Lying flat on my front, being fucked from behind, I wriggle and try to push my hips upwards and moan in frustration even though part of why I like this position is because of my immobility. Is he playing with my ass? I don’t remember. What I do remember is that I say: “Fuck my ass”, and shock the hell out of everybody in the room by saying it. Because I just don’t. I never ask for it, and I always have to be persuaded into it, and quite often, I say no. He pulls me to the end of the bed and onto my hands and knees, and his cock pushes slowly into my ass, all the way. I push back until I feel his balls slapping my pussy while he fucks me. And this time, I so nearly get it: the whole point of it, and why so many people rave about it.

Later that same day, which is full of different types of strangenesses, I should be dressing to go out, I’m flat on my back on the bed. But not flat at all: I’m curved like a damp and heated sapling, branching frenziedly. All day I’ve had to ease my tender flesh into fucks, waiting and maneuvering and pulling back and inching forward, but not now. It can’t be hard or fast enough, and I can’t devour enough. Every time his cock slams into me I feel as though I don’t know whether to close tight around it or open myself up for the next welcome blow, and every time my body wins the fight with my head and I brace myself against him and clench around him, it’s only part of the way to everything I need. And then it is enough, for a while.

At night, feeling the radiating variegated heat of the lash of a flogger, I think I know exactly how much I want: enough to feel it bite, but not to pain too much. Afterwards, though, it’s not enough to be held; I want every inch of my skin covered, to be weighted down to the bed while I try to find my way back from inside my head, which feels echoing and emptied of everything that floated out while my body thought of pain.

I lie on my side and wait for sleep, with warmth at my back, and look at the blank curtained window, sealed shut against the noise of the street, and at the debris of clothes, and supper, and half-drunk glasses of wine, and fall into the desperate sleep of long-awaited peaceful exhaustion.

“This is your theme song” says my daughter one day in the summer, when it’s playing on the radio. I know exactly what she means: I can’t find any sweetness in myself outside of in bed having sex. The rest of the time, I feel as though my feathers are permanently ruffled and my tail swishing threateningly: I’m a spiky, prickly hybrid animal and there’s too much real life getting in my face.

I don’t write much about tenderness, though I hope that sometimes I write with it – but if there were any lack of it in reality, then I’d gladly go without the rest. I play a game of Grandmother’s footsteps with intimacy, running forward unseen, and freezing in plain sight. I like the faux-intimacy of pillow talk with someone I don’t know that well, doling out little revelations like mystery gifts from behind my silky-smooth armour-plating – but it’s not what brings out my sweetness.

I’m asked if I’m happy. Yes, I say, I’m very happy right now. Maybe I’m happy because real life is the way I like it, or because it seems there’s a way I can selfishly do what I want without compromising what I value, or maybe the season suits me better and it was time for things to turn in my favour: it doesn’t really matter. I’m caught off guard by waves of contentment sometimes: standing in my kitchen cooking; in the car, laughing with my best friend till she nearly drives off the road; in the middle of a fuck that is somewhere between savageness and reconnection; in a warm bed with a man wrapped round me who knows the shortcuts to soothe or arouse me, and who can infuriate me and keep me interested in equal measure; having the kind of sex that turns my brain inside out and washes it clean.

The truth is that the superficialities of life stay pretty constant, and the sun mainly shines these days, though I don’t mind the rain and I love the storms. But I come home and it’s just me and the cats, and I mainly fall asleep alone, and my weekends are mine to dispose of as I wish. Great swathes of time to myself and a man that’s sweet about me and who can bring out the best in me– no wonder it’s easy to be happy these days.

