by Wendy Jones
I was with my sister in Nando’s a month later and I go, ‘I met this boy, blah, blah, blah.’ She was, ‘Okay, that’s fine, it’s your life. Did you use a condom?’ I was like, ‘Er, I don’t think he did.’ She was like really angry. She was like, ‘Delete him. Block him. Go and get an STD check.’ When you like someone it’s not always so easy to delete them. I got the STD check; that was fine. Yeah, Lee’s very good-looking! I go for handsome player-types – yeah.
I have fantasies about Lee. It’s weird; I wouldn’t mind dressing up as a schoolgirl for him. I guess I would do anything he wants, actually. Certain things I wouldn’t allow him to do. Like, no threesomes with his friends. No video recording. If we ever have sex again I don’t want it to be when we’re drunk or when I’m drunk. I want it to be when I’m sober. And no to anal sex with him, that’s one thing I say no to. Anything else, I’d do it. Yeah.
My sexual fantasy is to dress up. Last year Christmastime I wanted to dress up in a Santa suit. You know you get the little red suit and a boob tube? That’s my fantasy. I don’t want to do it with any random guy any more. So I’m kind of waiting. I want a proper relationship where I can do it, because that’s when I’m going to get the most out of it. I want Lee to go down on me! That’s one thing I want. I’d like to try sixty-nine. I have a fantasy about my own body – I want my bum to be bigger! I have another fantasy, right: I’ve seen it in porn. When you’re Asian or exotic-looking, I feel like white men look at you like some kind of exotic being. So I’ve had this fantasy; I’m lying down and I have a really big bum, so funny! And this white man comes in and I imagine him being American and then we have sex … and I have a really big bum. He’s like, ‘That’s a pretty good ass,’ in an American accent. I think that’s something to do with my subconscious – colonialism or something. Something else deeper is going on there. I imagine him being a bit older, he’s a bit more experienced and I don’t think he’d take his clothes off; he’d keep his T-shirt on.
I was reading Fifty Shades of Grey. And I think that’s a good book. Everything was so la-di-da-di-da for Christian and Anastasia, it made me feel depressed in my own life. Although Christian does all that sadomasochist stuff, he really cares about Anastasia. Christian is the most handsome guy, a billionaire, he’s nice but he’s got that sadomasochism; that must have been a bit weird for Anastasia. The best part came when she started to really enjoy the sadomasochistic sex and there’s a time when they’re in a bathroom when he takes her razor and starts shaving her. It’s good because there’s that intimate kind of thing. I thought I would use Fifty Shades of Grey as a fantasy. So I had a fantasy where I work in a publishing house, like Anastasia, and this Christian Grey figure turns up. I thought publishing sounded nice – I get to wear all these nice skirts and blouses. We just stare at each other. He’s an attractive character, he’s got it all: he’s tall, he’s dark, he’s handsome. Kind of treats me nicely. It’s a bit of a turn-on – he’s above me in that he’s my editor, that kind of relationship. I like it.
I was finding something quite interesting in that my hips go out but then my knees go in and I feel like I’ve got like love handles. I wanted to see how other naked women look so yesterday I typed naked women in Google. I find naked women more attractive than naked men; I just think we’re more attractive. I clicked on this picture and it took me to porn and I was thinking, actually I’m not turned on by porn. I’m turned on by naked women more than by porn. Yeah. I didn’t know that about myself. With porn if I have my vibrator I can do whatever but I never feel that good after. I get high and I really sink low. I pay attention for a bit, and then I get this low because the women are being degraded; it’s not natural, it’s all artificial. The man’s normally dominant. Quite rough as well sometimes. I think there’s still a lot of male domination. Even though there’s been a sexual revolution, I just feel this is a man’s world. We’ve put out that women are freer than ever, but I don’t think we quite are. Back in the summer there was this trend with hot denim shorts where you can literally see the bum cheeks hanging out; is it for the validation of men? Are we objects more than ever? I think for our generation, the word that comes to mind is ‘rough’; everything is going to be more rough for us.
Having Indian parents and being English does affect your sexuality. Sex isn’t really talked about. I remember my mum, when I was eleven years old, she was like, ‘Do you want me to teach you about the birds and the bees?’ My mum was really easygoing like that. I went, ‘No, Mum, I feel a bit awkward.’ My mum really didn’t want to marry my dad; her father forced her to. She was twenty-one. She even tried to commit suicide. Her father actually beat her up. He was a headmaster in India and the family had high status because of that. My dad’s side were village people. Really odd pairing of my mum and dad.
