Anonymphomania

“It was me”, I told her. “I was the one doing Belle du le d'Oxford. And I'm giving it up. This has all been for nothing.”

“Oh God”, she said. “Why?”

“Because I'm losing ground”, I said, “and now I'm really angry. I'm losing ground to someone that thinks that every line of dialogue deserves to be printed, on a new line, regardless of how nauseatingly poor it happens to be.”

“That's crazy”, she said. “Who'd read that? All of it?”

“I know”, I replied.

“Crazy.”

“Yeah.”

“Was that your Mojito or mine?”

“That was yours. Where are the toilets?”

"The ones with the brown door?"

"Yeah."

“You go down the stairs”, I said, my eyes fixed on hers. “You take a left, and then they're in that alcove just behind the Itbox. Are you going now?”

“No, I don't need it now. I just like knowing.”

There was a pause, so the next line of dialogue is also hers.

“I can see what she's aiming at, a little”, she said. “You might think that this quick, faltering style of dialogue creates the impression of sexual tension hanging in the air”. She hesitated, her words hanging in the air. “That is, if you'd spent the past decade doing nothing but read Hugh Grant scripts while weeping.”

“It's not about sexual tension.”

“Sure”, she said. “It's not.” Her lips closed, with a faint pout almost visible.

“STOP DOING THAT!”, I yelled. “I don't want to have sex with you!”

“I can't! It's your narration! I just closed my mouth!”

“This is why I'm giving it up!”, I yelled. “This has become my life! I don't have hobbies any more, everything is sex! I'm sick of writing about twenty seemingly identical men, each with zero outward sign of a personality and names like “Puppy” and “Handle” and “Roadsign”, each of whom is portrayed as being so unfathomably bland that I could mince their parents in front of them mid-blog, and they'd react with nothing more than "Awww, shucks" and a wry smile! By my age, Mozart had written, like... 50 operas! And none of them were about blowjobs!”

“Well, 'The Magic Flute' was at least ambiguous -”

“Fuck off, I'm ranting. A monkey could write this!”

“You're being harsh on yourself -”

“I'm not! I'm not! I let it write one! Did you not see my last one? It had a fucking “pedestal” pun, for fuck's sake!” And you know the insulting thing? The monkey had the better sex life! I just have to accept that I'm a moronic satirical creation who'll inevitably end up “in publishing” through my connections alone, sleeping my way through the layers, putting the apostrophes into Danielle Steel books and translating Peter Kay autobiographies into English!”

“Oh, [my name], you're not a -”

“I am! I am! And everyone knows it. And if they don't, they're stupid. Though to be fair, at least half of the readers of this blog are just scanning for words to masturbate to. Pussy pussy cock ass Gaga.”

There was a pause. Whatever scenery this is in either fell silent, or stayed silent. If we're outside, a dog barked.

“There's only one thing you can do. You have to tell them that you're you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell them your name. It's the last act of every dying sexblogger. Put your name out, and buy an extra three months of reader interest through posts about the terrible, invasive tactics of sexist scumbag journalists. Get a book deal on the basis of the publicity, and end up serialising your book through the very same newspapers full of terrible scumbag journalists who are terrible and invasive and sexist, but own pretty nifty chequebooks. Do media interviews to “set the story straight”, for no less than a grand a time. Off the back of this new exposure, become an avatar for feminist issues, female issues, sexual issues – whatever ITV are doing a documentary on that week, basically.”

“My god! It's so simple! Why doesn't everyone do it?”

“Have you tried giving out your name and making it sound like an accident? Like you said, people are stupid. What are you going to do? Drop your laptop while logged-in, then point and yell, 'oh, how embarrassing'? And if you tell friends, they'll just keep it to themselves, like the caring bastards that they are.”

“What can I do?”

“I know someone who works in PR, who knows someone who works in television, who knows a plumber who knows someone who writes for the Sun. All you have to do is let Mr PR know, and the chain does it all for you!”

I felt a rush of excitement. “Let's do it now!”, I cried.

“No”, she replied. “You're already over 800 words, people are already skimming”. She looked out through the screen. “You bastards”, she cried. “You absolute bastards”.

“Zoe”, I said, “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

S-ex-orcism

Ever since the first time we'd met, he'd always put me on a pedestal.

“Can I get down off this pedestal now?”, I asked him. “I'm not really enjoying it, and you only seem to be using this to look up my dress.”

