later, alone with my lover, a nice meal eaten, a nice bottle drunk, three episodes of Doctor Who devoured, his desirious lips whispered in my ear ‘let’s go to bed and make some love’. We groped our way upstairs, stopping to kiss and nip in the doorway; I froze suddenly, shouted ‘Oh feck the batteries!’ and scampered off downstairs again.

Ar áis sa seomra, I perched fully clothed on the bed disassembling and reassembling the reusable vibrating cockring (aka the Battlestar Galactica) and my favourite little bullet vibrator (as described before). My lover, already naked (ever eager), brushed his teeth in the ensuite. I wondered aloud at what point the meaning of ‘let’s go to bed and make some love’ had morphed into this. My man laughed through a mouthful of toothpaste, spat, and came back to stand, hairy and alluring, in front of me. I looked down at his swelling cock, shouted ‘Oh feck the ribbon!’ and scampered off downstairs again.

Some of you might be asking at this point ‘what’s with the trip to the haberdashery? What the feck’s she at with the ribbon?’ (I know similar questions certainly crossed my lover’s mind). Don’t worry, I’ll not leave ye in the dark. Here is what I do to my lover with a metre of 3/4 inch soft black ribbon: *ahem*

I tie the ribbon firmly around his ballsack, using only single knots, but looping twice. Then I tie it as firmly as feels comfortable around the base of his cock. Again, single knots, two loops. And then there’s just enough ribbon left to tie a pretty little bow on top. Aw.

This works much like a cockring, in that it traps blood in the penis making it swell more than usual and prolonging the time til ejaculation. But it looks nicer (I think), and is adjustable to whatever tightness feels right on the night, and with ribbon you can bind the balls too. Also, those spongy beginners cockrings can make things feel a little dry for the lady, but not ribbon. And ribbon is only 90 cents a metre in Hickeys. And ribbon doesn’t need any batteries. Rah rah ribbon.

There did come a point in our love making the other night when I looked down at my lovers prettily bound, just spent, condom protected cock, onto which we had at some point decided to attach the Battlestar Galactica too, and had to laugh. My lover crouched on all fours over me, panting, and followed the gaze of my smirking eyes. He exploded in giggles. His dick hung there like an obscene Christmas present, or a parodic Christmas tree, all baubles and bows. We can be accused of many things, but never of not getting into the festive spirit.

A very happy new year to all my lovely readers. May 2010 be full of things that go hump in the night.

Budget Bondage

So for Christmas my lover is getting me in a Princess Leia slave girl bikini, and also a chin-up bar. The chin-up bar’s a little snide, you might be thinking. How would I feel if he got me an ab-roller, you might be wondering. But you misunderstand. I’m not getting him a chin up bar so he can exercise his manly biceps (although it is hot watching him do chin-ups); I’m getting him a chin up bar so that he can tie me to it. It’s more of a present for me than for him if I’m honest, but hey, he got me weird incestuous comic book porn for my birthday this year, so it’s allowed. (Okay, he accidentally got me weird porn because he thought it was sophisticated erotica. And he bought me shoes to say sorry on the condition that I stop telling people that he’d given me weird incestuous comic book porn for my birthday. And I didn’t even stop.)

Anyhoo, I am partial to a bit of bondage. I much prefer being the tie-ee than the tie-er, but I’m up for either. Being bound and blindfolded just heightens the experience of everything that happens to my body. And there’s the kink of it, not knowing where your lover is looking or what he’s going to do next, having no control over where he puts his hands and mouth and cock, over how you’re going to be fucked. Delicious.

I’m not a fetishist, I don’t think, and certainly no submissive lover; I’m happy to take the reigns and ride baby. And I’m not masochistic. While I like having my bottom smacked, indeed I do, I’d have to say no if my lover suggested that I put clothes pegs on my nipples or anything yowch inducing like that. But being tied up while he does nasty things to me drives me crazy. Oooh the thought of it. I might just have to stop writing this post so that I can go upstairs on my own and think about it some more.

I guess I better get to the point first, bettern’t I? Yes, I like a spot of bondage, but there is one major problem: all the equipment you see in sex shops and on sex toy websites is stupidly expensive. Silk ties for your hands will set you back twenty squid; a door frame bondage kit will cost you fifty; all those handcuffs and gags and blindfolds and tape will bankrupt you entirely. What’s a girl to do with her loose limbs?

Aha! Here’s the thing: you don’t need any of it. All you need is a chin-up bar (tenner on amazon) and numerous scarves of different lengths. It will help if you or your girlfriend are from Galway, because Galway girls always have shitloads of scarves. Indisputable fact. When I moved to Dublin I couldn’t believe how scarf impoverished all the girls seemed to be. Oh look at that, I’ve gone completely off the topic, which is, all you need for fun fun bondage games is scarves and a chin up bar. And maybe a chair (y’know, so someone who’s tied to a chin-up bar can still have her mouth fucked). And if you can get one of those sleeping masks off a long-haul flight, they’re good too. But scarves will do.

My lover, however, is not as dedicated to recessionary kink as I. He’s already thinking of more complicated fare. He wants one of those chin-up bars with boot straps so that he can hang upside down and let me try to stop all the blood rushing to his head by making it rush somewhere else. Inventive, you have to give him that. Anyways, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve got Christmas tied up this year.