Ball gag misuse

Jessica was quite cooperative while I tied her to the chair. It was a lovely steel and leather construction, with nice clean lines and a subtle bondage sensibility to it. Very easy to attach wrists and ankles to, as well. Good piece of furniture to have in a hotel room. At this point she indicated in no uncertain terms that she would really like to be touched, licked and fucked as a matter of urgency.

That's where my manners failed a bit. I pushed her thighs apart, stroked the outside of her knickers and felt her up for a while before pushing past the edge of the crotch for a quick feel underneath. I withdrew my fingers, which were conspicuously wet.

She reiterated her previous request for further fingering. Not unreasonable, by any means. I stuck my fingers in her mouth, giving her a little taste. Then I put a ball gag on her, fastened it securely around the back of her head, and sat down to admire her.

"Your problem," I observed, disregarding her whimpering, "is that on the one hand I'd really like to take this nice corset off, and remove your pretty knickers."

She stared at me, nodding her encouragement.

"On the other hand," I stroked the inside of her thigh with my fingertips, enjoying the soft skin, "you just look too damn good like this. I feel like just having a wank, looking at you..."

She believed me for perhaps two seconds. Not much more.

Blind date

"So, where do you work out?" P rested her hand lightly on my buttock for a lingering while.

We had known each other for all of 7 minutes at this point. Well, 7 minutes plus the weirdly polite email exchange that preceded my waiting for her outside a little New Zealandish cafe in Soho. Our introduction happened through a mutual friend, a lovely charming whirlwind of a person who can't abide the thought of me being of no use while she's away for an extended family visit in a considerably warmer climate during the coldest months of the year. Standing outside, huddled into the thick wool of my winter coat, I noted the irony of the situation: She's on a beach, I'm standing on a wet Soho pavement watching the daylight vanish far too early in the afternoon.

And then with a rapid click of heels and a whiff of perfume, I was reminded why I wanted to be there in the first place. P strode up to me and in one fluid movement swirled a cascade of brown hair around my head while she planted a kiss on both cheeks. Then she stood back and looked me up and down.

"You look almost exactly like your photo," she smiled.

It's a bit like online dating, except our mutual friend introduced us by sharing some photographs. Proper ones, with clothes on.

"You too, but better," I replied, meaning every word of it. P smiled warmly and apologised for being late, linking arms with me and pulling me towards the cafe entrance.

"I'm desperate," she purred. "Only one espresso this morning. That's not nearly enough coffee."

The queue was out the door of the small coffee shop, moving slowly but steadily. We stood around, chatting, eyeing each other up. This is how I found myself a little while later waiting to pick up our order with P standing behind me, her hand cupping my buttock.

I mentioned the aspirationally named gym that I sometimes visit, mostly for their sauna. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason..."

We got the coffee and rushed to claim the last available table. She sat down on the bench by the wall and I noticed her looking me up and down while I removed my coat.

And then it hit me. Our mutual friend, before introducing us, had sent me a few rather explicit photos of P in the nude, with strict instructions that I should under no circumstances mention this to her, that she was breaking all rules of trust, honesty and decency, but in the interest of the higher cause of getting me and P into bed (or some other sexually accommodating space) she'd loosen her ethical strictures just for me, just this once...

Seeing the way P looked at me, I knew she had received exactly the same email, with one or two of the very few photos that our mutual friend had taken of me naked and erect, wearing a black mask over my face.

"Just for me," she'd said after she snapped the first photo. Before taking the next one she leaned over, camera still in her hand, and flicked the tip of my cock with her tongue.

Sipping my coffee, looking at P, I wondered if the resulting photograph what she was thinking about - the close-up of my cock, our mutual friend's hand grasping the base, her saliva glistening on the swollen head.

Dark

When we were naked she reached for the light switch. For a moment, she sat on top of me in the darkness. The first thing I noticed when my eyes adjusted to the light coming in through the curtains was her tattoo, black and spiny, snaking over her shoulder into the soft dimple of her collarbone.

Vanity, thy name is blogger

Yours truly has finally arrived in the land of the Kama Sutra. This weekend I got the opportunity to read about myself in an Indian newspaper when The Hindustan Times ran a story on erotica in the Sunday supplement Brunch. Given that Indian notions of propriety are considerably different from my own, I take my hat off to the journalist, Supriya Thanawala, who had the unenviable task of making an interview with me printable for a mass audience.

The result: I am now the face (or more exactly, the lips) of kinky bloggery for the readers of the Hindustan Times. This involved some editing of my email/phone back-and-forth with Supriya. Her article is a 2-page spread, with obvious limitations on space, but on my blog there are no such concessions to the physical constraints of paper and ink, so here's the full Q&A that we did over email.

(I am ambivalent about this. Really, publishing an interview with yourself is like wanking, except with hyperlinks and formating buttons.)

Here goes...

Who are some of your literary influences? Did any particular writer stimulate you to start writing the blog?

Good filth is hard to find, and I have ripped off the good ones with great pleasure. I often go back to Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye, and to Pauline Réage's Story of O. Nicholson Baker's The Fermata is another book I've borrowed from - particularly style and tone. Of course, without Susie Bright's Best of American Erotica series I probably never would have gotten interested in literary pornography to begin with. Lately, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and The Swimming-Pool Library have probably given me the most stylistic rip-off material. His prose just makes me want to take the verbs and run.

How would you compare the experience of blogging to other media like books and films?