You know how sometimes you see something, and you realise that all your puritanical anti-consumerist dogma has been shaken to its very foundations? Not only has it wobbled off its pedestal, but it has pressed its face up against the window and is fogging up the glass with its lustful breath? And it may even be dribbling a little? Well, that was me and the boots. For months I have been reading stupid articles advising people to beat the credit-crunch by buying more expensive stuff, or by people who had an agonizing time trying to survive by not buying vast amounts of stuff they don’t need, and rolling my eyes: try living on my salary without a credit card, and it’s MUCH easier not to buy anything but the bare necessities. My smugness was somewhat shaken to its very core when my mother took pity on me in Maxmara, and damn if they weren’t right: one good piece DID completely transform my wardrobe. But that was an aberration, and I soon reverted to my self-righteously martyred state, recycling the vast amounts of clothes I already own. Except that I had decided I’d allow myself a pair of boots this winter, as a reward for being so restrained that my finances are almost on an even keel again.

This is why I was looking in the window of the shoe shop in the first place, but not even in my wildest dreams had I expected these boots. Black patent and… something or other (neophrene?), big silver clips to hold the laces, HIGH heel, straps around the top and over the toe – fuck, these are boots and a half. There is no price in the window, so I go in. The shop is a veritable cornucopia of desirable boots and shoes, but these are still the most beautiful. The price, however, isn’t so enticing.

A little while ago, I was in Liberty in London, a place that I think of as my consumerist spiritual home, and I saw a pair of boots that cost about £900. I’m sneery to a fault about people who pay stupid amounts of money for things they can get much cheaper, but I swear to God, if I’d had anything approaching that amount, I’d have mortgaged my soul for those boots. And these boots are much less than that, but still double the amount than I can justify spending. But fuck, do I want them. I dream about them, I fantasise about them, I desire them with every damn fibre of my shallow little being. My best friend sends a request to the Universe that I might have them. In the meantime, I take a picture of them on my phone, and wail: My boots! Every time we drive past them.

Mid-week, I’m reminded that I have a job coming up, for which I am paid generously. A job which I have forgotten about, and which is not included in my budget. A boring, monotonous, pernickety job, which should be rewarded in boots.

So I can afford the boots, it’s just a question of when. On Friday, I have the money in my hand, and I’m sitting in the car debating whether it’s worth getting the train home (endless wait, hours standing, weary walk home uphill) or whether I should wait until someone can accompany me to the shoe shop. But what if they’ve sold out of my size? What if I’ve squandered the money by then? My best friend says she’s never seen me this worked up over a man: “But it’s BOOTS!” I cry, in anguish, “It’s a whole other ball game!” And so I get out of the car, and buy the boots, and get the train home.

The day after, I wear them out to lunch with the other best friend, mainly to see if I can walk in them. As soon as I get in the car, she starts frothing at the mouth over them. I confess how much they cost, and she shrieks over me: “Who cares? They would have been worth it at double that!” which is more or less what I think, anyway (BUT. Not only did they have them in my size, but there was a 15% discount). “OK,” I say, “but what do I wear with them? Apart from a corset and a whip?” She doesn’t know, she says: a corset and a whip are probably my best bet.

And this is it: pace Bitchy Jones, but these are corset and a whip boots. These are dominatrix boots, and they want to make me dress the part (but not do all the work). They make me think of stereotypical powerful images of women, and I’m sorry, but those women tend to be laced up tightly, cracking whips. The prodomme image may be a sweaty pvc cliché, but it is still enduring as an image of powerful female sexuality, and there’s more to it as well: it has a sense of fun and humour that the reality probably lacks. If I think of a dominant woman, then I think of cat-suited comic-book heroines, or the intellect and gorgeousness of Calico, not some asexual man-hater with a sense of misguided entitlement (see Unspeakable Axe for reference).

I spend hours looking at corsets. They are heavenly, and the women look divine with their nipped in little waists. Unfortunately, I know they wouldn’t work on me: my ribcage goes straight down, instead of in, and my back is so short there’s hardly any space for indentation before my hips start. I don’t doubt I’d manage to be dominant as hell in a corset: I’d be so uncomfortable and irritable I’d have no problem wanting to make almost anyone suffer. What strikes me though is the way that corsets manage to straddle the boundaries between looking both dominant and submissive, and how absurd it is that we find them sexy, considering the damage women suffered to their bones and internal organs in the days when they were de rigueur. The lacing on my boots blatantly channels the lacing on corsets, with all the connotations of forcing a woman’s body into a desired and unnatural state – is choosing to flaunt those laces a sign of independence or submission? Is it an appropriation of an image of female sexuality, or an admission of surrender? And why the hell is a powerful image one that references pain? (The heel on the boot is well-balanced, and they are far easier to walk in than they appear, but visually they very much play on the high heel=suffering/vulnerable-because-unable-to-move-fast trope).

