'Mr Sex', on Mothers Day

If I were to count the ways as to how skill my Mam is, we'd be here all millennium. I could go on about how she absolutely excels at all things Mamly. I could write reams and reams about the charitable stuff she does for people on her estate off her own bat. And I could tell you about the time she pulled a bra out of a dog's arse, while everyone else on the street watched (she doesn't know if the dog had eaten the bra, or some disaffected youths had shoved the bra up the dog's arse - I'm guessing the latter, because there's some right twattish kids knocking about round here).

But seeing as this is a sex blog, I'll pick out one example in particular; when I was 15, and had got hold of my first wank mag, after a flurry of trading negotiations that involved £1.50 and a bag of nicked lead figures from Games Workshop (Men Only, circa 1983: there was this one girl in it called April, who had long brown hair, eyes you wanted to swim in like a baby seal, and a long string of pearls. She had a telescope, and she liked to use it to watch other people shagging. Sorry to bore you, but you always fall in love with someone you see in your first wank mag).

I pegged it home with rapidly alternating feelings of excitement (because I was about to have my own nudey book for the first time), triumph (because it had took me ages to get hold of one), extreme guilt (because, well...y'know) and - bizarrely - melancholy (because it really felt like I was saying goodbye to my childhood, and I'd had a blinding one), with the mag burning a hole in my adidas holdall, only to run into me Mam. She seemed really pleased to see me. Really affectionate. Actually, too affectionate. At one point, she even said "Shall I get you some milk and cookies?" with a catch in her voice, like we were American or something. She had never, in my entire life, offered me milk and cookies, before or since.

I eventually went upstairs with a heavy heart, feeling absolutely mortified at the fact that her little lad was about to let his Mam down quite considerably. And then WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK. And then I rammed it right underneath the mattress.

Next morning, I woke up and had a bath before school. Whilst in the bath, I heard me Mam say ta-ra as she left for work. After I'd got dressed and went through my usual routine of playing Jam records dead loud, eating Toast Toppers and calling my sister a slag, I thought to myself; it's a quarter to nine. Hm. Better do me homework. Hm. No. Let's have a look at me wank mag instead. So I reached under the mattress.

I couldn't feel it.

I reached further. Then I lifted the mattress up. Then I lifted the mattress right up. Then I pulled the bed out. And then I thought, fucking hell, Mam's going to batter me, as she's only just made this bed while I was in the bath. And then I thought about what I'd just said. And then I looked at the bed. And then I reached over. And then I lifted the pillow.

And there it was.

I felt like those kids you read about in Take A Break, where their Mams wrap up a tin of Bostik and an empty crisp packet for Christmas to shock them out of glue-sniffing. And before I had time to scream, the phone rang.

It was her. She knew. She. Knew.

How the FUCK did she know?

After she had relayed the purpose of the call - to check that I was ready to leave for school, and confirmation that I hadn't burned the house down, thrown my sister through a window, etc - I couldn't hold it in any longer.

"Mam...soz."

"WHY? What have you done?"

"Y'know...that magazine. I'm really sorry. I'll chuck it away"

"Oh, don't be so sucky. You're fifteen. You're old enough for that sort of thing"

"Er, OK"

"Now piss off to school, you prat"

"OK. Ta-ra, Mam"

And that was it. She could have called me a right dirty bastard and threaten to tell me Dad. She could have laid an enormous guilt trip on me about how those women were somebody else's daughters, sisters and Mams. She could have ripped the absolute piss out of me* and make feel about two inches high. But she didn't. She allowed me to make my own decisions, and draw my own conclusions. Nothing else was ever said about it.

And that, dear readers, is just one reason why I love my Mam to death.


*although when I mentioned this to a friend the other night, she speculated that me Mam probably said; "Hey! I'm just going to ring Our Al up and take the piss out him. I found his first nudey book this morning" to her mates at the factory, and made pointy gestures at the mouthpiece of the phone and pulled faces for their benefit while I was shitting myself. I have a horrible feeling that she might be right.

