Logistics: MBJ

Back in the day, SP used to link me porn videos that he thought were good. We'd watch them together in the sense that we'd both watch them and talk about it over MSN, not in the sense that we were in the same room, as he's one of those people I know from a game, but have never met. Yes, it's pretty weird to link someone else your favourite porn videos, just add it to the growing list of weird things I do. I just thought it was fascinating getting an idea of what other people find attractive.

Anyway, one of the videos he linked me started with this guy sleeping in bed. He was woken up with a blow job, and it turned out that the person giving him the blow job was his wife's sister. He started by saying it was wrong, and he loved his wife, but she convinced him that it was OK with her sister, so they continued. #pornLogic

Adultery aside, SP mentioned that it'd be really awesome to wake up to something like that (with your partner, not your partner's sibling or anyone else), so I filed it away in my brain for future reference.

When the opportunity finally presented itself (remember, before I accidentally turned myself into a morning person, I was a diehard night owl), I remember lying in bed thinking, "How am I actually going to do this?" For starters, not everyone seems to sleep naked. Removing someone's pants while they're asleep without waking them is a lot harder than it sounds. If the person happens to sleep with boxers, or pants with the ... I don't know what they're called, but it seems like it's a hole for convenient peeing, then it does make it easier.

The second problem is that the other person may not be sleeping on their back, and if they're like me, sleep all curled up in the doona. Then there's the problem of trying to get into a good position, again without waking the person.

I know what you're thinking, isn't the entire point that the person does wake up? Well, according to SP, the good thing about it is waking up when you're already in the thick of things, not right at the start.

There's also the question of consent. It almost feels like it's on the border of rape, but even if the person consented beforehand, there's the question of whether they want to sleep. I love my sleep, and I would be pretty angry if someone woke me up for sex.

As I was lying there, I was thinking that sometimes there are little things in porn that are unrealistic, but realistic enough that you can suspend belief while watching it. I mean, sure, you suspend belief, because I'm sure there aren't that many pizza delivery men delivering pizzas with a side of extra sausage, or naughty nurses looking for alternate ways to help you get better. Maybe it's just me, and even with movies, if I'm not watching it for the sake of it purposely being bad, I struggle to enjoy it if there's something that seems improbable.

In the end, I started watching MrFodder sleep, like a creeper. I swear, all of my creepy actions have good intentions behind them!

Difficult Test

Guess what I was doing at 8:20 today? Standing outside a clinic to wait for it to open in order to get tested for STIs. Have I been cheating on MrMan5.5? Nope, I'm just finally being somewhat responsible for things I have done in the past.

Despite having sex with someone who was at the same time sleeping with others, I never thought to get myself checked. I didn't show any of the symptoms of any STIs, so I just assumed that I was clean. Well, I was wrong. Graham told me that you can often carry an STI without showing symptoms of it yourself, and spread it to your partner. So yeah, it is a bit late to get checked now, as you've probably guessed, MrMan5.5 and I have had sex already. But Graham told me that there are some STIs that can cause you to become infertile, which is also backed up by the CDC.

Chlamydia and gonorrhea are important preventable causes of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and infertility. Untreated, about 10-15% of women with chlamydia will develop PID. Chlamydia can also cause fallopian tube infection without any symptoms. PID and “silent” infection in the upper genital tract may cause permanent damage to the fallopian tubes, uterus, and surrounding tissues, which can lead to infertility.

So it's too late to protect MrMan5.5 from getting anything that I have, but I thought since we are getting married soon, I wanted him to know whether I had anything that may cause issues down the line if we ever want to have children. It only seems fair, right? Although I told him about this, and he said that it's not a big deal to him whether we have kids or not, but I still feel compelled to let him make an informed decision before we tie the knot.

If you don't want to hear about my adventure at the clinic, stop reading now!

The clinic doesn't take appointments, so they recommended getting in early to avoid having to wait for a long time. I went inside, filled in a form with my personal details, and then filled in a survey about my sexual and drug history. I feel like my responses were a bit misleading, as the questions only asked about the past 12 months. I have only had a single partner in the past 12 months, and haven't shown any symptoms of STIs. I also don't use any intravenous drugs. I was told that I was in a low-risk category, but I don't know if that's accurate given my history. Oh well.

After that, I went to see a triage nurse, who asked me a couple more questions and then it was back to the waiting room to be seen by a doctor. I do like their system for calling people though. To keep it somewhat anonymous, rather than calling people by their full names, they say name and month of birth, "e.g. Michael, born in June." I don't know what they do when there are two Michaels that were born in June, but I guess they sort that out if it ever happens, I imagine it's pretty unlikely though.

There were posters everywhere saying that it's likely that you'll need to give a urine sample, so don't pee unless the nurse or doctor tells you that you can. I peed before going to the clinic, so I was dry! I spent most of my time while waiting chugging water from the water cooler in the hopes that I'd be able to pee again soon.

I went in to see the doctor, and took the lower part of my clothes off, lay on a bed, put my feet in these stirrup things, and spread my legs. He put a speculum inside me and took a swab. If that sounds painful, it's because it is! He stuck something inside me, and opened it up like a pair of tongs. It doesn't help when they tell you to relax while doing it, because the pain makes it difficult to relax. Getting a pap smear was worse though. I told him that I didn't need to pee anytime soon, and so if he needed a urine sample, I'd probably be a while. He said that he wasn't going to ask me to give him one, as they only use it to test for chlamydia and gonorrhea, but after reading the CDC post, those are the two that I wanted to screen for! :( I think they may have done that when I got my pap smear done though, I don't remember, though I do remember the tests coming back negative.

After that, I went in for a blood test. The room they had for blood tests was really cool, it had a Where's Wally poster on the wall, so instead of watching the nurse draw blood from you, you focus on finding Wally. The whole thing was over faster than I thought. I didn't manage to find Wally though.

Then it was all over! Was pretty quick, I think I was out of there in 30 minutes. Now that I've actually done it, I'm not entirely sure what I was so afraid of. Well, that's not entirely true, I know what I was afraid of, I was afraid of a positive result coming back. But now I'd rather take comfort in the truth, than have this worry come up every now and again. It's happened a few times, that people around me have talked about getting tested, and each time I thought to myself that I should really go, but I never manage to push myself into doing it. I'm glad I have though. Positive or negative, I am going to deal with the consequences of my actions.

Oh, and if you are thinking of going, here are some tips that a friend told me:

• Go a little bit after they just open, so you don't have to wait as long
• Drink water before you go, so that you can pee if you need to
• If you find it difficult to talk to the doctor about personal things, go into "clinician mode" and pretend that you are talking about someone else, such as a close friend.
• Bring something to do, because even if you do manage to go at a good time, it's likely that you'll still have to wait
• The one I went to was free, so if you are short on money, it is worth Googling to see what options you have in your area. They also didn't ask me to verify any of the details that I gave them, so perhaps if you are worried about being "in the system" it might be worth checking out one of these free clinics. The nurses and the doctor were really nice, there was no judgement about anything - I guess they've seen a lot. 

They told me that they will call me if anything comes back positive, but otherwise, I will have to call them to find out my results, which will be available in a week. I don't think I've ever been this nervous about getting test results before.

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I forgot to post something new that I learned yesterday, even though I did learn something, so I will do two today.

There is a website called FlyLady.net that aims to teach you how to keep a better home (ignoring the colour scheme, I am told that it can be used by someone of any gender).

The address of Monaco station is damn hard to Google for, but here it is in Google maps. ~_~

(NSFW) Reflection in the Lake

This post is rated R, for sexual content, and possibly TMI if you tend to visualise things and don't really want the image of me and MrMan5.5 having sex, so read at your own peril!
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Had a bit of a sombre Graham moment today. Is being attracted to someone who is attracted to you narcissistic?

