Gabriel

A friend introduced me to Gabriel at a party, we chatted, and arranged to meet again, at the art gallery café the following Saturday, where there was some sort of dance thing on, with a jazz band. It was fun, and he was good company, so we met again, and again, and we ended up going to bed together after we’d known each other for about a month.

At first, it was just lovely sex. He wanted me on top, not just sometimes, but all the time, which I suppose was a bit unusual, but not that unusual, and I liked it, because I could see him, and he was absolutely gorgeous. It also seemed to take him ages to come, so there was never any question of my being left behind, the way I had been with some of my other boyfriends. He didn’t move in with me, or anything, but we spent three or four nights a week together, sometimes at his flat, sometimes at mine, and taking turns to do the cooking.

That had been going on for about six weeks when he muttered, “Pinch my nipples. Please?” while we were making love.

I thought I must have misheard, so I stopped pumping. “What?”

“Please. Pinch my nipples.”

“Why?” I’d been close to coming, but I could feel it threatening to ebb away, even though his knob was still as hard as ever inside me.

“Because I like it.”

If I hadn’t wanted to carry on where I’d left off, before everything went off the boil, I might have argued, but in the circumstances, I just gave his nipples a tweak and got pumping again.

He had the decency not to interrupt again, but by the time he grunted and squirmed, I knew that part of the dynamic between us had changed. We cuddled a bit afterwards, but eventually I had to ask. “What was that about? The nipple pinching, I mean.”

He looked a bit embarrassed. “Sorry. I like to be hurt. I didn’t think I was going to be able to come. Thanks for doing it. You could have done it a bit harder.”

My brain was stumbling, trying to keep up. “Sorry. Run that past me again. You like to be hurt?”

He nodded. “I can’t usually do it at all, unless I’ve been hurt first. With you it’s been special, but I still want you to hurt me.”

I couldn’t help laughing, but it wasn’t meant to be unkind. “I suppose you know that makes you a bit weird, but I’m not about to let a bit of nipple pinching come between us. Come here.” I tweaked the nipple I could reach, and he gasped.

“I love that. You can do it a bit harder.”

I didn’t really want to, so I just did the same again, and kissed him. That was the end of the conversation for that night. We went to sleep, and he didn’t mention it until the next time we were in bed together, a couple of days later.

“You know I said about pinching my nipples?” he said.

I nodded. It had been on my mind on and off, but it had made me realise that I’d actually fallen a little in love with him, so I was prepared to put up with it.

“Will you do it some more? Maybe before we start. You could bite them, too.”

I could. Or I could change my mind and walk away. I pulled the covers off him and looked at him. He was beautiful, but his knob was definitely not looking happy, lying on his thigh like a fat slug. It was decision time, and I decided I’d do it. I started with the pinching, then nibbled a bit, all of which had the desired effect. I didn’t especially like doing it, but it meant that he had a useable woody that I could straddle. I pinched him a few more times while we were doing it, and everything worked. I came a few times, he came, and we had a cuddle afterwards.

It turned out to be the top of a very slippery slope. After a while, just the pinching wasn’t enough, and nibbling was replaced by biting. Still, once I’d got him hard, he didn’t ask me to pinch his nipples again, so I could just get on with it.

We moved on to my biting his lip, and eventually to my nipping the skin of his knob with my teeth. Otherwise, we were just a happy couple, and the sex was amazing, getting better all the time. I was still uncomfortable with hurting him, but everything else was perfect.

Even when he bought me a pair of black leather boots and a whip for Christmas, I went along with it. He lay on the bed, and I’d flick his chest and his knob with the whip. Riding him with the boots on felt strange at first, but I quickly got used to it.

The most difficult moment came when he produced the hatpin. I looked at it in horror. “What do you want me to do with that?”

“Just stick it through my nipple.”

The word ‘just’ had probably never been so misused. “Just stick it through your nipple?”

“Yes. You just pinch it between your fingers and pull, and then you can push the needle through.”

“Needle? It isn’t a needle. It’s a fucking hatpin.” Even if I hadn’t been naked apart from a pair of boots, it would have been a weird conversation.

“It’s all right. I sterilised it.”

“It is not fucking all right. You’re asking me to stick a hatpin through your nipple. Which bit of that is supposed to be all right?”

“I want you to. I want to be able to make love to you. I love you.”

In my experience, men said that to me when they wanted to get me into bed, but he’d already done that, without any quibbling on my part. If you ignored the bit where I hurt him, and the boots, it was the best sex I ever had. “A few months ago, all I had to do was pinch your nipples. Where’s it all going to end?”

He looked sad. “I don’t know. Maybe the needle will be enough, but it might not. I’ve never gone any further.”