Blogging is an instant-feedback medium. Readers leave comments and send emails sometimes minutes after the post goes up on the blog. There's a sense of immediacy, of connection. It's an illusion, of course - like me, they just have their favourite blogs neatly gathered together on their RSS feeds, but I like the fantasy that there's a devoted army of eyeballs out there, thirsting for every crumb that falls from my keyboard.

Do you think that it's important for someone who writes erotica to be sexually experienced themselves?

I don't know. If someone who's only eaten at McDonald's their entire life wrote a cookbook on Indian cuisine, would the reader be able to tell? If there are chaste virgins out there writing hot sexy fiction, I'd be very happy to read their work. We need more testaments to the creative powers of the human mind.

What are some of your best memories of blogging?

The actual writing itself is not particularly memorable. I get pleasure from it, but the real kick comes from the reactions, the emails, the comments and the naked pictures that get left in my "tip jar".

Do you feel that if you were a woman, your style of writing would have perhaps been different in any way?

Since I started blogging, I have regularly been asked: "Are you a woman?" Apparently there's something in my style, tone, whatever that suggests femininity. I take this as a compliment, even when the question is framed like an accusation that I am somehow falsifying my blogging persona beyond all the other obvious and widely-advertised falsifications.

I've even had some rather strident emails from men and women, telling me that I am female and that I should admit it. Some of these emails were quite convincing, enough to send me rushing to the mirror for an emergency self-examination. You can never be too sure of your own gender.

Why does women's writing on sex grab a lot more attention compared to that written by men?

Maybe there are simply more interesting women out there who write about sex, and the interesting men write about other things like cricket and football. Of course, there are some brilliant men with interesting things to say about sex, for example Dan Savage's advice column and weekly podcast. If anyone was so misguided as to email me for serious advice, I'd exploit Dan Savage's work as mercilessly as I've lifted from Nicholson Baker and Pauline Reage. Too bad no one seems to want my opinions on how to conduct their lives.

How would you differentiate pornography and erotica? There are some who might say that erotica is more 'artistic' than pornography; pornography is entirely masturbatory. But would you argue that even good porn would have to be artistic in order for it to work well and in a positive manner? What is the 'real' line between the two according to you?

There is no inherent difference between pornography and erotica, there's simply arousing or dull. Fortunately, no one seems to have figured out exactly which is which.

Don't be late

"Honestly, I don't even want you to say hello."

"OK." This was starting to look like an interesting plan. I had merely suggested visiting her for a quickie. Kim is a busy girl, and I thought I might drop by one afternoon.

"Knock, I open, then straight to the bedroom. Lead me by the arm."

"That's no problem..."

"No talking. Just tell me to get down on the floor and open my mouth."

"Yes. I'm just there to get my cock sucked by a greedy little slut."

"Greedy slut having her period. Remember, no touching my pussy."

"Got it. No touching pussy." And here I was, thinking I might finger her. Kim gets very wet, her plump labia pout when she's aroused, just begging to be stroked.

But that's not on the menu this week.

"I want to be used. You're just there for the cocksucking. One hour, that's all we have. Don't be late."

Belle

So, the grand master of anonymous bloggers, Belle de Jour, has outed herself to India Knight in the Sunday Times. Honestly, I feel like writing her a fan letter just for the elegance of doing this with the journalist who panned her first book.

Not that it takes much to get me to write her a fan letter. I have admired both her writing and the carefully maintained anonymity of her persona ever since I first read her blog in the autumn of 2003.

The reference she makes in the interview to a talkative ex-boyfriend is testimony to the very clever way in which she handled the most difficult part of staying anonymous as a blog-to-book author - the money trail. She kept her literary agent and publisher in the dark (i.e., anyone in whose interest it might be that she get outed), stayed away from the myriad social temptations that go along with being a published author and having one's work parlayed into a successful TV series, and wisely entrusted her identity only to lawyers and financial professionals whose livelihood depends on confidentiality.

Belle has written some thoughtful pieces for the Guardian's Liberty Central blog on the responsibilities that come with anonymity (see here). In one such post she asks what benefit beyond selling papers and having the last laugh has ever been served by exposing the identity of an anonymous blogger whose writing is not a direct threat to the safety or reputation of some named person.

Not much, it turns out. We're a harmless lot, by and large, we whose writing is enabled by having a persona not identified with our boring everyday selves.

This is why I'm sad about this pseudo-voluntary self-revelation. I would have liked Belle's secret to have remained secret, and I don't really believe that she actually thinks that it's time to reconcile her saucy authorial persona with the research scientist. She decided to jump before she was pushed by some chatterbox who is only bound to confidentiality by such fragile obligations as trust, discretion and good taste. After all, a tasteful Sunday Times photoshoot at the Soho Hotel is far more flattering than getting papped at the supermarket for a tabloid kiss n' tell.

Good luck with the shitstorm, Belle.

Simple does it

There's a particularly devilish form of pussy teasing, involving only the simplest bondage: Wrists tied together with a simple cuff, then attached to the legs just above the knees.

The thighs are pressed tightly together in this position, leaving very limited access in between. The subbie, either on her back or turned face down, has very little leverage other than begging. If the begging becomes tiring, or too loud, one can always straddle her face and silence her with cock.

But this isn't the only option. Pushed face down, possibly held with a hand on the back of the neck to keep her still, she can be spanked and fingered from behind in a most appealing, defenseless way.

Or not. It might not be in one's interest to finger her at all. Just let the frustration build until the begging becomes too pathetic to bear it any longer... Tongue, fingers, some buzzy vibrating toy with xenomorphic protrutsions - use whatever is at hand and works.

She will beg to be allowed to come. I advise being helpful on that front.