by Wendy Jones
I used to email them, then I would meet them in Richmond Park which was a nice place to spend the afternoon – they would normally do drugs like me, happy drugs – and then I would take them back to the gay couple’s house: I was living with these two gay guys. Sometimes we’d make them parade round in their boxer shorts and the gay guys would check them out for me to make sure that they were up to scratch. If they weren’t who they said they were they’d not a chance. Sometimes we’d all be on the bed together, gay guys doing gay stuff and blowjobbing and kissing and I would do the guy, depending on how open-minded he was. There are some beautiful men – yeah. And then I’d sleep with them and then they’d be off. I did that for the next five or six years.
Sometimes I would sleep with ten men in one day. I liked the repetitiveness of it. Made me feel powerful, to be honest. I used to have numbers in my phone as Fuck 1, Fuck 2 or, if they were really fit, Fit fuck. It was practically a full-time job. I had sex on Victoria station – was it Victoria or Waterloo? I had sex in the rush hour under the stairwell on the platform and then we got on different trains – no one said anything. People could tell we were having sex: oh, yeah. Very quick sex, bent over. Then we just walked onto separate trains. That was cool. You can’t go home and sit on the sofa after that kind of sex: I have to be sitting on the train thinking, ‘Look what I just did! And didn’t get caught.’ It’s like a hit from a drug.
I could sleep with any man I wanted to, probably. Men are easy. You just get your fuck strut on – that would make a great song, wouldn’t it? ‘Get your fuck strut on!’ Men are easy to manipulate. I come from posh but I was very manipulated; it was what I was taught as a child, to be manipulative as a survival instinct. If you give a man enough signals that you want to have sex with him … To be fair, I could tell the men who didn’t want to sleep with me and I wouldn’t try. I’m quite a good judge of who and what I want, and if they’d want me back, because I don’t like rejection: I’ve got a big ego. But I set quite high standards. Definitely wouldn’t get rejected much – or not at all.
My friends all really laugh at me because I seem to be a good judge of if a man’s got a big dick, because the man has an inner confidence if he’s got a big dick. Men who have big cocks kind of know. We called one of my fuck buddies Max, because he had the biggest cock in the world, it was ridiculous. I don’t think I could take it now. It was like a donkey’s. It came up about three inches above his belly button. I’m not being funny. I would say it was on its way to ten inches, eleven inches long. It was a mad willy. It was the biggest one I’d ever had. And his nickname – his name was Timmy, for God sake – his nickname was Max because it was just so big. It was big when it was flaccid so it wasn’t like a thing that grew. It was just huge. I think it might have hurt more if I hadn’t taken a lot of drugs. We used to watch Julius Caesar on television in his bed and take drugs and fuck. He was beautiful as well.
I gave Max as a gift to my friend. Well, Max was my shag buddy for quite a while. And lying in bed watching films and having sex lasts a while but not forever because I want someone new to fuck. There’s no emotion so after a while it’s not as exciting; I get bored easily. And I had a friend who was lovely. It was a year after my husband died and we were at my house celebrating my husband’s suicide anniversary and people were keeping me company. Max came and I said to him, ‘I’m not that up for fucking you any more, go and fuck her – she’ll enjoy it.’ She was like, ‘Do you really mean it?’ and I said, ‘Yes, go on!’ And she did. Max was quite selfish in the end as a lover. Some men are lazy if they have a big cock.
I like giving pleasure to people. That’s what it started as because it made me feel better about myself. I would see a man and I would think, ‘I could give you a lot of pleasure. We could have some fun. And it will be all right.’ And it would fix him for a little while. Men like to have their cocks sucked. There’s a skill to blowjobs – I have that skill. Just think about lollypops: lick it and suck it and bite it. It’s like an art form and it’s a very powerful thing to be able to do because men love it, absolutely. I used to do it when I was a whore so I got really good at it. And I love doing it. I wouldn’t use a condom when I gave a blowjob, but bearing in mind when I was using drugs I didn’t really care. I had a hysterectomy when I was thirty-four and after that I had this attitude that nothing would affect me because there was nothing to infect. I don’t have a cervix or anything, so my mad thinking was that it was just going into an empty hole so what would the infection cling to? I didn’t get anything. And I don’t get thrush. I don’t know how I didn’t get something. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone who does it.
