Is it irredeemably shallow of me to feel more turned on by sex toys that come in beautiful packaging rather than impenetrable plastic casing? Quite possibly, but I prefer to think of it in terms of the girl can drop out of art college, but you can’t take away years of training in aesthetics, and when it comes to form versus function, anything that doesn’t tick both boxes doesn’t get my vote. I didn’t own a sex toy until about a year and a half ago, but it didn’t take me any time at all to develop a penchant for the high-end ones.

All of which is a long way of saying that I really love my new Lelo Ella, which I have been lusting after since I first saw it. It is a sleek and tactile double ended silicone dildo: one end straight and pointy and one with a blunt, slanted end. It’s not very big – this is not a toy to try if you have a gaping hole to fill – but it’s big enough to feel, and smooth and narrow enough to insert easily, and both ends found my sensitive bits with unerring accuracy. It doesn’t vibrate or do anything fancy, but it works beautifully with my Lily when I fancy a bit of buzz, which is by no means all the time. I like the buzziness of vibrators, but I’m wary of them too, and am instinctively drawn more to dildos. If I’m using one on my own then I know what I’m doing, and if it’s being used on me in conjunction with something else then it’s perfect when I want something inside me but don’t need the distraction of having to wriggle around making sure the buzz is hitting the right spot.

Like all things Lelo, the Ella comes with a year’s warranty and a little satin carrying pouch, and like all things Lelo that I have tried out, it gives great orgasm – and it’s just a gorgeous object (mine is black, to match my Lily). I preferred the pointy end (I like a bit of thrust with my penetration) rather than the one intended for the g-spot, though I had fun experimenting with both, and look forward to trying it out with the help of a tongue.

It’s also lucky that I think things are a bit dull when they’re predictable, because less than 24 hours later I’m full of dinner and a couple of glasses of wine, and I’m feeling drunk (I have no head for alcohol) and amorous. This is a good thing, I think, because I tend to get D&A when I’m not in the same room as anyone I want to do anything about it, and also because there is sometimes discussion about how I lack romanticism and other associated tendencies, and here I am! Affectionate and slightly maudlin and all mellow and cuddly. Except that the other person isn’t drunk, and is channeling his inner caveman so I wind up face down on the bed again clawing at the sheets, instead of curled up having a cosy chat. Even more luckily I manage to channel my inner raging libido and morph straight into: “Yes! Fuck me harder!” mode rather than saying plaintively: “But I thought we were going to talk about our relationship?”

And despite anything that anyone says about me always getting my own way, and only ever doing what I want, I still find myself at breakfast one morning with a butt plug in my ass. True, it wasn’t breakfast on the same day as I was originally asked to do it, but I did capitulate in the end, didn’t I? Surely no one could claim that I don’t sometimes, eventually, compromise (particularly if it works to my benefit).

Even with the boots off I’m still amenable to having various orifices fucked at all hours of the day and night, which is my argument for claiming that I am, on the whole, pretty obedient. While it might be true that I’ll only do what I want, I’m happy to do what I want when someone else wants to do it, even if this is at three o’clock in the morning after less than an hour’s sleep. It’s also worth noting that if I am provided with half-decent coffee and a freshly-run bath at a normal waking-up time, I’m generally even willing to consider doing what someone else wants (and it is disingenuous to claim that this is only because I’m too brain dead when I first wake up to remember what I do and don’t want).

I’ve never liked my tits, ever since they first started sprouting. There was never anything particularly wrong with them, but they just never seemed to be my idea of what breasts should be. Given a choice, I’d have liked nice little perfectly round ones with the nipples balanced like cherries on top. Instead I just got very ordinary ones, just slightly out of proportion with my size to make wearing shirts a problem, without being proper big breasts. I have a fairly similar relationship with them to the one I have with my feet, in that I show them off whilst heartily disliking them.

My tits were never particularly a problem until I met the Tit Man. Up until then my habit of wearing the shortest skirts possible had meant that I mainly attracted leg men, but the Tit Man was indifferent to my legs and seduced by my mind, and brought his breast obsession along for the ride. At one point I even considered not having sex with him, just so I wouldn’t have to get my tits out, but that didn’t really seem feasible, and he refused to let me have sex with my bra on, so I just had to be brave. Whether or not his passion for breasts is such that any breasts will do, or whether it was relief that mine weren’t as hideous as I’d led him to believe, he was gratifyingly thrilled with them when he finally got his hands on them, and although I still hated them, I did learn to accept that his enthusiasm was genuine, and not merely to make me feel better. And anyway, I’d never have managed the keeping my bra on bit, because my tits are needy, and like lots of attention. Well, I say attention, but what they really like is a bit of pain.

