That isn’t to say that I always expect my bed partners to be swinging from the chandeliers with a whip at their belt and a knife in their teeth but I have to say that the idea of merely going to bed fills me with dread. ‘Going to bed’ in my vernacular is code for going to sleep. I ‘go to bed’ in order to get some shut eye. Not to indulge in endless in-and-out that I’m not getting off on. If there’s no spice in it for me, it’s not really that exciting. I’d rather have the sleep to be honest, that’s something I’m pretty deprived of!

I do worry about this sometimes. Does it mean that I am in some way emotionally stunted and I can’t get off on what any other couple would describe as a natural and loving act? Am I an adrenaline junkie, who needs to feed of her fear and pain in order to achieve orgasm? Or is it that ‘vanilla’ women don’t, as is frequently noted in magazines, have orgasms from sex, or at least not as often as the men?

I do know, from frequent Kinky Girls Nights Out that women find it hard to achieve orgasm from penetration. Often, we require some other help, from fingers or mouths. Scientifically, this is due to the fact that orgasms in women are centred on the clitoris whereas the act of penetration is centred on the vagina, so unless you have some convenient friction or the angle is right, women do find it hard to come from sex.

It feels somewhat abhorrent to say this. It feels like I’m saying (and to a certain extent I am) that being vanilla bores me. That yes, I like cuddling and talking but when the cuddling and talking develops into sexual activity with no BDSM context, whilst I don’t exactly mind it, I do get bored. And if I know that’s all that’s going to be on offer, it’s like expecting to go to a five-star restaurant and then suddenly finding yourself in McDonalds.

Chicken McNuggets anyone?

I’ve suffered from it quite a few times in the past couple of weeks, not just from He Who Must Be Obeyed but The Lover as well. Basically, it goes something like this.

Jessica notices that all is not well in man world.

Jessica (knowing full well that this is the case): “Is anything the matter?”

Him (adopting either sulky or martyred look): “No, nothing.” (Deep sigh. Puffs out cheeks.)

Jessica (slightly irritated): “Are you sure?”

Him (bottom lip pushing out): “Yes! Don’t nag me!” (Deep sigh. Walks to desk and starts fiddling with handy piece of cable tie or other male item, occasionally opening drawer or typing with more force than usual)

Jessica : “I know something’s upset you.”

Him (vehement): “No! I’m fine!” (Deep sigh. Even deeper sigh.)

Jessica storms out in exasperation to cook dinner/do washing/clean bathroom/have shower (delete as necessary)

Later on, you catch them out when they actually say why they are upset or unhappy, normally when you have burst into tears and told them you hate it when they are cross. But by then, they’ve spent a minimum of six hours and a maximum of four days sulking and the whole time you’ve been trying to work out why they are unhappy – because you can’t take any steps to solve it until they say something. And then, because they’ve been sulking and upset you, you don’t feel remotely sympathetic to their plight. What you actually want to do it stab them in the eye with a pencil.

I find this so frustrating about men. As a woman, I’m used to having long and girly chats with my good female friends about everything. We analyse. We dissect. We surmise what he meant/what he said/did you see/did she really say/ Really? No! I don’t believe it! But whenever I try to talk to the man in my life, he adopts the pained expression of someone attempting to pass a watermelon without blinking. He dreads the words “I’d like to talk about something.”  If I ask to sit at the table for dinner, as all civilised people should, he attempts to eat in front of the telly, dreading that something emotional will come up over the broccoli.

One of the reasons that HWMBO and I fit together well is the opposition of our emotional states. I am all temper, hurricanes, shouting, ballistic missile-esque ball of fire and warmth. He is ice cool, snow, silence, hidden oceans of calmness and quiet. He calms me down. I rev him up. When I start shouting – and oh, how he hates that outpouring of rage, well-articulated by the pithy insult and the elephantine memory of All The Bad Things He Has Done – he literally waits for the storm to pass. Meanwhile, I am fuming at his lack of engagement, his refusal to argue, his careful eye-rolling, his calm voice saying “I’ll talk to you when you have let this out.”