He sounded like a teenage girl talking about taking her bra off. Remembering that, I gritted my teeth and forced a smile. “Okay. We’ll give it a go. Lie down and give me the hatpin.”

Goldilocks

Most of us are familiar with the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, about a girl who sneaks in to the bears’ house while they’re out waiting for their porridge to cool. Most of us probably feel sorry for Baby Bear, who comes home to find his porridge all gone and his chair broken to pieces.

I feel even more sorry for Mummy and Daddy Bear. The story makes it clear that they sleep in separate beds, and perhaps even separate rooms. What happened? Since they have a baby, they presumably shared a bed at some point, and even if they’re no longer sexually active, what’s wrong with sharing a bed with someone?

You don’t have to have sex with someone, just because you’re in the same bed. I’ve shared beds with friends of both sexes without even a kiss passing between us. It’s just nice to know that you’re not alone. If you wake in the night, there’s the snuffling warmth of another human being there, not far away. I know people who share their beds with dogs and cats, and I doubt very much that there’s sex involved.

Perhaps Daddy Bear got caught with Soo from the Sooty Show, or perhaps Mummy Bear had a fling with Baloo from The Jungle Book, but they’re clearly still on speaking terms, so why can’t they cuddle and make up? What sort of message are they sending out to Baby Bear, sleeping out their lives in separate beds?

Let us feel sorry for Mummy and Daddy Bear. Baby Bear’s chair can be repaired or replaced, and there are probably enough oats left for some more porridge, but there’s no substitute for companionship. Baby Bear doesn’t come out of the story too badly. He ends up with a blonde in his bed.

Writing about sex

Why write about sex? More to the point, what’s the problem with writing about sex? Most people, whether they’re reading this or not, are in the world because their parents had sex. Even the few who were conceived in a test tube were probably conceived in the test tube because their parents had tried to conceive a baby by having sex, and hadn’t succeeded. Their parents were probably having sex because they liked it. In fact, a lot of people like sex so much that they go to considerable lengths to make sure they can do it without conceiving a child.

Unless you’re very unlucky, sex comes closer to our lives than murder, zombies, vampires, or cataclysms that threaten the future of civilisation, but you don’t hear the moralisers complaining about any of those. Along with everyone else, the moralisers might well complain if I went out and murdered someone, but if I wrote about it, that would be fine. Not so with sex. Provided it’s all done in secret, and according to a set of rules that seem rather arbitrary, the moralisers seem happy enough, but if you write about it, you might as well be offering them a slice of cold baby pie. Curiously, though, vampire stories seem to be able to sneak past the censors, in spite of their very obvious erotic overtones.

If you write erotica, you’re probably going to be writing about sex. It’s possible that there are people who just want to read descriptions of sex, but that seems about as much fun as reading a description of a zombie, or a vampire, or a murder. To my mind, the sex should be integral to the story, like the murder in a murder mystery, in such a way that the story wouldn’t work without it.

However, sex in fiction isn’t necessarily restricted to erotica. There are murders in stories that aren’t murder mysteries, though if it’s a murder mystery, there does have to be a murder. Similarly, if it’s a zombie story, there are probably going to be zombies, and in a realistic contemporary love story, there’s probably going to be some sex. It’s what people do. If you’re in a relationship, I expect there’s a better than even chance that sex is (or was) involved somewhere.

You don’t have to want to read about sex (or zombies), but if people do want to read about sex (or zombies), leave them alone. For them to read about it, someone has to write about it. Good luck to the people who write zombie fiction, I’ll stick with writing erotica. I’m obviously crazy, but I prefer sex to being killed by a zombie. I also have an idea for a vampire story that the moralisers might disapprove of. That’s fine. They don’t have to read it.

Evil twins.

This is a chest. It belongs to a friend of mine, and as you can tell, he’s a man. Let’s call him M, for man. Some men have hairy chests, or bulging muscles, or man boobs, but M has none of these. If you like men with hairy chests, bulging muscles, or man boobs, you probably won’t find M’s chest sexy. On the other hand, if you’re like me, you’ll think he’s hot.
 
I have other friends, some of whom are women. Let’s pick one at random, and call her W, for woman. W hasn’t got a hairy chest, or bulging muscles, but she does have boobs, though they aren’t very big. You can use them to feed babies, though W hasn’t had any babies. I don’t especially fancy W, but her boobs have kept their shape better than mine, and they’re generally considered attractive.
 
