The Puritans in the Playroom

This is a Blogger blog, hosted by Google. Like all Blogger blogs containing adult material, there is a content warning, with an orange thing to click on, saying, "I UNDERSTAND AND I WISH TO CONTINUE" in big letters.

Two of my friends have had emails from Blogger (Google, really), containing the following. "In the coming weeks, we'll no longer allow blogs that contain sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video. We'll still allow nudity presented in artistic, educational, documentary or scientific contexts, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content."

It's sad that the puritans are once again trying to take over the playroom, but what is surprising is that it only applies to pictures and video. My posts The Naming of Parts and How Far Can You Go? both contain explicit language, but there aren't any pictures (or videos). My short fictional pieces contain explicit language and descriptions of sexual activity, but Blogger haven't said anything. I don't flatter myself that it is because of any educational, documentary, or scientific content. My suspicion is that it is because the puritans only look at the pictures, like semi-literate children.

I could congratulate myself on having got away with it, except that the semi-literate are dangerous. In 2000, a paediatrician had her house daubed with white paint, because "People don't want no paedophiles here". It's presumably the same people who failed to understand the meaning of "WISH TO CONTINUE" and clicked on the orange thing by mistake.

Watercolour by Gerda Wegener

Luckily for Google, however, the puritans' lack of expertise when it comes to clicking on things means that Google can contain sexually explicit or graphic nude images or videos. You can type a word like 'topless' or 'penis' into the search box, but then you have to click on the link to 'images'. Try it. Some of the results are educational, possibly documentary, and scientific, at a pinch, since human biology is a science. Meanwhile, here is a watercolour by Gerda Wegener. I assume I could have used it to illustrate my short story, The New Leda, since it's artistic. You can find a lot more of Gerda Wegener's art by typing her name into the Google search box, but you will probably still have to click on the link.

The Beaufort scale

Sir Francis Beaufort is best remembered as the originator of the Beaufort scale, describing wind strengths. However, there was more to the man than that. He was the author of a guide to the coastline of Asia Minor, and it may well have been Beaufort who suggested Charles Darwin to Fitzroy as the ‘scientific gentleman’ to accompany the second voyage of The Beagle. He was a naval hero, having been wounded in 1800 and again in 1812, and he slept with his sister Harriet.

This isn’t the stuff of idle gossip. Francis Beaufort kept journals, written in code, which were deciphered after his death. Nor were he and Harriet a pair of unruly teenagers, experimenting behind the handcart sheds. Their affair took place after the death of Francis's first wife, Alicia, in 1834, when Francis was sixty. His unmarried sister Harriet was only some three years younger than him, and in a letter to their sister Frances in 1838, she wrote, "My face has become so wrinkled and odious." In the same letter she says of her 'dear Master', "You know in days of yore I used to be called his slave, and so I am still if it be called slavery, to wish to oblige so dear and so kind a friend - who certainly never unreasonable in his demands - and to whose tenderness and affection it is but due to try to please him in small as well as large things." She calls him 'my dear Francis', too.

The whole thing is rather touching, but it wasn't to last. Later in 1838, Francis Beaufort married Honora Edgeworth, Frances's stepdaughter. He was knighted in 1848, and he died in Hove in 1857. Harriet died in 1865.

On the Beaufort scale from nun to Fred West, Francis and Harriet shouldn’t create enough of a stir to rustle a puritan’s skirts, so it's sad that Francis was apparently tormented by guilt. How much nicer it would have been if he and Harriet had lived happily ever after, breezing gently together through their twilight years.

Hair

Hair is funny stuff. Depending on whose it is, and where it is, it is either desirable or undesirable. When I was young, we had plaits or pigtails, and no girl had anything shorter than a bob. On the other hand, until the Beatles came along, men with long hair were considered foppish and effeminate, and the crew cut and short back and sides were the norm. That's all changed.