I try on various items of clothing with the boots, to figure out how I want to appear in them. For lunch, I wear a short knitted dress, and they look fetishly-funky (I accessorise with a small child, which effectively desexualises the boots). With a straight pin-striped skirt, they are ambiguous, swinging between bossy severity or straight-laced docility; with my most austere, double-breasted black dress, they are ambiguous in another way: the boots are undeniably fetishistic, and the dress is severe and uncompromising – and unforgiving, I think, standing in front of the mirror, but when I catch sight of myself from a distance, I see that it gives me a soft, womanly silhouette, which throws my whole self-image off-balance.

I decide that I like the ambiguity, and that probably the boots will work best with no clothing at all. And that despite all that, I really, really want a whip of my own.

Afterwards, he says “It’s a fantasy, you know”, and I say “Yes, I know. Because I would never do that.” “I wouldn’t want you to” he says, gently, and I say “Oh, OK. Good”.

And it’s stupid, but I need that reassurance that it’s a fantasy, and not one that will be brought up in the cold light of day to be seriously discussed. I should be able to tell the difference by now between what is possible future plans and what is fuck fodder, but I can’t. I don’t have the part of my brain that can just charge off into wild sexual fantasy without trying to work out the practicalities: Well, you know, we could do that, but wouldn’t it be unhygienic? Why on earth would I want to do THAT? Jesus, I thought I told you I’m not interested in that… and so on, fairly endlessly. I’m fine in the privacy of my own head, where what gets me off would leave me cold in reality, but that’s OK - my body and I don’t have a problem making the distinction between reality and fantasy there. It’s with other people that it starts to fall apart.

I don’t know if it’s because a fair proportion of my sexual experience involves things that no one discussed with me beforehand that I’m wary about flights of fantasy, or it’s just that I am too prosaic to imagine that people say things to excite without working out all the details and compiling feasibility studies first (this means that dirty talk, far from working me up into a frenzy, is more likely to leave me with a furrowed brow as I try to work out if I’d really like that, and where do all the bits go? This calls for a fair amount of patience and tolerance on the part of my partners – well, either that or they ignore my perplexity).

I’m also no good at fantasy scenarios because I basically have no interest in doing anything until I’ve tried it. My sexual imagination is more or less permanently jammed on “let’s fuck” and never progresses much past it. I don’t turn up bouncing with enthusiasm, yelling: “I know! Let’s you tie me up from the lampshade by my feet and then you can whip me with the electrical cord whilst reciting 10 Hail Marys! And then I shall ritually sodomise you with the hairdryer! And then… “ etc., etc., etc. I turn up bouncing with enthusiasm for the novel concept of taking all our clothes off and having sex: any variations on this basic theme have to be the contribution of the other person. This is probably why no one bothers consulting me after a while, which is not to say I spend my entire time having esoteric sexual practices inflicted upon my reluctant flesh – so long as my long list of things I have a strong desire not to do is respected, I’m all for doing anything new so long as I don’t have time to overthink it first.

Most of my sex life seems to have been conducted in a haze of perverted innocence. In my youth, when I was a bit more prone to saying “Oh, OK” to suggestions to do it in the road, I was always far too caught up in the fuck to even consider any voyeuristic ramifications, and still it sometimes surprises me that there might be another perspective to anything I do on my single-minded quest for a decent fuck. I read other people’s lists of sexual things they want to do and can’t come up with a single thing – which is less an active desire to do nothing, and more a vague feeling that I’m sure to find things down the line that will definitely go on my list of things that give me immense pleasure… it’s just that I don’t know what they are yet (and I look forward, in a vague, undefined way, to finding out).

