Spermbank Tower

Baroness Warsi knocked back the rest of the gin, swallowed, and belched loudly. I did the same. When I meet with people from other cultures, I try to observe their traditions. She snatched a fat rollup from the desk, and lit it with a clicky lighter. She took a deep drag.

“Aaaahhh”, she said. “’at’s the stuff, that is”.

She exhaled, and blew a thick fog of smoke into my face.

“As I were sayin”, the Baroness continued. “David’s finally gone and given me something. He says I’m Minister fer pretzels, homophobia and student sex-bloggers. Ee’s very keen on you bloggers. Says ee’s keen to encourage entrepreneurship like what you’re doing. You’re the engines of the recovery, some such shite. I couldn’t give two myself, but I get paid the same whatever.”

“You’re minister for pretzels? Isn’t that a bit pointless?”

“P’raps. But could it be more useless than Minister Without Portfolio? Fuck.” I caught a glimpse of her laptop screen in the window – “BigDog94” had pulled a flush on the river. Sayeeda (“call me Sy”) pulled out a credit card and started tapping.

She sniffed. “Anyway, ere’s yer grand. Just stick in a few more Coalition plugs. Say t’Big Society twatted a rapist, Milliband looks a nonce in that jacket, EMA shrinks yer cock. Anything really. When you need the other grand, go in’t Swan and ask for Big Billy.” She picked up another cigarette, lit and breathed. The smoke flooded all the corners of the room.

“Can I open a window?”

“S’a free country, duck.”

I did, and more smoke poured in through the windows.

“Well, fuck me backwards”.

A klaxon sounded; shrill screams rang through the air. The sounds of shattering glass. From Sy’s office five floors up, we could see twenty thousand students, all armed with fire extinguishers, using them to batter the two defenceless policemen below. Blood flew from the stricken figures. Hateful students dived in, claiming fingers or legs as trophies. Flecks of guts were flung in all directions. One found its way through the window, and onto Sy’s face. She licked her lips.

“It’s on.”

She clattered through the door. Crazed Tories ran up and down the stairs almost at random. One cowered, quivering , in a corner. Two stood by the blinds, as though judging their chances from this height.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a LOCKDOWN!”, the Baroness announced. “Everyone, please! Go back to your offices and await further instructions. These childish protestors will soon realise that direct action never solved anything and is never justified -“

“The Suffragettes?”, a staffer cut in.

“That was different. They weren’t allowed to vote. These 17 year-olds are just id-“

She was cut off by another fire extinguisher crashing through the window. Just as it did, there was an almighty crash against the fire escape doors. Three of the students had flung themselves against it. I noted their pallid skin and dark circles round their eyes. “EDUCATION FOR ALL”, they murmured. “NO CUTS. NO CUTS”. We stared in horror. One munched on the skull of a dead policeman.

Suddenly, another crash, and the door gave way. The students lumbered towards us. The Tories screamed, and threw themselves up the stairs. But I stood, fixated. One of them ran behind, flapping his arms, waving at the others.

“I command you! Stop this at once! By the powers invested in me as the President of the National Union of Students, I demand that you cease immediately! I –"

We both watched in horror as one of the students picked up a small kitten and bit through its spine. “NO TO ARTS CUTS”, he wrote on the wall with its blood.

I grabbed the President’s hand. Together, we ran into Sy’s office, and locked the door.

***

“You know, these aren’t bad people.”

“I know.”

“It’s just… being here. There’s something… it does something to them. To their heads. They…”

“I know! I saw. We just have to stay here, and hope – pray…”

“They don’t realise they’re undermining a largely peaceful protest!”

He sobbed. I took his hand, and gazed into his eyes. Something might have happened, but-

“TOOORIES OUT. TOOOOORIES OUTTTT.”

We gasped, and flung ourselves behind the desk. The only light now was through the cracks in the door. The doorhandle rattled. It kept rattling.

“They’re going to –“

“Ssshhh!”

I reached across, held him as close as I could, and kissed him passionately. He fell silent with surprise. It rattled again, and I gripped his cock. And then… silence.