Completely bald women are still something of a rarity, but they do exist, and like Gail Porter, they can be just as beautiful as women with long hair. I can't be alone in thinking that Jessie J looked hotter after she'd had her head shaved for Comic Relief than before. It wouldn't suit all of us, but it can look very sexy. Remember Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3?

Men more often have shaved heads, probably because nature robs them of the hair on their heads anyway, and as with women, it doesn't suit all of them. Bruce Willis and Patrick Stewart look great, but there's always a danger that the shaven headed man could look like a thug.

Men with beards are apparently considered manly, but I've never really understood the attraction of all that coarse facial hair, and designer stubble is even worse, like kissing a hairbrush. Give me a smooth face any day.

Moving away from the head, hair becomes even more controversial. Men almost never shave their armpits, and women mostly do. Not all women, of course, but if we think someone might see, we generally tidy up. Much the same goes for legs. There is a feminist view that we shouldn't shave our body hair, or pluck our eyebrows, but if you're going to go down that road, why bother with pretty clothes, either? If I think I look and feel better with sleek shins, I'm going to keep waxing, and if my eyebrows decide they'd like to meet in the middle, I'll keep plucking.

I don't much like hairy chests, either. A few silky hairs are nice, but the tangle of fibres that is supposed to constitute manliness reminds me of nothing as much as a doormat. Give me Jacob over Esau every time.

And so to the pubes. Female porn stars seem routinely to shave theirs, along with a few of the men, which seems a shame. I enjoy having my pubic hair pulled, gently, a few hairs at a time, one way and then the other. You can move the skin without touching it. I have a friend who has a few fine hairs around his nipples, and he enjoys having them tugged, in much the same way. The hairs around my nipples are so short that he'd need tweezers and a magnifying glass, but if they were longer I can see that I'd like it too.

As I've grown older, I've gone greyer. The hair on my head is dyed. If I let it grow out, I'd probably look like a road, with a white line down the middle. I don't bother with my underarms as often as I used to. My pubic hair has spread out, sparser in the middle than it used to be, and spreading to the tops of my thighs. If I ever want to wear a swimsuit again, I'll wax it, but for the moment, I'm happy for it to sprawl. There's more to pull.

The sound of language

Music may be the food of love, but the sound of language is lovelier still. Who can resist a word like squelch? Everything about it is soft and wet. Tribbing is fun, but the name doesn’t do it justice. Playing squelchy is a better name for it, but if it were up to me, I’d just call it squelching. Of course, squelch is onomatopoeic, describing a sound, like moan, or slap. However, that isn’t where the beauty of language stops. Take slap and tickle. Tickle doesn’t describe a sound, but if tickling were named bodding, for example, it wouldn’t represent tickling half as well as tickle does.

It might only be English. I speak a bit of French, and a little leftover schoolgirl Latin, but English is the language with which I’m most familiar, and whose richness of expression captivates my imagination. Spank, tug, drip, dribble, and drool. Suck and swallow. Pinch and squeeze. Finger and fist. Love sounds so much more restrained than lust, and not only because lust rhymes with thrust. After all, love rhymes with shove. The difference between grope and fondle is all in the sound of the words. Just thinking about them makes me tremble.

I shan’t dwell on the range of names for the things between people's legs, except to say that I prefer knob to prick and cunt to snatch, but there are other body parts with beautiful names, like thigh, and belly. Thighs sound as if they’re begging to be spread, and a belly is so much fleshier than a tummy. Who’d go to watch a tummy dancer? It’s a pity that there isn’t a really lovely word for breasts. Boobs sound friendly, but hooters and knockers are more like jokes, and they bring with them the idea of size. Tits are in your face, saying ‘look at me’. Breast itself is quite a nice word, but it still doesn’t have quite the quivery wobbling beauty of the thing it describes.

Longer words struggle. Masturbation doesn’t sound half as much fun as the act itself. Boys, would you rather come or ejaculate? Menstruation is a world away from bleeding. Voluptuous manages to pull it off, sounding as fleshy as fleshy, but it’s something of a loner at the party.