I am from a large, extended working-class Welsh family with Byzantine style family feuds and old insults and any large family gathering is like a piranha pond – last person to bite gets their leg chewed off. HWMBO, by contrast is from a small, terribly polite middle-class English family with buttoned up emotions who would never have dreamed of smashing plates whilst screaming and drinking vats of red wine in the way my lot do. My family watch fights in the street whilst the women call encouragement out of windows. His family are the ones that complain to the police about the common people who fight in the street. So maybe I am just better at getting it out than he is.

So men of the world – please – you know how you complain that you can’t read women’s minds? Well guess what – we can’t read yours either. So either spit it out or for goodness sake, stop sulking!

It’s going to feature couples who want the wedding of their dreams and the programme will organise it for free – and televise it at the same time. Jessica isn’t entering herself for this as she and HWMBO are already married and had a traditional, no-spanking-involved wedding* – although given that it’s our five year anniversary this year, maybe we should pitch to Channel 4 to let us renew our vows?

Anyway, the producer, Melissa Waterson, wrote me such a nice note to say that they would like to feature an ‘alternative’** couple in the programme that I thought I’d share it with all my lovely readers – after all, there might be some of you out there who are getting hitched and have your eye on the latest corset fantasy from Fairy Gothmother!

So here’s the blurb….

‘Do you want to have the wedding of your dreams without the drama? 

 Channel 4 are producing a new show where a top team of wedding planners, stylists and organisers will create your ideal ceremony at our ‘Wedding House’ for FREE.  All you have to do is be in love and want to get married & we’ll do the rest.  For more information and an application form, e-mail weddings@betty.co.uk or call 0207
290 0661’

And if by chance one of my lovely readers does get picked, please let me know and sent me a bottle of champagne as a thank you. I like Laurent Perrier Rose best!

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*Disappointingly. I’d have liked to have come out of the church under a row of canes and had all my bridesmaids spanked by the ushers…but I did have a corset and promised to obey HWMBO!
**Such as rubber kitten fetishists or transsexual polyamerous one-legged Buddhists in an arranged marriage with an American fundamentalist Christian with a banjo.

Since then, I tracked down another salon, only ten minutes walk (or five minutes drive) from me that appeared to be staffed by people older than 14*.

But, I hear you all asking, does this mean that Jessica hasn’t waxed her legs since October?

Well no dear readers, no. First of all, my waxer’s redundancy was put off until Christmas, so the festive season passed with me being fuzz-free. In-between Christmas and New Year, I shaved my legs and pubic area myself, plucked my eyebrows and used lots of mascara rather than tinting my eyelashes. Then in mid-January, I went to my new salon for the first time and had my legs waxed, eyebrows shaped and eyelashes tinted. But I didn’t have my pubic area waxed. Why? Because I wanted to see what the new waxer was like and preferred to have my legs experimented on rather than my pubes!

Anyway, said waxer proved to be brilliant, so last week, I booked in to have all my fuzz removed prior to my birthday weekend. When I called, the receptionist asked me what kind of pubic wax I wanted.

“Bikini, Brazilian or Hollywood?” she asked.

Now I know what these are. For the uninitiated**, a bikini involves having your pubic hair neatly trimmed and waxed so it doesn’t poke out of bikini bottoms. A Brazilian involves having it all removed but for a ‘landing strip’ of pubic hair in the middle of your groin area. And a Hollywood is everything off.***. Which is what I like to have, because that’s what He Who Must Be Obeyed likes.

Now my previous waxer used to take off all the hair on my pubic bone, right down to the top of my labia lips and around the side of the tops of my thighs, down towards my bottom. I then used to shave my actual labia lips. This used to be embarrassing enough, especially when you are required to hoist your leg to the ceiling, as if doing yoga. Last week, I discovered that what I had previously been having was otherwise known as ‘hollywood for wusses’. I realised that something might be a little different when I was required to remove my knickers – I used to just have to pull them down or aside. The second hint was when the lady touched the hair on my labia lips (in a totally professional way) and said “ooo, do you usually shave this bit?”

