I’ll check how people actually talk about laughing in bed and performance, then write it in Ellie’s voice as clean WordPress HTML.“`html

I Come Easier When I Am Laughing

Serious sex makes me watch myself. I can feel it happen. My face goes a bit arranged. I start thinking about my stomach, the angle, whether I sound like a person or like I have seen too many videos. It is still sex. It can even be good. It is just me, slightly outside my own body, marking my own homework.

Then someone says something stupid. Proper stupid. Not a line. Not a performance. A snort because a knee went the wrong way, or he whispered something filthy and then immediately ruined it by catching my earring. And I laugh. Proper laugh. The one that makes my eyes go wet at the corners.

That is when it works.

Filthy and funny is not a mood I switch on. It is the whole method.

I do not go slack when I am trying to look hot.

I know how I come across. Smug. A bit much. Makeup on even when I am only going to Tesco. People assume I am the girl who wants it cinematic. Low light, no talking, everybody breathing like they are in a trailer.

Sometimes I do. For about four minutes.

Then my brain clocks in. Warehouse brain. Counting, checking, fixing. Is my hair in my mouth. Is that a good noise or a try-hard noise. Does he think I am into this or just doing a version of into this. Once that starts, I am gone. Still moving. Still saying the right things. Not actually there.

Coming is not a personality trait I can force by concentrating harder. The more I stare at it, the further it walks off. Like trying to fall asleep by telling yourself to fall asleep. Useless. Makes you more awake and slightly annoyed with your own ceiling.

A laugh knocks that out. It is rude about the performance. It says sit down, nobody is filming this, your earring is caught on his jumper.

People treat clumsy like it is a failure.

I see it online all the time. As if good sex is smooth. As if bodies do not make weird sounds. As if nobody ever gets a cramp, knocks teeth, misses, laughs, carries on.

Bodies are daft. Mine is five foot three and determined. His is whoever he is that night. You put two people in a small London bedroom with a radiator that clanks and a flatmate on the other side of the wall and you want silence and perfection? Be serious.

The best ones laugh with me. Not at me in that cheap way. With. There is a difference you can feel in your chest. One is bonding. One is him deciding I am less hot now that I am a person.

If he goes quiet and offended because I giggled, I already know. He wanted a scene. I wanted a night. Those are not the same order.

Funny is not the opposite of filthy.

This is where men get confused, and a few women do too. They think if you laugh you have broken the spell. Like desire is a candle and humour is an open window.

Mine does not work like that.

I can be laughing and still want him to mean it. I can call him a tit for the way he just tried to look cool taking his socks off and still want his mouth. The joke does not cancel the want. It lets the want in without all the posing.

Dirty talk is the same. If it sounds copied, I drift. If it sounds like him, even if it is clumsy, I stay. Awkward and filthy beats cinematic and fake. I have said that before and I will keep saying it because it is true in practice, not just as a caption.

Tell me it is good. Tell me where. Get the words a bit wrong. I would rather that than a script he borrowed off a screen and delivered like he is sitting an exam.

The men who cannot take a joke cannot take me.

I am sarcastic on the floor at work. I am sarcastic on the night bus. I do not become a different species because my bra is on the chair.

If he needs me mute and worshipful, he picked the wrong short blonde with a mouth on her.

Some of them like the cocky in the pub and then want a saint in the dark. No. I will be a bit mouthy. I will make a face if something feels mid. I will also tell him when it is working, which a surprising number of people never bother doing. They just hope telepathy shows up with the lube.

Laughing is how I show I am safe enough to be ugly for a second. Teeth. Sound. No arranged face. If he only wants the arranged face, he can date a photo.

What actually happens in my head.

When it is too solemn I clock the mirror if there is one. Habit. I live in the mirror anyway. Lip, hair, am I still the girl who left the flat looking sorted. That girl is useful on a night out. She is a menace in bed. She keeps me at a distance from my own skin.

A stupid joke boots her out.

Then I can feel things in order. Heat. Pace. His hand. My own breathing. Not a review of myself. Just the fact of it. That is when I come easier. Not because funny is magic. Because funny stops me performing long enough for my body to catch up with what it already wanted.

I have had nights that looked perfect and went nowhere. Nice flat. Nice mouth. Everybody taking it so seriously you could have put it on a mood board. I left thinking, that should have worked. It did not. We were both too busy being good at sex to have any.

Then there was the one who snorted when we got stuck changing position and my ankle refused to be ambitious. We lost it. Properly lost it. And after that it was easy. Not gentle. Easy. There is a difference. Easy meaning I was in the room.

It is also a test I did not mean to invent.

If I laugh and he softens, good. If I laugh and he pouts, I clock it. If I laugh and he tries to shush me like I have ruined his scene, I am already halfway to finding my knickers.

Sex without humour feels like being assessed. I have been assessed enough. At work. In dating. In that stupid body count conversation men think is research. I do not need it in my own bed with my own breath in my own ears.

And I am not talking about turning the whole thing into a sketch show. There is a point. Hands. Mouth. The bit where talking stops because talking would be extra. I like that bit. I just cannot reach it if I have been holding my stomach in for twenty minutes like I am posing for a photo I will never post.

What I want, if we are being plain.

Start filthy if you want. Mean it. Then do not be precious when a human noise happens.

If something is funny, let it be funny. Then come back to me. Do not punish the laugh by going cold. That is how you teach a woman to fake a mood.

Stay for the water after. Say something daft. Touch my back like I am not a task you completed. That quiet bit is part of it. I have written that before too. I will keep writing it until it sinks in.

I come easier when I am laughing because laughing is the moment I stop being Els from the doorway, all smirk and product, and turn into a person in a room with another person. That is the whole trick. It is not even a trick.

Serious can be hot. I will give it that. For a minute.

Then someone should say something true and a bit stupid, and we should get on with it like we are allowed to enjoy ourselves.

If he cannot handle that, he can find a girl who does not laugh. I hear they photograph well. I hope they come. I know I do, once the performance has been shown the door.