Longer also words tend to have more restricted meanings. Compression means compression, and not much else. Ignition just means ignition. Describing the workings of an internal combustion engine could be awfully boring, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Next time you put your foot down, think of it in English. Suck, squeeze, bang, blow. It still makes me smile.

The hills may be alive with the sound of music, but pillow talk does it for me. Whisper to me, and make me melt, what’s your favourite word?

The New Leda

Adele had always loved swans. As a child, she’d loved being taken to the park to feed them, tearing pieces off slices of bread and throwing them into the lake. The swans would thrust towards her, pushing up little bow waves, and as they came close, she’d giggle, and hide behind her mother’s legs, as if they were after her.

She was in her teens when she came across the story of Leda, and Zeus turning himself into a swan, which she thought had been written just for her, with ‘Leda’ being almost ‘Adele’ backwards. Overnight, Johnny Depp seemed to grow white feathers, and her erotic dreams changed direction. She looked at the pictures of Leda on the computers in the library, and although she didn’t think she looked at all like the voluptuous women in the paintings, there was enough variety that she reasoned there would be room for a flat chested skinny girl with glasses somewhere.

She tried reading more Greek myths, but the other images of Zeus, muscular, violent, and bearded, she found distinctly unappealing, so she read about swans instead. One of the first things she discovered was that a male swan was called a cob, which she imagined as the combination of ‘cock’ and ‘knob’. Unfortunately, she also discovered that male swans didn’t have a cock (or knob), just a kind of general purpose hole, called a cloaca, which was the Latin for ‘sewer’. It only briefly dented her enthusiasm, and she decided that ‘cob’ was a much better name for a penis than ‘willie’. She took to collecting swan feathers from around the lake in the park on her days off, which she used to tickle her girlie bits until she could no longer hold back, plunging two fingers inside as her thumb scrubbed against her burning clittie, squeezing out her orgasm. The feathers were definitely single use, ending up soggy and bedraggled, and often bent where the shaft wasn’t strong enough to withstand the demands she put on it.

She took a break from the feathers when she was nineteen, and she started going out with Dave Swann, her first proper boyfriend. He worked with her in Sainsbury’s, and it wasn’t just his name that attracted her. He was tall and handsome, slim and clean shaven, with smooth skin, and not at all like Zeus. To begin with, she enjoyed having him stick his cob in her bits, but it never lasted long enough, so she always ended up having to use her fingers to reach a climax, while he sat and watched. After a couple of months, she dumped him, and went back to using the feathers.

As winter burgeoned leafily into spring, she continued feeding the swans on the lake in the park, and she began exploring around the edges, hunting for a nest. She never found a nest, but she did find a secluded gravelly beach, strewn with white feathers, and hidden from the paths by a dense stand of cherry laurels. When Adele stumbled upon it, it felt as if it was the perfect spot for a tryst with Zeus, in spite of all the blobs of swan shit, and her thoughts of finding a nest fell away. She collected half a dozen of the long feathers, as precious as angels’, planning to use them later, but her girlie bits were already tingling with anticipation. Wishing she’d worn a skirt or a dress, she kicked off her shoes, struggled out of her jeans, and squatted on the little beach, going to work with longest of the quills.

She was already oozing when the swan arrived, with little swishing noises as it pushed through the water towards the beach. Adele kept on going. She couldn’t have stopped, even if it had been a policeman, or her mother. Dropping the broken feather, she slipped her fingers inside, and moaned as her thumb hit the spot. “Oh, Zeussie.”

The swan stepped up onto the beach, its big black feet slapping in the shallow water, and Adele wished she’d kept some bread back, so that she could feed him. She wasn’t actually sure that the swan was male, but since it wouldn’t have a cob in any case, it wouldn’t matter. As she got her breath back, still squatting with her hand between her legs, she whispered to him. “Hello, Zeussie. I did that for you.”