“Yes” I replied, totally nonplussed.

“Oh well, better grit your teeth then!” she sang, smiling the smile of a woman about to do her job thoroughly.

What followed was one of the most embarrassing and painful experiences of my life so far as my lovely waxer efficiently stripped hair not only from my pubic bone but also from my labia lips, my inner labia lips and right down the inside, almost to my anus. I was torn (hah!) between total mortification as she parted my buttock cheeks to dab warm wax around my bottom-hole and total agony as she ruthlessly removed every stray hair where I didn’t even know I *had* stray hairs! It was like a cross between a medical procedure and a heavy S&M session. Tears came to my eyes and the waxer, sensing my pain, told me a very long story about her night out in an attempt to distract me, which only partially worked. I limped out of the shop feeling like I’d sat in a nettle patch. The driving snow in my face made me want to take off my jeans in the middle of the high street and expose my burning pussy to the cold snow.

My waxer told me that I would find this, the first waxing of my labia lips more painful and further times would be easier as the hair would be finer. Nursing my blazing bits, I wasn’t sure I agreed.

When I got home, HWMBO was surprised.

“You look a bit flushed.” he said.

Damn right!!

That was lunchtime. By teatime, I felt better, especially after a shower. But by dinnertime, with the prospect of a play that night with HWMBO, it felt amazing. As smooth and soft as a peach and the sensation through my knickers was already providing stimulation, even before doing anything. And unlike shaving, which I need to do every three days, it lasts for four weeks at least!

Hollywood, you have another convert! Ladies of the world, get your labia lips out for the waxer! Your lives will never be the same again!

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*For some reason, like being caned by nineteen year old males, subjecting my private parts to a 14 year olds ministrations doesn’t really appeal
**the men who read this blog, apart from the gay ones
***I used to call this a ‘Kojak’ but then ran into problems because beauticians tend not to remember the seventies.

Now most people would not find shelves terribly exciting. But I do. Because He Who Must Be Obeyed and I have a massive book collection, probably over a thousand of the things. Before last week, we had floor-to-ceiling shelves on one side of our living room, which was bursting at the seams with books – all the shelved had double rows and books were stuffed in every available space.  Now, after much nagging from me, HWMBO has finally thrown away his embarrassing 1970’s cocktail cabinet, poured all his strange-coloured bottles of alcohol bought from obscure destinations and which have slowly petrified, untouched, for the last decade, sorted out the computer and Lo! We now have floor-to-ceiling shelves on the other side of the room as well!

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. Even more than my forthcoming birthday weekend!

We moved the history, sexuality and gender studies section over there and will spread out the fiction next week. I am a geek and also suffer from being rather anal, so naturally, my library is split into:

a)    Fiction, naturally filed in alphabetical order.
b)    Non-fiction, filed roughly according to the Dewey Decimal Classification (without the spine tags)

It’s great. There is nothing more soothing than re-arranging books.

It also led to some interesting conversations. Take the biography of the Marquis De Sade. History, Sexuality or biography section? Should erotic fiction go in general fiction or stay in the sex section for easy accessibility? Do I put books on Victorian servants into the Victorian home section or the Victorian sex section? (NB: home section won!).

I can honestly say that if it was a choice between the playroom being full of desks and spanking benches or more shelves, I might pick the shelves. Now that really is kinky!!

Actually, the picking was mostly done by Abel with Jessica acting as a holder-of-twigs and a lookout for itinerant foresters.

After an hour, Abel had picked a suitably huge bunch of birch.  Walking back to the car, he showed that spanking of some kind is rarely far from his mind. As he passed through one of the gates in the woods, he ordered Jessica to bend over the gate.

