OK listen up, lover/fuckbuddy/casual shag. You want us to get our sexy fuck on, and that’s delightful. I would very much enjoy milking your dick/being ruined by you/tying you to the bedframe/getting spanked in the hallway/sucking you off/finding a secluded park where we can bang up against a tree/whatever it is that both of our little hearts crave. But in order to do this, and do it well, I need you to give me some guidance. Tell me what you want and why you want it. Talk about your desires and needs and likes and dislikes. Communicate with me – not just once, at the start of our connection, but constantly. Before, during and after sex. It’s not a one-shot thing, it’s a permanent responsibility. You want to eat the cookies? You have to help make dough.
Here’s the thing, I’m not a mind reader. I might have had a lot of sex, but I haven’t yet had a lot of sex with you. It might seem obvious to you, when you say ‘I want you to domme me’, what exactly you mean by that phrase. Of course it is! You live in your own head, and in your own head ‘domme me’ has a very specific connotation. But for someone else, ‘domme me’ could mean anything from an aggressive no-lube hand job to a vigorous pegging, a light spanking, or a bit of gentle teasing in the pub. It might mean that I stop sucking your dick just before you come so you’re squirming and begging me for it. Perhaps it indicates I should take your dick out of my mouth and slap it hard – once – with the palm of my hand, as the first squirt of jizz pumps from the tip. Maybe it means you shouldn’t get blow jobs at all, just be made to rub my feet and then my clit while I tell you what a good good boy you’re being.
There is so much variety! So much possibility! So many different roads to go down! If you want me to meet you where your kink is, I need you to draw me a map.
This goes no matter what your request is, by the way. Dominance is the most obvious one because submissives (I know this because I am one, and we’re annoying little shits sometimes) sometimes have a tendency to say ‘oh just ruin me however you like!’, without giving specific guidance. Personally, when I say that, it’s because I know I have a serious kink for being used and degraded, and I’m broadly up for anything within legal and safe parameters.
But dipping my toe into dominance in recent years has helped me understand more fully and completely why ‘within legal and safe parameters’ is one of the most irritating limits I could ever express. It’s far too fucking broad. FAR too broad. I’ve made plenty of mental notes for the future, of course, but I’m also sharing this info with you:
If you want to eat the cookies, you have to help make dough.
How do I tell you what I want?
I don’t expect you to be able to articulate the exact detail of what you want. If you’re subbing and you need dominance, dictating exactly what you want me to do might well kill the tone stone dead.
Again, because I’m usually submissive, I understand this completely. You don’t want to tell someone to rail you till you cry then feel like every stroke of that glorious fuck is there only because you’ve written a very specific brief that’s being followed to the letter. Back in the day we called this ‘topping from the bottom’ and most people tend not to like it.
BUT! There are lots of ways to help shape a scene that don’t involve handing over a neat script with notes on choreography.
- Show me your porn.
- Tell me your hottest stories.
- Participate in post-match analysis where you tell me after a fuck what your favourite bits are.
- Encourage me when I do the right thing! My recent foray into dominating people has hammered home the importance of what I’m going to call ‘reverse safewords’. Those things that people say (“Oh yes, that’s hot, I like that, unngh”) that function as a big green light indicating YES, THIS IS THE RIGHT DIRECTION. The reason I call these ‘reverse safewords’ is because I know some people struggle with even the very basics of sexual communication, and uttering a ‘yes that feels good’ in the moment makes them cringe with awkwardness. So if you’re feeling awkward about telling me how great a particular thing feels, just shout ‘green!’ or something! That’ll do! If you’re shy about saying something aloud, it can be a gesture. Grab me by the wrist, or squeeze my shoulder. Click your fingers three times, baby. Drop some spontaneous applause! Whatever you like! Establish a ‘green’ word or gesture and then use it when I’m doing what you like. Give me something!
I want to spend at least part of my spare time pondering how I next want to fuck you. Letting my fantasies about you grow around my own sexual desires like intertwining vines. But if you want those plants to grow then – yes, you guessed it! – you have water them. Give me some nuggets of information about the things you like, and why you like them. Help me get into not just the desires but the reasons behind them.
