If you go at me like the clock is running, I stay in my head
I am not even in the room with you. I am in the mirror. Fixing my face. Checking if I look good from that angle. Wondering if my mouth is doing something stupid. Wondering if I should make a noise now or if that will sound try-hard.
That is the truth of it. I can be filthy and still be elsewhere. I can want it and still be managing the picture.
Give me a minute to get stupid. That is when it gets good. For both of us, not just in the way men say both when they mean them.
Pretty is a job I clock into without thinking.
I do my face in the bathroom every morning like it is part of the rota. I catch myself in the kettle. In the tube window. In the dark glass of a cab home. It is habit. It is armour. It is how I leave the flat looking like Els instead of a woman who has been on her feet since seven.
So of course that version of me comes to bed. The one who knows where the light is. The one who tilts her chin. The one who would rather die than look messy too early, even when messy is the whole point.
People think confidence means you are not self conscious. Cute. I can walk into a pub like I own the carpet and still spend the first ten minutes of sex wondering if my stomach looks fine from his side of the pillow. Those two things live in the same body. They have been roommates for years.
If you rush, you get the performance. You get the girl who knows how to look like she is into it. You do not get me going slack in the head, which is the only version that actually finishes the sentence.
Rushing is just porn with worse manners.
I am not innocent. I have watched the same clips as everyone else. Fast, loud, no warm up, everyone already at a ten. Fine as a video. Useless as a map.
A lot of men treat the start like an inconvenience. Kissing is the advert. Hands are the queue. Then they want the main bit before I have even left the warehouse in my own brain. I am still wearing the day. The radio. The rota. The little tight feeling I get when someone goes quiet on me. You cannot outrun that with speed.
Slow is not polite. Slow is how you get me out of the admin.
Touch my mouth like you mean it. Stay there. Do not skip to the next move because you saw it in something with bad music. If you are already aiming for the finish, I can feel it. My body clocks it the same way I clock a lad who is only being nice until last orders.
I want the warm up. Then I want you to mean it. Soft the whole way through feels like you are frightened of me. Fast from the first second feels like you are frightened of wasting time. Neither of those is hot. One of them just has better branding.
What performing pretty actually looks like.
I keep my stomach pulled in. I angle the thigh that I like more. I make the sound I think he wants because silence makes my head wander and a fake moan at least keeps the scene moving. I watch his face to see if I am doing it right, which is the fastest way to leave my own skin.
It is not that I do not want him. It is that I want to look like a woman who is wanted. There is a difference, and it is exhausting, and I will still do it if you do not give me anywhere else to go.
Getting stupid is the opposite of that. Face not arranged. Mouth a bit open. Thought gone. I stop presenting. I stop producing. I stop being a person who would check her lipstick in the microwave door. That girl cannot come. She can only perform coming, which some men cannot tell apart, and those men do not get a second night if I can help it.
I come easier when I am laughing. I come easier when I am not trying to be photogenic. I come easier when you are not treating my body like a level you have to clear before the kettle boils.
Give me a minute. I mean an actual minute.
Not one performative kiss and then a dive. A minute where nothing is required of me except being there. Hands. Mouth. The kind of pace that makes me forget I have a shift tomorrow.
Talk if you can do it without sounding like a script. Tell me it is good. Tell me where. Or say something daft so I drop the pose. Serious sex makes me watch myself. A stupid comment knocks the camera out of my head.
Ask the pace. Then listen to the answer with your hands still on me. Confidence is not guessing faster. Confidence is not being scared that slow means you are bad at it.
If I go quiet, that is not always a compliment. Sometimes I have floated up to the ceiling to check my hair. Bring me back. Stay on the same spot longer than you think you should. People leave the good bit because they are bored of being good at it. Stay anyway.
What I need before I can stop managing the picture.
I need to believe you are not grading me. Sounds small. It is not. If I think you are collecting evidence for later, I keep the face on. If I think you might tell a mate, I keep the face on. If I think you want a performance you can remember rather than a person you can ruin a bit, I keep the face on.
Phone face down. Eyes on me. That is not a speech about respect. That is practical. I cannot get stupid while a lock screen is competing with my tit.
I also need the day to leave my body. Warehouse floors do not come off in one tug of a dress. I have been counting, lifting, smiling at people I do not like, doing maths on a night out I cannot afford. You put your hands on me in a rush and all of that is still running. Slow is how you shut the tabs.
And I need to not be pretty for a second. I know that sounds mad from someone who will reapply lip product in a club toilet under lighting that should be illegal. I still mean it. Pretty is how I survive the city. It is not how I finish.
When it finally goes.
There is a point where my face stops being useful. That is the point. You will know it if you are paying attention, which most people are not, because they are busy chasing their own ending like a bus they are late for.
I look less arranged. I sound less like a clip. I stop offering you the version that would photograph well. I get a bit greedy. A bit rude. A bit gone. That is not me being difficult. That is me arriving.
From there you can be rougher. You can be filthy. You can hold my hair without treating my head like a handle from a bad film. I like that. I like being in charge sometimes and I like not being in charge once I am actually in it. None of that works if you skip the bit where I stop performing.
Men love the idea of a confident woman in bed. They are less interested in the five minutes of ordinary touching that make her stop acting like one.
If you only remember one thing.
Do not take my makeup as the brief. The makeup is the commute. The good bit is underneath, and she is shy in a way I will never admit in a pub.
Go slow until my face forgets itself. Stay there longer than your pride wants. Make me laugh so I cannot pose. Then do not waste it by racing the last part like you have somewhere else to be.
I can give you the pretty girl in ten seconds. She is cheap. She is rehearsed. She will make you feel like you did well even if I was on the ceiling the whole time.
The other one takes a minute. She is less photogenic. She is the reason I bother.
Give me that minute. Let me get stupid. That is when it gets good for both of us, and I do not say both unless I mean it.