W goes topless on the beach. Sometimes she gets a few stares, but she doesn’t care. M doesn’t go to the beach, but he doesn’t care if people see his chest either. That’s almost where the egalitarianism stops. If M wanted to take his shirt off in the park on a warm day, he probably wouldn’t get many stares. If W wanted to take her shirt off in the park, there would be people who’d complain that they don’t want to see bare breasts. I can understand their point of view. I don’t especially want to see hairy chests, or muffin tops, but since the logical conclusion to that argument is that both sexes should wear burkas at all times, I’m not going to be drawn down that route. If you don’t like breasts, don’t stare at them.
 
If I wanted to post M’s picture on Instagram, or Facebook, not a problem. If I wanted to post a picture of W’s chest on Instagram, or Facebook, it would be taken down. What’s so evil about breasts? They’re often sexualised, but that doesn’t make them evil. M assures me that he likes to have a woman kiss his chest, so that probably sexualises his chest too. W actually prefers to have the back of her neck kissed. Is Facebook going to ban pictures of necks? If you want to see pictures of women’s chests, there’s a whole lot more Internet out there to explore. Just go to Twitter and search for #tits, for example. You won't even have to log in. Searching for #necks doesn’t work quite as well.
 
In spite of Instagram's draconian 'You may not post violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or other content via the Service’, there are loopholes. If W was pictured breastfeeding, Facebook wouldn’t mind. Or if she covered her boobs with her hands, so that no one could see her nipples, it would be fine for Instagram. Look at M’s chest. Besides the lack of hair, muscles, etc, the thing it has in common with W’s is that they both have nipples. How much hypocrisy would you like with your social media today, sir?
 

How far can you go?

Incest and bestiality are illegal, at least in the UK, but the boundaries aren’t clear. Full sex with my brother clearly counts as incest, and fucking a donkey counts as bestiality, but what about heavy petting, for example?
In Ginger, the toothless cat enjoys licking and chewing Gladys’s ‘thingy’. It’s his favourite, and he prefers it even to mashed sardines. Does that count as bestiality? Gladys enjoys it too, but it isn’t actual sex. A cat licking sardines off a finger is obviously okay, but what about the same cat licking fish sauce off an elderly woman’s ‘boobies’? She tries the sauce on her arm first, to see if the cat likes it, and that’s presumably okay. If I had infinite patience, I could write different versions of the story, with the cat licking a different bit of Gladys in each one, and see where on the scale of finger to thingy Amazon decides to ban it.
If I share a bed with my brother, or my sister, and we just sleep, that’s probably fine. If we kiss each other goodnight, that’s probably also fine. Maybe we can have a bit of a cuddle if it’s cold. However, somewhere along that line we reach the point at which Amazon starts banning things. Am I allowed to wank my brother with my hand? There’s no penetration involved. What about fingering my sister? Is clit play okay, or do I have to limit myself to kissing her boobs? What about kissing my brother’s chest? He hasn’t got boobs, so that’s presumably all fine, and if I can kiss his chest, surely I can kiss my sister’s chest.
In Butcher And Baker, the brother sticks his finger in his sister’s arse, to see if she likes it. She doesn’t, so it presumably doesn’t count as sex, in which case it isn’t incest. If he were a proctologist, he could be checking her out as a favour, and that wouldn’t be incest. If she likes it, though, does it become incest, or do they have to go further than that? Supposing he were only her half brother? Would he be allowed to go that little bit further before it becomes incest, or are the lines in the same place? In the UK, first cousin marriages are legal, even if the cousins are ‘double cousins’, who share 25% of their genes. If I had a half brother, though, I wouldn’t be allowed to have sex with him, because we would be too closely related, with 25% of our genes in common.
According to Wikipedia, consensual incest is legal between adults in Spain and the Netherlands, and I haven’t noticed society falling apart in either country. Maybe I should just translate Butcher And Baker into Spanish, and put it on amazon.es, where it presumably wouldn’t be banned, since the brother and sister are both in their fifties, and they want to do it, thereby sitting solidly within the law.
In the circumstances, it’s a lucky thing I don’t fancy either my brother or my sister, and I haven’t got a donkey, or even a cat. Life's complicated enough.

The naming of parts.

Most of us have names for the things between our legs. I generally think of mine as my bits, short for ‘women’s bits’, and if I refer to them, that’s the term I normally use. There are exceptions. When I see the doctor, I call it my vagina, and if I want to shock someone, my cunt. Sometimes, just for fun, I call it Sophie, but it’s always an ‘it’, and never a ‘her’. Other women call it their pussy, which isn’t a term I use myself, though I can see it’s fun.
 
If I were a man, I could still call the thing (or things) between my legs my bits, except that it would be short for ‘men’s bits’, and not women’s. The most usual vernacular term would appear to be ‘cock’, frequently in conjunction with balls.
 