“One day we’re gonna escape this, okay? We’ll be sat in the sunshine, yeah? Kids’ll be laughing around us. You’ll be drafting a letter to the Independent about library funding, and I’ll be polishing my 2010 Guardian Student Media Award for Digital Journalist of the Year. Just think of that. Just think.”

He looked up. “I love you, Mimi”.

“I know.”

Then a crash. The door was blown from its hinges. Ten of them swarmed in. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty. I swang a flaming Liberal Democrat 2010 manifesto at them, but for every one I hit, five more replaced it. Hands grabbed at me from all sides. I gripped the hands of the man I knew only as the President tighter than ever. Soon we were ripped apart. This is it, I thought. And…

***

“NO MORE FEES! NO MORE FEES”, I yelled. From the roof of the Millbank Tower, I could see for miles around. The glorious fires of student protest burned around me. Big Ben was reduced to rubble. The London Eye was a pool of molten metal. They’d managed to persuade me. How could I have been so wrong?

Nathan - the tallest - had put his lips around my neck. Then he’d kissed me all over, and we’d had sex a few times with the others watching. Then they’d joined in. The sex itself was some of the best I'd ever had. Uninhibited, non-obligatory, just forty-eight people who were happy to have each other. As I came, so too did my revelation. A minute later I had my very own fire extinguisher, and had flung it to the ground below, crushing five policemen and a disabled soldier all holding white flags as their young families watched.

“I’m going to burn some public property that's paid for with taxpayers' money!”, I yelled, and hundreds cheered me on. “We’ll burn it down!”, they yelled. “Anarchy! Anarchy!”

As we cast the limbs of junior Conservative policymakers into the fire, a helicopter rose in front of us. I saw the Baroness. She winked at me, and took off into the sky.

Amnesiamorousness

“Fuck.”

I opened my eyes. Black, with a tint of green.

“Fuck.”

I rolled over and threw up for what was probably the third time. I rolled back. Black, again, with a tint of green. And flecks of yellow. God, there’d been drinking; that I could remember. That was all I could remember. There might’ve been a bop. What was the theme?

“British victims of terrorist atrocities abroad”? No, that was last term. I’d have remembered that, it takes hours to look convincingly beheaded. I felt about gingerly. Was I wearing a nappy? No; lacrosse social was last weekend. I sighed with relief. “Sluts of the Special Olympics”? No.

“Nuns ‘n’ Nazis”? That was it. I staggered to my feet and made my way off the lawn, pushing over a couple of tourists who were stupid enough to obstruct me.

“You know, it’s a fifty quid fine for going on there”, said a fresher.

“Go fuck yourself.”

I flicked the last flecks of vom off my Waffen SS uniform. A photographer from the Mail on Sunday tried to get a picture of me, but I punched him in the face. Why were they always here after bop night? No doubt this one just appreciated my dedication to historical accuracy*.

(*I don’t think wearing a full SS uniform and jackboots to a bop was insensitive; after all, my great-uncle died at Auschwitz. He fell off a guard tower! That’s not to imply that he was a Nazi, though. He just happened to think that climbing the guard tower was the quickest way to escape, fell off, and was killed. Often when I tell this story people think I’m telling some kind of joke implying that my great-uncle was somehow a Nazi, which is a tragic insult to his memory. Anyway, it can't be offensive, it’s freedom of speech. Being able to wear an SS uniform in public is a right my great-uncle fought and died for.)

I stumbled into the lodge unable to remember my name or anything else about the night. I begged the porter to tell me what little he knew.

“You were with some guy, he said he was your agent. He said he couldn’t work with anyone who wanted full editorial control over anything she appeared in. Especially when that thing she was going to appear in was Babestation, so it was pretty much just a camera pointing at you anyway.”

I did remember this bit. I’d asked him if there was any way to make it avant-garde – maybe invert the colours, turn the screen upside down, or smash a rabbit’s head into the camera for a few seconds in a tortured metaphor for the commercialisation of sexuality.