The other day I read a post that has been sitting around in my head, partly because it deals with one of the things that most stymies me about blogging, which is the degree of self-censorship involved when it comes to writing about other people.

If you have a blog, and open it up to the public, you are fair game for criticism. This is the downside of writing publicly, and it’s not always a comfortable truth. The blogosphere is, on the surface, a remarkably tolerant and adulatory place, and if you aren’t too cynical, it’s easy to imagine that it shouldn’t be anything else. Blogging often seems to be a form of group therapy, and people are frighteningly willing to expose their vulnerabilities, whilst imagining that their cloak of anonymity will still protect them from themselves. The anonymous writer is brave and fearless, but the real person behind the screen is not immune to hurt - and this is evidenced in a thousand self-justifying blog posts whenever the whiff of criticism is read.

I’ll defend with my dying breath the right of anyone to write crap about the me that I offer up through my blog - who am I to dictate other people’s opinions of me or my writing? (and it’s hardly as though I’m the least judgemental person in the universe). I’ll also defend with my dying breath my right to write about anything in my life, but my defense is weaker there. However much of a right I have to interpret events my way, there’s still a good chance that the other people I write about might object to it - and rightly so. I cover my back to an extent by ensuring that the people I have sex with know about the blog: whether or not all of them read I don’t know - I don’t ask, and I never check my stats any more, and I prefer not to know, as it gives me the necessary mental disconnect. They at least cannot object in principle to what I write, so long as I am careful not to identify them. But the others? If I write about them in public, and expose their actions to public censure, then I can argue that I have represented my opinions, and I have done nothing wrong.

Morally, though, I don’t have a foot to stand on if I am writing about someone who is not on the same playing field as me. It is my right to express myself and to write the truth as I see it, but I have no moral right to open someone else’s actions up to criticism. There’s a not so fine line between a discussion of wrongs that should be attacked and brought into the open, and a whine or personal vindicativeness involving a third party who has not chosen to put their behaviour in front of an large audience. Even if I write about someone who knows I might do so, and who has therefore given their tacit consent, I can still be accused of rendering the person or the situation incorrectly. I’ll defend myself, but I can’t expect them to suck it up the way I would a negative reaction. When I press publish, I do not expect everyone who reads what I write to condone my actions, approve of my morals, or think that I’m a splendid specimen of humanity: I’d be a fool if I did think that, and if I wanted everyone to think it, I’d write different posts. The way that I react to criticism, having chosen to expose myself to it, cannot be compared to the reaction of anyone I chose to write about. They can justifiably complain that I have misrepresented them, even if I have not misrepresented their actions.

Blogging is a strange, surreal business. I suspect that people start to believe their own hype after a while, and to imagine that they are above criticism. So many people tell you you are wonderful that it seems like an affront when someone suggests you aren’t, particularly when you’re in your happy little sex-blogger bubble of permanent hotness. But here’s the thing: commenters are, as a rule, polite. In general people don’t leave negative comments, and that’s a self-perpetuating circle, because when they do, everyone jumps down their throat and rallies round the poor wronged blogger and their quivering upper lip. Blogging, though, is like sex to an extent. When you take off your virtual clothes, just as when you take off your real ones, and stand there exposed and naked, the mannerly response is politeness and compliments. But just as with sex, it has to be taken with at least a pinch of salt: after all, only one of us can be the best possible, sexiest, most talented, mind-blowingly gorgeous fuck in the universe. I’d love to believe the one was me, and that I was the world’s most talented writer, and that whatever I did, everyone else ate my dust, but, sadly for my delusions, I’m a realist. So I’ll believe that sometimes, in the heat of the moment, I’m sex on legs and a world-class lay and that I can write everyone else into a paper bag.