In my stories, the terms the characters use reflect their nature. Gladys, in Ginger, calls her bits her thingy, the kind of euphemism that a woman of a certain age might use, and when she laments her long dead first lover, she thinks of his willie. Willie is also the name that young Billy uses for his bits in Billy And Rosie. For her part, Rosie differentiates between the inside, which she calls her cunt, and the hairy outside, which she describes as her pussy cat.
 
Mary, in The Virgin, opts for the anatomical ‘vagina’, and ‘penis’, having learnt about the latter mainly from books in the library.
 
The middle aged brother and sister in Butcher And Baker are strictly mainstream, apart from the incest, and the fact that he’s gay, going for cunt and cock. Peter and Em, in Post Mortem, also go for cunt and cock, quite literally, all the way to the end and beyond.
 
In Milk, the hormonal changes that Jan undergoes in pregnancy are accompanied by a change of nomenclature. She begins by thinking of it as her vagina, or genitals, and ends up thinking of it as her cunt. As for the male equivalent, in Milk, it’s mostly just a banana.
 
There are a host of other names for them in both sexes, some of which are fun, like bearded clam or one-eyed trouser snake. My lovely friend and fellow blogger billierosie pointed me to a website with a number of historical names for both lots. Her favourite is ‘altar of Venus’, and mine’s ‘Petticoat Lane’, which rhymes with Lady Jane, another of my favourites. However, outside of erotic romances, I have yet to meet a woman who refers to hers as ‘the core of her womanhood’, or a man who refers to his as his ‘length’.
 
What’s yours called?
 

Blocked by Amazon

My last short story, Butcher And Baker, isn't available on Amazon, but if you want to read it, it's available on Smashwords. I did submit it to Amazon, but it appears it violates their guidelines, possibly because of the incest, so they blocked it. It's fiction, it doesn't exhort anyone to go out and commit incest, and the characters are adults in their fifties. There are plenty of other stories about incest available on Amazon, and at least one with very graphic details, which I won't name, in case Amazon decide to block that too. It seems unlikely that Amazon will block someone as well known as Georges Bataille, whose My Mother includes sex between a boy and his mother, among others, so I'll mention that one. There's murder on Amazon, which is apparently okay, and rape, which is fine. Not even Smashwords would touch Billy And Rosie, which my lovely friend billierosie posted on her blog. It's the story of two children exploring sex. It's gentle, and lots of children have done that kind of thing. Sorry, you aren't allowed to read about it. At least Smashwords will let you read about two ageing siblings having loving and consensual sex. Here's a fairly tame extract.

 

Extract

I watched him get out of bed, and I thought he did a better job of it than I had, with hardly any sitting on the edge of the bed retching before he stood up. He was starkers, and for a bloke in his fifties, pretty hot, with a nice tight bum and smooth skin.

The last time I’d seen him naked, we were both still at home, sharing a bedroom. I was sixteen, and he was fourteen, so mostly we were a bit careful about getting dressed and undressed and so on. I must have been moving quietly, or maybe he was too preoccupied to hear me, but I walked in and found him starkers, sitting on the edge of his bed with one of my 19s open on his knees, wanking to a picture of Marc Bolan. He half looked up, with glazed eyes, still wanking, then he made a funny noise and shuddered, spurting gouts of cum all over my magazine. Quite a day for firsts, really. The first erect cock I’d seen, the first boy wanking, the first cumshot, and the day I found out my little brother was gay. Or queer, as we called it then. I hadn’t seen Marc Bolan with cum on his face, either, but compared with the rest, that didn’t seem important.

“Sorry, Sis,” he panted.

“It’s okay. I’ve read it. You can keep it. Do you want a tissue?”

He nodded, holding up a sticky looking hand. “Are you going to tell Mum?”

“Course not.” I hoiked a tissue out of the box, wiped his hand, and held it out for him. “You can do Marc Bolan and your willie.”

“Thanks.”

I left him to it, and went off to wash my hands. They weren’t covered in cum, or anything, but I didn’t want to have to watch him cleaning up.

He was still starkers when I came back, but standing up, and although his willie was still a bit swollen, he didn’t have an erection any more. “Sorry, Sis.”

“It’s okay. Really. Did you enjoy it?”

He nodded. “I think Marc Bolan’s sexy.”

“Yeah. Me too.” I waited until he’d put a pair of pants on, then I gave him a little kiss, but that was the last time I’d seen him starkers. I left home a couple of months later.

When he came back from the loo, I got to see his cock again, too, and it had the same half swollen look as the last time, forty years before, but I didn’t think he’d been wanking. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yes. Hung over, but otherwise fine.” He slipped back into bed, and shuffled over a bit so that he was close enough to kiss the end of my nose again.

“That’s nice. You did it last night, too. Thanks for yesterday.”