“I saw this earlier and thought it would do” he said gleefully. “Come on Davies, get up on the paling, I need to test these birches. Lift up your coat.”

Inwardly grimacing, but not that surprised (and actually, quite looking forward to it), Jessica placed herself over the fence, legs on paling, bent right over, arms gripping the fence. She lifted her coat and Abel briskly whacked the switches across her bottom. It stung, even over her jeans.

After six strokes, Abel stopped rather abruptly, confusing Jessica who is used to rather more in the way of discipline from him. Lifting her head, she saw why. Mouths agape, two joggers ran past on a forest path at right angles to Jessica bent over the fence, looking sideways in shock at Jessica bent over with bottom in the air. Jessica leapt down, blushed as crimson as her coat and Abel laughed. A lot.

They walked on and Abel was now on a mission to find a slightly more secluded spot and fence to carry out his birch tests. He found one in the shape of a protective fence, protecting a tree specially planted for Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.  This time, Jessica was bent right over and was given a rather more thorough switching, still with her jeans up but the sting of the birch twigs radiating right through the denim and making her bottom tingle.

It felt rather nice.

Five minutes later, nearly at the car, Jessica was feeling whiny.

“My bottom hurts,” she moaned. “I bet I’ve got marks, even through my jeans! Look!”

Quickly Jessica dropped her jeans to her knees and bent over to show Abel her bottom. Abel obviously needed Jessica to lower her knickers as well to let him have a proper look and of course, couldn’t resist spanking the tempting target.

At which point, the same  pair of joggers ran past at right angles again, having obviously jogged on a more circular route around the forest.  Again, both looked shocked at the scene, the male jogger so surprised at being presented with a right pair of kinksters for the second time that he just missed running into a tree.

Jessica, racing to haul up her jeans and cover her embarrassment, slipped in the mud and nearly fell over.

Abel, totally helpless with laughter, looked like he might actually have to sit down on the forest floor as he bent over and spluttered with mirth. Jessica had to laugh too. You just had to. The pair of them laughed all the way back to the car, where thankfully, no members of the police were waiting to apprehend them for nicking birch twigs.

In the pub for lunch, Abel was struck with a thought.

“What if they come in here for lunch now?”

Jessica, pulling her hat over her eyes, sincerely hoped not!!!!

But honestly, if there was ever a pair of ‘men’ (I use the word in inverted commas because their behaviour was like that of five year old, but with more swearing*) that were aching for a jolly good beating, it was the pair on South West Trains last week, at 6.15am in the morning.

One had a bike, the other did not. The one with a bike got on at the same stop as me. As it was very early, the train was only a third full; there were loads of empty seats. But the man with a bike, who was a typical lycra lout cycling thug, puffed up with his own importance about saving the planet, wanted to put his bike in the area designated for bikes, which has a polite sign on it saying ‘please make way for cycles’. Unfortunately, another commuter was already sitting there. In the way of his bike.

Instead of asking politely if the chap would move, so he could rest his bike – there being lots of other seats – the lycra lout loudly and aggressively ordered the man to move, startling all of the commuters in earshot (including me) from their coffee and papers. The other man, in a typical male posturing way, refused to move, perhaps fearing that his penis might never rise again if he gave way – although I have to say that if someone had spoken to me like that, I might have refused to move on principal as well. But he was in a bike space.

Anyway….

This argument went on for a good five minutes, got louder and louder, the swear words started flying** and it looked like there was going to be a fight.

Until Miss Davies – that’s my grown up self – intervened.

Standing up, I politely asked the cycling thug to calm down and stop swearing and being abusive and then asked the commuter in the bike space if he would mind moving to another seat. I was sure, I said, that the commuter would have happily moved in the first place if he’d been spoken to more politely. The bemused commuter nodded.

Then, I suggest, icily calm and polite, when they’d stopped being so silly, perhaps all the other travellers could enjoy their journey to work and peace and quiet. Couldn’t they see they were upsetting the elderly lady sitting there?