So after that post about getting myself in the mood for sex more often, I went and watched a heap of porn, and didn't masturbate or anything. This took an unbelievable amount of self-restraint, but it was for a good cause! The result being, when MrMan5.5 was ready for some bedroom gymnastics, I was incredibly aroused. I don't think I've ever been that wet in my life - I guess that's a good argument for delayed gratification increasing the pleasure later.

Usually we like to play a bit beforehand, but once he felt how wet I was, he pushed himself inside me right away. It felt like he couldn't control himself and he just had to have me right then. That was such a turn on for me. Afterwards, I thought maybe it's a bit narcissistic, to be aroused by someone being turned on by you.

It does feel really nice to be externally validated, like when people praise you. Sometimes I feel the need to be validated by strangers on the Internet, because I know that they don't know me, so if they do say something nice about me, it's because I did something well, and not because of our past history together. I'll admit to occasionally looking at my Dota 2 profile to look at how many commendations I have. (You can commend people that you play with, which just adds to a number on their profile page, though they can't see who commended them, or what note you left, if you chose to leave a note.)

Considering I've spent a lot of my life being praised for intelligence, it feels good to find someone who finds another aspect of me attractive, especially given that in high school, I had a lot of issues with skin and weight, and just accepting physical appearance in general. That's probably like really attractive people wanting to find someone who can see their inner beauty, or people who are rich wanting to find someone who just isn't attracted to their money, so I can't say that it's a deep revelation.

Still, the whole narcissism thing made me think about some of the stuff I have done in the past. With Charmeleon, I went through a phase of wanting to have sex in public places (though only at night, and only at places where children were unlikely to be), and I thought maybe there was an exhibitionist inside me trying to escape. I don't know if that's true, but the excitement of maybe getting caught, and the potential case where someone who caught us might want to join us just made the whole experience more thrilling. We didn't end up doing it anywhere exciting though, once on the beach, once on the roof of his house, once in a park (although if you looked, you would have just thought I was sitting on his lap, at least, I hope so anyway).

I'm starting to think maybe I am an exhibitionist. I really like the idea of someone else watching us have sex, although similar to the rape fantasy, I'm not entirely sure I actually want it to happen, or if I just want to roleplay something like it. I don't know how you could roleplay this though, as there needs to be a third person. I read a horrible reddit thread where someone agreed to let a female friend of her boyfriend watch them have sex over Skype. When her boyfriend finally reached orgasm, he shouted the name of the person on Skype instead of his girlfriend. The friend later texted her to say, "I'm sorry...", and added another text, "... that your boyfriend thinks of me during sex with you." And then it turns out she took screenshots of them having sex. I don't really want to open our relationship up to that kind of complicated situation. I don't want one of our friends to watch us, and I don't trust a stranger to watch us either.

Wow, huge tangent. Back to the Graham-esque narcissism pondering. I think people are inherently attracted to themselves, or at least some aspect of themselves. Which in turn makes them attracted to people who are like themselves - even if it's only as friends. I feel like all of my closest friends are like certain aspects of me. But similar to the fate of Narcissus, I don't know if that kind of attraction is good for a long-lasting monogamous relationship. If you spent all day admiring yourself, you would never hear dissenting opinions, so all of your thoughts would be echoed back at you, and would probably cause you to become one of those close-minded, fanatical crazies. Which might be OK if you two isolate yourselves to some remote part of the planet, but for most people, that's not a realistic possibility, and you'll have to integrate into society. I guess this is how people like the wife in Amy's Baking Company can delude themselves into thinking that they're an amazing chef.

When talking to our marriage celebrant about our relationship history, one of the things she made me realise that I love about MrMan5.5 is that he keeps me grounded. If there's something that I believe that he thinks is ridiculous, he will tell me (although sometimes he has to pick his battles, because there are some things that I get quite prickly about). This isn't a super sexy trait, but it's so important to me, because I want to keep improving, so I'm glad he does it. I want to avoid becoming deluded about something, if possible. No Narcissusfodder please. That's an open invitation, by the way. If you think there's something that I believe in, that you think is completely ridiculous, please let me know and hopefully we can have an intelligent discussion about it (GP: yes, I did get your email reply to my blog post about parents making their children leave LoL games, and Ephant, I also saw your reply. Replying to both of these has been on my to-do list!). I may not change my mind, but I would like to at least be informed of other points of view.

ADIDAS.... not

I wrote about having a lower libido earlier, and I've been thinking a lot about the cause of it. I know I tend to think a lot more about sex when I'm bored, and to be honest, I have very little time left these days to be bored. Not because I'm super popular, but there's always one more Dota 2 game that I could fit in, or one more page of Reddit posts to read. Now I have these blog posts to write in my down time, and I have a heap of Steam games that I need to finish. Compared to when I was at my most sexually active, which was while I was at uni. I had tons of free time, and even though I had a lot to do (assignments), I had the freedom to procrastinate, and that gave me plenty of time to daydream about sex.

I've been reading a lot of posts on Reddit from men who feel tricked that their spouse appeared to be a nymphomaniac before marriage/kids, and is now completely uninterested in sex. MrMan5.5 and I did hit a rough patch about a year or so ago, but I've been working a lot harder on it. However, we are soon to be married, and who knows what will happen after that?

The subreddit I was browsing tends to have a mantra about how to handle a dead bedroom - leave, deal with it, or cheat. Fortunately, I do not think MrMan5.5 is in danger of cheating or leaving at the moment, which means the only option remaining is to deal with it. The thought of him suffering in silence makes me feel really sad. And he'll probably grow to resent me. There was a guy who kept a spreadsheet recording all of the times he asked his wife for sex, and her response, along with her excuse when she said no. I don't want MrMan5.5 to have to resort to that.

Something I've been trialing is trying to get myself to watch more porn. I know this sounds like a stealth brag, and I don't mean it to, but I have barely needed to watch porn since moving out with MrMan5.5. Usually if I do it, it's because I can't sleep. Perhaps that's also one of the causes of my low libido - not that I was watching lots of porn while living with my parents and with my computer in the same room as my brother's computer. I was reading more erotic literature back then though.

It has definitely helped, in fact, MrMan5.5 ended up turning me down once, and now I know how he feels when I tell him that now isn't a good time. It is going to require a conscious effort to maintain this though, as I can already feel the effects wearing off since the last time I binge watched some porn. I'm also a bit worried about the porn desensitisation effect, as even last time, there was a lot of stuff I was watching that I got really bored with, which rarely happened in the past. Maybe the quality has gone downhill since I last tried though. But I do want to stick with YouPorn, since they are sponsoring a Dota 2 team, so I want to give them my advertising cents. I will just need to get better at finding the decent videos.

Since this has just started, I can't really report on how successful it has been, but I am open to ideas from other people about different things I could do. This is my year of proactive problem solving, so I want to address this thing before it gets so bad that end up sucking some random woman's juices off MrMan5.5's dick.

Swinging a Club

Taking a break from the gratitude - I'll finish it, I promise! Only 20 days in and I'm already struggling with writer's block. ~_~

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20 days in, and 20 minutes to go before my bedtime. Let's see if I can stream of consciousness my way into a long enough post. Here we go!

MrMan5.5 was recently admitted into hospital and had to receive surgery. Part of his recovery process meant that he was not to strain himself, which included reduced bedroom activities. Since moving in together, I've noticed that my libido has dropped - possibly because mine has always been lower than his, so essentially, anytime I wanted sex, I could have it (blah blah blah, riding the cock carousel, go away Red Pillers). There wasn't really the same level of anticipation as there was before we saw each other all the time. I've noticed that whenever MrMan5.5 is away for an extended period of time, my libido climbs. So right now, it's something I'm thinking about a lot, which sucks, because it's not something that I can fulfill right now. Scumbag hormones. :(

I went to bed a couple of days ago, and I must have had the conversation I had with a friend on my mind when I fell asleep because I remember dreaming about her and another friend of mine. Naked. They were having sex, and I was turned on by watching them. Part of me wanted to join in, but it just felt wrong, like I felt MrMan5.5 waiting for me, and I didn't want to disappoint him.

