Border Crossing

It's all about challenging perspectives, I suppose. Pushing your boundaries. If you don't try it, I suppose, you'll never know if you like it. The idea of sushi always freaked me out until I tried it, tried a bit more, liked it and will now happily tuck into raw tuna and squid salads. I'd have missed that if I didn't have this burning urge to give things a go, just so I can say I have.

There are two concepts which I've always found really odd, sexually: spanking and dirty talk. They both struck me as a bit false, like you'd feel totally ridiculous. Whipping, less so, things like that I could imagine the quick stinging thrill of, but the idea of being put over someone's knees and spanked like a disobedient child? Just seemed a bit wrong.

Turns out that's what's great about it.

Yeah, I had both of these ideas simultaneously blown out of the water. I agreed to give it a try - the combination of sexy man, which in itself is quite unusual as I tend to find women more attractive, and natural curiosity made it a bit more appealing. I thought I'd wuss out, to be honest, or crack up laughing, but having it whispered as a threat whilst you're trying to have a conversation with a bar tender just kills that dead. Finding yourself back at a hotel, in that awkward kind of lost momentum, and just being instructed to "Sit. Here," starts off the shivering and the reminder of what you've got coming to you, with lips touching your ear… that's hotter than it should be. Being gently but unexpectedly manhandled into position takes the awkwardness away; you have your skirt lifted up and suddenly this is actually happening and you don't feel weird at all, just excited.

And he speaks to you all the while, utter filth in that oh-so-gentle lilt with the undertones of 'shh, it's okay', and the things he makes you say are, if anything, worse but it doesn't make you cringe. It makes you shiver.

Ninety, was my figure - it's amazing how many misdemeanours you can amass in six weeks, and he was very gentle. By fifty, I was working out how to earn myself some more.

On a separate but related note of expectations… Glamour is sexy, so I'd always sort of presumed you need to maintain an air of glamour during sex. Well, there you have it: I was wrong. It makes you tense, if you care about how you come across, you're just not going to get into it.

Something obscurely liberating, therefore, about having your face shoved down in the pillows, your hands crossed over behind your back and fastened there, your legs shoved around at angles that wouldn't be possible if you hadn't been doing gymnastics for sixteen years and being fucked with your boots still on.

No chance whatsoever of thinking you look dignified then - even less chance of caring.