“The shows on that channel are so mundane. Why won’t Babestation fund original programming?”

“They don’t want original programming.”, he’d said. “They just want you with your tits out.”

In short, control-freakery of the highest order. When a channel won’t take a risk and let you write Carol-Ann Duffy quotes across your bare boobs, you know TV has stagnated as a medium. I remember mouthing the words, “Jonathan Ross was right”.

I turned back to the porter.

“Then you said he couldn’t leave you, because you were in love with him, and anyway you’d already slashed all of the tyres on his car so he couldn’t go anywhere but to bed with you.”

The joke was on me; he’d slashed all my condoms so we couldn’t do that, either. Also, I’d forgotten that he was meant to be giving me a lift home. So this was sort of what’s called a “pyrrhic victory”. I walked away from the lodge, glad of the porter’s incredible observation skills. I walked out into an OUSU march against tuition fees, very few of whom understood the reasoning behind my costume, except for a few who thought I was making an incisive satirical point about George Osborne.

* * *

“Don’t you still want to be my boyfriend?”, I’d asked him.

“I never was your boyfriend!”

“Oh my god! I can’t believe you’d say that! We were together for two months, and now you’re acting like it meant nothing-“

“We were never together! You just kissed me once when you said you were rehearsing for a play! A play that you’d written!”

This much was true. A good method of pulling, I find, is to write a play in which two people kiss, then tell the other person you were rehearsing it. Just take inspiration from anywhere! Mine’s about a 1920s sex-diarist who falls in love with her boss. I wrote it for Marilyn Monroe – I know she’s dead, but a Marilyn Monroe impersonator would do the role just as well. On the downside, it wasn’t a very plausible excuse. On the upside, my play is beginning a two-week run at the Burton Taylor Studio.

Back in the story, I burst into tears. I ran into the bar as quickly as I could, desperate to show I was emotionless and over him. I made a beeline for Joseph Goebbels by the dartboard, but he ended up necking Mother Teresa. I collapsed into sobs. As I saw Rudolf Hess slide his hand up the Vicar of Dibley’s skirt, I cried out to no-one in particular: “Why are all the good men taken?”

I took out a gin bottle and a couple of shot glasses. I poured out two shots, and then I downed the rest of the bottle. Then I downed the shots. Downing the shots sorta wrecked the whole “physical comedy” vibe that I was originally going for, but it did make everything go blurry and the air taste vaguely of blood.

It was then that my natural popularity started to kick in: “You need to come with us”, went one group of girls, offering to carry me (that’s fame!). “You should really come this way”, said a man in a security guard costume - they always seem to find me attractive.

I turned them all down - I’d just been dumped! The last thing I needed was more celebration. Everyone kept talking about going to “The Hospital”, which for a minute made me think I was drunker than I’d thought, but it turns out that that’s actually a night at Kukui with £1 drinks if you only wear a lab coat.

With all this in mind, and having learned from another blog that “how-to” guides really help fill up space once you’ve run out of content in three posts, here’s:

The Belle des la'Oxford Guide To Surviving A Breakup

DON’T cry. Ever. Take the tears and force them back inside you. Men can smell emotion, and they see it as weakness. A soldering iron will take care of those pesky tearducts!

DON’T immediately get pregnant, give birth, name the child after your ex, and bring them up to dress and act exactly like the man who rejected you so he’s the partner you never had! (There’s always the chance you might give birth to a girl…)

DON’T threaten to kill yourself! You don’t want to get involved in “suicide chicken” where he ignores you and you end up on Magdalen Bridge at midnight begging him to take you back or you’ll just jump off and end it all. Even if you win, you look insane!

DON’T try to be friends. All you’re likely to do is end up with a long-term relationship of mutual trust and support, which won’t get you more than 10 blog views.

Stay sexually active,

Belle xo

Insignificant Others

There’s something about being at Oxford that makes every man think sex with you is their right. It isn’t: it’s my right. By which I mean that it’s my right to give them the right, a right that I will give away or occasionally lease out to whomsoever I choose. I guess what I’m saying is, I really hate it when men text me, ask for my number, or smile at me. Because that’s what they mean.