Danonymous Dan: The First Kiss

Hands up who has seen Dawson’s Creek? Or its more recent clone, The O.C? I am sure there are plenty of ‘Emo in disguise’ shows which I could list here, all aimed at the American middle classes. We all know how good American ‘aim’ is, and unsurprisingly, in a hail of televisual friendly fire, those shows ended up here on our TVs. Mowing down our impressionable young people in a cross fire of weepy teenage angst, I was luckily just old enough that these show’s bullets of cathartic simplicity bounced harmlessly off my embittered British skin, when they first started arriving in the late ’90s.

“Did you see the one where Dawson agonised over his naughty thoughts while hiding himself in a shack by an idyllic lake which the director brilliantly juxtaposed with Dawson’s roiling inner turmoil. You see! He’s just like us, except with a bigger forehead, obviously.”

Whether you think these shows are escapism, catharsis, or simply crap, you can’t deny their subject matter, first kiss, first fondle, first act of onanism (‘onerism’ is incorrect – look it up), strikes a chord with everybody. Unfortunately, life doesn’t do soft focus, and most people’s experiences are far more interesting and visceral than daytime US sop-soaps can cover. Looking back, I find my first kiss incredibly funny, but at the time it threatened to scar me for life. It was pre-Dawson by about two years – the only television I had to help me cope was Blue Peter and Byka Grooove.

Being the ‘creative type’ (read dyslexic and emotionally stunted) I had managed to land myself a bit part in the school play and was at school one weekend for a rehearsal. The play’s lead, played by one of my year’s cooler sorts, had brought a few ‘out of school’ friends with him, like a coterie of groupies. It was with one of these girls, a hoop ear-ringed, shiny shell suit wearing meta-chav with an expression of permanent distaste on her face, that I had my first kiss. I’m being a bit nasty after the fact, because I do remember her as very pretty despite all the Elizabeth Duke trappings.

I was a Nirvanoid, so I guess if she was a blueprint for chav, I was the blueprint for Emo and as they say, opposites attract. After much ‘my-friend-fancies you,-do-you-like-her’-type chat this girl and I ended up away from everybody behind a bush or something romantic like that. Things were going well, hotting up even. I cracked jokes, she laughed. She cracked jokes and I pretended to laugh. You could almost hear the music in the background building the tension toward the romantic encounter that surely neither of us could avoid. We were two freight trains on a single track of destiny ploughing toward a perfect passionate moment – time would surely stop. I lent in and it happened, boy freight train met girl freight train, we kissed, our tongues questing, my eyes open in shocked surprise at my luck – ‘look mum, I’m doing it!’ The moment lasted what seemed like an age, the girl pulled back and looked deep into my eyes and said:

“You’ve not done that before, have you?” My train de-railed, rolled down a bank and fell off a cliff edge of sheer drop-jaw embarrassment. She went off and told people who laughed at me.

Cue Music: “I don’t wanna wait... for our lives to be over…”

'Mr Sex': Aw, they grow up so quickly, etc

My gorgeous little nephew reached a very important milestone in his life this week; he got caught singing his first dirty song by me Mam. He was sitting on the settee eating steak and chips (proper chips, mind - none of this oven bollocks) and watching the telly when the Muller Rice advert popped up, and he came out with "Got my legs, got my bum, got my WILLYYY". Eeh, what a shame I missed out on that. I would have been roaring like a jessie with pride.

Because, apart from the obvious sperm-and-egg palaver that goes on at the beginning (and if we're very lucky) dirty interpolations of music (more often than not taken from adverts), is almost always the first contact we have with sex, isn't it? At that time, you don't know how life-affirming, horrible, enjoyable, embarassing, perfect and depressing sex is. You don't even know what it is. All you know is that, for some reason, it's funny as fuck. So let's go back and share a few of those old-school classics, in a Stars On 45 style and fashion. First off is an all-time classic that was taught to all the kids on the street by my next-door neighbour's big sister...