“I wouldn't call it a pedestal”, he said. “It's really more of an upturned bucket”.

Ever since the first time we'd met, he'd always put me on an upturned bucket.

This was the first time I'd seen him since leaving our relationship. Lots had changed. He'd joined the Nation of Islam, and formed an indie-pop band in London - I now referred to him as “my ex, Jason X, from the xx”.

A week later I was sat across a table with someone I had just met, in an entirely chance meeting.

“All I'm saying is, if you ever meet this fucker, stay the hell away”, she said. “Sure, you might think that when you're deep-throating him, the shit might be able to focus on you for a fleeting second - is that too much to goddam ask? But later you find he's got six sluts in the bathroom – and he's Tweeting two during! When a man asks for anal, always make sure there's mirrors. And when you fly on holiday to LA, the fucking freak dumps you at the airport.”

“Sure thing”, I replied. “It's your turn.”

“Oh. Two pluspowers on Blastoise, plus weakness to water, 120 damage, your Charizard's dead. I win again.”

“Damn”, I said, and kicked over the table. I wasn't angry, those were just the house rules. And then I realised. Her ex. My ex. The ex. Jason X, from the xx, at LAX!

“That cunt!”, I yelled. Two six year-olds looked over and tutted. Sure, he'd told me about her. He'd claimed never to have slept with her, let alone dated her, but the story lingered in the back of my mind.

It explained a lot. All those unscheduled 2am lectures. Those increasingly generic texts to “Baby” (and the ones in two languages. Then the “delete as appropriate” era). That bag of used condoms (He'd lied: there was no such Blue Peter appeal).

And then there was our whole first year. The excuses. His mum's “doctor's appointment”. His mum's “chemotherapy”. His mum's “funeral”. It was one thing after another, with him. Why couldn't he just get his story straight?

Everyone comes with a warning sign. A brief history of some guys I know:

The Ex: A cheater.

Tiger: A cheater.

Gill Sans: He had it written on his face from the start. (For the last three weeks, he actually had “I'M CHEATING ON YOU” written on his face. Sometimes girls just ignore the signs. When I found out, it really hurt. But then, I guess he meant it to hurt. I don't know why else he'd write it there.)

Simplified Arabic (the lobotomised Iraqi): Not a cheater, though he did own books written by other women, and occasionally smiled at waitresses.

So, I traipsed back to The Ex's flat, my mind still brim-filled with thoughts. He put on a Vin Diesel movie. Halfway through he flipped me over and started doing me from behind, keen to put the hot love-kebab of his penis into the longing, hungry mouth that was my vagina. I started thinking aloud.

“Have you cheated on me?”, I blurted out.

“What are you talking about?”, he said. “I love you. I'd move halfway round the world for you.”

“But that's exactly the point, isn't it?”, I told him. “Only half. I need some sort of real commitment.”

“But you can't get further than halfway round the world”, he said. “The globe being a spherical object, once you're more than halfway round, you start coming back. In fact, were I to move all the way round the world, that might well end up being no distance at all, which is hardly romantic.” He was trying to talk himself out of it, again. To blind me with science, like so many men I'd come across.

It was then now or never: I decided, while having the sex during xXx, to make Jason X, from the xx, my ex-Ex.

“Fuck you”, I told him. “I just can't believe that, after man after man coming to abuse my trust, I was finally beginning to open my heart to you, when suddenly I find out that you're just as bad as the rest of them. I just don't get it! All of you men, it's like you're all after the same thing, and you just think I'll put up with anything! What do you think I am? Stupid?” After that, I pulled his cock out of me.

I turned around. In a flash of panic, I saw him hurl his BlackBerry behind the cushions. Twitter! I let out a scream of rage. When men want it from behind, always make sure there's mirrors.

Memory Laid

So, then, exams are over, then. You're probably wondering what happened to all of my potentials – or “the font gang”, as I ended up calling them. Well, Comic Sans hit the bottle pretty hard when I rejected him, and ended up getting stretchered off the cobbles after a jump from the Rad Cam roof. Times New Roman (the clock-collecting Italian) got quickly dropped when I realised he was secretly sans-serif, if you know what I'm saying! Wingdings went a bit weird when people accused him of having links to 9/11, but the less said about that the better.