So I ran out of fonts to name my men after ticking off my 22nd nationality – Ecuadoreans, if you’re wondering, are nothing to write home about! So I picked spices next. There’s no particular reason, there’s just lots of them. Of course, as soon as I switched, a man came along who was one of the most annoying I’ve ever met. I can’t think of any particularly irritating spice – you know, I’ve never sat down and thought, “tarragon really fucks me off”. So I settled on Wattleseed. Okay?

So I went to Park End’s traffic light party. And, yes, I was wearing hotpants and a bikini top – it is October after all, so the days of G-strings are gone with the September breeze. And, yes, I did pick “green” as my sticker (ironically!). They didn’t tell me how many to take, so I took a round twenty, stuck five on each boob , and arranged the rest into a smiley face on my midriff. A waggish friend tried arranging them into an arrow pointing downwards, but that just made me look like a slut.

So I was under-dressed. What do you expect me to wear, a burka? But that doesn’t give men the license to be lecherous and pathetic. On the way in, one man opened the door for us with an immense grin, and said “evening ladies”. He didn’t say it, but I knew what he meant: “I reserve the right to have sex with each and every one of you” - as though that simple act of opening the door meant he could ask me to drop my knickers there and then. This went on through the night – a “you’ve dropped this” here, a “is this your insulin” there. Men.

So - so far, so demeaning. Of course, after a while, I started to think that no-one was taking me seriously, and also I was bored. So I strode across the room, picked the first man I could find – this was Wattleseed - and kissed him for over a minute. Then I left. Now, any woman would just accept this for the fun it was and move on, yes? Not this person. This male person.

So then I looked across to find him leching and slobbering his way towards me. Like men will always do, he’d misread the signals.

“Hey, I wondered if you maybe wanted a drink or something?”

So I tried to ignore him, to put him out of his childish masculine embarrassment.

“Hey?”

So I ignored him again. A bit annoyed now.

“Hello?”

“LOOK”, I burst out. “I think it’s quite obvious that I have a boyfriend, okay? So please stop coming over to me and REPEATEDLY trying to have sex with me, and don’t you EVER THINK of sending me any texts or phonecalls, because I won’t answer, alright? People like you make me sick. Why can’t you all just take a hint?” The string on my bikini top came undone, but I managed to tie it back together while still glaring at him.

“Okay, I’m sorry if -“

So that was the last straw.

“SECURITY!”, I screamed. Sadly I did it at that point just between tracks where the music’s a little quieter, so all of the room was turned to look at us. A bouncer grabbed him by the neck and marched him out.

“Sorry about that, darlin’”, said the bouncer. But him I did have sex with later, though. You can’t win them all, can you? But it got me thinking. Why is it always the ones we like the least who cling on the most? Well, maybe not always – sometimes the ones that hang on most become your boyfriend, so that’s a big exception there. I suppose what I’m saying is, “Why is it always the ones we like the least who annoy us the most?” And that’s a rhetorical question, as no-one knows the answer.

So later, I picked up “Moby Dick”. It turns out that that book was about something entirely different to what I thought. I was expecting something that, even if not involving actual dicks, I could use as an allegory for my relationships. Turns out I can’t. Except maybe I’m the whale, and all of the men on boats are trying to capture (have sex with) me, and I’m trying to escape (most of them) because I’m not all that into them. But then in Moby Dick the whale kills them all and drags everyone below the sea in a giant whirlpool and everyone dies. Well, maybe that still works.

Don’t try to harpoon me, right? Cos I’m a massive whale.

Until next time,

Belle xo

Freshers' Week Survival Guide

Ah, Oxford. Ah, freshers' week. Ah, when the fresh and brightest faces appear in Oxbridge. Ah, those excited moments. Ah, those disappointed moments. Yes; freshers week is certainly an experience for everyone, men and women, regardless of race, colour or creed. From the moment it begins to the moment it ends, freshers' week is absolutely filled with time.