The swan made a chuckling noise, as if he’d understood, and he rattled his big orange beak. He took two steps towards her, and sat down, watching her, and reminding her of Dave Swann.

“I’ve already come. Do you want me to try to do it again?” she asked, still keeping her voice down, as if someone might be listening.

She might have been mistaken, but she thought the swan nodded, and he certainly made the chuckling noise again.

“Okay.” Her bits were sore, but she picked up another of the feathers she’d left next to her jeans and pants. Working around the outside, and keeping an eye on the swan, she tickled herself until the soreness was replaced by the familiar tingling. The second time around, she was gentler with her fingers, but her orgasm was no less intense when it came. The swan just watched.

She stood up carefully, in case she should startle the swan, but he seemed no more surprised than he had when he’d watched her, merely turning his head to follow her movements as she picked up her jeans and shoes. Once she was dressed, she thanked him for the feathers. “Bye, Zeussie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When she went to bed that night, she thought about masturbating again, but she was still sore from the afternoon, so she just held her fingers against her bits to keep them warm, until she fell asleep, and dreamt of Zeussie. In her dream, he had a proper cob, like Dave Swann, but unlike Dave Swann, he brought her to a climax, his feathered belly between her spread legs, like in the paintings.

The knocking on her bedroom door woke her up. “Are you all right?” her mother asked.

Half asleep, Adele tried to reorient herself, as the swan disappeared into the darkness. “Mmh. Yes. Why?”

“You were crying out. Can I come in?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Light from the landing flooded past her mother’s silhouette as she entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Were you having a nightmare?”

Adele said, “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.” At least the second part was true.

Her mother touched her hand to Adele’s forehead. “You feel a bit hot and sweaty. Maybe you’re sickening for something. Who’s Susie?”

“Susie who?” Adele asked.

“I don’t know. It’s what you were calling out. ‘Oh, Susie’. Over and over.”

“I don’t think I know anyone called Susie.”

Her mother fetched her a glass of water, and sat with her while she drank it, as if she might cheat, and pour it away somewhere. “You know you can tell me anything you want,” she said, as she took the empty glass.

“Thanks, Mum. I expect it was just a dream. I don’t think I know anyone called Susie.”

In the morning, her mother asked her again if she was all right.

“I’m fine. Thanks for the glass of water.” After breakfast, she took a slice of bread, put on a cotton skirt, and set off for the lake. She hadn’t put on a pair of pants, and in the cool of the morning, the breeze wafting around her bits felt delicious. On the other hand, fighting her way through the cherry laurels to the little beach had been much easier in a pair of jeans. The twigs and the brambles caught on her skirt, as if trying to keep her from her destiny.

Zeussie wasn’t anywhere to be seen when Adele finally got to the beach, but she didn’t mind, she was prepared to wait. She found a patch of gravel that didn’t have any swan shit on it, and sat down, pulling up her skirt to let the sun warm her thighs and her bits. The swan arrived a quarter of an hour later, announcing its approach with the familiar swishing in the water.

“Hello, Zeussie. I’ve brought you some bread today.” Adele hadn’t actually planned what she was going to do, apart from feed the swan and masturbate, so she waited while Zeussie slapped his way out of the shallows and came towards her. Opening her legs, she tore off a piece of bread and threw it between her ankles, wondering if Zeussie would come that close.

He did. Waddling slightly, he bent down, and gobbled the piece of bread, clattering his bill. The next piece of bread went between Adele’s knees, and Zeussie snapped that up as well, taking a couple more steps to get close enough. Trembling with anticipation, Adele put a piece of bread on her thigh, near the top, hoping that Zeussie wouldn’t bite her.

Zeussie took another step, so that his body touched the inside of her leg as he bent forward to eat the bread. He didn’t bite her, and the nibbling tickled. Adele crumbled what was left of the slice of bread as close to her bits as she dared, right up to the edge of the hairs, and as Zeussie worked away, hoovering up the crumbs and catching her hairs in his beak, she felt herself getting wet inside, as if she were playing with a feather.