I've mentioned by rule about the third person being a stranger before, but with these two, it felt so natural. Is that strange? Is there an exception to the third person rule, for instance, if you've already had sex with the other person, then your partner already knows that you've compared the two, and decided that your partner is better? Or how about if it's someone that the both of you are attracted to? Is this how people become swingers?

At the same time, I feel like it's too late in life to begin something like this. It might sound really prudish, but if we end up having children, I would not want them to know that this is the kind of lifestyle that we lead. I don't even want to know about what my parents might have gotten up to before I was born. I think this is the kind of thing that can end up scarring your children for life.

I'm actually really curious now, how you join this mysterious world. I imagine it's some sort of invite-only club, and the two of you have to be fairly attractive in order to join. Maybe I could start some sort of ugly people's swingers club. But then what if people show up, and aren't interested in having sex with anyone else at the party? Although, there is that whole secretly wanting to have sex with people you know. So what if I make it a neighbourhood swingers club instead? While all the children are off at camp, you can meet up, and flirt with the lady that always brings lamingtons to the school bake. It'd definitely make those neighbourhood watch meetings a lot more interesting.

Although there was that episode of CSI, where they did have a neighbourhood swingers club, and it turned out that the daughter of one of the couples had started to get involved with one of the older men, and she ended up killing her mother out of jealousy. So yeah.... might want to steer clear of that one. Again, no children should be harmed in the making of my swingers club.

Oh! How about a roleplayers swingers club? It'd be really fun for everyone to get into character, like a murder mystery night, except instead of trying to work out who the killer is, you find someone (or someones) that you would like to spend the night with. You can't break character, even during the sex.

"Oh, Constable Thomas. Thank you for rescuing my puppy from the notorious thief Marceux. Please let me open my legs for you, and allow you to take your pleasure."

"Madame Winter, it was my pleasure. And it shall be my pleasure to watch your soft bosom sigh as I show you what the true force of the Nottingham constabulary can do."

This seems like the kind of stuff that I'd only be able to do if I was really rich, as I imagine you'd need a fancy Victorian house to be able to pull it off properly. Oh well, I can still dream.

Love and Sex and Magic

I find UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension - warning, link to TV tropes) absolutely fascinating. I don't know why, but watching two people that you know try to hold back their feelings for each other is so interesting to me. Obviously if I knew there was nothing stopping them from being together, I'd try and help them out, I'm not that cruel, but in the situations I've observed, there has always been some sort of obstacle in the way.

But contrived UST in TV shows just really annoys me, usually related to the crappy trope Can't Have Sex Ever. Note: spoilers for the following TV series ahead:

• Dark Angel
• Legend of the Seeker / Sword of Truth books (kinda)
• Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

HERE

IS

YOUR

CHANCE

TO

AVOID

THE

SPOILERS

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So, in Dark Angel, there is UST between Max and Logan for a very long time. A lot of it seems to be because Max is too interested in being a detached badass, because if I recall correctly, Logan falls for her pretty quickly, though he hides it, of course. Then there's also the fact that he's in a wheelchair, so he can't physically have sex with her anyway. Eventually, they do fall for each other, and Logan's paralysis is cured, only for Max to be infected with a very specific virus that will cause Logan to die if they ever touch each other. There is one episode where Max finds a temporary cure for the virus, which would mean they can finally have sex, but too many other things happen in the episode, and their window of opportunity closes.

In Legend of the Seeker, Kahlan is a Confessor, which means she has the power to "confess" someone, which would make them entirely devoted to her and do whatever she wants them to do. Which sounds awesome except for the part where she can't have sex with someone, because during that moment of ecstasy, she'll lose control of her powers, and confess her partner, which would turn him into a mindless slave. For a majority of the series, Richard is in love with her, and she with him, but they can never be together because Richard has an important role to play in the ongoing war, and if she confesses him, life as they know it will be doomed.

Then in Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel is a vampire with a soul, which means despite being a vampire, he is a good guy, and doesn't want to just go around killing people and sucking their blood. However, the curse that gave him the soul has a catch to it - if he ever experiences a moment of perfect happiness, he will lose his soul and go back to being Angelus, the bad guy vampire he was for many years before being cursed by gypsies. Buffy, who is a vampire slayer, obviously falls for the good guy vampire (good job there, buddy) and he falls for her. They know they shouldn't be together, and Giles looks condescendingly on their relationship, but they do it anyway. Not knowing about the curse, they both have sex, only for Angel to wake up and be evil, and do a lot of bad things. Buffy ends up killing him, but he comes back, only he has his soul again, and now they can never be together ever again in case he goes back to being evil.

What really annoys me with this trope is that it equates love to sex. A lot of the time, the characters bemoan that they can't love each other, when what they really mean is that they can't have sex with each other. For me, love involves things like being happy when the other person is around. Being willing to do things or sacrifice things because the other person needs you to. Caring about them, and what happens to them. I feel that way about my family, but I definitely don't want to sleep with any of them! I feel that way about some of my friends, and again, don't need to have sex with them for me to feel that way.

I understand that for most monogamous relationships, sex is tied in, because you tend to only have sex with your significant other, but I personally have the view that you can love someone even if they need to get their needs fulfilled elsewhere. And again to the topic of cancer, if I had breast cancer, and had to get them both removed, and maybe I started to get plague sores and would look really ugly, I would hope that MrMan5.5 could still love me and want to be with me, despite the fact that the sight of me would possibly be a horrible boner killer. I would if the situation were reversed. Well, I can easily say that now because it hasn't happened, but I would like to think that I would.

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But back to regular UST, I wonder if the people who are experiencing it know about it. I think it's really hard to tell if someone has feelings for you, because you're too close to the situation. It's a lot easier for an outside party to pick up on the signs. So if they don't know about it, should I tell them? A part of me doesn't want to, because then I miss out on my live action soap opera, and then there's the fact that the UST is part of the fun. I just really like that nervous feeling you get when you're around someone that you like, but they don't know about it. Plus, I am trying harder to stay out of other people's business!

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If you are curious about what happens in those three shows: Max and Logan's relationship dies to the show being cancelled. Richard and Kahlan get together, and they realise her powers don't work on him because he's already in love with her. Angel leaves Buffy and Sunnydale behind and moves to Los Angeles.

Planetary Alignment

Someone posted on Reddit about how she found out her boyfriend regularly searches for a friend of hers on Facebook, and it turned out it was because he likes to masturbate to photos of her friend. A lot of the replies basically said that it was a pretty normal thing.

• what if you know them?

  9:04 PM
• how can you look at them normally?

  9:04 PM
• pretty damn easily

  9:04 PM
• ok this may be a shocker

  9:04 PM
• but I've jerked to most females I know

  9:04 PM
• and almost every guy is the same

  9:05 PM
• • for me it's a 1 or a 0

    9:11 PM
  • and if it's spank bank stuff

    9:11 PM
  • maybe 90% of people are 1

    9:11 PM

I'm told that sometimes, if you have someone on the mind, the only way to get them off your mind is to use them in that way. It just seems really odd to me. I don't know if I'm just picky, but for someone to be in my spank bank, they have to pass a really rigorous test!

Be attractive to me

I think this one is a bit of a given, as you are fantasizing about them in a sexual way, and if you don't find them attractive, well, then you'd better hope you don't develop RSI.

Cannot be in a relationship with one of my friends, or have been in one in the past

This one is more to do with the girl code, and I would feel really guilty picturing someone's partner in a sexual way, even more so masturbating to them. Interestingly, if someone who I may have thought about in the past starts to date one of my friends, then they just fade off my radar. 