I still remember my first relationship as though it was yesterday. I saw him at school, which in those days I went to almost every day except for weekends. I still remember his name, all these years later, as well as other vague details such as what city he lived in (mine), and the school that he went to. And his eyes, and his hair, both of which he had – though that was hardly unusual for a child of our age and background.

It was all innocent back then. The sun shone, the birds sang. I'd borrow his ruler, he'd peck me on the cheek, I'd give him a handjob on that bit of tarmac behind the caretaker's flat, but nothing more. We were, literally, inseparable. “Oh, [my name]”, one of my teachers told me in an exasperated tone. “You two and your handjobs! Are you never going to learn!”

On the bus, in the street, in the library: these are just three examples of places where we might've been together. Old ladies would look at us, with my hand on his cock and say “bless”. I did 'learn', eventually, and now can't do it without oven gloves for fear of viruses. But try telling that to a six year-old girl with the choice between that and Pythagoras!

I still think about him sometimes. I might see him on Facebook, or he might just pop into my head, and I might let out a long sigh, or spend an afternoon imagining what might have been, or I might write two thousand words about him to fill up a word count for a blog that's meant to be about sex. Sometimes I'll look at pictures: pictures of him with me, pictures of him in black tie, pictures of him without me, pictures of him by a light switch, pictures of him eating some bread, pictures of him holding a bottle in the dark, pictures of him smiling at nothing in particular.

Another thing that made me think of him was when I met and had sex with him two weeks ago.

I still remember it to this day. It was a break between exams, and I'd taken the day off to do my bit for charity, attending the “Lie Around For M.E.” event in Uni. Parks. When I arrived at 12, hardly anyone had bothered showing up. I collapsed on the floor with the other three, and hoped they'd avoid a charity disaster not seen since “Chess against Scabies”, or “Jailbreak for Agoraphobia” (ten of them were found huddled in a nearby phonebox a week later).

Suddenly, walking up from the horizon and towards me, I saw him. I still remember him being exactly how I at that point had still remembered him being. He said my name, laid down beside me, and his eyes searched mine. Absolutely nothing had changed. Is this the same guy whose foreskin I used to tickle while eating Coco Pops and watching Aquila?, I thought out loud.

“What?”, he said.

“Nothing”, I said.

Eight hours and six double vodkas later, it was inevitable. He kissed me, putting his tongue in my mouth in a way that most six-year olds are basically incapable of doing. We took a shower in my room, and then I steered him towards the bed. I decided to put on some music, and fumbled with my alarm clock which is also an iPod. I still remember buying it. (Argos, it was. £27.99. The sun shone, and the birds sang.)

The music flooded the room, and I smiled at how apt it was to our situation:

I told the witch doctor I was in love with you

I told the witch doctor I was in love with you

And then the witch doctor, he told me what to do

What is love? I don't know, but maybe I was in it. It was indeed like some shamanic magic had taken over my heart. I longed for some celestial witch doctor to tell me what to do.

And he said ooh-ee, ooh-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla-bing-bang

Ooh-ee, ooh-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla-bing bang

This bit, I will admit, made less sense. I still remember that.

A Very Social Democrat (by which I mean that he wanted to fuck me)

“A new dawn has broken!” I thought, as the sun set over Downing Street, and Dave first set foot outside number 10. I pressed my face to the metal bars of the gates as a crowd swarmed behind me, desperate for a glance of history.

The sky was cloudless, save for a couple of clouds that were there, but were nonetheless not very big. Around me, I could hear car horns hooting in support, clearly audible above the car horns hooting in derision. Even the bearded protesters in red shirts yelled “Tories, Come! Tories, Come!” - crying out for change.

“Oh, Dave!” I yelled. “Dave!” The hopes of a nation rode upon him. Would Britain finally have a fearless, powerful leader, to introduce a secondary education voucher system? To cut Child Trust Funds, to ensure our glorious nation’s survival? To replace Trident?

Could this, finally, be our English Obama?

So swept up I was, that I’d missed the seven text replies on my Samsung E-61i, from seven men telling me they had plans that night. I had a moment of panic - I'd planned on them for sex and shelter! I switched to my Plan B, and walked backwards into the nearest man. There stood a colossus with a goatee and sandals. I motioned as though to say, "how about it?"

“Forget it”, he said. “I’ve always hated your type”.

“Please!”, I begged. “I left Oxford just to see this! Without you, I'll be homeless!"