When it comes to creating scenes and moments that make you whimper and cum like an eager virgin pumping wet-dream spunk into his mattress, you’re my fucking muse. But being my muse involves work: you gotta feed the fire, baby. Gimme petrol and coal and a spark. At the very least give me kindling.
Tell me what you think of when you’re wanking. Make noises when I’m doing something good. Text me ‘remember when you did that thing on Saturday? I loved that, please do it again… but harder, while calling me a bitch.’
You want me to set your world on fire? Give me something to fuel the flames.
11 Comments
“You want me to set your world on fire? Give me something to fuel the flames.”
While most interested in what’s happening between your ears, and learning lots more about how things are happening from an alternative perspective than my own, perhaps fantasizing about the extraordinary which could not ever possibly be any potential reality is most exciting. I’ll never get to be another gender, in an alternative circumstance/lifestyle/setting/etc, doing some taboo excitement without actual fear of consequences… What potential possibilities could that represent though?
I want to get a butt-plug shaped cookie cutter so I can decorate them as Christmas trees and take a batch into work in December. Just wanted to get that off my chest.
I’ve always struggled, historically, to be really clear about what I want, and part of it goes to that ‘I want to be used and demeaned’ thing you speak about. You know what you want, but being explicit about it and getting exactly what you ordered doesn’t hit the spot. It’s been easier with a girlfriend – women do, generally, communicate better about this stuff in my experience – but we still haven’t quite reached the optimum balance of directives and spontaneity.
I’m a big fan of the post-match analysis. Not immediately afterwards, but certainly while you’re both still in that post-cum afterglow. Saturday afternoon sex – that’s the best; you freshen up a bit afterwards, walk to the pub and sit with a drink, having a play-by-play review (in voices just loud enough that you might be possibly overheard) and sow a few ideas for the future.
OK so firstly, if you do this butt-plug-Christmas-tree cookies thing, please show us pics of the results!
I think this is a really good point: “You know what you want, but being explicit about it and getting exactly what you ordered doesn’t hit the spot.” There’s definitely a balance between ‘here’s what I like’ and ‘here is a very explicit menu of everything, and you’re going to follow it like it’s a script’. As I think about it, I’m wondering if actually the latter could potentially be very hot in a certain context, depending on the drives of the people involved, and now I’m wondering if I should try it at some point to see if it could be kinky. But yeah, the former is definitely the sweet spot for something that follows a sexy flow but isn’t too prescriptive.
Ultimately this ‘tell me what you want’ isn’t a template for something specific to do, more a guide on one of the ways you can help that sexy flow… well… *flow*. These little conversations about sex – before, during, after – build a framework that you can play within for the future. And oh my GOD yes to the postfuck pint and discussion. I miss this. I yearn for this. I want to go and have a stoned roast on Sunday afternoon while discussing all the sex we had on Saturday night. Big sigh.
Omg Jaimie I laughed so hard after a long hard day. Nailed it.
GOTN, this is framed for a reader who is into very specific things and has lots of experience with partners. Which is one valid bay of the Ocean of Sexuality, but very different from someone who waited 10 or 20 years after puberty to try things with other people, and spends private time with a lover every year or so. It takes a lot of experimenting to figure out what feels good with other people and not everyone has had that experience at 30 or 60 or 90. Some things are fun to fantasize about but not so fun IRL, and some things which might be fun I am not up for in twenty fucking twenty five. I agree that communicating helps but for a lot of people that communication will be “could we try …” and “move your hand a bit ah that’s lovely” and “dear, I want to talk about last night, because I know I asked for degrading talk but one of the names you called me still bothers me” and not “I would like you to be Santa and me to be a naughty elf. Here are my favourite toys for Santa’s toybag and how I like them used on me. Here are notes from a former lover on what I do when I am close to climax- holding me there between 75 and 120 seconds feels best. Please don’t spoil my orgasms.” You get into exploratory communication eventually but after setting the frame around people with very specific desires and lots of experience of what does and does not feel good with partners.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Your comment reads like you’re criticising me for not including other forms of comms, then acknowledges that I do include other forms of comms. Fundamentally, yes, different people will communicate differently, and the level to which someone is comfortable communicating (and the kind of things they want to communicate) will be different for each person and each scenario. I’ve got a piece on more simple communication here: https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/joan-price-eye-chart-meta-sex-advice/ and a piece on fantasy/reality here: https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/kink-for-misogyny/ though I do talk about this quite a lot. Here too: https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/anal-as-punishment/ Some things are sexy in your head but not in real life, and some things can be brought into real life but only as *play*, on the understanding that they won’t be acted upon, just talked about for hotness. The general message of this piece is just ‘you have to join in by opening up a bit and sharing’ which I don’t think really goes against anything in your comment, but if you have a specific issue you think I need to address here let me know.