Must be intellectually stimulating

This one is probably a bit weird, because it's not like there is imaginary cuddling after the imaginary sex, but I just can't imagine sex with someone who I'm not able to talk to. For instance, there's a guy I met a few months ago, who is definitely physically attractive to me (except for the fact that he has a tattoo on one arm, but not the other, so he's asymmetrical (why would you ruin perfection like that?!)), but even if I try as hard as I can, I just can't imagine him in a sexual way. We only have one mutual friend (a male), and so I'm pretty sure he hasn't dated anyone I know. I think the reason why is because the only thing he has ever said to me was, "You were a poker dealer? That's cool." Although looking at his Facebook page, it turns out that he also worked at the same casino, so maybe we do have more to talk about with each other than I thought. And he's a pretty big nerd. Hmmm, brb...

Can't be someone I hate

Another self-explanatory one. Although I find it strange that some guys I have asked said that they could have sex with someone they hated. Personally, I feel like sexy time is happy time, and it shouldn't be interrupted by angry thoughts caused by someone you hate. Oddly, I think I could have sex with someone who hated me. Maybe that's part of my people pleaser personality, and that maybe if I slept with them, they might like me more?

There are very few guys that I know that I haven't already slept with who I fantasize about. The main reason is, these are people that I see, and I find it very hard to look them in the eyes knowing that I pictured them naked with my mouth around their cock not too long ago. For me, it doesn't just end after orgasm. There is that guilty memory of what I just did which lingers after it's over. If I end up seeing that person not long afterwards, then I feel a compulsion to apologise, but can't bring myself to do it because it would admit that I had used them as a sexual object, which seems like a horrible thing to do.

It's hard for me to just ignore the fact that the person is my friend. I feel like I am violating them by using them without their consent like that. I think I could probably do it if I had their consent, but then that brings the problem of getting that consent in the first place. "Hi, I find you attractive, and you are not currently dating, nor have not dated, a friend of mine. Plus, I also think you are intellectually stimulating and I don't hate you. However, I am in a serious relationship, and I'd never actually have sex with you, but are you OK with the idea that at some point in the future, I would like to masturbate to you?" Yeah... I can't imagine anyone wouldn't find that creepy, much less than agree to it.

Overall, I find it so much easier to just go online, find a picture or video that some random you'll never meet has uploaded and get your rocks off without having to ever worry about any rules or post-orgasm awkwardness.

The Third Person Must Be a Stranger

Nate: A threesome?
Dan: Oh yeah. Just me, Olivia (his gf), Vanessa (his best friend), two girls, four boobs, one Dan Humphrey.
Nate: Aw.
Dan: How awesome am I?
Nate: How stupid can you be?
Dan: What?
Nate: Buddy. Okay, I know things. I've been to Europe. Chuck Bass is my best friend. Alright, the third person is supposed to be a stranger.
Dan: The fact that it was Vanessa is what made it so fun.
Nate: Okay, the problem is that during a threesome there's always a twosome and a onesome going on.
Dan: You know what? The onesome was not so bad.
Nate: Okay, you may have enjoyed the show. But let's face it Vanessa is very vocal. It couldn't have been easy for Olivia to hear all that.
Dan: You know what, Olivia was fine. We talked the next morning. And so was Vanessa. I mean I haven't really seen her much, but I'm sure she is. Why are you being such a buzzkill?
Nate: Because you're lucky to have both of them in your life.
- Gossip Girl: The Last Days of Disco Stick

I was reading some old blog posts, and came across the saga of "That Guy", which I feel is one of the biggest mistakes I have made so far in my life. TL;DR: Wanted sex  one day and Charmeleon was unavailable, suggested meeting up for sex with one of my guildmates from WoW. We did. Then we did again. Then he wanted to, but I wanted to study, so I said no, but he kept insisting. So I decided I didn't want to see him anymore, and he said:

(sic) Alright, lol? okay.. see you like to make your insignificant life soo out there. and bitch to the open, i think in my defense i should only reply to your blog so others can read, alright. 

for starters I’ve only ever read ur blog twice, coz i know you love to bitch about people and life after certain events like all myspace/blog kiddies (100% predictable of course) 

Now. i’ve never called you. so why lie to make this much more of an issue to dramatize ur pathetic low life? i only messaged you twice to ask why u blocked me so i really dont understand why you make such bullshit up… So yes, i do regret even knowing you. even having sex with you on the first meetings i ever met you, well for me the experience was very daunting. you wondered why i couldn’t climax, that’s because it was like having sex with the grand canyon. 

Alright. soo now that we’ve established your a self righteous bitch unable to face a problem and a delusional moron with 0 life experiences as so expressed from her 1 of (I’m sure many, in her boring ramblings of her depressing thoughts aka “blogs”  ) shit analogies , and a shit root and a slut lol.. i think i will finally decide to not even initiate ur pathetic existence in this world and will forever regret knowing you. 

my 2cents.

So... Very harsh, but not entirely undeserved. Maybe I gave the impression that it was an ongoing thing, like I had with Charmeleon, and I wasn't entirely clear that I didn't want to see him again - which is highly likely, given how much I hated being direct back then (and still do). Thinking back, I realised it was a really risky thing to do. Although "That Guy" wasn't a complete stranger (he was a friend of a friend of one of my cousins), getting into a car, and then sleeping with someone you've never met before probably isn't a good idea!

In retrospect, that was one of the moments I would like to redo if I went back in time. I don't think it has affected me very much, but it was cruel of me to do that to someone as if they had no feelings. Sometimes it makes me feel pretty sick that I could do that.

Someone at work asked why I didn't just ask one of my male friends at uni? For one, it's a heap safer in the sense that I will have had some time to scope out whether they're an axe murderer or not (although with some people, you can't tell...). The thought had crossed my mind, but I decided against it for a few reasons.

At the time, I still lived with my family, and I didn't really think they'd be happy with me bringing a stranger to our house. My mum doesn't even like it when we invite over people we know really well! We could have done what I did with AG, was just do it in his car, or at his house - or, and I feel really bad about this one, at the house he was house-sitting (I really hope he washed the sheets afterwards =/). However, I barely knew anyone who had their own car, much less someone who had moved out of home. The people who did fill those criteria were mostly people who were already in a relationship, so they were definitely off-limits.

There was also the problem of my lack of confidence. I didn't think anybody would say yes. I asked someone at work who I also happened to go to uni with, and  he said he would have said no. I'm not even looking anymore, but even that felt a bit crushing - I don't think I could have handled a real rejection.

Most importantly, I had a great fear of ruining a friendship. It's kinda like snoring - how can you really know whether you snore or not?  How can you know if you're good in bed or not? You can ask your partner, but they have a huge motivation to lie to you, which is why you hear women saying, "He wasn't very big anyway" after a relationship has ended, but who don't complain during the course of the relationship itself. Sometimes it's just a spiteful insult, but I think sometimes it's true. For all I know, I could be the grandest of all canyons, but I can never find out as I will have nothing to compare with (and if I couldn't work up the courage to ask someone I knew to have sex with me, I would definitely not have enough courage to ask someone I know to have sex with me and then sex with lots of other girls to compare).

When it's just a throwaway relationship that you haven't spent time building up, then there is no fear that the person you're sleeping with might not enjoy it, and so even if it is bad (from either person's point of view), you haven't really lost anything. However, if it is a friend, then there is the potential that the friendship will never be the same - especially if you are a coward like me and struggle to confront someone directly.

I've never been in a threesome, but for the reason above, I feel like I should stick closely to the Gossip Girl rule: The third person is supposed to be a stranger. We've talked about possibly asking people we know, and I think it was mostly decided that it would be weird. Nate's point from the quote, about it being a twosome and a onesome is another great one, as at the end of the day, we are going to cuddle together in bed and go to sleep, while whoever the other person is gets packed onto a train for a lonely trip home. Would anyone want to do that?

