I don’t know.

What I do know?

There’s no magic skeleton key for sex.

I get emails asking me, “What do I do!? What’s the secret password to the Garden of Earthly Delights? YOU WOMEN ARE SO CONFUSING!”

Only not so poetically.

Thing is, there’s no one technique. There’s no single, handy-dandy, 100% guaranteed or your money back method for being an amazing lover. The closest thing to being a universal panty-dropper is to just be psychic.

This is a huge bummer, I know.

Psychics are hard to come by.

Barring telepathy, there’s… asking.  Asking whoever you’re trying to please just what it is they like.

The world is full of temptation.

The asking thing isn’t bad advice.

Good luck getting an answer, though.

Most women I’ve run across are a lot better at telling you what they don’t like, than they are at detailing what they do like.

So, in that spirit, I’ll give you my top ten lists of things you shouldn’t do:

1. Just because it worked on one woman, doesn’t mean we’re all going to like it.  Don’t assume all women are built the same way. One woman’s “yum” is another woman’s “I’d like to see a motherfucker try.”
2. Tangentially: Odds are that you’re not as good at oral as you think you are.  Do not assume that your magical pussy eating method is a universal constant. Really. I don’t quite know why this is so common, but it is. It’s the same thing with blowjobs, too. A person gets it into their head that they’re the Oral Avenger, or something. It’s a pride thing. Weirdos.
3. For the love of all that’s holy, don’t do something weird, messy, invasive, or possibly infectious on the spur of the moment. Ask before you blow a load on someone’s face. Or hair. Semen in the hair is the worst. Ask before anal. Do not attempt intentional “accidental” backdoor action. We are on to you. We know the difference between real accidental and fake accidental.
4. Likewise, that meme running around that all women like ass smacking and hair pulling?  A lot of women do.  But, you know, maybe bring that up before nudity is involved?  ”Mother may I” in the act can actually sort of ruin the whole point of ass smacking and hair pulling, but if you know ahead of time that she likes it, you win. Be a winner.  Ask if she’s into it. It makes for sexy date conversation, anyway.
5. She’s probably kinkier in her head than she lets on, and she’s not going to tell you just how much. Even if you know she’s kinky?  She’s probably actually kinkier. This one is a comedy staple, really. Stand ups love to talk about how disgusting men are in the privacy of their own minds. I’m telling you–women are just as disgusting. She’s thinking about things that she’s never going to do with you. In fact, she doesn’t even want you in the same region. And it’s a bitch, but too bad, dude. Too bad. Don’t pester someone about their wank bank. That stuff ain’t yours.
6. Don’t use the word “frigid,” with a woman who’s not up to your level of sexual adventurousness. There are also a lot of women that are just not into any sort of sex that’s not the “making love” kind.  They hate “empty” sex or “meaningless” sex or “demeaning” sex.  There is nothing wrong with this. She’s not frigid. She’s just getting something different out of fucking.  If that’s a dealbreaker, fine, but don’t go throwing around armchair diagnoses. I hate the word “frigid.”
7. Likewise, there’s this notion that if she’s not initiating a lot, she’s not that into sex. This is bunk. There are a lot of things going on in our culture that make it hard for a woman to display spontaneous arousal.  Or, to even recognize it.
8. Don’t freak out if she seems excessively fastidious about cleanliness. I’ve seen men complain that she immediately runs to the bathroom.  Let me tell you why:  UTIs.  Peeing right after sex can prevent UTIs.  It’s not hot, but anatomical biology is not interested in any of our precious feelings, you know?
9. No woman likes to feel like a portable vag and boob transporter. There are other parts. Really.
10. Don’t immediately demand to know how good it was. Be a zen sex warrior. If you have to ask, you are not the master.

Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your BDSM Relationship

Several months ago, Mr. Daddy put on his Dom Hat and decided that we needed something contract-y.

And, I laughed, because, hello!  That sort of thing can be pretty darned funny.

“Oh, really?  Are you going to add a border full of official looking clip art?  Can you used fancy Ye Olden Script?!  Oooh. Can we include lots of pretend legalese!”

I do believe his reaction was something like, “I’m going to take that legalese out on your ass.”

For the record, he did bring home something in Ye Olden Fancy Font, just to crack me up.

Because it’s still pretty darned funny.

So, now I’ve got rules.

In Ye Olden Fancy Dragon Script.

It’s one of those things you do just have to jump into. You have no idea if the water is cold!  At first I was very self-conscious. This was that whole scary 24/7 thing that sad people try to use to prove they’re not poseurs.

Then months down the line, it’s all old hat.  Boring even.