You are giving unsolicited advice to strangers which assumes very specific things about what those strangers are like but takes those assumptions for granted, like a book jacket which assumes you know which country “the economy” refers to. I think “lots of experience and into specific things” is a fine type of lover for you, but its not everyone, and presenting it as the cost of entry just discourages people who run colder from going out and trying things with cute people where they live. “Communicate with your lovers about sex” is useful for everyone, the first half of this article maybe for 10% of people.
Thing is though, I talk to a wide audience of lots of people. I tend to assume that if people realise an article doesn’t specifically resonate for them, they’ll move on. Maybe even to one of the other articles I’ve written that might resonate more. I frame a LOT of my writing in terms of ‘you’ referring to individuals I’m thinking of when I write rather than ‘you’ as a universal mass meaning ‘everyone’. Not everything is written specifically for you, sometimes it’s written with different people in mind. Some things will resonate, some won’t. I can’t make all of it resonate with everyone because we’re all different.
Also I take issue with this: “ “lots of experience and into specific things” is a fine type of lover for you, but its not everyone, and presenting it as the cost of entry…” I’m not saying someone has to have specific fantasies or be into specific things in order to fuck me, I’m using examples to show the breadth of a point. Someone doesn’t have to be in to these specific things as a ‘cost of entry’to shag me(side note: what do you mean by that anyway?). I’m using some examples to show why communication is important because we’re all in to different things.
I mean the cost of entry to being sexual or romantic with other people, not a specific person (because a specific person can and should set specific boundaries for their specific lovers). One reason why I waited longer than most people is that the messages about human or male sexuality which I read did not fit me or demanded things that I could not give or did not know how to give like being able to feel sexual or romantic interest in a crowded noisy room or based on a few photos and some short text. These days I have someone pretty I see every so often and communicate with well but even then getting physical is a challenge because it’s twenty fucking twenty five and I don’t have a lot of experience of what worked in the past to troubleshoot with (or the very vivid and specific fantasies and longings which you have blogged about).
I’ve followed the debate with interest, and it may not be for me to chime in (and GOTN will doubtless and rightly moderate my ass off the conversation if she deems that I’ve overstepped). Still, I’m personally struggling a little to understand the complaint.
I’m a writer myself, and I think it is important to understand that not every piece that you read will be as inclusive to you and your own, very specific circumstances as you might like. It never can be. If everyone only wrote and published what was inclusive to every taste and sensibility, nothing would ever get written, and we’d all be paralysed with anxiety about sharing anything in case it didn’t cater for the entire gamut of the potential readership.
Writing about yourself isn’t exclusive; it’s sharing, and you can learn by listening to what other people’s experiences are, even if it doesn’t directly relate to your own experience of sex and relationships.
I always look forward to reading the pieces that Jenby writes. I’m never going to let anyone whip my ass with nettles, but it’s interesting as hell to read about it.
So, everyone’s experience is different, and you meet life where you are at the present time. If I may be so bold, your choice of the phrase ‘cost of entry’ infers a transactional view of intimacy – you have to be or do something to expect intimacy in return. I don’t agree with that. I think the only cost of entry is to be open: open to yourself and open to others, and what the universe might drop into your lap. Hopefully, a nice, sexy something to spend some agreeable time with.
This was not intended to be critical of your comments, and I hope you don’t take them that way, Aeneas. I would encourage you to, perhaps, be a little more outward-looking, and in doing so, I hope you find your Dido.
Jx
“Writing about yourself isn’t exclusive; it’s sharing, and you can learn by listening to what other people’s experiences are, even if it doesn’t directly relate to your own experience of sex and relationships.” I think this nails it perfectly, thanks Jaimie <3 I appreciate you joining in!