I got more pleasure out of making them come. I didn’t want much back. I was quite happy to give it away, then do it myself. I wouldn’t let them make me come. I’d come in front of them but I’d do it. I was in control, absolutely. I don’t think a man deserves my orgasm. And as much as I’m turned on, I can do it myself, and they can watch. I didn’t take my clothes off in bed. Childhood: dirty. With my last shag buddy I did take my clothes off a few times but I’m very eager to put my clothes back on. It’s because I can leave quicker and I don’t really see why I should have to be naked: they don’t really deserve it. I’m so controlling.
I love having sex and walking away. I find that really exciting. To finish and say, ‘You can go now; I’m done.’ Men always assume you’re going to say, ‘Oh, stay. Come back.’ Men are surprised by women who want sex like that because men have this mad feeling that every woman’s going to have the necessity for it to be repeated, or for there to be time spent together afterwards, or that you need to put words in it, or emotions other than sexual feeling. When a man’s had sex with a woman he tends to think – well, I don’t think they think; I think the animal takes over – he feels the need to protect her – you know – like animals do, or that she might be vulnerable after sex. Men do want to do that protectiveness, but I don’t want it. It’s just sex; it’s not a possessive feeling.
More and more people began to come to my house; they came in hour-and-a-half slots and I discovered the money side of things. I’m good at business skills from running a pub – I just moved the skills around a bit. Little by little what happened was some people started to pay me, which was also quite cool; bearing in mind that my mind was pretty fucked up. Sex to me was just something that gave me power. At first it was like a donation thing. I would get up and the bloke would have left and I’d notice there’d be money on the side and I’d think, ‘Oh, okay, they think I’m a whore. Ha ha ha! I’ll do that. That sounds like a really sensible plan.’ I did all right by accident. That was in the heydays, in the good days. I wasn’t like, ‘It’s £30 pounds for this; it’s £30 for that.’ It would never be less than fifty quid.
Then I ended up going to offices in London to sleep with the directors of companies. I’d know them on the internet, and they’d say, ‘Can you come at 2p.m.?’ I’d just pretend I was some sort of marketing manager or something at the reception desk. When I was going to people’s offices, I’d go up and shag them in their offices and they’d give me the money. I would just be walking in, fucking them and leaving them. I don’t know if people knew, I don’t think I cared. I wasn’t doing anything wrong in my head. I used to think that was a fucking great thing to do.
I had great fun. I learned that it’s all right to be like that. I learned to be comfortable with sex. I learned that people actually quite like having sex and having fun. Sex isn’t a bad thing. I think sex is fine. It’s how we make babies and how we fuse each other together. And there aren’t many rules for sex. It would be more fun if people were more up for it. Isn’t that everyone’s fantasy, to be happy in bed and not feel inhibited? The only thing that came out of all that was I was hurting myself, but to be honest I wouldn’t change anything that I did apart from one thing: I slept with one of the gay guys I was living with and I should never have done that because he was in a relationship and it really fucked it up. I mean, he was obviou
sly not quite as gay as he thought; he was very up for it. It was the most harmful thing I’ve ever done in my sex life. It ended very badly and I had to leave the house and leave the husky dogs.
As I got more drunk and drugged it fell apart and I started to get psychosis and that spiralled into me being a prostitute on the street, which I quite enjoyed. I liked the power of it and the money. It was easy. It gave me the drugs I wanted. It was dirty and I felt dirty inside so it fed my dirtiness. And I was in free fall: my husband was dead, my child wasn’t … I still have no contact with my child. I didn’t have much to live for, I suppose. With drink and drugs I didn’t make a personal choice because I was addicted to it, but to be honest, with the sex thing I didn’t have to do it and I wanted to. I wanted to prostitute myself on the streets. My truth was I liked it. So I did it.