When the last of the crumbs had gone, the swan seemed to look at her, and then he settled down between her knees, the way he’d sat further down the beach the day before. Carefully, so as not to disturb him, Adele slipped her fingers inside, and pressed her thumb on her clittie, biting her lower lip to stop herself from crying out, in case it frightened him.

Zeussie was unperturbed, but after she’d come, and she took her fingers away, he nosed between her legs, as if sniffing her, and he clacked his bill.

“Thanks, Zeussie,” whispered Adele, reaching out to stroke his neck. The swan appeared to like the attention, stretching out his neck and making little muttering sounds.

She stayed there until her back began to ache. “Sorry, Zeussie. I have to move. Sorry.” Carefully, she eased herself away from the swan, who remained where he was, following her with his small dark eyes. Adele patted his head before she left, but she resisted the temptation to bend down and kiss him. “Goodbye. I’m afraid I have to work tomorrow, but I will be back, I promise.”

The morning had warmed up, but the air around her hot bits still felt cool as she sauntered home, humming T Rex’s ‘Ride A White Swan’ under her breath. She cleaned herself up in the bathroom, and reluctantly put a pair of pants on under her skirt.

It was a couple of days before Adele was able to return to the little beach, but when she did, the swan was already there, as if waiting for her. “Hello, Zeussie,” she whispered, lifting up her skirt to show him that she wasn’t wearing pants. “I’ve brought you some bread, too.”

The swan chuckled, and turned to face her as she sat down on the gravel.

Adele didn’t bother throwing a piece of the bread between her ankles. Instead, she just crumbled the whole slice over her upper thighs and her pubic hair, and by the time she’d finished and was leaning back, Zeussie was already settling between her legs and nibbling, his beak making the little rattling noises. He tugged on the hairs as he tried to get the bits of bread out, which made Adele gasp with pleasure, and when she brought her knees up, he nipped her clittie with his bill.

“Oh, Zeussie,” she murmured. “If only you had a cob.”

By the time he’d finished the bread, Adele was so aroused that she scarcely had to touch her bits to bring herself to a quivering climax, so that even Dave Swann would have been able to deliver. Afterwards, she squirmed down, so that her bits were touching the swan’s breast, which she hoped might make her look a bit like Leda in one of the paintings, except for the glasses, and Zeussie didn’t appear to object.

The following day, the weather wasn’t as good, with the sky overcast, but it was still warm, so she wore just a summer dress and a pair of slip ons, and took the Leda theme still further, undressing completely on the little beach, except for her glasses, which she left on so she’d be able to see properly. Zeussie just stood and watched, and when she sat down, he waddled up to settle between her legs, even before she’d crumbled the bread.

Instead of putting all of it around her bits, she spread some of the bread over her belly and her chest. She hoped that Zeussie might start at the top and work down, but in fact he picked up the biggest pieces first, dipping his head here and there, and nibbling. It was still exquisite. He caught one of her nipples in the tip of his bill, which caused her to squeak, but it didn’t faze the swan, who just kept on nibbling, leaving the crumbs tangled in her pubic hair till last, probably because they were the hardest to get at.

When he’d finished, she fingered herself quickly to orgasm, and lay back, naked except for her glasses, with the swan between her thighs, as if they’d really made love. She must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew, it was starting to rain, with big cold drops hitting her warm skin. Trying not to disturb the swan, she struggled to her feet and put her dress back on. “Sorry, Zeussie, got to go.”

It didn’t rain especially hard, but by the time she reached home her dress was wet, and clinging coldly to her skin. She took it off and hung it over the banisters on the landing before she fetched a towel to dry herself off.

The dress was still damp when her mother came home, and asked about it.

Adele just shrugged. “I went down to the park, to feed the swans, and it came on to rain. I got a bit wet.”