Clearly, I don’t write because I expect criticism, and I don’t publish what I write on the internet expecting to take on the world. But at the same time, I do expect those who don’t like what I write to read something else without necessarily having to express their ire – that much is just basic manners. And if they do? Tant pis. It’s part of the deal, and I accepted that before I started – and it never ceases to amaze me how some bloggers just seemed to assume they would get nothing but positive feedback. Those I write about were left out of the whole deal-making process, however, and I can’t expect them to suck it up stoically if they don’t like it – quite frankly, I wouldn’t like it either if all a load of rather partisan strangers knew of me were my worst moments. It drives me insane, at times, that I stop myself writing what I would like to write, but I can’t do it, however tempting, because it’s simply not fair, and I despise self-justification too much to go down that road. And if the cold winds of what I could have written blow about me, then I must just warm myself with the warm glow of moral righteousness .

Lying back on the chair, that is almost a chaise, smoking a cigarette and wearing nothing but my funky new socks (natch), I think that I really was born in the wrong time. It’s the bows on the socks that do it – ideally I should have just been divested of lace-trimmed pantaloons and a corset, instead of a duvet, and I should have a gold-tipped cigarette in a mother of pearl holder, not a Camel Light.

He opens my legs, and looks. “Enjoy your cigarette” he says. I intend to, I tell him, and his head descends between my thighs. Years ago, in the midst of a stupid conversation about I don’t care if we fuck or not, see if I care, I let my legs be opened, and just moved the ashtray to my chest as his cock pushed into me. I lay perfectly still, and took increasingly shaky drags on my cigarette as I looked up into his face as he fucked me with a calm little smile on his face. And then I think he shoved his cock straight through my cervix, and I screamed and convulsed and fucked him back, both of us smeared in ash.

This time I’m sure I’m made of sterner stuff, and I keep my mind determinedly on the upper half of my body, though the lower half squirms a little. I smoke my cigarette down to almost the end, taking dizzyingly deep drags to finish it faster. I stub it out and my mind shoots straight down to my cunt and gets lost, and I wind up with my head hanging over the chair, thinking maybe I’ll fall off, but does it really matter? and eventually I hear my voice saying hoarsely that I need him to fuck me, and it’s a while before I get to smoke a cigarette again.

Here’s the thing about being the mistress/lover/bit on the side: you can, in the interests of full disclosure, admit when you’re on the other side of a screen or phone that you’re sitting around in your ratty pyjamas that started out life as a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants several years ago, accessorized by an ancient cashmere cardigan and sticky-socks with fluffy cat faces on the front (actually I’ve never admitted the sticky-socks to anyone). You can even volunteer, unasked, the information that you’re wearing your pretty nightgown that your tits fall enticingly out of, when by happy chance you are actually wearing it, as opposed to the white one that got in the dark wash by mistake. You can tell your lover you are as hideous as you like, because when he sees you, you’re always dressed for excitingly tactile easy access: things to slide a hand up, things to be encountered when the hand does slide up, things to unbutton and conceal and reveal.

Dressing up to be undressed is the fun bit until you end up having to travel to meet your lover at the end of a long hard work day. Oh, I’ve managed it: gone home and bludgeoned my daughter into giving me a lift, ensuring time to bathe and shave and assemble suitable seduction outfits; changing and bathing at a friend’s house; costume changes in the bathroom after work. But every so often I have to embark on a journey involving every possible means of transport excluding boats, and then it gets more tricky. I can’t face a long day on my feet traipsing about in heels, and I don’t want to be standing around chilly stations feeling the wind whistling about my stocking tops, and nor do I need the entire metropolis ogling my tits. So it’s jeans (but they’re velvet, and feel lovely, and low-waisted, and easy to get into) and a little lacy top covered up by a sweater, and boots and pretty lingerie and…. socks.

