If it is all serious I tense up fast.
That is the whole post, really. Filthy and funny is the mix. I come easier when I am not bloody posing about.
I know that sounds like a punchline. It is not. It is the most practical thing I have learned about my own body in years, and I learned it the unglamorous way. On a mattress that dips in the middle. After a late shift. Makeup half off. Him trying to do this intense eye contact thing like we were in a paid scene and I was supposed to whimper on cue.
I did not whimper. I snorted. Then I apologised, which made it worse, because now we were both performing the apology. The night did not recover. I went home in an Uber thinking about the rota and whether I had any clean tunics.
Serious sex makes me leave my own body
I can do intense. I like intense. I like being wanted in that slightly feral way where nobody is checking the time. What I cannot do is the solemn version. The soundtrack-off, faces-very-still, nobody-dare-break-character version.
My head clocks out. I start watching myself. Is my stomach alright from this angle. Is that noise too much. Did I just look keen. Should I look keener. It is exhausting, and it is the fastest way I know to make an orgasm pack a bag and leave.
People talk about being in your head like it is a moral failing. As if you just need to relax, babe. I work in a warehouse. I split a flat. I check my balance more than I check the weather. My brain does not have an off switch because someone dimmed a lamp. It needs a reason to stay in the room.
Laughter is the reason. Not a stand-up set. Not a bit. Just the permission to be a person while you are also being filthy.
The night it actually worked
Best sex I have had lately did not start hot. It started stupid.
We were already half undressed and his belt got stuck. Proper stuck. He did this little panicked wiggle and I said, without thinking, you look like you are fighting a deckchair. He wheezed. I lost it. Then he got the belt off like it had personally offended him and looked at me with that face men get when they realise you are not going to grade them.
That was it. The air changed. Not softer. Easier. He could say the filthy stuff without putting on a voice. I could be loud without wondering if I sounded like I was trying. When I came it was not pretty. It was a bit undignified and I laughed after, which would have killed it with the wrong person. He just said good, and went again.
I thought about that on the night bus home. Not the positions. The fact I did not once clock myself in the dark window and start adjusting my face.
Filthy is not the opposite of funny
Some men hear funny and think you want vanilla. Soft lighting. A playlist. No thank you.
I want the rude words. I want to be told what to do. I want hands that are sure. I want it a bit messy and a bit specific. I also want to be allowed to grin when something ridiculous happens, because bodies are ridiculous. Knees crack. Someone gets a hair in their mouth. The neighbour slams a door at the exact wrong second. If you treat that like a crime scene, I tense. If you treat it like we are two adults who can cope, I stay.
Funny does not mean you are taking the piss out of me. It means you are in it with me. There is a difference, and I can feel it in about ten seconds.
The ones who cannot take a joke in bed are usually the same ones who cannot take direction. They have a script. I am meant to fit it. When I do not, they go quiet in that sulky way that makes my stomach drop. I have left more rooms because of that silence than because the sex was bad.
Posing is the enemy
Porn taught a lot of people that sex is a face you pull. Mouth a bit open. Eyes a bit tragic. Back arched like you are being paid by the centimetre.
I have done that face. Of course I have. I do my actual face in the bathroom mirror before I leave the house. Performance is a habit. It gets me through a shift and a night out and the walk from the tube. In bed it is a problem, because my body can tell when I have clocked out to manage the picture.
When I am posing I can go through the motions and still feel miles away. When I am laughing I am stuck in the room. That is the whole trick. Not scented candles. Not a new toy, though I am not against a new toy. Presence. The unglamorous kind.
I come easier when I am not arranging myself. When my hair is a state. When I am allowed to say wait, no, like that, yes, that, and then ruin the line by giggling because his elbow just went into the pillow wrong. That is not a mood killer. That is the mood arriving.
What I actually want from you
Make me laugh. Then make me. In that order if you can manage it. Sometimes they happen at the same time, and that is even better.
Say something filthy in your normal voice. Not the movie voice. Yours. If it comes out clumsy, leave it. Clumsy and honest beats polished and fake on every mattress I have met.
If I snort, do not panic. If I swear at the wrong moment, take it as a compliment. If something does not work, say so. I would rather a blunt oops than five minutes of both of us pretending a position is doing anything for anyone.
And after, do not roll over like the scene has wrapped. Water. A stupid comment. A hand on my back. I feel safest when I am still wanted once I have stopped being useful. That is not needy. That is how I tell the difference between a good night and a transaction I will edit in my head on the way to work.
Why this matters more than it should
I can be cocky in a kitchen. I can be cocky on the floor at work. Sex is where the act slips if I let it, because I learned early that looking sorted keeps the quiet away. Funny sex is the one place I do not have to look sorted.
It is also the one place I notice who I actually like. Not who is fit. Not who talks a good game in the pub. Who can hold a filthy sentence and a laugh in the same breath without making it weird. That person is rarer than people admit. When I find one I remember them longer than I should.
So no, I do not want it precious. I do not want it grim either. I want it human. A bit rude. A bit daft. The kind of night where I forget the rent and the rota and the face I do in every reflective surface, because I am too busy being in my body to manage the picture of it.
Make me laugh. Then make me. If you can only do one, start with the first. The second has a much better chance once I have stopped posing.
