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.

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Do you have a ‘good’ sense of humour? I reckon most of us want to answer ‘yes’ to that question. Myself very much included. If I’m going to shag someone, not only do I want them to make me laugh but – crucially – I want them to laugh at my jokes too. And although ‘good sense of humour’ is a useful shorthand, because humour is so personal, you’re better off hunting for someone who has a compatible sense of humour, rather than what they describe as a ‘good’ one – I mentioned this in an older blog post about writing the best online dating profile. Most people love to laugh, but not all of us find the same things funny. Someone you think is hilarious might be tedious and irritating to me, and vice versa. I’ve been thinking on this a lot recently, about the ways in which humour can not only entertain us and sometimes laugh us into bed, but also indicate compatibility and green flags in potential partners.

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I learned a new word, team, so now I’m going to inflict it on all of you: interoception. It refers to the sense by which you perceive what is currently going on in your body. How do you feel physically? Are you hungry? Does the tickling, dry sensation in your throat mean you’re thirsty? Are you horny, perhaps? Is your left elbow itching? Interoception is perception of your internal physical needs and wants. Even though I’ve only just learned the word, I have actually written about interoception before: this piece on drinking water was deliberately crafted to manipulate your interoception into convincing you that you’d love to drink a nice, cool glass of fresh water. One of my favourite ever posts, about the ache that settles at the entrance to my cunt when I’m desperate to get fucked, is also about this kind of perception. Quite a lot of the stuff I write here is designed to trigger horny feelings, so to heighten those feelings I often lean in to words or phrases (and sometimes specific instructions I want you to follow) to make you tune in to the way your body is feeling, and pay a little extra attention to those parts of it that are yearning to come. I think it’s this kind of perception that helped me learn how to orgasm during PIV sex.

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In response to a very bitter post I spat out recently, quite a few people asked me if I’d heard of ‘kintsugi‘ – the Japanese art of repairing broken things with gold. The idea is that, by gilding the cracks, you can see what something has survived and it becomes more beautiful. It’s a very cool concept, and yes I have heard of it. Stuart even used it in an illustration many years ago about heartbreak, which I’m using for this piece today too. But no matter how gorgeous the idea, I am not in the headspace right now to repair myself with gold. To observe the shattered pile of dust which used to be my self-worth and note with detachment that, some day, it’ll make a lovely pot.

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“I wish I could take it away,” he says. My friend who doesn’t know what to do with my sad feelings. He tells me, with sincerity: “I wish I could take some of this away for you.”

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