My tips for the adding of rules and discipline, from a Sexy Contract Noob:

1. It’s okay to laugh. Really. If it’s not okay to laugh, then, maybe you need to dial the Srs Bsns down just a smidgen.
2. Don’t start with that gigantic list those contract generators spit out. Start with a handful of things you think are really helpful or really hot or really in need of mindfulness and work.  See if you can manage those first.  It’s no fun to be set up for failure.
3. Set up a time frame for a formal re-evaluation. Maybe you can add minutia! Maybe you were too ambitious in the first version. We had the big discussion about How it All Went last week. I think we should have had it sooner. I would have liked something more like 3 months. We went something more like 5 before really re-evaluating.
4. It’s helpful to be very clear about motives. There’s nothing more weird and potentially a turn off about doing something pointless, or even mildly distasteful, and having no idea why. Let’s just say, we’ve had a lot of panty-wearing battles at Casa de Joan this year, and I always lose.
5. Maybe I’m a big old baby who doesn’t have Deep Dark DeSade Monsters living in the depths of my psyche, but I think a system of punishments could do with the occasional reward. If you’re not of the Dark and Tortured bent, then remember that your new contract can literally contain anything you want.  It doesn’t have to be one long list of “don’ts” and punishments.  The word “training” is sort of overused in BDSM land, and sometimes you can train with treats.

And, good luck to Lily on her forthcoming book!

Guilt. The ultimate aphrodisiac.

1. Surprise butt sex.
2. Vulva-scented perfume.  Yes, really.
3. Lingerie that doesn’t fit.  The ways it can be taken badly actually multiply as you give it deeper thought.  It’s the terrible gift that keeps giving.
4. Poetry with star-crossed lovers.  No one wants to be the Juliet to your Romeo, the Sid to your Nancy, or the Plath to your Hughs. Just, no.
5. A badly thought out playlist. “Um, I think this is about a stalker masturbating in a motel room?”  ”Really?” “Yeah. The line about the periscope in the ice machine was sort of telling.” “Oh. I just thought, um, she thought he was so hot she needed to cool off.”

How can you not love this picture? GoogleImages tells me it’s Russian.

All this sex writing has me wallowing in the past.

I was a one-girl wrecking machine.  It got so bad that at one point people were buying me t-shirts so as to warn off others.

It’s not that I was a super-hot heartbreaker with a magic snatch. There’s an assumption that “crazy” girls are crazy good in bed, and I was very likely a lousy lay. I just had huge eyes tits and low standards.  I said all the right things to half-ruined boys with delicate constitutions, and they’d get all tangled up in it and trip.

I had enough of a conscious to feel bad about it, but not enough self-esteem to stop once I realized what I was doing.

I wasn’t the only girl in that scene leaving a path of destruction in my wake.

I wasn’t even the best at it.

There was this one girl that had an endless string of fiances, all of which were strung out on her for months. Years even. Two of them committed suicide, and included her in their swan songs. She was a hell of a thing to watch. And, watching was all ever I got to do, because she instantly disliked me. But, so far as I could tell, she was basically without her own personality—one of those people that mimics who ever they are with, like a long, tall gorgeous massage for latent narcissism.

I wasn’t that talented. Or, hapless. Or, cursed.

I don’t really recall the exact point at which I gave it up, or when I started to wonder what I was getting out of it. I had a horrible tendency to, I suppose, target boys who had a particular brand of damage. At a certain point, I got tired of it.

“I am not your therapist.”

“I am not your mother.”

“I am not the girl sent by the fates to help you achieve actualization and self-acceptance.”

Because, really, that’s how you end up the girl in the margins of someone’s life story.  The one that’s always twenty-two in his memory.  The one that cried just so, in a way he associates with a particular type of weather and a stupid song by a band that’s not cool anymore.  The eternally smooth-skinned prop in someone else’s biopic, who hopped off the train at the right stop, but he didn’t know that at the time.

I guess, eventually, I stopped wanting to be that girl. It’s poetic, and it’s hollow.

But, I don’t know.

I don’t know that I am any wiser. I think maybe I just figured out how to emote appropriately, instead of giving the intellectual approximation of emoting (as drawn by a particularly clever and traumatized ape.)  Or at least, I get it all wrong, but with some sense of grown-up boundaries.

I tell myself, I got the boy I deserved, because that was what I was looking for. And, he’s since become a man. This marriage that I am in (my second, ftr) is one of those long term situations. And, really, I can’t tell you why it works. It’s a mystery.  We’ve always been a mystery.

“It works.”

Why it works?

He says it’s because we have complementary levels of fucked up. I can buy that. I can’t partner up with someone normal. I can’t relate. It wouldn’t work.

I think, maybe, there’s an element of having hit the “realizing other people are really people” point at the same time, though.  You can’t treat people like things—toys, masturbatory aides, ego salve, liferafts, mirrors. Or, you can, but it’s dishonest. They’re people.

Don’t use your body as a weapon. Don’t assume “clever” gives you a right to hurt the unsuspecting.

So, I don’t treat dudes like collectibles anymore.

You can’t go around breaking boys like you’re picking the wings off of flies, without eventually turning into something ugly. If you’re not going to really love the boy, you should probably leave his heart alone.

His cock, though? That’s probably okay.