So without further ado, here's just a few of the zero “do's” and forty thousand “don'ts” of coming to Oxford University!

DON'T get paralytically drunk to the point that you vom in that bit with the sofas in at the Bridge, the security guards lead you outside and say, “I think you're done for tonight, love”, so you hail a taxi and when you get in you vom all over that too so he throws you out and leaves you to stumble over Hythe Bridge alone, and then when you get to Rad Square you collapse while screaming out the half-remembered words to “Without You” through an unswallowed mouthful of doner, seriously gashing both of your legs, and as the paramedics wade through a pool of blood mixed with vom and chips and ketchup you hear them say, “fuck's sake, if the bint does this ONCE MORE I say we just leave her”.

DON'T let anyone film you during sex in the first week, even if they're the one you're having sex with! When it comes to the first week, you can TRUST NO-ONE. Treat it like 24, except the terrorists are trying to have sex with you, instead of kill the President! Once freshers' week is over, those darling buds of young romance may just be dead leaves blowing in the autumn breeze and uploading videos to Youtube. And if you become an Oxford celebrity, who knows who'll be offering your most intimate moments to the student newspapers for cash (as OxStu deputy editor, I bought eight)!

DON'T be “that couple” - you know the one! - who are cretinous enough to start a relationship in the first week! We all know what's going to happen. Either you'll break up after the first week, or you'll stagger on for three months and collapse into violent bitterness, or you'll be torn apart two years after university when his career starts taking off and you're left with the twins, or you'll end up crying at the side of their grave when they leave you all alone forever. And all the time you'll be thinking, “why did I waste my university days on this person?” Be rational! Wait a few more years until you find a relationship with no possibility of loss.

DON'T answer all requests for coffee with the demand that they go through your agent! Often, your agent will just forget to pass on the messages.

All The Nudes That's Fit To Print

Devastated. That's the only word for it. My name all over the papers. Devastated. My life stretches before me like a black, empty void filled with tears, fear and nothingness.

The calls won't stop coming. Daybreak want me to do half an hour's flirting with Adrian Chiles. I get a grand for every “base” we can sneak past Ofcom – double, if Christine joins in.

I can't believe they gave my name. I mean, they didn't actually say I was the Oxford sex blogger, they left it unexplained. But obviously I was going to take the credit, which meant people knowing that I blogged about sex. I pre-emptively sent emails to my mother, a close circle of my friends, the Welsh-Mexican, and News International. I suppose you could say that by announcing my name, The Guardian really wrecked my anonymity.

It was my mother I was most worried about. She's a Catholic, but as it turns out, she's not one of those Catholics who believes in God or bans sex before marriage, and she will occasionally eat an KFC Zinger burger in a church on a Friday.

The conversation went a little like this:

“When you were having sex with all those men, were you wearing your rosary beads?”

“Of course I was, mother, I never take them off”. Though I occasionally use them for bondage.

“Oh, thank Christ. Will you be going on the One Show?”

“I don't know, they haven't called yet.”

She admitted to being a little disappointed.

My biggest fear was of all my exes reading my blog. Take it as read that certain names, locations and dates have been scrambled or fictionalised to protect the innocent. Equally, though, many names and events have been left exactly the same for the same reason. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight – it's a form of “double-bluff”, you might say.

Sven was one. But again, he seemed supportive.

“You know, when we were discussing Robin Williams films as I came, it wasn't Good Morning Vietnam I said. It was A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.”

“Sven, like I said, I changed things, alright? To make them less embarrassing?”

“Saying Good Morning Vietnam is still pretty embarrassing.”

“But A.I. was a colossal wank of a film.”

“I suppose you always were right about these things”, he sighed down the phone. We agreed to meet up later and watch a film like the old days, though recently the 3D glasses have really blocked the back-row fellatio. And I'd paid an extra two quid to see Toy Story in 3D, so I was keeping them on.

“Are you going to be on the One Show?”, he asked.

“I don't know”, I said. “I'll ask my agent.”

