Being a Boy (14 page)

Talking you through a good kiss is difficult. In simple terms you need to part your lips slightly and massage the top or bottom lip of your partner between yours. This sounds hideous, but feels lovely, I promise. The goal is not to dock with your partner’s mouth. It’s about the lips.

You can gently kiss your partner’s neck or earlobes, but I’d suggest anywhere else, facially speaking is a bit weird. Never have I heard anyone say, ‘then he kissed my eyebrow and I was in ECSTASY!’

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The amount and duration of tongue action varies wildly between individuals. Some people just aren’t keen on ‘French Kissing’, as precisely no one calls it any more. I would suggest that NO ONE wants a big, fat tongue thrust halfway down their throat.

Where is our happy medium? Most kissers enjoy a bit of tongue-touching and it’s usually pretty easy to follow your partner’s lead on this. If in doubt, GENTLY pop a bit of your tongue into their mouth and brush against their tongue. While experimenting with a bit of tongue action, don’t forget that you should be paying more attention to their lips.

PRESSURE:
A good kiss should feel neither like saying goodbye to an elderly relative or being hit in the face with a lust truck. It’s all about pressure, or the force applied to the lips. The amount of force you should apply varies according to a number of factors.

So let’s say you’re feeling 10 horny, but you’re in a park so that’s only a 3 for situation and your partner’s feeling a bit gloomy so has a bad mood score of 8. So that’s 10 × 3 / 8 = 3.75. That’s going to be quite a gentle snog.

Compare that to an evening at home when you’ve just seen an amazing film and are both feeling horny – that’s 10 × 9 / 2 = 45! Game on! Passionate snog a-go-go!

Both types of kiss are GREAT and have their time and place. Not every kiss needs to be a gropey smooch-a-thon. The best boyfriend in the world would have a fantastic repertoire of soft, gentle kisses and hard and horny ones. More to the point he would intuitively know when to deploy each.

If unsure, start slow and build the passion if your other half seems receptive. Attacking a face like a bull in a china shop can be really hot, but it can also be greatly off-putting.

For the sake of EVERYONE IN THE WORLD keep your most passionate kisses to private places. If you insist on noisily licking your partner’s face in full public view, I assure you there is a special place in Hades with your name on it.

SALIVA:
The goal of a good kiss should not be to deposit as much of your saliva as possible into your partner’s mouth. This is why limiting the amount of open-mouthed tongue action is advisable. Similarly, you shouldn’t really have to land much more than a delicate frosting to their lips. If you are getting dribble on their chin or cheeks, something is amiss. As long as you remember to swallow during kissing, you should be fine.

Get practising – above all else kissing should be fun. NEVER see kissing purely as an opening act to sex. Sometimes, in the desire for sex, it’s easy to neglect kissing, but this is a mistake. The thrill of a first kiss rivals any sex and it’s a great way to ease yourself into the idea of a sexual relationship. Enjoy it for what it is. A cheeky snog is a great way to pass the ad breaks on TV, too.

N
ews flash: you don’t have to be in love to have sex. Never heard this before? That’s because you’ve probably been told that, ‘when you meet someone, you really, truly love, you will want to share something with them that is SO SPECIAL, a kiss just won’t do.’ This is true. Your body is the only one you have, so you should look after it the best you can. However it’s also true that sex always feels nice, whether you’re in love with your partner or not.

Fact

Sometimes, sex is recreational.
That sound you just heard was the thud of prudes hitting the floor as they faint with moral outrage.

So why haven’t you heard this before? Well, for one thing, teenage pregnancy rates around the world are too high. Even the most liberal among us acknowledge that having babies as teenagers is far from ideal for you or society. Accidents happen, but no adult is going to encourage you to have loads and loads of wild and free sex for the reasons listed before – babies and sexually transmitted infections.

Also, sex is tied to emotions, no matter what anyone says. There’s no such thing as 100 per cent ‘no-strings’ sex. However hard you might try, feelings always creep in because we ALL WANT TO BE WANTED. Being in a relationship IS the best way to have sex because AFTERWARDS you will feel better about it. All sex involves ‘exposing’ yourself emotionally and literally to a person. It’s much, much less daunting if that person is someone you like, trust and even love.

