There’s Nothing Casual About Sex – Part 3 was supposed to summarise and crystallise my thoughts on casual sex. I wanted to say that casual sex was never casual; it was often nervous and awkward and uncomfortable. Sometimes it was explosively good, but it was certainly never casual. I wanted it to put the matter to bed… so to speak. It didn’t do that. Instead it was a self-indulgent meander through some of my darker sexual misadventures. And despite my protestations to the contrary, I actually find it very hard not to be proud of my sleazy history. I don’t keep any of it a secret anymore and, although I hide behind this blog to some degree and I use myriad pseudonyms and noms de guerre to protect my identity, most people who know me personally know what I’m like – a nice guy but a bit of a deviant. One of my real-life nicknames is simply ‘Sex Shop,’ for example, and I don’t really care if you find out my real name. I actually, it would probably only take a light sprinkle of intelligent Googling.

Now that my life is a little bit more settled than it was (I mean, I live in Surrey, fuchrissakes), I’ve been looking back over the last few years of my relative recklessness and wondering exactly how healthy (or unhealthy) my preoccupation with casual sex was. But I’m sorry, if you came here looking for definitive answers you’ll be definitively disappointed – because I have none. My thoughts still aren’t clear on the subject of casual sex, and I don’t know if it was healthy or not, and whether I should even try to defend my history at all. In fact, there’s no doubt in my mind that this blog post is part of the understanding process for me. I’m quite excited that you get to join me in these thoughts, and a little ashamed too. Ashamed because although the things I’ve told you about so far are unpleasant, I did worse and I’m still not brave or mature enough to tell you about those things. I cringe when I think of them. But there are a handful of things of which I’m absolutely certain:

• I love sluts.
• I’m well aware that ‘vanilla girls’ sometimes want to feel slutty.
• Wanting to feel slutty sometimes isn’t the same as being a slut.
• Casual sex can be incredibly fulfilling.
• It can also make you hate yourself.
• Those last two things are fucking hard to reconcile.

Eternity

This is the gym. The image at the top of this blog is the view out the window.

I was in a gym recently, in Covent Garden. I was in a glass-walled room that hung over the free-weights section below. I was doing what I always do in gyms: krav maga. Around half way through the class, the instructor told us to break for a minute and take on some water, and we did so. I stood staring idly out of the glass window at the gym below – I didn’t really know any of the other practitioners in the class and I wasn’t in the mood for small-talk. While there were dozens of people rowing and cycling and running and stretching, there was just one person in the free-weights section below me; a girl. She lay on her back on a flat bench with a dumbbell in each hand, pushing them both together a little unsteadily toward the ceiling, and I couldn’t help notice how the sweat on her skin added some definition to her muscular shoulders. I accidentally caught her eye, and she didn’t look away. Inexplicably, neither did I. We looked at each other for about three to four seconds – and if you’ve ever held a stranger’s gaze for three to four seconds, you’ll agree that it’s a fucking eternity.

Throughout the class, she kept catching my eye and I kept catching hers. When the lesson was over and we were filing out, sweaty, bruised and filled with adrenaline, she caught my eye from across the gym again, and then she got up and walked away, towards the women’s changing rooms. I of course disappeared into the men’s changing rooms and to be honest, I didn’t really think anything of it at all. I mean, there was nothing to think, surely?

So I left the gym after freshening up and went to unlock my bike from the railings outside. I fumbled with the keys to the lock and dropped them at my feet. I bent down and, through the gap between my armpit and my hip, I saw her again, now with a long, fashionable coat pulled over her gym clothes and a lit cigarette in her hand. She was watching me as she walked past, and she continued to look over her shoulder and glance at me the whole time she walked away from me. Her entire body begged for me to catch up with her and say something – saying anything at all would have been fine, I suspect. My girlfriend will hate to read this, but I had to work very hard to remind myself that I was not single. Because if I had have been single, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would have been climbing inside Gym Girl in no time at all.

If only this book worked...

Secret Handshakes

I used to wish there was, like, a secret signal casual sex enthusiasts used, so we could spot each other on the high street and disappear into some public toilets, or park bushes, or anywhere the fuck else. I used to wish there was a secret masonic handshake that we had all agreed on and kept discrete from the mainstream. But, I think there actually might be. Let me explain.

Perhaps you think I could be misconstruing Gym Girl’s looks or, more likely, you think I’m overstating my sexual ability. You might be right, but I really don’t think so. I spoke her body language, and it told me that she was horny.

But herein lays a big problem, a problem that I can’t reconcile. If Gym Girl gave off sex signals so readily, and she obviously saw that I was giving them off too (even if I didn’t mean too), does that mean that I give them off to everyone? I mean, I meet attractive women every day of my life. Do they all think I want to have sex with them?

Or do you have to be a casual sex addict to spot another one, a bit like Gaydar? (I call the casual sex equivalent of Gaydar ‘Laydar’). If you have an opinion, please share it. Because I’m at a loss.

So you made it past Part 1 and Part2? You should be ashamed: you’re an accessory after the fact.