If I introduced a guy to my dad and he’s white, my dad could take it. Black, no. Muslim, no. Those two we just can’t go for. I don’t have a fantasy about black guys. I wouldn’t be open to marrying a Muslim guy. I would only have a fantasy about someone I could probably marry. I’d go along with an arranged marriage. If the guy’s nice. But I’d really want to get to know the guy, I wouldn’t just go, ‘Okay, in a couple of months we’re getting married.’ One or two years and then we’ll see. I wouldn’t pretend to be a virgin. No. If he’s from this country I don’t think he’d be innocent. When I go into my marriage I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not. I’m going to be straight with him, so he knows what he’s dealing with. Maybe in the future I’ll find someone but right now it’s not happening, maybe I’ve got too much baggage, maybe I’ve got to sort out my values.
To be honest my dad hasn’t got time to arrange a marriage. He married another woman quite quickly – one year after my mum died. He went to India, he saw this woman and he married her. Then she came here but it didn’t work out and so he’s going through a divorce. A couple of months ago my dad was talking to this woman from Birmingham; I think he was thinking of marrying again. My sister said to my dad, ‘You’re fifty years old, don’t you think you should be trying to find me a husband?’ He goes, ‘Well, I’ve got my own life to lead.’ So it doesn’t look like we’re going to be getting an arranged marriage.
Because I haven’t had sex for a long time, what’s been in my brain is having lots of casual sex, no-strings-attached sex. That’s what I want now. But I’m two-minded about it. Number one, I don’t want to get attached like I’ve done in the past and, number two, where to find it? Fantasy’s not satisfying any more. It’s got to the point where I just want a casual one-night fling. I was trying to find what the best phone app is if you want casual sex with someone and my friend goes, ‘Blendrr is a good one.’ And I’ll be honest, I’ve got like fifty messages from guys: the thing is, they’re not good-looking! There was this guy, he was a bit older but he was all right looking but he kind of put me off. He goes, ‘Do you want me to come over?’ ‘Actually I live with my dad and my sister.’ He said, ‘Maybe a hotel room?’ I stopped talking to him. The ugly ones I just delete. There’s this really good-looking guy, he doesn’t really reply, he doesn’t talk that much: good-looking guys are like that, I think.
I just. Want. Good. Old. Sex. Like it was when I was fifteen – the first time I had sex. That’s what I want: the orgasms. I only had sex with Marvin, the first guy, once but it really worked. He wasn’t that good-looking. I was horny so I contacted Marvin recently and we were texting and I was really turning him on with these messages, I was going: ‘I’m messaging you naked.’ I was making him go mad. Something stopped me going through with it; I don’t know what it was. Marvin was going to come over twice. I backed away. He goes, ‘We should have done it more.’ I might as well do it now while I’m young. I don’t want to do it in three years’ time when I’m married and he’s married. And then there’s the personal trainer from the gym – Adrian. Oh God! Very – again – good-looking and handsome. When he was giving me a free personal training session I touched his arm, which was really mu
scly. I don’t know what it was; it was like an orgasm. It just felt so good when I touched him. That’s when I started to kind of think, ‘Do I look fit?’ Only I want to lose weight before sex, I don’t want him to think, ‘She’s got a flabby belly.’ I might get working on it.’
10
Face
Deborah, 41, Leicester
‘I’m attracted to horrible men’
‘If I was being honest about my sexual fantasy, I could say things like ‘I’d love to have sex in a walk-in shower,’ for example. Don’t know why. But I would. I like men in pink shirts! I swing between fantasising about a therapist who used to look after me years ago, about him having sex with me really gently, but then I also have a bigger thing about wanting to be raped again. In actual fact, the rape fantasy is far bigger for me but in both those fantasies I’m never turned on. Sometimes I try and think sexually when I watch The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner. I don’t get sexually aroused but I get really emotionally aroused which I’m aware for a woman can be quite closely related. I don’t want to have sex with Kevin Costner but I do want him to look after me, to protect me. There’s that bit where he lifts her up in his arms it’s like, ‘Oh Kevin. Do that to me.’