I guess ideally, to be fair, you'd have two couples, and one really strong bed, but then it's just partner swapping or in the worst case, you end up with a threesome and a onesome. Or a twosome and two onesomes. I wonder if that's how people get into cuckolding. Or bukakke.

The only other solution seems to be to pay someone to join you, but I'm really worried about diseases. I think they're meant to tell you whether they have something or not, but I don't know if you can ever really know for sure. Though the same is true for your friends. Do you all go and get tested together and open the results together? That seems like something that'd kill the mood pretty quickly. Plus, anyone can print out some paper and put it in an envelope. I've never actually been tested, do the results even come in an envelope? Maybe they just email it these days.

There must be an app for this kind of thing...

FX Appeal

Someone on Reddit asked if anyone who had made a post (with naked/revealing pics) on r/gonewild had lived to regret their decision, and this particular comment, and I_KeepsItReal's reply caught my interest.

(In case comments are deleted or the thread dies.)

I think it was a couple of weeks ago when I had a dream that I had had sex with my manager. I felt guilty at the time, but then I realised it was probably like in Scrubs when Turk dreamt about Elliot (NSFW). Only it won't go away. It's like a switch has been flipped, I barely noticed him before and things were really cool between us, like friends. But now when I see him, I can't help but think, "I dreamt about having sex with you." It's not that bad, since we are on different projects at the moment, so I barely talk to him at work except about graduate program related things.

Except when there was a team movie night last Thursday, and we went for a drink after the movie (I only tagged along because I felt bad for the guy who organised the movie night, as only the 3 of us went). The other guy chugged down two beers, then his wife called him and he had to leave. So it left the two of us. Even though I was slowly drinking my one drink, I could feel my mind getting slower and slower and I was saying things I probably wouldn't have said normally. I was almost about to tell him about the dream when I finished my drink and I think the rational part of my mind finally won control and told me it was time to go home.

Now that I'm thinking clearly, I can see no benefit in telling him - unless my ultimate goal is to make things so awkward that I get kicked out of my team and have to try and find another role for when the graduate program ends. Which I can assure you it is not. But that does not change the fact that some days, I can't even look at him in the eye without being worried that he can read my mind and know why I feel so embarrassed.

I_KeepsItReal says that masturbating is a healthy way to cope with an infatuation. But it just doesn't seem right to do it thinking of my boss. Partly because I would feel bad as I love MrMan5.5. I don't believe that we can only think of each other while masturbating, but the fact that it's someone I actually know and not a video of a stranger on the Internet just makes it seem more real, and ups the guilt-factor.

The other part is the concern that it might get worse. Dreams happen by accident (well, sub-conscious mind, etc., etc.) - it's not like I actively made myself dream about him. If I tried to do it on purpose, then I might go from thinking I dreamt about him when I see him to the constant reminder that I fantasised about him while pleasuring myself.

I'm slowly adding to my list of reasons I regret choosing this team. Since Person is so great at sucking the sexual energy out of everything, I'm almost certain this would never have happened when I was in his team. But I console myself with the thought that I have learnt far more in 4 months in FX than I learnt in 6 months in Person's team.

Force Choke

A break from DotA related things today, as I realised there might be a bit of information overload. This is an O.5 post, bordering on R, so read at your peril! For my DotA players in training, try to focus on picking a role, and learning a few heroes who can perform that role.

Yesterday (4 days ago now, as I stopped writing mid-post) I learned that a penis is actually partly spongy, courtesy of Very Demotivational Posters and Wikipedia. It makes sense, as, if hentai is to be believed, there must be some way for guys to hide something that can grow to the size of an adult human's arm in teenage boy gym shorts. I remember watching something linked to me years ago where the premise was this guy was the "Chosen One" because his penis could grow to accommodate whatever girl was trying to please him. There was a club at the school that controlled the school, and members of the club could do whatever they wanted. The head of the club was this girl who had to give this new guy a blow job to be promoted to something else, but failed, because his penis was too big. So they're afraid he was the one spoken of in prophecies who would bring down the club with his huge dick, and so they send all of their members to try and get him to orgasm, but they all fail as he pleasures them too well and they fall over in exhaustion. I'm sure the plot was better than that, but I don't remember it that well.

One particular scene sticks in my head though, they're in a classroom when three of the girls try to seduce this guy. They grab him and throw him against a wall. One of the girls begins to suck his cock, and he starts to moan. But as she continues, she starts to struggle as he's getting bigger and bigger. Eventually, she starts choking, and she can't take it anymore, so she stops.

At first, I just passed it off as "those crazy Japanese, what will they think of next?" as nothing like that would ever happen in real life. I don't think I've ever seen a form-matching penis, but I have watched a lot more porn since then, and only now that I've started to think about it, it does happen quite a lot. Well, by a lot, I mean in the subset of porn that I enjoy watching the most - porn that focuses mainly on blowjobs (although it leaves me open to my nemesis: a2m). On a side note, after this picture Julian linked, I feel quite proud that I think I'm still what would be considered vanilla despite being spending as much time on the Internet as I do. On a side note of that side note, despite what I said about wanting to make people feel more comfortable about their fetishes, I think I am going to stop myself from ever asking someone what their fetish is. I was just thinking, that despite the fact that Graham and I share quite a lot on this topic, and do a lot of discussing, I don't want to know what his fetish is.

I mean, what if his fetish is having short, Asian girls come up to him saying that they're sick of being unsatisfied by Asian dicks, and they want him to show them what a real man is like, when he pulls out his gatling gun-sized penis and later they conquer China together. Now that I think about it, he seems to like collecting short, Asian, female friends, and what if during our entire friendship, he was just subconsciously planting the idea in our heads - and isn't the fact that I just thought of this proof of his scheme?! So now this is what I'll think of when I think of Graham, and not only that, if I ever see him with a short, Asian female, I'll wonder whether he genuinely wants them as a friend, or if he is just biding his time. This stuff can ruin friendships!

Back to the original topic, I've seen a few videos where you look at how big the guy is, and you think there is no way he could fit in her mouth, but she manages somehow. Only she only bobs down twice, and has to go back to licking again. Then she'll try again, and she might last a bit longer this time, but still not very long. Then later, the guy will push her head down, and you can tell she's struggling, because now she sounds like she's choking. I wonder if they have to sign waivers or something - occupational hazard: large, erect penises. It's also not like she can call out a safe word if she's in trouble or something, because, well, for one, it's rude to talk with your mouth full. It seems dangerous, there was one video I was watching where the girl seemed to be in tears, and I couldn't keep watching as I was starting to get worried it'd turn into a snuff film.

On the other hand, I have great respect for the girls who are able to follow through. I'm envious of the level of self-control they seem to have. Although RH assured me that unless I had just eaten a lot of food, deep throating will at worst cause dry-retching, if I feel even slightly like I'm going to throw up, I have to stop. I don't know how my mum expected me to become a doctor, as I have such a weak stomach. I actually started feeling queasy when Albert was talking about finding hairs in your food.

I wonder if I should add vomiting to my grad bio in my list of skills. My manager wants me to add all these skills that I really don't think I have, and after Albert's failed stint as a Java developer, I'm afraid of ending up somewhere where they think I'm able to do stuff that I can't.

Whoa, this post jumped around a lot. I guess that is what happens when you try to continue the train of thought from 4 days ago... Sorry everyone for the mess!

Nigel's Words

Ah, I realised that some people might not have read about the inverted penis thing (don't google it...). One of my cousin's friends called me an inverted penis because I'm a girl, but I like to do "guy things", like gaming - i.e. "girl on the outside, guy on the inside". Though nothing to do with the term (though it fits the meaning in a way), MrMan5.5 tells me that when they do sex change operations on guys, they take the penis, and turn it inside out to make it into a vagina. Why they couldn't use the word "tomboy" or something similar, I'll never understand.

