I’m on a train. The plan was to spend the three hours to North Wales working out my finances and how to pay for £7000’s worth of work to the outside of my house that’s needed next year. Then Exhibit A tweeted this and suddenly I had a much more interesting diversion.
Happily, a notebook that carries everything from plans for travel adventures to what I spent on carpets and paint also has a list of everyone I’ve ever fucked (more on that later). I flicked to the page and running my eyes up and down the list I realised there was no way I could pick just one. So here’s four.
D: I wouldn’t give him the title of first love. First love has a sweet comforting ring to it and people’s tone frequently shifts when they speak about first loves. But he was the first man I fucked. April 1st 1994, and while I wouldn’t call it love I was definitely a fool for him. Three years older than me and, to my mind, unspeakably cool, I’d been crushing on him for a year or more by the time we fucked. I can’t remember much about the sex that night (I was just relieved to have got it over and done with, being the last in my close circle of friends to reach that milestone) but I can remember details from the months and years after as we hooked up while at home for uni holidays. He was unreliable and a total slut (which 19-year-old me could neither understand nor cope with), but he was arty and intense and bloody exciting. He’d push me into other people’s garden walking home from the pub, we fucked in graveyards and secretly in other people’s bedrooms at parties, he pushed me onto the kitchen floor at my parents’ house and bit my tits until the dog came to interrupt! We’d talk about photography and music for hours. He also casually and without fuss removed a tampon the second time we had sex; to this day I still say the occasional silent thank you to him for being the man who normalised period sex from the get go. I can’t remember the last time we fucked, but it would have been at some point during 1996. Twenty years on, oh my God, I totally totally would.
N: This one is tricky. I don’t know if I would actually fuck him again or whether hindsight just makes me wish we’d had more adventures when we were together. N has been my one big big love to date, the guy I lived with during my early/mid twenties. There was so much good about us and so much not so good. For all the love and intensity, common ground and fun, he definitely didn’t bring out the best in me. To this day, a hangover of what I became in that relationship makes me shy away from ‘big love’. We met through a mutual friend when we were 23 and the attraction and chemistry was instant. He was the first man to make me come with his tongue and I still remember how bloody surprised and elated I was. The sex was always amazing – the kind where occasionally the emotion can overwhelm you and leave you choking on tears, not because anything’s wrong but because everything is right. Even when our relationship was on its last legs and during the very last time in a hotel room in Paris, sex still rocked. One of my current frustrations is I am only now exploring things that I wish I had in my twenties and early thirties. I get cross with myself that I wasted so much time. When I think back to moments N and I had I wish I hadn’t got shy, giggled and wriggled out of the (badly tied!) restraints in that hotel in Chester. I wish that instead of always fucking to the sex scenes in mainstream movies we’d watched some decent porn together. I wish I could tell younger me to not worry so much, that these are not odd things to do and to just get on with it!
J: I was dating J for around eight months two years ago. He was lovely and kind and thoughtful and intelligent. And he had a tiny cock. I mean so tiny you couldn’t really see it in his hair if he wasn’t erect. To use his words, he wanted to ‘warn’ me about this (happily with no sense of shame or embarrassment) and he made it clear that sex with him wouldn’t really involve cock. That partnership taught me a lot about assumptions and understanding what can give me pleasure and taught me about a whole different aspect of body positivity. He was one of the most confident lovers I’ve had and with him I had the most intense mind blowing orgasms of my life. I’ve always known my arms were one of the most sensitive parts of my body but he somehow made them feel liquid. I still think about the magic he could weave with his tongue and fingers and if I find anyone who can tell stories as filthy and hot half as well has he did I’d be very very happy. We came to an abrupt and premature end because of unreasonable and controlling behaviour from his primary partner which I wasn’t prepared to accommodate, but I still miss some of our moments.
K: K is a friend. A good good friend. I’ve had more open and honest conversations about fantasies and kinks with him than any other friend or partner. We once shook on a plan to go to a sex party together if, by an agreed date, we hadn’t found a partner to go with. On a few occasions we’ve rolled drunkenly into bed after a crazy nights out, but never really been sober enough to get our shit together in any coordinated way! He has a special place in my heart though, not least for breaking a significant drought a few years back and for, at the grand old age of 40, giving me another first. It was over a predictably drunken dinner at mine he encouraged me to write the list I’ve been reading on this train journey. He expressed envy at a threesome I added to the list. “I’m 40, I should have had a threesome by now,” he said. “What’s on your ‘I’m 40, I should have done that’ list?” he asked. “Anal,” I answered, not missing a beat. “Well we can’t sort my threesome out tonight, but we can tick yours off,” he replied. So we did. Brilliantly spontaneous and perfectly relaxed. He lives in another country now and is gloriously and deeply in love. As sure as you can be of anything, I’m pretty certain there won’t be any drunken fucking again. But it doesn’t mean I don’t wonder what a lazy sober afternoon in bed would have been like.
So those are the four I’d revisit. But if I really really had to choose just one, it would be D. But it’s all in my imagination now so why limit myself to one?
Wow… that was some tweet. No wonder it stopped you in your tracks… it did me. I too kept a list of every woman I had sex with. Even a few prostitutes. I just wrote down their first names in a running list… there were a few ?’s. I eventually lost it, I think my second wife found it and threw it out, but I was never sure. Hope you figured out your £’s.
I love this!! Especially the period sex guy. I should probably revisit my (long) page on my blog and think about what they taught me. I like your rationale!
What a beautiful post – I loved reading this. The fondness and joy here is lovely.
How we evolve and become more confident of ourselves as we grow. I loved the bit about wishung you’d watched some decent porn earlier.
Gorgeous writing x x thank you for sharing
This is lovely!