He looked deep into my soul. His FAIR VOTES NOW t-shirt quivered in the breeze. We both had something to offer each other.

Surely he couldn't walk away?

“Okay”, he said. “I’ll do you a deal. I’ll let you through the door. And even if anyone else comes in, I won’t kick you out. That’ll be all, though.”

We both looked each other up and down.

“That’s so uninspiring”, I said.

“I agree”, he said. “What we need is something that provides stability, and underpinned by some form of common purpose."

I laid out my demands. “Alright. I’ll come with you, and we’ll watch Love Actually over a glass of Merlot.”

"No", he said. "We'll come home, and you'll have sex with me twice."

"Forget it", I said. "I have my principles. I don't have sex twice on the first date."

"Okay. Let's have sex four times."

I saw an opening. "We'll do it twice", I said. "That's my final offer."

He darted back into the crowd for about two minutes, then returned.

"Where'd you go?"

"Oh, it's alright, she didn't seem interested. Though I think we were closer in terms of personality, I just don't think there was much chance of a lasting partnership."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and her boyfriend was against it."

We had reached a crucial stage in the negotiations.

"Alright", he said. "But I don't want this just falling apart after a night. I want something that lasts, for the good of us both. Let's say five years?"

"Five years? What if we end up falling out?"

"We'll be able to break up, if 55% of us agree."

We knew immediately it was love, subject to an agreement that he'd silence himself when the conversation turned to nuclear power.

"Let's go, baby", I told him. "I want your Member in my Cabinet."

"Sure thing", he said. "I want to get to tackling your deficit." That didn't quite work either.

He took my hand, and we fled. He cycled, and I took a taxi close behind. When we reached his house, he opened his big, black door, and with his long, toned arms picked me up, and carried me over the threshold. He rushed up to his room, set me down, undid his zipper -

"Oh, that's hardly proportional", I said.

“I know”, he replied, glumly. “It's so unfair.”

License to Shag: Shag to Kill, book 1: Return to Murder Cove

I mentioned my first novel in my interview. Well, here's the first draft. Don't be too harsh!

The book's undergone a name change. it will now be the first of seven in the Licensed to Shag: Shag to Kill series. The first one is called "Return to Murder Cove", as I feel that there's a few words that will always make your title a better one. One is "Return", another is "Revenge", the third is "Killer".

In case you're thinking, "how can it be 'return', it's the first book, they've not even been to Murder Cove yet", that's something that happens in the book at some point. Here is the first chapter. I have put notes to explain why I've written some stuff.

Click the images to make them larger.

Shagazine

Sorry for the absence, but I’ve a great excuse. Shortly after my email, I had a phonecall. British Grazia had already gone to print, they said, but Polish Grazia would be thrilled to have an interview. So I flew to Warsaw on April 11 with just a credit card and a box of rubbers. I was to be famous!

I wouldn’t recommend Poland – everyone there looked really miserable for some reason, probably something to do with all flowers piled up in the streets. I didn’t think it was anything to be upset about – they clear up easily enough! I even put some in a bin myself, but that just seemed to make them sadder.

“Well how do you propose to get it done?”, I asked them. “No-one ever solved endemic litter problems just sitting round and reading about plane crashes”. Anyway I was quickly deported, but it turned out they wanted to do the interview by phone the whole time anyhow.

So - if you’re in Poland, my short interview is on p.43 of this month’s issue, right after the 8-page feature on Bishops’ Wives.

---

GRAZIA: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

SAO: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

GRAZIA: This is a telephone interview.

SAO: Yeah, but I sat down especially.

GRAZIA: What first inspired you to take up blogging?

SAO: Well, I’ve always been a fan of blogs – blogs with cats looking funny, blogs with cats wearing things, and blogs dedicated to divisive crypto-fascist polemic (also cats). So when I saw that there was a word that combined “blogs” and “sex” – the word “sexblog” – I realised that the world needed my contribution like a hole in a donut head.

GRAZIA: So you’ve been a blog fan for a long time?

SAO: Yes – I’d say they were the major inspiration in my decision to learn English. On discovering them I bought 100 issues of "Readers’ Digest", from which I learned from scratch.

At the end of the day, I thought, build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. If you build it, they will come, and time is money, and money talks. So I guess what I’m saying is, don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. A stitch in time saves striking while the iron’s hot.