(To the Wrigleys Spearmint Gum advert)

Wrigley's Spearmint Gum, Gum, Gum
Stick it up your bum, bum, bum
If it don't fit, fit, fit
Have a little shit, shit, shit

(To Snoopy V The Red Baron by the Royal Guardsmen)

10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or more
Frank got Betty down on the floor
Kissed her once and he kissed her twice
Pulled down her knickers and said "Ooh! Nice!"

(To Tea for Two)

Tea for one
It's only just begun
Tea for two
We're gonna have a screw
Tea for three
He sat her on her knee
Tea for four
He got her on the floor
Tea for five
Her legs are open wide
Tea for six
He pulled down her knicks
Tea for seven
It felt like heaven
Tea for eight
The midwife's at the gate
Tea for nine
The twins are doing fine
Tea for ten
Let's start it all again.

All very innocent (yet confusing - how do you get someone's knickers off when their legs are wide apart, for example), I'm sure you'll agree. It's only when you hit your early teens that things start to get a bit malicious...

(To Lip Up Fatty by Bad Manners)

Piss off fatty, ah, piss off fatty now you're preggy!
Piss off fatty, ah, piss off fatty now you're preggy!

(To the Milk's Gotta Lotta Bottle adverts)

(Girl you fancy but she's not interested, meaning she's a slag, somehow)'s worked in a - lotta brothels!
(Girl you fancy but she's not interested, meaning she's a slag, somehow)'s worked in a - lotta brothels!

Sadly, I got detenno for that. But anyway - let us care and share. What were you singing when you were a nipper, even though you didn't know what the fuck you were going on about?

Dave: Flirting

Perhaps it’s nostalgic misrepresentation, but flirting seemed so much easier in our youth. You could read the signals far more competently. You and your mates would be loitering in one of the local parks, drinking Merrydown Cider and giving each other spinning blow-backs off a single joint. You’d plonk yourself down on a vacant bench and she’d come and sit on your lap. And you could tender your intentions with equal clarity by ripping the piss out of her then stuffing clumps of mud down her top. Ah, great days.

We just went with what we felt. The potential consequences didn’t appear to bother us so much. Or at least we lacked the experiences life throws at us over the years, to corrupt our hopes and courage.

Now however, we are perpetually surrounded by the medium of fantasy. Engulfed by literary characters and heroes of the silver screen. To the point where it has created expectations, as we lose our grip on reality. Confused between desirable and down right fictional.

Flirting – isn’t it supposed to be subtle? The more discreet, the sexier? Potent glances across the bar. A shy smile. A flick of the hair. All highly impractical in a world (or at least society) whereby we struggle even to read the signals from our own gender. What? Are you feeling unhappy, angry, confused, horny, flatulent?

Flirting is the sexiest part of the ritual. When it works. Solely because of the uncertainty, the mystery and above all the fantasy. It’s entirely an act. Albeit a pretty sexy one. Nobody wants honesty. We want to be dazzled, seduced by the sexy siren or the international man of mystery. Performances. Certainly we want to belief a truth of being desired but as long as it is charismatically swathed in bubble-wrap.

That wonderful scene in Tootsie when Julie (played by Jessica Lange), frustrated with men and their flirting techniques, vents to Dustin Hoffman’s Dorothy how she wishes a man would just be up front and come up and tell her “I find you very interesting and I’d really like to make love to you” So Michael, as himself, tries the very same line on her at a party and receives a glass of champagne in the face. Predictable? Of course. But that’s the point.

Honesty no longer has a place in flirting. In fact, it’s the most likely quality to kill any sexual yearning on her part. If however you have a particular fetish for pitying expressions and sibling-style hugs, then let the truth out in all its unadulterated glory.

Bring back the days when sexual blossoming negated any personal expectations. Before women became truly aware of their sexual clout and the insecurities that come with that. Bring back the shyness, the giggles, the headlocks, and the exuberant groping. And rid the world of expensive dinners, cheesy grins, prosaic yarns, and unambiguous social roles. Strip down the responsibilities of financier and mannequin. And restore the joy of flirting.