Girl on the Net

The UK Government has announced its roadmap out of lockdown, and although the government has been as bad at acknowledging sex as it has been good at handing expensive contracts to its incompetent mates, I’m here to help with a brief guide to what the lockdown roadmap means for slags.

First thing’s first, you need to know that for people who live in houseshares, who cannot legally form a ‘support bubble’ with another household, sex has been effectively banned for quite a large proportion of the last year. The rules favour people who already live together and – more recently – adults who live alone. I’ve been lucky enough that even after I broke up with my dude after lockdown one, I then immediately fell into the ‘single adult household’ category. I say ‘lucky’, it’s financially killing me and I am desperately trying to tread water while I disentangle myself from this expensive clusterfuck, but at least in the meantime I can form a legitimate, legal ‘support bubble‘ with a lovely guy who is kind enough to fuck me senseless on occasion.

For people who live in houseshares? No such luck. Although rumour has it that many people who aren’t technically allowed to go fuck their partners/fuckbuddies/bored colleagues are still occasionally doing it, because ‘total abstinence’ has literally never been an effective message to give people about sex. Even when there’s a plague. People are going to want to fuck, because people are people.

So. If you’re a person who likes to fuck, here’s a quick fuckmap out of lockdown, based on the government’s current ‘roadmap’ plus some advice if the Tory plan is toilet paper to you and you’re planning on breaking the rules anyway.

[Update: thanks to Quinn Rhodes for pointing out that while I refer to ‘the UK’ throughout this piece, there are actually some important differences in approach. The ‘roadmap’ here applies to England – read Scotland’s strategy here, the plan for Wales here, and the current guidance for Northern Ireland here (which may be updated soon).]  

8th March – schools go back, fuck your partner in the living room at lunchtime

The eighth of March is the biggest date in the calendar because it marks the first easing of restrictions since… God, whenever the fuck these came in. A couple of months’ ago? A decade ago? The fourteenth century? Time has no meaning. But if you have kids, this will presumably be a huge date on your calendar because finally you get to ditch homeschooling and nagging them to put shoes on to go for a walk and do what you were born to do: fuck in the living room at ten a.m. Good for you.

For those who do not have kids, 8th March is still significant because it marks the time when you’re allowed to meet one person outside for recreation. This means if you’re dating, you can start lining up coffee-and-walking dates with people you like, with the aim of potentially fucking them later down the line. If you’ve not seen a partner/friend/fuckbuddy for a while, you can plan in a nice long picnic where you drink together in the sunshine and discuss all the ways you’d tear into each other if you didn’t still have to keep two metres distance.

29th March – groups of up to 6 allowed, backyard masturbation shows possible

Up to six people can meet outside in a garden? Gang bang BBQ time!

I jest, of course. You’re still (I think?) not meant to actually touch the people with whom you’re meeting up. But if you’re planning a circlejerk where each of you sits within a hula hoop carefully spaced two metres apart? Get this date in your diary, because that’s when it’ll technically be allowed.

Meanwhile, fuckers like me are getting excited because finally we’ll be allowed to go on park-based picnics with our friends, which – as ever – could lead to plans for future shags when the next stage of lockdown is lifted.

12th April – nail salons open, prepare for a hand job bonanza

In its roadmap out of lockdown, the government is keen to stress that each of these dates is movable – the phrase repeated often is ‘no earlier than’, so if I were you I wouldn’t go booking anything non-refundable just yet. Fuck knows the Tories have cocked up enough stuff already that by April we may well be swimming in a tide of brand new, vaccine-resistant variants, and this whole plan will have to be binned like inadequate PPE supplied by Matt Hancock’s mates. But still.

If you believe what they’re saying, then sometime on or after 12th April, you will be able to go to the gym (on your own or with your own household), get your hair/nails done, buy non-essential things, then go for a pint in a pub garden to celebrate your hard work. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even be allowed to sit near-but-not-next-to the person you’re planning to bang when lockdown gets lifted further.

What I find weird about this stage is that you’re technically allowed to have someone touch and fondle your hair, or sit directly opposite you while they go to town on your nails (I used to get my nails done occasionally in the Before Times and it takes… like… way longer than a shag. I’m talking 30-45 minutes – I could fuck five different people in that time!) but there is no word about whether you’re allowed to give a masked-up, rapid hand job to someone you don’t already live with. It doesn’t really seem fair.

17th May – smash it, then smash it again, then have a break and return to smashing it

Weirdly, there is no explicit statement in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown on when, exactly, we’ll actually be allowed to fuck people. But I reckon the 17th May – the earliest date by which we should be allowed to mix two households indoors – seems reasonable. So by this point you should probably be allowed to consummate those outdoor dates you’ve been chastely distancing on in the last few months, and finally get down to some fucking.

Failing that, you’ll have to wait till…

21st June – everything open, especially our legs

“It is hoped all legal limits on social contact can be removed.“

You know what this means? Spaff on my face.

Is this roadmap out of lockdown actually going to happen?