GRAZIA: That sure is a lot of clichés. But why make it about sex?

SAO: Well firstly, ever since I was about 13 I’ve always felt this strong urge to procreate. But I never used to understand the power girls like me have until recently.

Let me tell you a story. I once knew a guy who could barely look at me, and found five-minute conversations with me a chore. One night we had sex five times. Sure, we broke up the next day, our one-month anniversary, but the sex certainly improved things. So I suppose you can say it’s about sex, because I found out that sex makes me popular. “If you want to get ahead, you have to give-a head”, as my Italian grandfather used to say!

GRAZIA: There’s around 40,000 sex blogs already, and 3000 involve students. What makes yours better?

SAO: I go to Oxford. Sex here is very different to sex anywhere else; I've lost count of the number of times I've been on top, and accidentally blurted out a view as to the potential horizontal effect of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights since the Lisbon Treaty. Of course, this probably happens to girls at all universities, but their arguments are rarely as well-referenced.

GRAZIA: You seem to have a few followers now. Would you recommend sex-blogging to others in your position?

SAO: From a free-market economic perspective, certainly. I mean, if you accept the assumption that all rational beings will want to maximise their economic potential, then to have sex gratuitously, without at least opening up the opportunity of a lucrative media deal is patently inefficient – wasteful, if you will.

We wouldn’t accept it in business. We wouldn’t accept it in government. Why should I accept it in my vagina?

GRAZIA: What are your future plans? Are you currently working on other projects?

SAO: I'm working on my first novel, about an everyday Oxford-educated sex blogger who gets recruited by the CIA for some sexy reason. It'll be called either "Licensed to Shag" or "Shag to Kill", I haven't decided yet. Maybe "Licensed to Shag: Shag to Kill".

It's still very much in the planning stages, but it'll definitely be a Choose Your Own Adventure, because no-one's written a good one of them in ages. I'm a firm believer that there's no book that can't be improved with a Choose Your Own Adventure format. Even with my favourite books - The Complete Works of Shakespeare, A Child Called It - I just feel, I need more choice!

GRAZIA: Do you have anything else to add?

SAO: Erm... if you're ever in the area, do go see Amsterdam, as the doubledicking there is something really quite sumptuous. Oh, and to my parents: I owe you everything.

----

Well, that's it! I think I came out quite well, though they did edit out the bit in the middle where I listed every man I'd ever slept with with names, addresses, dates of birth, penis size and a rating on a twenty-point scale. I'll post that up here later.

Correspondence #1

TO: graziadaily@graziamagazine.co.uk

SUBJECT: My Oxford Sex Blog

Dear The Editor of Grazia,

I'm a (female!) Oxford student, and I've started a blog about my sex life at Oxford - http://oxfordsex.blogspot.com/. I started this on the same day as someone else started their blog about Sex at Oxbridge. Now, I'm not bitter - far from it! Ha! Ha! - but I can't help but think that she has stolen what is rightfully my success.

I've heard on the grapevine that you're thinking of printing a story based on her, even though I've slept with more people. What kind of just universe is this?

Anyway, all I ask - ALL I ask - is that you take out her story from your magazine and replace it with mine. In return:

- I will ask for just half the money that she's getting. Since the death of print media you need to cling to every penny, no?

- I will promise to have sex with as many people as I can find between now and my article. These will be as famous as possible; if you would like to suggest some people for me to try to sleep with, I'll happily oblige! People have already suggested Graham Norton, and (Oxford Professor of Constitutional Law) Vernon Bogdanor, though that might be unrealistic, as Bogdanor's really old.

- I will make sure that every one of my words is absolutely brilliant. When I feel a word is at all out of place or mundane, I will get a thesaurus and find a better one. This might sound arduous, but it is the modus operandi I use for all my manuscriptions (!).

As the old saying goes, "I'm making you an offer you can't refuse"!

Now, I know what you're thinking, surely I could just take this anywhere? Well, perhaps - I already have offers for exclusives from Seatback Magazine (the official in-flight magazine of Virgin Atlantic), and reputable London freesheet The Daily Note! But they don't inspire me quite like yours, with its perfect mix of words, and pictures relating to those words.

So - you put my words in your magazine, sell it for a profit, and give me a small percentage of those profits. Everybody wins, right?

Yours hopefully,

The (Anonymous!) Oxford Sex Blogger