But when people ask me about sex, this is what I say: ‘I haven’t had sex since 1993, and if I never have it again, I will be a very happy woman.’ And as far as I’m aware I’ve never had an orgasm. I think I’d know if I’d had one! If it’s as good as they say, I think I would have remembered! I haven’t kissed a man since 1999. Do I think my life is any less for it? No. Actually I think my life is a lot simpler without men and without sex, to be frank.
But then I had a very recent incident. I’m attracted to horrible men; I just find horrible men more attractive than nice men. I had this man come to the door trying to sell me dusters and cleaning stuff; he was obviously a complete charlatan and he tried to come on to me and I actually physically felt attracted to him. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt that; it was so weird. It was like: if I didn’t think my lodger was going to come home I would have just had him on the floor. It was such a new experience. It was like – what on earth was that?
What attracted me to the salesman was he was a bit of a git: that was part of the problem. He was young. He did have quite nice pecs! But he was obviously a complete charlatan. He’d told me he’d been in prison and he told me what for: grievous bodily harm. So, of course, immediately there’s this thing that triggers off in me: a violent man. I have a pull towards them. And he was being very suggestive, to say the least. He was asking me what kind of massage I liked and he actually asked me for a kiss. When I told some friends they were mortified and shocked because I could easily have had sex with a random stranger.
One thing that has really affected my sexual identity is I was born with a really rare condition. There are two forms of it, one is the genetic form, which I don’t have: I’m just a complete freak; the odds are millions. Before I was born my brain grew too big so my skull wasn’t joined which meant that the whole centre part of my face was misaligned and I was born without a nose and with eyes displaced to the side of my face. The first lot of surgery was not until I was eleven. That meant I spent the whole of primary school looking very odd. The surgeon used a material like Plasticine to build a nose and, to me, it looked so awful that when I walked past somebody I would pretend I had an itch and I would scratch the top of my nose but I did that so obsessively I actually wore away the Plasticine.
Children are cruel so I had, right from the word go, people being horrible about my face. I was taunted as ‘ET’ as a teenager, and ‘flat face’. I remember when I was going on the bus to secondary school there was this really pervy bus driver and he said, ‘How are you?’ and I said, ‘Oh, I’m all the better for seeing you.’ Some children at the back of the bus said, ‘She’s got to say that because she ain’t going to get nobody else, that’s the best she’s going to get.’ That kind of stuff really stayed with me. That’s part of why my dad could do what he did because there was this sense that I would never get anyone else and someone was better than no one.
The reality is I’m forty-one and I still get lots of comments about my face, which have left me a complete wreck. I have people to this day shout out across the street how ugly I am, and recently when I was on breakfast telly talking about doing jigsaw puzzles, somebody put the clip on YouTube and this person wrote the most awful comment under the YouTube video: there was an alien I looked like. I got some of the comments taken off; I don’t know if there are any more. I don’t look now. I just can’t bear it. I remember once when I lived in Leicester I was walking through a churchyard and this bloke came up to me – I’d never met him before – and said, ‘You’re so fucking ugly,’ and walked off! That’s what he said to me. I was like, ‘Oh, why would you do that?’
How I look has been a massive thing for me, and for men. I will speak to friends and they will all say I’m lovely and I look nice, but in reality I have random people being horrible about my face. Then I get really confused because I know some real mingers and they’ve got married, and I think, well, what’s that about? They’re having sex. So I know there’s something more to it than what we look like. Sometimes I look at people and think, ‘Oh, surely I’m not as ugly as you?’ Which is such a terribly judgmental thing to say. I have spent my whole life at the hands of people who have made my life hell because of the way I look, but I am aware that I am as judgmental with other people. I am completely aware of that to my shame, it’s not something I’m proud of.
When I go into primary schools to teach, the children tend to look at me at first but once I’ve opened my mouth and they’ve met my personality it’s not an issue, and part of the reason I’ve got quite a vivacious personality is overcompensation. But if I’m in a pub or a disco and a man comes up to me I automatically think they are taking the piss and doing it for a bet to see if they can pull the ugliest bitch in the room. I’m so self-conscious about how I look and if I was being brutally honest I think I’m so ugly that no man would ever want to kiss me or hold my gaze. And the blokes that had sex with me very rarely kissed me because kissing is the most intimate thing you can do. The salesman, the infamous salesman, was trying to chat me up because he wanted me to buy stuff off him; I had no illusion. He actually took my number – stupidly I gave it to him – and, of course, I never heard from him and I didn’t think that I would but … yeah. Dirty old men find me attractive. Married men that want a shag find me attractive, but nice single guys who aren’t going to hurt me don’t find me attractive, which is a bit of a bummer, really.