I had an agent by this point. This all started when the journalists started crowding around my house. The first time took me by surprise. A pizza delivery boy came to the door. “Pizza for you”, he said, then took my picture. Also, the pizza was cold, and tasted stale. Also, I hadn't ordered a pizza. I'm lactose intolerant, so that's the sort of thing I'd remember.

The next day, they were swarming. At least ten of them were stood on the pavement, and their abandoned cars littered the street. Some of them had crashed a bus into a tree in their hurry to get there. Some people had even slept there overnight, marking out their territory with a chalk outline. Also a lot of things were on fire, but that's the tabloids, eh? Frankly, it confused me. I shut the door.

Halfway through the X Factor there was a knock. “We need to talk.”

He handed me his card.

Nigel Smith

The N. Smith Agents Agency

Agent

“Over 20 years of experience”

“Wow. How many of you are there?”

“Oh, it's just me. It doesn't say industry experience. I'm twenty-one though, so it's technically correct. I've definitely been experiencing stuff, so that's watertight.” He slicked his hair back. “My credentials are unparalleled. Not Quite Incest, they've just released their Number One single -”

“A number one single!”

“As in, their single number one. First. That's watertight, you can't say I didn't say that. Battle of the Bands runner-up, though. And the psychic octopus -”

“The psychic octopus!”

“... a psychic octopus. Not that one. 65% success rate – still unexplainable! Makes a shitload from lookalike PAs though. Touch the octopus for a fiver! Kids love it.”

“Can you get me on the One Show?”

“My fee is eighty percent. Because I like you. It's double for octopi.” He grinned. "But you're no octopus."

We shook hands. “If only there was some way I could repay you. Other than in all the money I'm giving you, I mean.”

“Oh, I'm sure we could think of something.”

“Do you mean sex?”

“Yeah.” So we did.

---

Term starts again soon, so I'll be back in Oxford. Can you suggest anyone for me to sleep with? No beards or Australians. I'm not shy - send me some ideas! xo

Cumming Is Free (But Fucks Are Sacred)

Greetings, fellow sex-fanatics (“sexnatics”)! A little bird told me to expect more traffic today than normal. If you're new, you might be interested in The Best Of Belle De Le Oxford. Here's a selection of posts which are better than the other ones, which are also great:

I often told him that Welsh-Mexican was a weird mix of cultures. "Welsh-Mexican is a really weird mix of cultures", I'd tell him. "It's a really weird mix of cultures, Sven."

- in which I lose my sex-virginity for the first time!

He handed me a small plastic box, ‘How Babies Are Made: A Book On Tape’ (as read by Alan Carr, foreword by Boris Becker).

- in which I lose my abortion-virginity for the first time!

“It’s a consent form”, he replied. “It proves legally that you’re willing to do this.” I smiled. It’s not often you see a man with such a commitment to feminism.

- In which a nice man takes me to the Randolph

My first novel: “License to Shag: Shag to Kill – Return to Murder Cove" (A "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel)

- If you are a literary agent, PLEASE read this and make me famous

He was hung like a donkey, and stacked like a gorilla. I cast my eagle eyes upon him, and he stared back doggedly at my pussy and great tits. I went hoarse.

- My first blogged sex!

And there's a Facebook page and a Twitter feed.

Belle

xo

* * *

“Oh Alan”, I purred. “You were so good.”

“I'm just sorry I kept passing out like that”, said Alan. “It can be such a chore having it two feet long like I do, you know, it's hard to find the blood to keep it up!” A silence fell, and he brushed his foppish black quiff across his face, out of the way of his glasses.

“You know”, he said. “That was some top-class content you delivered there, really in keeping with the spirit of the medium. I'm starting to think you should charge for it.”

“Ask for money?”

“Maybe a subscription model. Say, a fiver for a month's unlimited access.”

“But that's disgusting!”

“How else do you expect to maintain such a high quality of output?”

This worried me for a moment. “I never thought of that”.

“Well, I once had a friend”, said Alan. “She started charging for it, and within a month, sure, she was having sex with 99% fewer people, but she'd almost doubled her profits.”