Like the pain that my feet can endure, the pain my breasts like is specific. They like, but are unaroused by stroking – what they really like is a good bruising squeeze, or a nice sharp bite delivered at precisely the right moment and not before. They hate nipple clamps, but recently discovered they enjoy slaps. When I’m not actually fucking, stroking, kissing, sucking and just generally playing with my breasts is nice, but there is something about being on top that makes me want to have some pain inflicted. Whether it’s because they are so obviously just there, or because the toppiness of being on top throws me slightly off kilter (it’s a position that doesn’t always work for me, because sometimes it just seems to unbalance the power exchange too much) I don’t know, but certainly something needs to be going on with my tits while I’m the one who is actively fucking.

This is where the little flogger comes in. I’d already discovered that I liked it on my tits and pussy, and felt far less threatened by it than I would if it was one of the big ones flaying my front: I chose this one on purpose because although it can deliver a nice thud, it doesn’t cause that teeth-gritting I-will-endure desperation that a flogger with a bit more power behind it can. It’s a girly flogger par excellence: small, soft, purple, sparkly (yes, I identify far too much with that flogger, even though in my blacker moments I’m more of the long, heavy, bitey one), and there’s a headfuck in itself just being walloped with something so pretty. When I reach over and hand it to him while I’m fucking him I think he’ll just take a few swipes at my breasts and then put it down again, but apparently his cock is getting strong messages that my tits like it more than my head does. He doesn’t stop until I do, and that’s only when I’ve come so hard I don’t know where it started – in my cunt or my poor hurt tits.

But mainly:
Family, friends & lovers

I’m ready. Bring it on.

My packing concerns are less about whether I’ll need my heavy coat, and how many cashmere sweaters can one woman possibly fit into a case and still leave room for more (as she gets older, my mother develops more and more expensive allergies. She’s now basically reduced to being unable to wear anything except cashmere, poor thing). My dilemma is how to fit into one very small bag enough clothes for various eventualities.

I need clothes to travel in, clothes to hang out with my sister and various kids in (this involves going to the park unless I can avoid it, and sitting in a damp garden at midnight drinking wine and smoking furtively (the furtiveness is pointless: at some point a child will lean out the bathroom window and howl: “I know what you’re doing! Smoking kills, you know!”)), clothes to have breakfast in, clothes to have dinner in, and clothes to be fucked in with my boots on. And off. And clothes to take off to be fucked. All of which need to be fitted into a very small suitcase, because I am obsessed with traveling light.

I can’t feasibly totter round parks after small boys on bikes in dominatrix boots, so I have to take another pair of boots. I can’t sit around in gardens in the rain in skintight dresses and fancy underwear, so I have to take jeans and sweaters. There is no fucking way I’m hiding the boots under jeans to go out to dinner, hence the dress. But I’m not going to travel in the dress and worry about bits of myself falling out of it, hence another dress. Or a skirt. Or….

Fuck. I am so my mother’s daughter, only without the reserves of cashmere.

Later that same day, which is full of different types of strangenesses, I should be dressing to go out, I’m flat on my back on the bed. But not flat at all: I’m curved like a damp and heated sapling, branching frenziedly. All day I’ve had to ease my tender flesh into fucks, waiting and maneuvering and pulling back and inching forward, but not now. It can’t be hard or fast enough, and I can’t devour enough. Every time his cock slams into me I feel as though I don’t know whether to close tight around it or open myself up for the next welcome blow, and every time my body wins the fight with my head and I brace myself against him and clench around him, it’s only part of the way to everything I need. And then it is enough, for a while.

At night, feeling the radiating variegated heat of the lash of a flogger, I think I know exactly how much I want: enough to feel it bite, but not to pain too much. Afterwards, though, it’s not enough to be held; I want every inch of my skin covered, to be weighted down to the bed while I try to find my way back from inside my head, which feels echoing and emptied of everything that floated out while my body thought of pain.

I lie on my side and wait for sleep, with warmth at my back, and look at the blank curtained window, sealed shut against the noise of the street, and at the debris of clothes, and supper, and half-drunk glasses of wine, and fall into the desperate sleep of long-awaited peaceful exhaustion.