I didn’t grow up in a Christian home – not at all. There was no Christian influence – quite the opposite – and it was a horrible, overtly sexual environment. I always went with my parents to the pub and when I was twelve my mum got Dad a stripogram for his birthday and I was taking pictures of my dad with this stripogram. I look back now, as a teacher, and I wouldn’t be very happy if one of my Year 7s told that to me.
I had a very complicated, incestuous relationship with my dad. My mum was in hospital for over a year and at that time I was sleeping with him and I became his wife; it was a bit like the Stockholm syndrome, I was utterly in love with my dad. I have to say it was a very confused time for me. I think it was when I was about thirteen or fourteen, for just over a year, and it didn’t go on afterwards because my mum came back. And I hated my mum with a vengeance for coming back, absolutely hated her. She’s dead as well. Absolutely hated her because she took him away from me.
My mum handled everything so badly. For example, I have always struggled – and I think this is mostly linked with not wanting sex – with washing, with keeping myself clean. I’m a lot better than I’ve ever been and, unless I’m depressed, I will religiously shower every other day; that’s the most I can get to. I work very hard at having a shower every other day, I tell you, but it’s bloody hard work sometimes. As a teenager I didn’t wash at all and some of that was I felt so dirty on th
e inside that I wanted a physical mark on the outside to show that I was dirty. Some of it was I couldn’t bear taking my clothes off and touching my own body. Some of it was that at home there was never a lock on the bathroom door. Having a bath was not safe for me. I remember when I started my periods, which was a real awful awfulness to me, and I’d got blood on my knickers and my mum showing my dad my soiled knickers saying, ‘Look what your daughter’s done.’ I just remember dying a million deaths.
Since my dad’s died – he’s been dead eight years – I’m stuck in that grief of him. When my dad died, to all intents and purposes I probably died with him. I’ve often said, ‘I might just as well have got in the coffin with him,’ because I think when we have sex with somebody, that soul tie, that bond, that yoke, whatever terminology we use, is so powerful and when it’s used negatively in the sense of a control mechanism it’s very hard to break. I’m currently stuck in that process of not being able to let him go. I would give anything to have him back. Would I sleep with him again? As an adult? I’d really like to think not but … He was a bastard but I was in love with him, you know. In the wrong sense. Completely in the wrong sense. But he’s gone, and I wish he hadn’t gone, I wish he was still here even though he was horrible to me. It was a complete idolisation, a wrong kind of love. It felt like being taken over and I felt I couldn’t live. So Dad was just really, really complicated.
When I was a teenager my dad was on the scene so I never had a normal boyfriend. I was enmeshed with my dad, really. I didn’t want anyone else. Since my twenties, I’ve had the gits who just want sex. Yep. In terms of the very negative sexual experiences I’ve had, that has been because bullies can sniff out victims – definitely. I give off a sense of, ‘You can do what you want to me because I won’t say no to you.’ I think predators sniff out their prey. Two of the men were vicars. They were both married and they were both my priests at the time. With one of the priests – I was in a psychiatric hospital and I was let out into his care and he slept with me that night. Then I had an affair with a guy who was very like my dad – that wasn’t great. My experience up to my fiancé has been shagging married men. I was always the other woman in real life. Yep. Always the other woman. Obviously this is twenty years ago I’m talking about. What it’s done is left me with this legacy of, ‘I’m quite a good-time girl, I’m quite a good sexual partner, I’ll do whatever men want ultimately.’ But they can always say goodbye; they can always leave me. They don’t have to put up with me. They can get what they want but then they’re not the ones that are having to deal with me if I’ve got a headache. After having sex, these blokes usually wanted to have sex again; what I wanted was for them to stay in bed with their arm around me. They wouldn’t, obviously. Or they wanted to get up and go because they could. I’ve never had an experience of sex equating with love. Do I think a man can love me without having sex with me? No. In my mind, if I want a man then I’ve got to be willing to do what the man wants. Well, actually I hope I’m not sick, but oral sex and swallowing the sperm I find really horrendous, but they want that, so because they want it, I do it. Oh gosh, I think I’m going to be sick … I won’t be sick. Oh. Phew …