“She doubled them? How was she making money before?”

“Oh, you know. Writing “Lexus” on her tits. “Burger King”. “Domestos”. Sometimes different ones for different body parts, you'd get a different demographic for each. Public sector job ads on her forehead, for the missionaries. Tequila and Pot Noodle on the buttocks for the ass men. There's a whole branch of the advertising industry devoted to this sort of thing.”

“And that didn't work?”, I said.

“It did, for a while. But then there was an advertising recession. When you're earning a pound for every thousand views, can you afford to take a pay cut?”

Of course not.

“I suppose the problem of generating revenue from content is going to become an increasing concern in this internet-savvy something-for-nothing generation.”

“That's pretty smart.” He gazed at me. He was a much older man, of course, but if one squinted, he looked just a little like Harry Potter. But it was me who had Accio'd his heart – though only after he'd Charmed me, and we'd both had a lot of Potions!

“Hey Alan”, I thought suddenly. “Couldn't all of that stuff we've just said also be applied to newspapers? You know, about making money through -”

“No”, said Alan. “Don't be fucking stupid.”

I sighed. If sometimes I seem bipolar, it's because I am. Not clinically, I mean. What I mean is that sometimes I have good moods, but if you check back later, I might be having a bad one. I have more than one emotion, I suppose is what I'm trying to say. I'm pretty sure that's what “bipolar” means.

“Don't worry”. Alan read my thoughts. “People will know who you are soon. Soon you'll be a household name, like Brooke Magnanti.”

“Who?”

“Belle du Jour”.

“Who?”

“Billie Piper!”

“Oh!”

“Don't worry, I've got a trick up my sleeve.”

Oh, by then I'd told him I was The Oxford Sex Blogger. I probably should've mentioned that.

* * *

I'd been stood next to King's Cross station, next to one of their two McDonald's. In my spare time, I collect Happy Meals. Not the toys, just the meal. I still have a classic 1998 cheeseburger, still in its original wrappings: I can only imagine what it's worth now! I love collecting – my mum always said to never throw anything away, as it “might be worth something”. I was also holding 50 Evening Standards, to drive up their value. People were getting annoyed at my not sharing.

A baying crowd gathered. Two of them begged me for the TV listings. Another one implored that I read the sex column (the irony!). As I jammed myself into a phonebox to avoid a riot, I couldn't help feeling awkward. “You are a strong, confident woman”, I told myself, as my McNuggets started to congeal atop my stack of freesheets.

Suddenly, one man surged through the crowd, clouting any obstacles with his iPad. It was Alan, by the way, so I'm not going to describe him again. He dragged his finger across the screen, and flames shot out; he used it to jet over the angry mob, landing just in front of me. A press and a drag later, a laser fired from the screen, blowing the hinges from the phonebox. As he threw me onto his back and flew us away from the torches, pitchforks and waiting police, the sexual tension was clear.

“That's quite some iPad”, I said as we crossed Holborn. It was gold-plated, and embossed with the letters 'AR'.

“Thanks”, he said, setting us down with a somersault. “It's a special model. Built in Swiss army knife, doubles as the hoverboard from Back to the Future 2. Fully operational Gaydar. Contains the full digitised personality of Stephen Fry.”

“Can it make phonecalls?”

“No.”

“Why did you save me just then? Why now? Why me?”

“You cannot create scarcity without becoming isolated from this new networked world. Walking on might be the best decision in business terms, but it removes me from the way people the world over now connect with each other.”

I wondered what his cock looked like.

* * *

“Lentil?”, he offered.

“No thanks, I ate.”

He pounced on me again. In stature he was a Berliner, but where it mattered he was pure broadsheet. The liveblog of my heart updated. "10:51pm: Wow!"

I couldn't not tell him. The dam burst like a reservoir. “It was me, I did a sex blog and I called it Belle and nobody knows and -”

“It's alright! Stop. I know, I know.”

“How? How do you?”

“You think this golden iPad is just for flying, making kosher bacon and watching non-Flash videos?”