I know there are people who get their kink on with nothing more than a pair of knee-socks to enflame their passion, but I don’t care: there is nothing in the world as unsexy as socks (except possibly some of my pyjama combinations). Nice as my socks are, in their unassuming, perfectly respectable sock way, I can’t help feeling that they cramp my style, somehow. I need over-the-knee socks, I decide. And happily, I have some – two pairs, no less. Unhappily, further investigation reveals that the cute stripy wool ones were the victims of one of my laundry disasters, and now resemble cosy spaghetti holders, and my daughter went off with the slinky black ones. I stomp off to work in my blameless but resolutely unerotic socks, trying out stealthy sock-removing maneuvers in my head, but I can’t be reconciled. I’m supposed to turn up all sweetly scented and scantily clad, ffs, not wearing socks. I’ll never be able to hold my tail up at the next sexkitten meeting at this rate.

In the end, the several changes of transport turn out to be a blessing in disguise, as I manage to interrupt my journey to sock-shop. Now I just need to do some contortions in public transport toilets, and my sartorial mojo will be restored (swapping socks is the least of my transformation acts in public toilets after all: it’s just not as easy as whipping off a pair of knickers, or as fun as whipping off everything but boots and stockings and covering up with a fur coat – although that was a little off-putting when a stranger’s slightly boggle-eyed stare made me realize the coat maybe wasn’t as all-concealing as I had fondly imagined).

So I swap socks, and feel better instantly. Until I walk out and become aware that over-the-knee socks are really more visual than practical, and they are slowly sliding down my over-the-knees, tugging my jeans with them. But hey, who cares! I can safely be undressed. Off I stride, ignoring the vaguely sinking feeling from the bottom half of my clothing, secure in my soxiness.

This package contains explosive materials:

A tightly wound coil of weeks of nit-picking, time-sensitive, obsessive attention to detail work-stress. I need to be carefully unwound and stretched out, and allowed to find my natural curve again.

Libido like a thin all-enveloping layer just below the surface of my skin: I feel as though it keeps bubbling up and trying to push through to air and free reign, and it needs set free before it consumes me.

Tension born of the delicate tightrope of negotiation and diplomacy, of smoothing feathers with the lightest touch; of ensuring the release of the hostages of reason and hope and that battered warhorse, the common good.

Twin weights of energy and exhaustion, neatly divided in their turn between the physical and the intellectual.

And stuffed in every available corner: lust, anticipation and pleasure.

I’m travelling light. All I’ve packed is my ticket, something to read, something to write, a wisp of lace and some smokes. I’m packing, though, so you better be ready.

I start to wake up when he pulls my thighs apart to roll me onto my back and open up my pussy to his tongue. I think that I’ll have time to wake slowly, stretching into his mouth, being awakened and aroused gently at the same time. That’s not how it works out, though.

A few quick licks to ensure that I’m wet enough for entry, and he pulls my legs up and sinks his cock into my wetness. I’m still playing catch-up with my half-awake preconceptions of ways to be woken up, but apparently it isn’t all about me (a concept my sleepy brain has a little trouble grasping). I open my eyes and look at his face: yes, it’s definitely not about me, right now. But I can hear the slapping sound of his cock slapping into my wet cunt, so it seems I like it. And I do like it: even half-asleep, I like to be fucked hard. Love-making can be saved for the next morning, when I feel as though I’ve sealed shut from hard use, and have to be gradually and tenderly licked open, and even then it’s not until after breakfast and a bath that I can be fucked without feeling slightly as though I’m being crowbarred open (it’s very sex-goddessy to have a tight pussy, of course, but it’s not always ideal, and it’s not difficult to see how pain and sex are sometimes inextricably linked, for me (and not only me – I have sometimes vaguely heard through my orgasmic throes the sound of someone else saying “Ow!”)).

So he fucks me hard, and my body bounces off the mattress, and his cock hits exactly where it should, and there’s just the right pressure on my clit. My happy little inner muscles clench preemptively and get more of a bashing in return, and I decide it had better start being about me now, even though the fact that it isn’t makes me flutter inside. I brace my legs against his chest and shove my hands against his arms as I clamp down on his cock and come as though it was being ripped out of me.

And then, when I’m trembling and undone, and you’d think I might get a bit of mercy, he just fucks my tender flesh harder. But I’m brave, and I hate wimping out, so I just whimper and wait to come again (and anyway I know that later, it will be all about me).