Chewing gum: how soon is too soon to be a fuckup?

Image by the brilliant Stuart F Taylor

“I’m not 17, I’m a grown-arse woman. I just regularly make childish mistakes.”

– Tracey, Chewing Gum

In today’s blog, I am going to tell you about a ridiculous, embarrassing mistake. The first person I told was my good pal Jessica, who greeted this story with howls of laughter followed by ‘you’re definitely going to tell the blog this, aren’t you? You HAVE to.’ And yeah… I am committed to telling you my silliest fuckups as well as my sexiest fucks, so I guess I do have to. This is a story about chewing gum, and the question of how soon in a budding relationship is too soon to be a fuckup.

My new dude doesn’t smoke. And by ‘new dude’ I mean this guy: he of the bracelet game and picking me up and spanking the sorry out of me. I like him. That’s all you’re getting for now, and that’s all you need. This is a man I like, who I’m reasonably keen to impress.

He doesn’t smoke, because he’s a good and healthy boy. So when I go to visit him, I have a quick fag before I ring the doorbell, then chew gum on the way upstairs so I can kiss him when I arrive without giving him a mouthful of nicotine and horror.

Then, because I’ve usually cycled over in a delightfully sweaty manner, I pop to the bathroom so I can shower and change out of my cycling clothes. After my shower, when my mouth is fresh and minty, I wrap my chewing gum in a tissue and dispose of it.

Anyway.

On this particular evening, I did everything the way I usually would (or so I thought), then emerged fresh from the bathroom ready for wine and dinner and hot make-outs and shagging. It was the day after the new lockdown had been announced, so we were both feeling a bit miserable about the world, and we began by making dinner to take our minds off the plague.

At some point after dinner, we started making out, and honestly team he was being so hot I almost – almost – just dragged him straight to the bedroom at that point. But I’d felt something a bit weird in my knickers while we were snogging and thought ‘hmm… maybe I’ve come on my period? It would be odd timing but I should probably check.’

So I made my classy excuses, popped to the bathroom, pulled down my knickers and…

Ugh. Fuck. No. Ew. WHAT.

There was chewing gum in my knickers.

Not just there, also literally in my pubic hair. Have you ever had chewing gum in your hair? It’s an absolute bitch to remove. Strings of minty-fresh goop stretched between my gusset and my pubes, and I had to spend quite a while picking away at them with my fingernails to try and get rid of the worst of it.

Deductive reasoning tells me that what must have happened is that earlier in the evening, I went for a pee after my shower, absent-mindedly wrapped my chewing gum in some tissue, then forgot that was the chewing gum tissue before I went to wipe.

Me and my minty-fresh pubes were very full of regret.

How soon is too soon to be a fuckup?

I swiftly realised I had two possible choices.

  1. Tell this man, who I have promised I’ll be entirely honest with, about the whole ‘chewing gum pubes’ situation and hope that he finds it funny instead of utterly disgusting.
  2. Explain to him that I’m feeling a bit down and not massively up for sex tonight, thus sidestepping the immediate issue but giving myself a pointless, pathetic lie with which to torture myself when I wake up at 4 in the morning.

GOTN would do 1, because of course she would: she’s literally publishing this story for all of you to read because she likes to disgust as well as arouse you, the least she can do is tell the guy she likes about it. I should do 1. But of course I pick 2. Because although I pretend to be wise here on the blog… and I try my best to approach life with honesty… and I trust this guy not to go running for the hills when he finds out I’ve been a big fuckup… I still have fucking CHEWING GUM IN MY PUBES. Chewing gum. In my PUBES.

It is hard to think straight when you’re consumed with shame, and I made a poor decision. Incidentally, I have dined out off this story when chatting to all my mates (shoutout to Claire from my second book who now refers to me as ‘gummy pubes’) and the most frequent piece of feedback I have received from them is that they are genuinely surprised I didn’t immediately tell him what had happened. To quote someone who knows me very well: “lying about this is incredibly off-brand for you.”

I know. I know. I know. I just wasn’t ready for that conversation while the waves of embarrassment were still crashing over me. This guy thinks I’m cool! He thinks I’m sexy! He literally reads my sex blog! He will hear this story and realise that the first and (so far) only night we have hung out and not had sex was not entirely down to post-lockdown sadness but partly because I’m a total fuckup who accidentally deposited a wad of chewing gum in her knickers.

Later that evening, as we were chatting and kissing and generally having fun, he confessed that he thought I was cooler than him. I explained a few reasons why the opposite is actually the case but it took every ounce of my self-control not to include:

“Dude. How much chewing gum do you have in your pubes at this exact moment? If the answer is ‘less than some’, I promise you are far, far cooler than me.”

 

20 Comments

  • Girl on the net says:

    I figure a lot of people might want to hear his actual reaction, so here goes. The other night, when I realised I would definitely publish this story, and that it probably wasn’t cool to let him hear it filtered through the medium of my trying-to-entertain-strangers voice, I waited till he was drunk enough to be able to laugh with/at me, gathered my courage in both hands, and told him about the chewing gum.

    His response began with: “there’s a lot to unpack here” and was incredibly reassuring, which was nice. He told me a whole bunch of stuff he’d done that he thought was gross to try and make me feel better.