God no. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? I mean… can you think of a time when the government has told us something will happen and it’s actually happened exactly according to plan? Or are you instead sifting through seemingly infinite examples of times they’ve overpromised, fucked shit up, u-turned then blamed the public?

It’s not gonna happen, but we can dream. And dreaming (plus occasional rule-breaking and judicious use of London’s rapid-Covid-testing facilities) is what’s got me through lockdown three so far, maybe it’ll help you too. Or maybe this whole post will just make you want to yell at me in the comments, telling me how irresponsible it is to want to fuck when people are dying. You’re right – people are dying. I’m utterly incensed about it. We have been ripped off at every single stage of this fucking nightmare by a government that routinely ignores scientific evidence in favour of making dangerously populist decisions. They literally paid us to go to restaurants over the summer! They let loads of people meet at Christmas even though they knew it would cause further deaths! They have consistently ignored warnings that without financial support people won’t be able to self-isolate! They opened schools for ONE DAY in January before shutting them back down! They spent billions on Test and Trace and it doesn’t work for shit!

So yeah, people are dying, and it’s enraging. But I am not going to take out my rage by battering the people who want to fuck with a big smug stick that says ‘you are an evil person’ because I understand the frustration of watching the government make decisions that drastically increase the risk to the general population, while lecturing us on personal responsibility. I know people who work in schools who are being told to go back to work, without a vaccine, who also have to listen to Keir Starmer (leader of the Labour party and total wet wipe) urging them not to strike even though they’re yet again being hurled into danger. If those people want to fuck, I won’t tell them not to. As a good pal of mine who works in a school pointed out: “It’s illegal for me to meet up with my girlfriend, yet both of us are compelled to go to work and mix with 2000+ households every day. What the fuck.” Yeah, what the fuck. He’s had Covid twice now, by the way, because he works in a school and that’s what happens when you work in a school. He has not yet been invited for a vaccine.

How to lower your risk if you’re shagging during Covid

If you’re concerned the government’s route out of lockdown is too risky, or are planning to break the rules anyway, I’m going to give you a little bit of advice on how to minimise your risk. Just as ‘don’t fuck at all’ is rarely (lol OK never) a successful sex education strategy to try and prevent young people getting pregnant or swapping STIs, ‘don’t fuck at all’ is going to be also a shit strategy when you’re trying to manage an entire population during a pandemic. So for those of you who are planning to illegally fuck/kiss/share a tops-off cuddle on the sofa while you watch The Great Pottery Throw Down, here are a few tips on how to minimise your risk:

1. Research rapid testing sites near you. No test is going to be 100% accurate, and there are always false negatives, but getting regularly tested is now possible in many places. Go to Google, search ‘rapid community testing near me‘ and book yourself in if you can. That way, although you can’t know for sure you’re not passing Covid on, you can help to minimise the risk if you are planning something sexy. It’s the equivalent of getting an SHL test for STIs if you’re about to have condomless sex: lower your risk, make yourself safer. If your area is anything like mine, there is so much capacity that the people working there are bored shitless. You are almost certainly not taking a test from someone who needs it more, but you can adjust your strategy if you find things are different in your case.
2. Keep a record of your risk levels. You might have genuinely spent the last two weeks indoors seeing no one, or you might have had a busy time of it shopping/caring for someone vulnerable/going to work on public transport. By keeping a record of what you’ve been up to, you can make a more accurate assessment of how risky you are at any given time.
3. Get really good at disclosure. This is great practice for the After Times, when you’ll be fucking yourself into a hot, messy paste every weekend: get used to being up-front with partners/people you’ll meet about how risky you are at this moment. Be honest about where you’ve been and who you’ve seen, and let other people make their own choices about whether they want to fuck you, or limit things to a distanced walk for now. You can always spend the walk telling each other hot fantasies, then go home and rub one out while you’re on the phone to each other, then save the fucking for later down the line when it’s safer than the day after you got sneezed on in Tesco.

As ever, there is more and better advice on Covid and safer sex at Bish.

Wow GOTN, this is wildly irresponsible – are you telling people to break the law???????

I’m not telling anyone to do anything. But I am really frustrated that the government has been so crap at acknowledging that sex is wrapped up in the (genuine, serious, no-it’s-not-a-fucking-joke-just-cos-it’s-sexy) need for human contact. I’ve done two big lockdowns now: one in a couple and one on my own, and holy shit the latter is way harder. I have lost most of my patience with people in couples smugly explaining that ‘we never break the rules.’

Yes, we all have a huge responsibility to those around us, but we also have a government that’s doing far more damage than any one individual could ever dream of, and I trust myself to be better at managing that risk than Boris ‘Eat Out To Help Out/Serco Can Handle This/Have A Jolly Careful Christmas’ Johnson. So yes, I’ve broken the rules sometimes, I’m not exactly proud of it (I am, in fact, deeply ashamed and angry with myself) but I am not the only one. Sometimes it’s more helpful to acknowledge that mistakes are inevitable and give advice on how to manage risk than it is to pretend we’re all angels who never fuck up.

Yours honestly,

A Fuckup.