When I got to the evil crack-whorey stage, I was fucked. I was using heroin and crack and living on the streets and I was poorly as well. But it wasn’t damaging me; I was damaged already so I didn’t find it ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to go and do that’ at all. I’d still prostitute myself quite happily – it’s not a moral thing – but I know that doing stuff like that would stop me finding love. Not because I find being a prostitute bad, I still find it a really interesting life. What I miss most is that seediness, I like that seediness; sexually I find it exciting. My tattooist is really cool and when I go out with her for a night the draw of that life is huge.
No idea how many people I’ve slept with. Thousands? And then there are the ones I don’t remember. I’ve met a few since I’ve got clean: there’s been a few come to Eastbourne. There was a guy – I thought I’d had a one-night stand with him; apparently I was with him six months, but that was after my husband died and I was pretty fucked with post-traumatic stress disorder and on Valium, and Valium takes away your memory. I was, ‘I remember you – we had a one-night stand!’ And he was like, ‘We went out together for six months. I left and went to treatment after that.’ I was like, ‘I remember you! You came into my pub, and I took you up to my flat and fucked you,’ and I thought that was it! So yeah, that wasn’t good for his ego.
In six years of being clean from drugs. I’ve only slept with five people: I’ve really changed. But I’m probably more outrageous and naughty when I’m not having sex because I’m thinking about it more so I tend to misbehave or swag it down the street a little bit more – but then again that’s not true because I do it after sex as well because it feels powerful. I don’t wear knickers. When I go out without a skirt on I definitely start swaggering – without having knickers on, I mean! Very uplifting to not wear knickers because of the air, and it’s sexy as well. I can think, ‘They don’t fucking know that I’ve got no knickers on,’ and it’s funny. And it’s got a kick. I feel sexy even if I don’t, in that moment, want to have sex. I still want the attention. I like people to look to me: a lot of people do anyway because I’m covered in tattoos and piercings.
Now my fantasy would be to fall in love. I didn’t know when I got clean that I might want a relationship with someone again, but clearly I do. My mind and body are healing, despite myself, even if I don’t want them to. Recently I decided I’m having a sex ban because if I keep having casual sex that’s what I’m going to have for the rest of my life. Having casual sex stops me learning to love someone again because I can fix myself on casual sex really easily for that moment. I don’t walk away thinking, ‘Oh no, I’ve got to text this person.’ Only, when a man touches me affectionately I don’t know what to do, it makes me feel so uneasy. But I desperately want a cuddle. When I see people who are lovingly in love with each other and they want to talk to each other as well – I don’t really get that because the person I loved killed himself so … Then from my childhood the love was fucked up anyway.
I’d probably still want an open relationship sexually, because jealousy isn’t my thing, weirdly. My husband was a very beautiful man but he was possessive over me. I wouldn’t have slept with anyone else without him there: you have to have rules and boundaries. If you love someone, you trust them and you do everything together, like me and my husband did. I don’t want the same thing as I had before; that would be like trying to replace it. I’d want a similar sort of thing but I don’t want them to kill themselves. I don’t want it to come with the fucked-up-ness. I want someone who’s open-minded but I also want someone who makes me feel safe; it’s quite tiring being independent and fiercely sexual. My fantasy is to love again. Which is a bit boring really; but I suppose not if you haven’t been loved. Now my fantasy is for love.
Part of my fantasy would be that I’d feel safe enough to let go of my control. That would be scary, wouldn’t it? Nowadays I want someone to take control even though I don’t like it. My fantasy would be to hold hands in public with someone and then have sex with him. I’m going to grow daisy chains, aren’t I? I’m going to go from being a hardcore prostitute to holding someone’s hand. Imagine the poor man – or poor woman – who has to deal with that!