The rain marked a change in the weather, so Adele had to resort to masturbating with feathers again, which she found disappointing after her adventures with the swan. To make matters worse, her bits started to itch, leaving her with an almost uncontrollable urge to scratch. She made an appointment to see her doctor, who said she’d better take a look.

“Just slip your bottom things off and climb up there,” she said, pointing at a leather couch.

Adele took off her jeans and pants, and lay back with her knees in the air while the doctor’s rubber gloved fingers poked and prodded. Unlike Zeussie’s bill, the fingering was just uncomfortable.

“Hmm. It looks a bit red. Can I look inside?”

Adele nodded. “I suppose so. What is it?”

“Probably an infection. Are you sexually active?”

“No.” It was almost true.

“Right. Let’s have a look. This might be a bit uncomfortable.” The doctor picked up a plastic speculum, but when she opened and shut it, it clacked, the way the swan’s beak clacked, setting Adele’s mind racing.

Adele heard very little of the rest of what the doctor said, and apart from the initial intrusive thrust as the speculum was inserted, she barely noticed what was going on. She realised that Zeussie didn’t need a cob, when he had such a magical orange beak that he could use instead.

“I don’t think it’s thrush,” the doctor was saying, as she withdrew the speculum. “It looks like a bacterial infection of some sort. You can get dressed now.” She dropped the speculum in the sink and started to peel off the rubber gloves. “I’ll prescribe some pessaries, which ought to clear it up. You just put them in like tampons, and they’ll dissolve, and I’ll prescribe some ointment for the outside. If it hasn’t gone in a week, come back and see me again. I’ve taken a swab, which I’ll send off, but you should be fine. You might just have wiped your bottom from back to front, that’s the usual cause.”

“Okay.” Adele took the prescription, but she wasn’t thinking about what the doctor had said, she was thinking about Zeussie’s bill in her bits. She was tempted to ask if she could take the speculum away, to practise with.

The itching eased in the first couple of days, and Adele started to imagine that the pessary was a piece of bread, which she’d rolled up, and as she pushed it in, she thought of Zeussie sliding in after it, opening and shutting his bill as he tried to eat it. She was sure that the ointment wasn’t supposed to be rubbed in vigorously, but she couldn’t help herself.

On the other hand, she stopped using the feathers, thinking that they might have been the source of the infection, with all the swan shit on the beach, and not incorrect bottom wiping at all. She didn’t throw them away, but she stuck to fantasy and fingers, which worked just as well.

The week went by, the rain stopped, and Adele’s day off dawned warm and sunny. She waited until her mother had gone out, then she took off her bra and pants and slipped her summer dress on over her naked body. There was plenty of bread in the bread bin, and she was tempted to take two slices, but she worried that Zeussie might have had enough to eat after the first one.

On the way to the park, she relished the breeze around her girlie bits, which tingled with anticipation all by themselves. The bushes seemed to have grown since she’d last been there, but she managed to fight her way through the cherry laurels, and when she reached the beach, the swan was there, sitting with his back to her, looking out over the lake.

Trembling, she took her dress off. She didn’t think she was in the least bit voluptuous, but she did feel beautiful. “Hello, Zeussie,” she whispered. “I’m back.”

The swan clambered to its feet, and turned, clattering his beak.

Adele lay down on the gravel, and crumbled most of the bread over her chest and bits, keeping back a couple of crusts hidden in her hand for the end. For a moment, she thought the swan wasn’t going to approach, but after a moment of hesitation he waddled up, and settled between her knees, eyeing her carefully before he started on the bread.

It was bliss, and by the time he’d mopped up all the crumbs, she was ready to come. “Here, Zeussie, look what I’ve got,” she said, holding up the crusts so that he could see them. She was so wet and open that the crusts slid easily inside, taking her even closer to the edge. Scarcely able to believe what was about to happen, Adele lay back, her heart pounding, and the swan brought his wonderful beak down towards her bits.

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.