So, as you might have guessed, I gave up on NaNo again this year. Well, not gave up so much as decided to take the pressure off. I know it's not really the point, but I thought maybe I could write the story in my own time. I've just been so pressured at work to finish the project I'm on before I go on leave (being the only Java developer on the team kinda sucks), that by the time I get home, I just want to relax. It's an excuse, I know.

This blog post stemmed from my last one, and I think it might cause some trouble at home, but I'm writing it anyway!

A while ago, a friend and I were standing outside the train station, and we were discussing average penis size. He casually slid in the fact that he was in the top something% based on penis size (don't know if he brought up the topic just to brag) - maybe it was 2 or 3 standard deviations above the mean, but basically he was saying he was big. He told me how big, but I forgot, because inches don't mean anything to me, and so there was no context for me to remember.

Then another friend of mine was telling me that her partner, who I also know, is also quite big. Now, when I see either of them, I wonder just how big. (This line-between-friends thing seems to be a bit of a theme lately.)

I don't even understand why though. Maybe it's cultural brainwashing, or something, but so many people say that size doesn't really matter, so it doesn't make sense. What makes even less sense is that I've been there, and done that, and it wasn't better (although, I have to put my usual small sample size disclaimer here).

AG was also pretty high on the scale - though I didn't know it at the time, given my only other source of comparison came from porn, which is pretty biased in terms of size. So sex hurt at the start pretty much every single time, and I thought that was normal. I mean, if you think about it, it would explain why girls in porn movies are always making so much noise. It was a weird mixture of pleasure and pain, and I think there was a bit of a case of the mind only remembering the good parts, which was why I kept going back. Then, during one of the times we "broke up", I mentioned to him that my parents would like it if  I were with an Asian guy (LOL), and he said to me that I should make the most of him while I could, because Asian guys would never be able to compete...

I would like to say that it was a moment of enlightenment for me, and that I realised at that point that sex didn't have to feel like someone was trying to put a telephone pole into your ass (I say ass here so both genders can understand!), but I didn't, and continued to think that that was just how it was. It wasn't until many years later that Charmeleon helped me realise that it doesn't have to be that way.

I think it's way better when it doesn't hurt at the start, so I really don't understand the fascination. Maybe it's just curiosity, like trying to find out whether there are non-porn star guys who have porn star penises. Or maybe to prove that porn stars don't get penis enlargement surgery.

Apparently the French did a study to find out the average penis size of French men in order to try to make everyone feel better, but if the average is the middle, then you'll still upset a lot of people!

I have been told that at my hen's night, I have to do something wild, but I really have no interest in having a stripper over - whether it is for penis research or other means. I still really like the idea Rob and Lena had, where they had a combined hen's/buck's night, and their guests could move back and forth between the two - one of which was a LAN, if I recall correctly. Or maybe we can marathon bad girly movies and have a sleepover! Don't care about the "last night of freedom" thing.

Cognitive Fetish

This post is a reply to a reply to my post Naked. Which is really exciting, as the reason for my blog being public is because I want to have discussions with people about the things that I think about, and the one great thing about a reply in blog form is that it means the person has sat down and thought about it, so their response is well-constructed.

I hope this post is generic enough that the person can't be identified. The post got me thinking about fetishes (of the sexual kind), and whether it was bad to have an abnormal fetish. I always preferred to break it down into harmful and non-harmful, rather than normal and abnormal. I believe if someone gets off on watching clocks tick from 11:59PM to midnight, and they're not doing anything harmful to anyone, then so be it. Who cares if it's "weird" or whatever? Though "harmful" may not be the right word, as some people enjoy BSDM, among other things, and so they might want to be harmed in that way. So maybe something along the lines of doing something to someone which they don't want done to them.

Anyway, the post also had me thinking about the way in which fetishes develop. I've been meaning to write up a cognitive model of HoN learning for a while now, but I've been too lazy. The idea behind this is somewhat similar.

When you first start exploring sexual material, chances are you did not know what you were looking for, and you were too embarrassed to do a deep search, so you would stop at the first thing that remotely turned you on, and that you had relatively easy access to. These days, for most people, that would be something found on the internet - which was DBZ fanfiction in my case. What you tend to go searching for may also have links to what you have been told by others is "hot" - for instance, the stereotypes surrounding maids, schoolgirls, nurses, etc. You sample this for a while, and it works for you.

Later, you might decide to expand your horizons, maybe try out a Russian dominatrix instead of the maid you always go back to. The mood has changed, and you have to adjust your style. Rather than watching the demure maid who does whatever she is told, and will do anything to please her master, suddenly you're watching a woman who knows what she wants, and if she isn't pleasured NOW, then there will be punishment. Things are so new, and the things that you might have looked out for before (brief glimpses up the maids skirt, or the ridiculously clumsy maid falling on an erect penis (sounds painful to me)) aren't there, and you have to learn what new things are there to excite you.

Maybe it takes too long. You think to yourself, "I should have finished by now, what's going on?" Maybe Russian dominatrices aren't for you, and so you go back to the familiar, the things that you know work. Over time, your mind has things that it is guaranteed to get off on, things it is sometimes in the mood for, and things that don't really work, or might work after a lot of effort.

I think it is when you don't try out new things, that you end up with a very small number of things in each category, and you just become so accustomed to your favourites that it is hard for you to adjust to seeing something new. Then there starts to be some crossover, where you start to notice in the outside world those things that you previously only looked for while masturbating. It's natural to find people attractive and be aroused, but I think when it's at the point where you are starting to fixate on certain things, and aren't able to control it, that it gets to the point of being a fetish.

It makes me wonder whether maids, schoolgirls and nurses are really that interesting to the male libido, or whether it's just a reinforced stereotype.

For a while, I was a bit afraid that I had an abnormal fetish, and that it was bordering on harmful. We used to have a shared computer at home, so looking up porn was pretty much impossible. However, I discovered a bunch of books that my aunt had given us, and some of those books featured Mills and Boon type romance novels. I can't remember how old I was at the time, but I read them thinking they'd be like the Babysitters Club style romances, not having any idea what I was reading until it was too late.

For those who have yet to open one of those books, a lot of them feature a sex scene where the guy is so overcome with desire for a woman that he has to have her, and somehow her clothes seem to just fall off, and she is so wet that he can just slide in and thrust deep (it's always a deep thrust, I think in that world, there is no other kind) inside her. Of course, they both orgasm at the exact same time, which shows how in love they are.

Being the naive girl that I was at the time, I started to believe that that is how it happened, and so a lot of my fantasies involved doing something mundane in a room with a guy, when suddenly he would be so overcome and he would take me right then and there (never having had sex before, the details were kinda fuzzy). Those were the kind of stories I would seek out (you can look pretty inconspicuous reading text on the computer, and chances are, nobody would be reading with you over your shoulder, so it was something I could do with a shared computer - I also learned how to clear browsing history around the same time).

For a long time, I seemed to have a bit of a fetish for being practically raped, but then it actually happened (me having sex, not me being raped), and it kinda dispelled the idea. I would sometimes find a story, and a voice in the back of my head would tell me that things don't really happen like that, which would occasionally ruin the mood. That's when I started trying out new things, and found other things that worked for me.

One last thing that I thought about. The poster said that it is hot when a girl talks about sexual things, but creepy when a guy does it. Personally, I disagree. I used to read a blog written by a guy about things he did with his wife and various other women (can't say if it was real or fake though), and I didn't find it creepy at all. Actually, it was pretty hot, until it got a bit boring, as it was mostly the same stuff over and over again.

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I did WiiFit again today. I think my body started to get used to it, as I found I was thinking about doing yoga quite a lot during my week without WiiFit. Plus, I am now at 67kg, so I think that's another sign that I should continue. Although, I want to take up ice skating, and I'm going to sign up the term starting in October.

Eyes Wide Shut

O.5 warning here! Should also add a TMI warning, as well.

She closed her eyes as he entered her, pushing deep inside her causing a soft moan to leave her throat... So begins the generic sex scene from so many stories. I always wondered, what's with the closed eyes?