I would shag for a good dick, oh … the chef at the hostel I’m staying at. Oh, I want to sleep with him. He’s beautiful. He’s called John, which was my husband’s name, which is really bad. I’ve been really good: I haven’t slept with him. He’s going to ‘rub me up’ a burger tonight. That’s how bad we’re flirting. Instead of ‘cooking me up a beefburger’, for God’s sake! Honestly! He wants to keep on hugging me and I’m like, ‘Stop it, get down, back! You bad chef!’ and all the young girls are giving me really, really bad looks because we’re laughing and flirting. They looked surprised that he’d want to flirt with me because I’m forty-seven but that’s because they don’t know – do they? – that I’m really good in bed. I know it. And he knows it, because I’m giving him that ‘I’m-really-good-in-bed’ nick.’
8
Nun
Olive, 35, Leeds
‘It was laden with guilt, mixed with pleasure’
‘In my first year at uni, I was looking for meditation classes and I ended up in a Buddhist centre. I walked through the door and I thought, ‘I’m home.’ I carried on walking through the building and I saw a statue of the Buddha and I thought, ‘I’m a Buddhist.’ It was like love at first sight, it was a profound spiritual experience. I threw myself into that religion and I got ordained as a Buddhist nun within the year, and with that comes vows of celibacy. So I shut down my sexual self and I remember feeling the relief of, ‘Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with sex.’ Partly I didn’t know what I was missing because I’d never had sex. Also, I was twenty so I didn’t have that sense of longevity and the future and, you know, life’s different when you’re twenty.
When I heard the teachings I got these magnificent visions and it was beyond reasoning and questioning. I saw a living Buddha, I saw lots of different forms of Buddhas. I had conversations with them. I had experiences of being in this completely pure world. Of the ground turning to gold and exotic creatures everywhere, and the trees laden with gems and magnificent birds. All interactions were based on love and compassion and patience and abundance, where everything flows and is smooth, and whatever you need appears. There was also this deep sense of peace within me; I got washed in a wave of love and compassion.
I’d just had a very horrific year with my parents’ divorce; I’d had to testify against my dad for domestic violence. So it was very traumatic and dramatic. Also I was very lonely at uni. I had friends and I went out and partied but there weren’t any deep connections. I came from a broken family and suddenly there was this whole family at the Buddhist Centre. I loved the value of people working together for a common goal rather than for themselves. And from a very young age I had had a deep yearning or thirst for spirituality and meaning. I was adamant that I had found a purpose in life. I wasn’t running away. I was twenty so I knew everything! I do strongly believe if I hadn’t gone down that path I would have gone down a much more destructive path of probably drugs and alcohol because I’m prone to extremes. So I threw myself in
to the extreme, into this spiritual path. It was a protection. Otherwise no doubt I would have ended up in violent, abusive relationships. But then having said that …
I must admit I did feel very beautiful in the robes. There was a beauty to those magenta, maroon and yellow robes. People were drawn to the purity and spirituality they represented. I had a shaved head. That was completely asexualising. I didn’t mourn my hair for one second. I had long brown hair and it was like, ‘Get it all off!’ It was a very liberating experience. And it did feel great when I got in the shower and I just came out. I liked being bald. I never felt overly self-conscious. I’d go out with a bald head. It’s intended to be empowering, not disempowering, in that I was very definitely focused on a spiritual path so I’ve got no need for worldly things.
The Buddhist Centre was a mixed community of fifteen monks, nuns and lay practitioners – part of the philosophy is to integrate our beliefs into modern life rather than separating from ordinary life. Because I was very keen and I’m also a very capable person I was snapped up right away to do all of the organising of running a residential property. Very quickly I was asked to teach courses to the public and I was very popular as a meditation teacher. People really resonated with me; they just warmed to me.