The commuter, clutching his coffee like a shield, sidled past me to another seat. The cyclist flounced his bike into the space and then flounced to another seat.

“Thank you so much gentlemen” I said, ultra politely, and sat down.

Peace reigned.

How I longed for a cane at that point. Perhaps a quick six of the best each would have taught them about behaving in public!

**************************************************
*Although these days, most five year olds swear worse than I do.
**Hearing the ‘C’ word used at 6.20am on a commuter train is not a good thing.
***Actually she wasn’t that old. Whoops. She probably wanted to get up and punch me in the mouth.

First up was coming through Terminal 5 at Heathrow to collect my suitcase. The Lover and I are confronted with a giant BA poster. It features a little girl standing by the arrivals barrier, looking excited.  She is holding a sign saying ‘Daddy’. The caption on the advert is ‘Christmas with BA – getting you home for Christmas.’ All very heartwarming. What wound me up about it was the casually sexist assumption that it’s Daddy that’s been abroad on business. Whatever happened to Mummy working away? Or doing an international conference? Or going on a sales jolly?

Next up was the verdict in the Meredith Kercher murder trial in Italy. A very sad business and an appalling case. No argument there. But the way the papers reported it, you’d have thought that only Amanda Knox or should I say ‘Foxy Knoxy’ has been guilty. There were, to my knowledge, two other murderers, both of them male. But neither of them has had anything like the acres of coverage that the female murderer received, the comments on the clothes she chose for the trial, the sanctimonious commentary in the Daily Mail (and I speak here as a person who reads the Daily Mail) about how she was sexually suspicious and obviously guilty because she left a vibrator and condoms in the bathroom. What the hell is wrong with that? Not to mention the assumption that she was a ‘she-devil’ and a ‘wicked Eve’ who’d led the two male murderers to kill for her, such was their desire for her wantonness that they lost all control and stabbed an innocent woman in the neck. This was crowned by the Sunday Times double page spread (which is, for those who are interested, 2000 words long) on Ms Knox and a mere 200 word sidebar for the two male perpetrators. Nobody called her boyfriend ‘Randy Rafaelle’ did they?

Finally, a more British-based furore, which was the fact that Sally Bercow, wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons had seen fit to give an interview to the press – tied up with the fact that she is desirous of becoming a Labour MP and all publicity is good publicity. In the UK, the Speaker is an important figure who is required to renounce party-politics and be neutral. So I’m sure I can’t be alone in finding the fact that his wife used her position as his wife (and let’s face it, they’d never have interviewed her if she wasn’t his wife) to knock the Conservative party leader to advance her own profile when he relies on her husband to call him to speak in Parliament, extremely distasteful.

What I didn’t find remotely distasteful was that she confessed that in her youth, she’d been a bit of a goer. The charges M’Lud, were as follows:

• That she’d drunk a lot at university and in her twenties.
• That she’d smoked like a chimney.
• That she’d had some one night stands.
• That she’d taken unlicensed minicabs and occasionally missed her stop on the tube after going to sleep late at night.

Shock horror! From the way the Daily Mail reacted, you’d have thought she was confessing to Satanic Orgies*** and drinking the blood of newborn babies. If I have a single reader who in her time (and who is not still) drinking a lot and occasionally shagging a random, please leave me a comment and I’ll send you a present. I mean really! What year are we in, 1809 or bloody 2009? Women have casual sex! Get over it! So do men! Why is it ok for men and not for women? Why are women slags and men just one of the boys?

I thought it was a contrast, especially as the week before, Tiger Woods got an awful lot of ‘ooo, you naughty boy’ coverage of the ‘wink wink, doesn’t really matter’ variety for shagging around on his wife repeatedly. At least Sally Bercow (to my knowledge), became a pillar of the community once she got hitched and became a mother. Although from the look of her husband, I’d lay money on the fact that he likes a good spanking.

