Anyone can copy a move
I have been with men who had a whole routine. Hand here, mouth there, that little pause they saw in a video and thought was original. Some of it even worked. My body is not complicated when it is already interested.
What I keep thinking about, weeks later, on the night bus with my makeup sliding, is not the trick. It is the hand that checked my face. The thumb at my jaw. The quiet look that asked if I was still in it. That is the bit that lands between my legs when I am trying to think about the rota.
I am thirty. I like sex. I like it filthy and I like it often. I will not pretend I am above a good, stupid, slightly too loud night. But I am so bored of being performed at.
The ones who treat you like a scene
You can feel it straight away. He is not with you. He is doing you. There is a difference, and your body clocks it before your mouth does.
He flips you like he is proud of the choreography. He says the line he practised. He watches his own arms. He is so busy being good at it that he misses the part where I go quiet, or the part where I laugh, or the part where I am right there and he could have had all of me if he just looked up.
I can still come like that. I am not made of glass. A determined mouth and a bit of patience will get you a long way with me. Then I put my clothes on and I do not think about him again, except as a story I edit for the flat.
The ones I replay did not put on a show. They got close enough to notice when my breath changed. They slowed down without making a speech about it. They held my hips like they meant to stay there, not like they were posing for a camera that did not exist.
That kind of attention makes me wetter than a speech about how filthy I am. I already know I am filthy. Tell me you can see me.
Kind does not mean gentle the whole time
People hear kind and think vanilla. Soft lighting. A man whispering thank you. Cute. Not what I mean.
I want him to mean it. I want his mouth on me like he has been thinking about it on his lunch break. I want my hair held, not yanked like a handle. I want to be turned over because he cannot wait, not because he saw a list of positions.
Kind is him watching what that does to me. Kind is him grinning when I swear. Kind is him asking the pace and then actually using the answer. Kind is filthy with the lights on and still checking I have not gone somewhere else in my head.
Because I do that. If it is all serious I start performing pretty. I think about my stomach, my mouth, whether I look like the girl he wanted when he matched me. A stupid joke knocks that out of me. Then I am in my body again. Then I get greedy.
The best sex I have had was not the most athletic. It was the night I stopped holding my face in place. He noticed. He did not panic. He stayed with me while I got a bit ruined and a bit laughy and a bit too honest. I thought about his hands for days. At work. On the tube. In the bathroom doing my lipstick like it was nothing.
What I actually replay
Not the climax, if I am being precise. I replay the bit just before, when he looks at me like he has forgotten to be cool.
I replay a hand on my lower back that did not slide away the second he was done. I replay him passing me water without making it tender-on-purpose. I replay being kissed after, when I did not look polished. I replay him saying I was good in a voice that did not sound copied.
I replay the weight of him. The heat. The way my thighs felt afterwards, that sweet ache that makes sitting on the night bus a private joke. I replay waking up and still feeling chosen, which is a dangerous little habit of mine, but there it is.
Tricks fade. My memory is rude like that. I can barely tell you what the last impressive move was. I can tell you who watched me come and did not look away. I can tell you who laughed into my neck. I can tell you who said stay a minute and meant the minute.
That is the stuff that makes me squeeze my legs together in Tesco like a menace. Not a position. A person paying attention.
Phone down or do not bother
If you can reach for your lock screen, you were not as into it as your mouth said.
I have watched a man roll over and glow blue in the dark while I was still trying to find my breath. Instant death. Whatever we just did becomes content he has finished with. I get up, I find my knickers, I become very funny and very done.
The ones who stay human keep their hands on me. Even sloppy. Even lazy. A palm on my stomach. Fingers in my hair. That half asleep stroke that says you are still here and so am I. It is not a speech. It is not a ceremony. It is just not abandoning the scene the second you have got what you came for.
Women talk about this constantly, just not always in those words. We say he was good. What we often mean is he did not disappear inside the act. He kept a thread between us. Skin, eyes, a bit of talk. The thread is the sexy part. Cut it and I am just a body that happened to be convenient.
After is part of the sex
I will say this until I am knackered of saying it. The night is not finished when he finishes.
I want the rubbish talk. Was that okay. You all right. Come here. I want the loo trip and the water and the laugh about how my mascara has migrated. I want to be touched like I am not a task that has been ticked.
That quiet bit is how I decide if he gets another night. Not whether he lasted. Not whether he knew a trick with his fingers he was dying to demonstrate. Whether I felt wanted when I was sticky and unimpressive and a bit too honest.
Good sex makes me clingy for about twelve minutes. Then I remember I have a shift. The clingy bit matters though. If he treats it like a problem, I file him under used me nicely. If he lets me have it, I replay him. Simple as that.
And if it is casual, aftercare still counts. Casual is not a free pass to go cold. You can want nothing tomorrow and still hold me for a minute tonight. That combination is rare and it makes me stupidly wet, because it means I was not just a hole with a good line in sarcasm.
Why the kind ones ruin you a bit
Because once you have been paid attention to, the performers feel cheap.
I go out. I flirt. I am good at the start of the night. Cocky, shiny, lip product on, the whole bit. Then I end up in a kitchen that is not mine, or mine with a sock still on the floor, and I can tell within five minutes if he is with me or with an idea of me.
The idea of me is easy. The actual me gets loud, then quiet, then greedy, then soft. I swear. I laugh at the wrong moment. I want it harder and then I want to be held like I have work in the morning, which I do.
Kind hands can follow that. Tricks cannot. Tricks have a script. I am not a script. I am a warehouse manager with a high drive and a habit of leaving before breakfast so I do not have to ask for toast. When someone makes it safe to stay in the bed a little longer, my whole body files that under please again.
That is the ache I mean. Not romance novel. Just the memory of being handled like I was worth looking at while I came, and worth keeping hold of after.
If you want me to think about you tomorrow
Do not collect moves. Watch my face.
If I go still, ask. If I swear, grin and keep going. If I laugh, do not take it as an insult. If I pull you closer, stay there. If I say wait, wait. If I say more, give me more and check I still mean it.
Put your mouth where you have been staring all night. Use your hands like you like my body, not like you are trying to complete a circuit. Tell me something true. Even if it is just that I feel good. I can hear the difference between true and copied. True makes my thighs open. Copied makes me perform.
Then afterwards, be a person. Water. A joke. A hand that does not vanish. Maybe a text the next day that is not fishing for a review. I think about that more than I think about the angle.
I will sit on the tube with my work face on and still feel where he held me. That is the win. That is the thing that makes me want him again when I should be thinking about the promotion and the milk and whether the bathroom is free.
Anyone can copy a move. Fewer check my face. The ones I keep is the ones who paid attention and then stayed human.
Those are the hands I replay. Those are the nights that follow me into Monday. And if that sounds soft, fine. I can be soft and still want it filthy. The combination is the whole point.