When I was with AG, I decided I was going to open my eyes during sex to see whether it was any different. It took me a while, because I kept forgetting to do it, but one night, I was lying on his ex-girlfriend's sister's bed (yes, I am a horrible person for doing this in someone else's bed), and he was pounding away, and I opened my eyes. At that moment, I forgot all about my experiment as all I could see was AG's face so close to mine. He had his eyes closed, and it felt like such an invasion of privacy to see him like that, all red-faced, looming above me. It was such a turn-off that I never did it again.

I don't think that's the reason though, as I'm pretty sure my eyes were closed the first time we had sex. My first theory was that it makes it feel better. They say that people who are blind find that they can make up for it with their other senses, as though they have been enhanced by the one sense that is lost, maybe by closing your eyes during sex, it enhances the feeling of it. I guess it makes some sense, if you think of it from a divided attention point of view. We only have a limited amount of attention, and when you have five senses that are battling to be noticed, with sight being the most predominant of them all, removing visual sensory input should lead to the other four senses having an increased presence.

My second theory was that it's due to influence from media. Things like erotic literature, or sex scenes from movies or TV shows, even pornos have their fair share of women arching their backs as they reach orgasm, mouths open wide and eyes tightly shut. Can't speak for the guys in pornos though, as I mostly focus on the ACA trifecta - abs, cock, ass - not really paying attention to their facial expression. Maybe someone can offer some of their experience in this area. Anyway, I figure for a lot of people, they see porn (even soft-core) long before they actually have sex, so they will be conditioned to think that this is how you are supposed to act during sex.

Further on the conditioning theory, I read somewhere that some guys have a lot of trouble reaching orgasm through sexual intercourse. The supposed cause being the fact that nothing can simulate the same feeling they get from their hand during masturbation, and they have conditioned themselves for so long to get off in this way that they really struggle with any other method. Makes sense to me, I mean, your hand is made for gripping things, and a vagina is made to be able to push out a baby's head, so one of them is probably going to have a tighter hold than the other. So it made me wonder, what other kind of behaviours do we get conditioned into due to masturbation?

I don't know if it's just me, so here's a try-it-yourself section if you want! I can't seem to finish if I masturbate with my eyes open. I will watch porn on the computer, then when it's done, shut it down, get ready for bed, and then rub one out under the sheets with my eyes closed ready for sleep. I tried this one with my eyes open as well, and I found a lot of the time I'd be thinking of something hot and really getting into it, then wonder if I can touch the light bulb with my head if I stand on my tiptoes on the bed. Or looking at the cookbooks on my shelf wondering what kind of dessert I should try to make next.

So maybe this has conditioned me into finding it difficult to orgasm with my eyes open. Anyway, this is all based on a sample-size of one, and so, like most of my thoughts on this blog, probably don't have the weight of a proper scientific experiment. Feel free to add your own thoughts and/or experiments in the comments!

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Current weight: 66kg

GP says that I should weigh myself in the morning before eating to get a more consistent weight, but who has enough time in the morning to do 30 minutes of exercise (more, as you have to take into account loading screen times (though they're much shorter in WiiFit Plus))?! I would rather get that little bit extra sleep.

In Latex and Bows

So the HoN servers are under a DDoS attack, and as funny as it is reading the forum posts about it (so many kiddies yelling that S2 should have safeguarded against the attack, or that they should find the person who is doing it and kill them), I'm struggling to remember what it is that I do when I'm not at work, asleep or cooking.

A few days ago, Julian and I were discussing whether geek/gamer girls are more promiscuous than non-geek/gamer girls. I would have done another poll, but I think the sample size would have been far too small to actually find anything worthy of reporting.

I think the cause for the discussion was this blog that he suggested I read: GeekySexBlog. She has linked quite a few porn videos recently, and I realised I haven't actually watched any in.... a very long time - I can't even remember what I last did. Probably because I have been catching up on TV shows. But I think the important part is, it hadn't even occurred to me. I do remember thinking at one point, since I started working, that I have been a lot less interested in sex. I attributed it to either working so much, or just being ooooooooooooooooooooold now, and then didn't really think about it anymore.

Even when Marie linked porn in her blog, I wasn't all that interested in watching, I was more interested in reading what she wrote, but when she linked one with Sasha Grey, I figured I should watch it to see what all the fuss is about. Not to get into the TMI zone, but even though the video itself wasn't all that great, it was like all of a sudden I wanted sex so badly, something I hadn't felt in so long.

So in a really roundabout way, this made me think of Julian's theory about geek/gamer girls being more promiscuous. I wonder whether it is that they just feel more free to talk about sex because people around them tend to speak freely about sex themselves(either because they are playing games with people who don't realise they're female, or because the Internet just allows people to speak their mind better). But also, I wonder if maybe part of it is because it is somewhat the norm to discuss sex - even if it's in a derogative way, e.g. "Suck my balls" (does anyone even say that anymore?).

I guess it depends on how you would define yourself as promiscuous. I wouldn't consider myself promiscuous, as I have only had four sexual partners, and on the most part, it has been only one at a time (not in the threesome sense, but in the "exclusive" sense). But then again, the fact that I had a friend-with-benefits might cause some people to label me as promiscuous.

On an unrelated note, going to these dev meetups with Tong has finally paid off. I have a few things I'd like to work on, but don't know when I will have the time. I half want the HoN servers to stay down a bit longer, but then my APM will go doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooown. T_T

On another unrelated note, I told Teekay that there is this awesome guy at work, but I am unsure about him because his APM is too low, and Teekay said it's about quality, not quantity. What do you think....?

[EDIT]: What I meant to add was that maybe part of wanting to have sex is simply thinking about it or being exposed to it, so geek/gamer girls tend to be more promiscuous because people around them talk about it more.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

(break from stats for a bit)

Kelso: Dr Reed.
Elliot: Mr Murdoch was admitted with a COPD exacerbation, he responded well to antibiotics, bronchodialators, but he did develop a rash on his... ummm... private area.
Kelso: Sorry, on his what?
Elliot: His peepers.
Kelso: Excuse me?
Elliot: His schwing schwong.
Kelso: Dr Reed, it's bad enough that you run out on a patient in the middle of a pelvic exam, but you are a doctor and you need to be able to say simple, clinical words, like penis, or vagina, or anal.
Elliot: Anal is not a dirty word, sir.
Kelso: Tell that to my wife.
-Scrubs, My Dirty Secret

A friend of mine who suddenly has significantly more time to game with me had me wondering what the change was. He said that his usual gaming partner was busy doing something else, to which I made a few inquiries as to what said activity was, and he was pretty vague about it. I made the obligatory porn comment, and my friend replied, "He doesn't watch porn."

As an aside, I should add that it seems silly that there's an expectation that all males watch porn and all females don't. However, there are many, many females who are quite vocal about their porn watching habits and applauded for being so open, so why is it that when a guy states that he doesn't watch porn is he instantly called a liar?

Anyway, I was filled with disbelief, and asked how my friend knew his friend didn't watch porn. His reply was that his friend just didn't seem interested in sex. I asked him how he knew, and he replied that his friend just never talked about it, or mentioned it, or did anything to show that he was interested in it.

While I don't want to fall into the automatic assumption that he is watching porn because he's a guy, I don't find the reasons for him to be uninterested in sex to be enough to convince me. I think there are a lot of people who just don't want to talk about sex, maybe because it makes them feel embarrassed, or uncomfortable. Sometimes I wonder if I write about or say things that make people feel uncomfortable. I try to give people warning when I can, but I don't always get the chance. Am I being oversensitive? I know Graham would probably feed them a spoonful of cement and say, "Harden the fuck up" (ah, the fond memories of Jello ).