Welcome to Part 3. Here, things get a little… dark. And things cross some borders. Have something to hug, you’ll need it. Because these things aren’t just disgusting, but also immoral and also possibly illegal.

A shitload had changed when I moved back to England from France. I’d been away for a while and when I returned I was no longer a nobody. Suddenly, I was a stranger with two degrees and a sense of humour and an OK body. I was new again. I was literate, charming, not too shabby to look at and I was sexually experienced. For some reason I was more popular with people who’d heard my name but didn’t really know me – in short, I was popular with people from my school who were younger than me. For a good few months, I slept with more than my share of 17 year old girls, and I loved every second of it. And I was twisted too. I did terrible things to them. Whenever I could, I would keep their underwear so I could masturbate into them later. For some reason, I was catnip to teenage girls – perhaps because they talked to each other about sex and I came over pretty well.

All the guys in my home village hated me. So, as a natural reaction, all the girls fawned over me. And for a few months, I had a very acceptable amount of sex.

But it faded, and so did I. The sex was drying up like a desert river, and as my novelty waned so did the opportunities for casual, no-strings satisfaction. For a while, I had very little sex at all.

And then one day, when I was trying to sell a snowboard on a website called Gumtree, I noticed a dating section, with a ‘Casual Relationships’ subcategory. My interest was thoroughly piqued and I inevitably clicked the link, and I discovered that Gumtree was much more than I way to flog old shit and look at other people’s old shit.

Gumtree allowed you to advertise for completely anonymous sexual partners. Not only that, it was organised and easy to use too.

Sadly, it no longer works.

I browsed the posts, breathless with excitement. Some were posted by men who apparently wanted to meet for ‘casual watersports’ or ‘NSA fun with younger guys.’ Some were obviously spam. But some of the posts seemed to be genuine: a lot of thirty-something women seeking flings. Of course, I responded to as many as I possibly could. I was happy to fling all over Hampshire.

In the early days, many of the women would request photos of my penis before we met. I happily obliged, because I like my penis – but after I’d sent a picture I would often never hear from the women again. This caused me some insecurity; maybe my penis was too small, or too big, or too ugly, or not ugly enough. But now, I believe that those women were just collectors of penis photos. Like antiques traders. Many of them probably weren’t even women. They were seedy old men, wanking their lives away in their office chairs (which was far worse than what I was, which was a seedy young man, wanking my in my office chair).

Many insisted that they come to my flat (they can’t ‘accom’), or meet me in a public place or a hotel, which led me to believe that they were in committed relationships, cheating on their boyfriends or husbands purely because they liked the feeling of cheating. It took me a long time to realise that women have the same urges and fantasies as men – for some reason, I had always assumed that women were a little less sexually motivated as men. I was wrong, and I was very happy I was wrong because I was regularly getting my cock wet.

But some encounters were better than others. Some were more satisfying. And meets would be wildly different.

Meeting Strangers For Sex

One day I had sex with two women in the same afternoon, purely because they coincidentally lived within walking distance from one another. The sex was terrible both times but I didn’t care. I slept with a woman in front of her child, and with a girl with learning difficulties. I had sex in and around Southampton Common several times. I even had sex in the playground, right next to the swings, for fuck’s sake.

A surprising number of these women fantasised about rape. In fact, I raped a student in public and then blackmailed her – all consensually and at her request. I had never had a fantasy of raping a woman or being raped myself; it seems to be a peculiarly female fantasy. But in truth, I don’t care because I enjoyed it.

Probably the craziest casual sex I ever had was with a girl who became a temporary fuck-buddy, and she also entertained borderline rape fantasies. I took the day off work to fulfil this particular fantasy. She was tiny actually, and I love tiny girls. She still lived near the school she had attended, and she had kept her school uniform and could still comfortably fit into it. This particular school backed onto a small wooded copse, through which I ran fun-runs as a child. At 3:15pm, the arranged time, I walked through this woods and discovered her, dressed in her school uniform and as other schoolgirls bustled past, leaning against the gate that connected the school to those woods. She was smoking. I started chatting to her, and she acted the perfect tarty schoolgirl perfectly. Soon, I talked her into the woods and I fucked her, and I pulled her hair and spat in her face while she tried to swallow my cock, and I eventually dragged my length out of her cunt and painted her face with sperm. Then I walked away, without saying a word. She never contacted me again and I never contacted her, but she had fulfilled a fantasy. I was ambivalent about the whole event.

Gumtree was a goldmine. Seriously. It was a secret of course; at the time I never bragged or boasted or talked to anyone about it. It was my dirty little habit. I would screw a stranger in the morning, and then go out with my friends like nothing ever happened. But recently, I spoke to a guy my own age and with similar interests, and discovered that he had used it too. What became clear, is the fact the we bashed our genitals against other people’s genitals until we achieved an orgasm, and then that was it. There was no emotion, no affection. It was like shaking hands, or writing a letter.

I was masturbating, but instead of my hand I used a stranger’s body.

But the crazy thing is, as terrible and depraved as the sex usually was, and as horrible and insane I felt afterwards, I can’t stop myself being attracted to it.