It was obvious. I could never have kept it hidden forever. As his brown eyes locked on mine, I let relief wash over me. A weight lifted. He was hard once more, and inside me in seconds. And so he beat on, balls against the current, borne back ceaselessly into my ass.

--

The Oxford Sex Blogger is nominated for Digital Journalist of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards

Decent Exposure

There are forty-one types of people. I thought about it for like, an hour. Of those, there are twenty-seven types of men. Verdana had green eyes and liked the Beatles; that's one type. Traditional Arabic had a beard; that's another type. I'm not going to list them all.

There are also eight types of houses. I counted them all as Zoe drove me to a mysterious man's house. We had to tell him I was a sexblogger, but we had to make it sound subtle. Publicity was waning – the buzz from Polish Grazia was drying up, and Rupert Murdoch wasn't returning my calls. M&S were sceptical about my offers to model their new burka range. "I have to stay anonymous!", I said. They said they weren't looking for any sexbloggers to model their Islamic religiouswear for them right now, but if they were, they'd let me know.

As we pulled up to his house, I was sure it was a type five – the kind with a chimney, and a door at the the front. So: me. Her. There. Stood. Knocked. Waited. The door opened.

“Alroite. Oi'm Seamus”, shaking my hand with a tight, confident grip. I said my name back. He hugged Zoe close, and led us into the sitting room. Seamus got Zoe and me a Coke, and poured himself a Diet Coke “on account o' me diabetes”. In my opinion, there's two types of diabetes. One where you have too much insulin, and one where you don't have enough. He had the second one, the one I like to call “second-type-diabetes”.

“So what brings ye round moy neck o' the woods?”, he asked.

“Oh, we were just passing by”, said Zoe.

“Really? Doing what?”

“Oh, just experiencing the culture and the sights of... the surrounding area”. That was the trouble with satnav. You just followed it to god-knows-where. We had no idea what this place was called. Had we taken the ferry? We didn't know. It was all hazy now.

Anyway, we had a job to do.

“So what do you think of recent developments in the blogosphere?”, Zoe asked the PR man.

“Y'know, soitis oi don't much follow them no more. There was a few interestin' sex blogs a whoile back, but... soyouknow, I ain't much been followin' them since the divorce.”

“Which interesting blogs?”, I jumped in.

“There were one or two university ones, some crafty loosebits talkin' about their boxes, but I stopped reading them when they made me think of Linda's. God almoighty, I loved her. She took everything from me. Everything!”

“Ah”, I said. “Were they good blogs, though?”

“Sometimes I think about ending it all.”

“Well-written? Commercially viable?”

This was clearly going to be harder than we thought. We could steer the conversation towards me all we liked, but he selfishly kept pushing it away. A bolt of thought shot between me and Zoe. We'd have to abandon all subtlety, here. A quick drinking contest later, we were willing to strike.

“So”, said Zoe, “whatdya both say if you foundout someone you know's a secret blogger?”

“HOWDA FOOK d'you know!”, yelled Seamus, unexpectedly. “Oi'd kept moy being Twenty Major a secret for feckin' years, you fockin' shoitehawk!”

“Not you!”, she shouted.

“You mean about you being WanderingScroibe? Don't worry, we all worked that out years ago. All that child abuse shoite don't mean a thing to me, it's foine.”

“YOU BASTARD!”, she screamed. “WHO ELSE KNOWS!”

She aimed a fist at his nose; Seamus stepped back, picked up a harp and swang it at her face. She ripped the pipe from his mouth, jabbed him in the chest with it, and knocked him flat. The pair wrestled, arms and feet flying in both directions. Seamus swang a sack of potatoes violently, but was distracted by a passing car bomb.

“And I'm Belle des Oxford!”, I said. Zoe kicked Seamus in the crotch. “Did you hear? I'm...”

“Come on.” Zoe grabbed my hand. “We're going”.

There are three kinds of nights. Those that are good. Those that are really good. Those that are bad. And then there are those in between, which aren't quite either. I'm not sure which this was.

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.