Personally, I have various levels of comfort when it comes to talking about sex. Like Elliot, I tend to stick with certain terms for various body parts, although I am more from the clinical school and go with penis and vagina. I was discussing writing erotic fiction for NaNo with Olek, and I mentioned how I just can't bring myself to put "cum gun" or "love stick" into a story, or even most of the stuff listed here (wtf, "Moisture and heat seeking venomous throbbing python of love"). "Cock" I could use, but it makes me feel weird.

In primary school, there was one guy who would always tell me not to say "dirty" words. When I asked to borrow his rubber, he would look at me like I was crazy, and say that he didn't have any condoms. So I started using the word "eraser". When I asked to borrow his sharpener, he teased me and said I just wanted to see how big his "pencil" was. I started carefully choosing my words in order to avoid coming across words that he had marked as being bad, and sometimes I wonder if my conversation with friends growing up has suffered because of it. To think all of that happened in primary school.

I think that some people who seem uninterested in sex may not be uninterested, just unable to get over the psychological taboo of talking about it. I was definitely in that group once, and I think finding someone I could talk to about it, and blogging helped me a lot.

More Stats

Doing all of this in Excel makes me realise how much I miss SPSS. Thought about installing R, which I might end up doing next time I do stats related stuff and have the bandwidth.

WoW players and sexual activity

As many people have said, losing your virginity isn't the same as being sexually active. As Graham put it, you only have to lose it once to get kicked out of the V-Club, so as people get older, they are more and more likely to have lost it. If this were a longitudinal study, I would expect everyone to have lost it eventually. So with the same 38 people, here are the stats with sexual activity instead.

22 WoW players, 9 of which are currently sexually active.
16 non-WoW players, 6 of which are currently sexually active.

Chi-Squared test showed no significant difference (X^2 = 0.047, p > .05).

Hardcore vs single/multiplayer

Seeing as I didn't make that part of my survey compulsory, I did have one missing value, which I've decided to just delete. I've had a few comments about this question, the most prominent being that certain people prefer different types of games depending on the mood they are in. I'm not too sure how I would change that if I were to run the survey again, but keep that in mind when you read the results.

So we had 37 results.
24 defined themselves has hardcore gamers, 5 of which preferred single-player, and 19 of which preferred multi-player.
13 defined themselves as not hardcore gamers, 6 of which preferred single-player, and 7 of which preferred multi-player.

Chi-squared test showed no significant difference between the two (X^2=2.6, p > .05).

World of CasualCraft, the Follow-Up

I've closed the poll now, and have started calculating some results. I had a total of 38 people respond to my survey. I didn't take any demographic data, which I probably should have, but it is too late now.

Quick note about my survey. Yes, I was only looking at whether being a WoW player affects whether you are a virgin, but I also asked a few other questions because it felt weird to just outright ask whether someone is a virgin or not. I think I am going to try to look at what some of that other data says, but I just have to work out how I'm going to do that first!

So the first part, is there a relationship between WoW and virginity?

Number of WoW players (this includes ex-WoW players, as well as current): 22
WoW + Virgin: 10
% virgins: 45%

Number of non-WoW players: 16
Non-WoW + Virgin: 7
% virgins: 44%

I guess I wasn't all that good at guessing after all. =(

I ran a Chi-squared test and found that the results show there isn't a significant difference (X^2 = 0.14, p > .05) between WoW players and non-WoW players and virginity.

Interestingly, if you look within the WoW players, dividing between current and ex-WoW players, you get a different result.

Current WoW players: 7
# Virgins: 1
% virgins: 14%

Ex-WoW players: 15
# Virgins: 9
% virgins 60%

Chi-squared test shows that this is a significant difference (X^2 = 4.04, p < .05)! Does that mean that playing WoW and then stopping means you're less likely to lose your virginity? I did get data on whether players are currently sexually active, so that will come in a further post!

[EDIT] Eric points out that this more likely means that people who have lost their virginity are less likely to quit WoW, rather than what I said - which makes much more sense!

I guess the biggest problem is the whole time factor, that I didn't include in my survey - ie. whether it was lost before or after playing WoW. But it still goes with my personality theory, maybe people who are WoW-quitters (!) have a certain type of personality. If I was to continue with my World of CasualCraft assertion, vanilla WoW, and perhaps BC were far more hardcore than WotLK is, and so hardcore players would have quit long ago.

The other things I want to look at:

-whether hardcore players tend to prefer single-player or multi-player games
-whether hardcore players tend to prefer certain genres
-whether WoW playing and current sexual activity are related
-whether it's not just WoW, but MMOs in general

World of CasualCraft, Part 2

So it seems I wasn't entirely clear about what I was looking for in my last post. Although I wanted to answer chaoticgood's statement about my WoW friends being more sexually active than your typical nerd, I wanted to go about it in a different way. What I wanted to show was that the kind of person who would play WoW is possibly more likely to be the kind of person who enjoys being in a social setting, and meeting new people. I know that isn't true about everyone (I know someone who played WoW and suffers from social anxiety), but I think compared to games such as Counter-Strike or Starcraft, World of Warcraft is more likely to attract a more social-minded audience.

Again, I need to add more disclaimers, correlation is by no means causation (so going out and buying WoW isn't going to get you laid!), my sample is biased, I am only looking at whether someone has lost their virginity rather than whether they are currently sexually active (which does make a difference).

So for anyone that missed it, since it kinda got eaten when I tried to post it, my "results" were:

Total WoW-friends: 63
Total assumed to have had sex: 45
% of total: 71.4%

Total non-WoW-friends: 75
Total assumed to have had sex: 34
% of total: 45.3%

I would do t-tests and stuff, but I'm kinda lazy, you can see the difference is quite large. I'd also like to emphasize that the sample was of gamers, so this doesn't indicate that non-gamers are less likely to have had sex than WoW players (which everyone seems to assume is untrue, I wonder if anyone has done a study on that...)! So going with these results, what are some of the reasons that could explain this?

As chaoticgood mentioned in a comment, WoW tends to be more of a social game, and this may attract more social-minded players. So rather than a game that prompts a "LOL, n00b, I pwned you" attitude, WoW and other MMOs tend to be a game where you build up a character and join a community to accomplish goals. While it's not impossible, it is quite difficult (and for most of your journey it will be lonely) to do a lot of the things in the game without having other people.

I read somewhere that WoW has a higher female:male ratio than most games, so perhaps it has a higher pick-up potential. I think one of the factors that caused a bias is that WoW is one of the games you can bring your partner to. MrMan5.5 and I have tried playing a few games together, but WoW seems to be the best game that we can actually play together. When we try to play TF2 together, we usually get separated, or one of us gets auto-balanced to the other team. When we played DotA/HoN together, it seemed like we spent more time in different lanes because of our different playstyles.

The reason for the title of this post though, is that WoW seems to be a really casual game now. It took me hours of practice before I managed to even make it to gold rank in Starcraft 2, and probably years of practice before I was half-decent at DotA/HoN. It seems that WoW doesn't have that great a skill curve. Sure, if you want to be gladiator, you need to be incredibly skilled, but to do normal stuff, it doesn't seem that way anymore. In vanilla WoW, healing seemed so much harder, because mana management was actually an issue. Now I heal without even looking at my mana bar. I joined Chris and Brookiee's ICC group one night, and they had managed to get to Lich King, the last boss. The warlock in the group was a complete moron, and yet he managed to get to the last boss of what is currently the hardest instance in the game.

It seems that in a game like WoW, where you can be carried by gear, and gear drops from trees, it attracts more of a casual playerbase. So people who prefer doing things on weekends that don't involve sitting in front of the computer may prefer playing a game that you can play for a few hours a week. I know that it seems weird for an MMO to be a casual game, but at the moment, you can play a little and still do reasonably well. Gone are the days of having to farm a lot each day in order to keep up.

Thoughts? Suggestions for more research? I would like to do a study on gamers and sexual activity, but I don't think anyone would answer me, because it's a bit of a dodgy question!