Now for the record, I’d slit my wrists before I voted for Sally Bercow, but for God’s sake, she does not deserve a load of mealy-mouthed old harridans (the kind who used to sit in the front row knitting whilst watching heads roll from the guillotine) saying how awful she is. Because she really isn’t. Not in this day and age.

(Pause to get breath and put out fire on keyboard from irate typing.)

I have always assumed that the kind of people who get vicarious pleasure from tutting and disapproving are the kind of people who have either never had an orgasm (or possibly sex) and are just jealous that possibly other people are having more fun than them. But sometimes, I just despair. For all that women are equal, when it comes to the bedroom – we are back in the dark ages. But the worst thing of all is that the vicious scribes dipping their pens in poison tend to be female. Hell hath no fury and all that…..

**********************************************
*And shock horror, Daily Mail readers, he doesn’t mind!
**When I next get some.
***GASP!

How on Earth did he manage that?

I went to New York with the following CP items:

Governess strap
Heavy paddle
Light tawse
Small strap
Small martinet
Small whip

Sadly, they did not get nearly enough use in my humble opinion. I did have some wonderful scenes in New York, but due to The Lover’s slightly more considered sensibilities (especially at the Thanksgiving weekend, when the hotel was full of families with small children), the CP was measured, infrequent and above all, quiet. He found plenty of other ways to torment me, but as the days wore on, I began to long for some solid punishment, the kind that makes you sob and leaves you lying on your front*.

I’m not sure if other people have quite the same worries when staying away – I have a very good memory of an excellent thrashing from Abel at a hotel-based playdate in London – but I could see that we didn’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves!

There was a particularly funny moment though, on the Saturday night. The Lover and I had been playing over dinner, when we ate at Sparks, a well-known, ex-mob restaurant where Gambino crime boss, Paul Castellano was famously whacked on the sidewalk outside as he approached the door in 1985, dying before he got his steak. Poor bugger. It was bloody good steak as well! So we felt inspired by this….

The Lover was therefore a convincing and bloody scary gangster and I was his rather dim moll girlfriend who’d had the temerity to go to the police precinct and be interviewed by detectives. I was quite proud of my moll outfit, a dark-green fifties style dress in homage to Betty from Mad Men and a short fur jacket. Having been thoroughly terrified into submission over the oysters and steak, and still in our roles as the town car whisked us back to the hotel, it was disconcerting to share the lift up to our room with a lovely Mom and Dad and their two impeccably behaved small boys.

Mom was chatty.

Mom: “I love your coat! Beautiful fur**. You look gorgeous, Have you been to the theatre?”

Pause.

I had a wild impulse to blurt out “This is my boyfriend, the mobster and he’s about to torture me in his room for squealing on him to the police. Help me!”.

Another pause.

Mom looks quizzical, perhaps assuming that I am an idiot or possibly dumb.

Jessica: “Er, no, we’ve just been to dinner.”

Pause.

Mom: “Oh, how lovely.”

Pause.

Jessica: “Yes.”

Pause.

Mom: “Where did you go?”

Pause. The Lover is totally inscrutable at this point, but raises a single eyebrow. It’s a bad sign. It usually means pain in the next ten minutes.

Jessica: (unsure if revealing restaurant location is a hanging offence in gangster’s eyes and means trip into Hudson river with concrete block tied to self.) “Um, I er…um…we went, …. – I had Oysters!”

Mom: (now very confused): “Oh, nice!”

Lift then finally limps its way to the relevant floor and disgorges Jessica, The Lover – and the family. Who have the room next door.

Mom: “Oh well, goodnight! Say good night boys!”

The children chorus goodnight with charm and grace and a touch of preppy android-ness.

At that point I realised that no matter how hacked off the mobster was, there was going to be no beating that night. Not with such apple-pie wholesomeness next door.

Maybe next time?

*************************************************************
*Incidentally, this has been promised for a later date
**Not real. Honest!