Dirty stop out

Before I launch into this week’s offering, I have to explain, dear readers, that my face is burning hot while I am shivering and coughing like a cat with fur balls. This isn’t because I have my front against the oven and my rear in the fridge, while gorging on doughnuts, either. I am not expecting your ‘there theres’ and sympathetic violins – I just felt the need to explain why what follows may be a little below par. But in the absence of a deputy DSM, I will soldier on, muddle through and fight my bug to bring you your weekly service! Hurrah (cough, cough)!

Your eyes open, you start to come round and it suddenly hits you that you are not in your own bed – the sheets smell different and the pictures on the wall are alien – and who is this person snoring next to you?

It may be the first (and last) time you have woken up here; it may be the 20th, but for whatever reason you have to leave, now. The first obstacle is wriggling out of bed unnoticed – easy if the other person is facing away from you on the other side of the bed, not so if you are clamped down under their arm. After you have pulled a move a contortionist would be proud of, there’s the clothes scavenger hunt – taking you all around the bed, on selected stairs and down to the lounge where you will find your bra/wallet/coat/leftover chips.

This all a breeze compared to getting out of the house, facing the cold light of day and doing the… WALK OF SHAME. And I’m sorry, men but this is much worse as a female, unless you hooked up at a fancy dress party and have to somehow get home dressed as a chicken.

My first WALK OF SHAME (WOS) occurred rather late, when I was a student but any shame or embarrassment was probably largely in my head and not evident on the outside. My underwear felt grubby, worse so when trapped under tight black leggings, I felt dirty and my makeup was smudged and crusty. I thought everyone would be able to tell I had been a ‘dirty stop-out’ and committed a sin by spending the night with a man.

In truth, being a student in the 1990s probably worked in my favour – I could just be pulling the grunge look, like a bargain bucket Courtney Love (Google her, if you are too old/young to know her), except I’ve never had bleach-blonde hair.

The worst thing would be running into a friend while walking back from a night of sin, although this was rare as it would usually be a Sunday morning. If it occurred I would avoid eye contact and pretend to be in a hurry.

A particularly bad WOS happened when I made a serious error of judgement in winding up at an ex-boyfriend’s friend’s house. He happened to live on the same road as my ex and I was spotted by the ex’s mum sneaking out the next morning. Of course she wasted no time in telling her dear son what she had just witnessed. And an angry confrontation took place later that day.

The other that sticks in my mind was several years later when I ended up at a house in the outskirts of a nearby town, somewhere I am not too familiar with. I had successfully pulled the bed exiting wiggle, the clothes hunt and was ready to make a break for it, when I realised all the doors were locked and there were no keys in sight. What security conscious folks this guy and his housemates were. It was early and I didn’t want to wake anyone so I looked around frantically for a way out. The front door was out so I looked to the kitchen and side door. Firmly shut, but the window next to it was the sort that opened outwards on a hinge across the top. I couldn’t squeeze through it (I’ve never been a willowy type) but maybe I could manipulate the handle from the other side. And I did. Thank goodness for dodgy rented houses and their dodgy locks.

But my problems were far from over, as after tiptoeing into the street, I realised I had no idea where I was. The outskirts of a town, yes, but what area and bus route, no. It was a hot day and my night-before clothes stifled me as sweat trickled down my back. I waited at the nearest bus stop, hopeful.

A bus appeared after what seemed hours and I asked to go to the town centre. It turned out I had flagged down the wrong bus and was standing on the wrong side of the road. I imagined the largely geriatric passengers, probably on their way to church or visiting friends, tutting and shaking their heads in disgust. Somehow I made it back home, but I did panic that I would have to return to the house, shame-faced and pleading for help.

Maturity means I am now better-prepared for a journey home from The Man’s house. I usually manage to take a spare top and knickers and am allowed a shower before I leave, so I don’t have the Eau de Sweaty Slut on me as I travel home. The Man also builds me back up with breakfast and coffee, so hopefully no one on the bus suspects my debauched night, but then again, who actually cares?

School’s out

“You have ten minutes to label the male sex organs,” I remember my Biology teacher telling our class of giddy 13 and 14-year-old girls.

I also recall that we were tested the previous lesson on our knowledge of female sex organs and that I scored eight out of ten for my lady bits diagram and nine out of ten on the meat-and-two-veg version. I am not sure whether that showed an early interest in penises and testicles or that I found the words on the male diagram easier to remember.

Those biology lessons and a talk by a lady from a well-known tampon company, who explained periods (plus a bit on how her product was better at absorbing blood than rival brands), was the total sum of any sex education I had in school in the late 1980s. I learnt some stuff from my more experienced peers – the two girls in my class who lost their virginity at around 13 and held court at lunchtimes with their tales of bonking and groping misadventure. I am sure they would not have been so frank in a mixed school.

The rest of my knowledge came through sneaking a peek at my mum’s copy of ‘The Joy of Sex’ – which made me cringe a little, especially the bearded 1970s man and the very intimate images; my little brother’s porn mag stash which he hid in his bottom drawer and on- the-job training. Seeing ‘love-making’ scenes in pre-watershed TV programmes and films was no help – as a romantic dreamer in my early teens it made me think the whole thing involved rolling around in silk sheets kissing and cooing over each other. I would gaze at the posters in my bedroom and imagine myself doing that with the keyboard player from A-ha or John Taylor from Duran Duran.