    But somewhere in the back of my mind I was worried because he didn’t – like all my friends – immediately rip the piss out of me. Did I tell this story in a way that was too serious? Is it not funny that I’m a total clusterfuck? How can we hang out long term if he’s not willing to rag on my objectively ridiculous behaviour? Later that evening, though, as we were lying in bed, he put one hand down to cup my crotch and whispered “just checking… you know… for gum.” 

  • Jul says:

    This one’s a keeper.

    • Girl on the net says:

      Haha, he’s a very nice dude indeed, but I’m always wary of language like ‘keeper’ because a) I have not known him for that long and it is WAY too soon to be thinking about that sort of thing also b) he ain’t mine, so I don’t ever get to ‘keep’ him. I’m glad he’s happy to hang around for now though, he’s fun.

  • “Just checking … for gum .” Will have to be his go to now and forever for feeling your crotch. I think this has given him an excellent intimate response for wanting to feel your crotch so well done for giving him that.
    You do make me laugh and I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to know how long it took you to get the gum out and did you have to cut it like head hair?

    • Girl on the net says:

      Replied on twitter but doing so here too in case people aren’t on there – most of it came out with a vigorous scrub but I did another pass over the general area with hair trimmers just to be sure. Luckily my bush is fairly short at the moment otherwise I reckon it’d probably all have had to come off.

  • Valery North says:

    I think I would have guffawed at you, and concluded with “I’m just glad something like that hasn’t happened to me yet.” And then remember how I once started wanking with melted chocolate on my fingers, and STFU.

  • Faustian says:

    You missed the most important bit – Spearmint or peppermint?

  • Grimble Xong says:

    no! hopefully it was Juicy Fruit

    • Girl on the net says:

      Honestly, I don’t ever want to kinkshame anyone and I would never piss on someone’s personal taste but… fruit flavoured chewing gum is utterly depraved.

  • SpaceCaptainSmith says:

    Thank you for your honesty here. :)
    I’m sure he must have been happy to know there was an entirely good reason for you not to have sex that night! (Not that ‘a good reason’ should be required, but you know… it wasn’t anything really bad.)

    • Girl on the net says:

      Haha yeah he was a bit. He had been a little confused as to why I so suddenly did not want to fuck, so I was glad I could clear that up. =)

  • Mosscat says:

    That was incredibly funny, though potentially painful – and part of the reason you ARE so incredibly cool is that you fuck up, laugh and cry about it and make it OK not to be perfectx

  • fuzzy says:

    but i *am* utterly depraved. Juicy fruit is the only way to fly. Love the whole “just checking for gum” thing. Followed a link to your “disgusting things” post, and rather than comment on a 5-year old post thought I’d point out that as far as “I smell good when I smell dirty” comment in that post, I find that Smell is All. I can go from zero to mach 1 in 0.5 seconds in arousal solely on a woman’s scent.

    • Girl on the net says:

      Oh God yeah – scent is fucking *excellent*. I once followed a man round a shop because I wanted to work out why he smelled so good and I wanted to ravish him. Eventually worked out he was wearing ‘Joop’ – the scent so many horny teenage boys used to wear when I was younger.

  • Michael says:

    Worse one. I was using Nicorette to help my stop smoking campaign. One night i had some in my mouth when we got into bed. My wife started playing, indicating that i should go down on her. Instead of calling time out and getting rid of the gum I pushed it between my gum and upper lip and submerged under the sheets. It took a while but eventually she came nicely. Problem – the gum had come loose and was now tangled in her pubic hair. I had to tell her and there followed a bad tempered interlude with me trying to trim it out.
    When she was finally tidied up and washed and back in bed she managed a laugh.

  • Lisa Stone says:

    It’s a great story. And as always, what confuses us at the wrong moment turns out to be a very funny story. The main thing is to tell correctly.

  • Fajolan says:

    How to turn chewing gum / pubic hair into a joke? Easy
    Romantic story? Classy!

  • Mike says:

    Love this post, not just because of the gum angle, although that is hilarious.

    What I really like is you talking about having a bush as though it’s the most natural thing in the world and all women have them. Many people seem to believe that all women now shave all their fanny hair away, a view supported in porn. Female friends tell me that in the real world e.g. locker rooms, hairy fannies are still very normal. You post is so real, compared with so much else that is out there.

    It reminds me of a time I was doing a half marathon with three female co-workers. During training runs, two of the women used to wind the third up because she (apparently) had a natural ‘70s style’ bush, and they clearly didn’t. On the day of the run, the only place to have a pee was on the wooded areas either side of the road at the start, which were packed full of other runners, you could hardly move. The other two women were shocked when the’natural’ lady just dropped her shorts to pee. “Advantage of not shaving it off” she smirked. I can confirm no vagina was visible, all you could see was her pubic hair. Given there was no-where else to pee, eventually the other two had no choice but to drop their shorts also. One was shaved bald, they other trimmed her pubes very short. Suffice to say, I felt well acquainted with their labia afterwards. And I didn’t get away scot free either. I hoped they’d not look as I got my cock out, but they loudly discussed it as I peed, trying to decide if I was circumcised or just had my skin rolled back.

    Got to say, I found it all quite hot. Not sure you’re supposed to find watching people peeing hot but I did And for me, the woman with the bush was far sexier, even though her vagina was not directly on view. I suppose that is likely because I was a young boy growing before people started shaving it all off. Girls didn’t have hairy fannies but grown up women all did then.

    Not surprisingly, none of this was ever discussed again.

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