This week an article did the rounds on Twitter titled ’10 Things Men Do In Bed That Women Hate.’ It was So. Fucking. Awful (and mostly copied word for word from this old, awful listicle from more than a year ago) that I thought I’d write an alternative.

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I always hated the common dating site question: ‘what are your favourite books/films/bands etc?’ It struck me as a bizarre way to help encourage compatibility. Sure, if you’re going to be with someone for a long time you don’t want them to be constantly swapping out your punk rock tunes for dance anthems, but it’s more than possible for people with differing tastes to want to jump each other’s bones. Is there anything more useful I’d have asked?

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A few weeks back, I gave the best blow job I’ve ever given. Apparently. I don’t like writing that down so starkly – it’s far easier to talk about how mediocre I am in bed, or how incompetent I am with certain sex toys.

But I’m writing it because the sentence itself will spin round in my head forever. I don’t want anyone to tell me that anything was ‘the best blow job ever’, because I’m primed to root through any compliment until I eventually find a negative. And so this week I’m tortured by this one simple fact:

None of my other blow jobs were as good as that one. 

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How should I define my first date? There were lots of experiences with boys long before I was ever formally asked to the cinema, or for dinner, or whatever it is people do when they’re not just desperately trying to rummage in each other’s pants.

The first time I kissed a guy (on the lips, no snogging or anything) I was at the swimming pool. Our friends had all got together for an afternoon of splashing around, and I was determined that I’d come home with a boyfriend. The proto-boyfriend, you understand – not a real one. The one you get when you ask your best mate to just go around all the boys who seem vaguely willing and ask them in turn: “Will you go out with my friend?”

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This post has everything to do with anxiety and nothing to do with sex. Except, of course, for the fact that both sex and anxiety are woven so tightly into the fabric of my life that they touch on everything I do. Except for that.

A while ago, someone sent me a link to this old article on stress and anxiety, and it made me stressed. But the good kind of stressed: annoyance that prompts me to write a long blog post about something. That kind of stress I like. It’s a refreshing break from the other kind of stress I have, which is a constant low-level hum of worry that I have done or said something howlingly awful, which at some point will be revealed to me via the medium of a friend or colleague telling me to get fucked.

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