But as a parent myself, I do worry that things haven’t changed enough. A recent Ofsted study has found that over a third of English schools fail to teach age-appropriate sex and relationships lessons. The problem is apparently a lack of teachers properly trained in this field. As a mother of an eight-year-old girl, I can testify that children of this age are a lot more savvy and sexually aware than 30 years ago. They don’t know about sex, but they know it exists – I had no clue at eight and never even asked those kinds of questions as I lived in blissful ignorance with my Sindy dolls, climbing trees and riding my bike. My daughter on the other hand regularly says “Oo la la”, wiggles her hips and declares she is pretending to be sexy.

Funny, maybe, but also worrying. Children cannot be wrapped in cotton wool and shielded from the real world unless you are bringing them up in a religious commune. Yes, we want to protect them from harm and exploitation, but the world has changed in 30 years so protecting them now also means informing them.

Another factor is that according to research, an increasing number of girls start their periods at primary school i.e. before the age of 11 – another overwhelming reason why sex education has to improve. And I am not levelling all this at girls – boys need to learn how to be responsible, respectful and safe too, as well as protecting themselves from exploitation.

Oh and I forgot to mention the life drawing session we had for our A-level Art group – when we had to sketch a woman in her 50s. After much blushing on our part (while the woman was serene and confident) the only thing we learnt was that pubes turn grey. And it’s easier to sketch the human naked form in charcoal and pastels than with a pencil…

Touch me there

So, I have covered the penis and the nipple. Any idea where I’m going today? It’s probably on the tip of your tongue – you can’t quite put your finger on it…

To mark today being the last day of International Clitoris Awareness Week I thought I would take a journey ‘down under’.  The word ‘clitoris’ is apparently also Greek for key and is seen as the key to female sexuality, no doubt unlocking the door to our pink caverns.

For someone who has been around the block at least twice, it may surprise you to learn that it has only been in the last four or five years that I have really enjoyed having a ‘bean’.

Before then, some attempts had been made to give it a good time, but few even bordered on a mild tingle, never mind a full-blown pulsating orgasm. At the beginning of my sexual adventures, I had an irrational fear of losing control – put it down to fear of the unknown or self-consciousness over how I might have looked if I let go. So I never allowed myself to come, pushing my lovers’ hands away when I felt my body start to spasm or pulling them up on top of me and forcing them inside if they had been munching the ‘furry burger’. I would usually lie and say I had climaxed and allow them to continue pumping until they exploded, assuming this was what everyone else did.

Funny how age and experience change things – and having sex with someone who is determined to share the bliss. I drifted through my married life in the same way I had previously – as soon as I reached a tingle, I would force him to get on with the rest of it, get it over and done with.

But (as you have already guessed) The Man changed this. He was determined to take me to the other side and persisted in pleasuring me until I reached the dizzy heights of climax, all 8,000 nerve endings included. My clit must have wondered what hit her. She had finger stimulation, a never-tiring mouth and tongue and sometimes a vibrator. The Man would also continue to work his busy fingers while he was inside me, feeling my vaginal walls squeezing him and my body juddering in spin cycle underneath him.

He also bought me my first vibrator so I could enjoy all this when I was alone. So my ‘bald man in a boat’ now leads a very active life, taking regular trips upstream and not complaining about getting his feet wet from time to time.

To avoid disappointment…

There are two types of angry teachers – the ones who shout and rage and the ones who tell you they are very disappointed in you.

The shouty ones tend to have the impact of striking a match – their spark of rage is strong and bright, but it fizzles out quickly while the disappointed ones are like a large candle, burning through you slowly, leaving a lasting, lingering trail. I always found the disappointed teachers were the best ones, too, who didn’t need to raise their voices and left me feeling terrible for ages, that I had let them down when they had put so much faith in me.

Disappointment is such a lingering feeling – it can take years to die down. The same can be said for disappointment in the bedroom.  It’s an old friend of mine, though, whom I first encountered in my student days.

The second person I ever had sex with was a hunky blonde guy I thought was completely out of my league. But somehow we ended up in my room in halls after a night in the student bar. He talked his way into my pants, which wasn’t hard when I had been trying my best puppy dog eyes on him all evening. But then it was quick in and quick out, literally. And I was left wondering if it actually happened at all. The only proof was the way in which he completely ignored me the next day and never spoke to me again.

Then there was Mr Para-phimosis (see my post of 4th February 2013). I had fancied him for weeks and even engineered meeting him (I got oddly bold about things like this in my mid-twenties) by shoving a note under his door – this sounds like a stalker, but he lived on the floor above me in the flats I was living in at the time, so I wasn’t staking out his house or anything…

Things went reasonably well until we found ourselves in his bed. Too tight foreskin meant painful, slow, agonising sex for both of us – his pain physical and mine mental. I sometimes wonder if the poor guy ever got his problem sorted out. .

Then, what is traditionally supposed to be the most important sex ever – the big wedding night. I was totally exhausted after what seemed to be two days in one and my ‘up do’ seemed to contain more pins than the average sewing box which meant I was in the bathroom of our hotel room for half an hour trying to pull them out. The end result was something like an old witch with over back-combed hair and running make up.

By this point my husband had fallen asleep waiting for me to re-emerge so I had to jump on the bed, shouting ‘oi!’ Not very romantic or lady-like, I agree, but I was so tired I had lost all decorum but was determined to consummate our nuptials in the traditional way. A half-hearted effort followed.

But it is disappointments that stay as strong in the memory as the spectacular rip-roaring shag marathons. The not-so-bads and okays are quickly forgotten.

So I have learnt to enter proceedings open-minded and see what happens. High hopes are too often dashed.

Of course with The Man, I was open-minded but hopeful – I had hoped something would happen with him for a long time and when it did, it exceeded expectations. He is largely to blame (or maybe to thank) for the Drunken Slut Mum on your screen.