However, that is in an ideal world. It seems likely, sooner or later, you’ll have casual sex. Why? Because not every guy or girl you meet is going to be compatible in terms of a long-term relationship. To employ a weary old cliché – you really do have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your princess or prince.

S
o you met a girl, or guy, you really like. You dated, you had a snog, you’re ‘official’. There’s a commitment there. Eventually it’ll get to the stage where merely kissing your partner is going to feel a tad redundant. Kissing is BRILLIANT and everything, but you might start to want something more. Remember, you’ll know you’re ready because you will really, really want to have sexyfuntime. If you’re content with kissing, then stick with that.

This is perfectly natural and all about the ‘curiosity’ I mentioned before. The lovely thing about sex in a relationship is that it feels very safe. Not safe from being stabbed or whatever, but safe in that it makes a potentially nerve-wracking situation less so. Think about it – you’re naked, you have to perform, you have to not cum in three seconds – there’s a lot happening and it’s so much better if you KNOW your partner isn’t going to laugh at the weird unicorn-shaped mole on your buttock.

Sex is meant to be fun. The best way of ensuring it’s fun is by doing it with someone you already have fun with, even someone you love. After all, a girlfriend or boyfriend is basically a best friend you have naked time with.

After millennia, this is still the IDEAL way to have a sexual relationship. A meets B, they date for a while, they have some sex. There are so many benefits to this type of relationship, from the companionship and security to spending whole blissful afternoons together snogging until you literally shrivel up from lack of saliva like a salted slug. (This won’t actually happen.)

W
hile being in a committed relationship is the IDEAL way to have sex, you must have by now realised that life doesn’t always go the way we want it to. Sometimes you might meet a girl or a guy and think they’re hot and you do some dancing and kissing ‘in da club’ and then in a moment of passion decide to have sex with them. Oh no! Now you will go to Hades!

What will happen is this: you’ll wake up the next morning and everything will feel forced and awkward. If you’re lucky you’ll get a cup of coffee and a bit of toast before being politely shepherded out. THIS IS FINE. You don’t have to marry this person, they probably don’t want to marry you either. It’s unlikely the townspeople will come tearing down the street with flaming torches and pitchforks either. Hopefully you practised safe sex so you have nothing to worry about unduly.

Sometimes all of the above will happen and you’ll chat the next morning and realise you met someone really good and three years later you’ll get married. These things also happen. Casual sex can become something more.

It’s a numbers game. It must be lovely to be the 0.00000001 per cent of couples who end up with their childhood sweetheart. The rest of us, however, need to play the field a bit before scoring a goal. You shouldn’t feel GUILTY about doing what comes naturally to all mammals but you should be safe and smart about it.

There may also be times in your life when you just don’t WANT to do the whole relationship thing. Having a partner can be fantastic but only if they’re the right person. What are you meant to do in the meantime? Luckily there are also guys and girls who are just looking for a bit of fun between boyfriends (or kissing frogs to find a prince). Hurrah! The itch is scratched and fun is had.

There are lots of reasons why you might not want a relationship. Perhaps you’re too busy to date, maybe you’ve just come out of a big relationship, maybe you just can’t be bothered. Fact is, sometimes people have casual sex and that is fine as long as you’re both HONEST and SAFE. Remember, you don’t HAVE to be in a relationship with someone to have sex with them, but you DO need to be honest about it. How would you feel if you woke up next to a super-cute specimen you really wanted to take out to dinner only to find out they didn’t really want to date you at all. And, as for being safe, do I seriously need to say it again? Turn to
chapter five
for more on ALWAYS USING A CONDOM and other safe-sex tips.

A
s mentioned before, there are also times when you might just not feel like sex. There’s a lot to be said for waiting until someone really special comes along. A period of celibacy isn’t something to be ashamed of. Always better to be picky than sicky when it comes to sex, I feel.

HERE’S THE THING:
You know how I just said it was FINE to be celibate, have a sexual relationship or have casual sex? Well it is, but there’s a catch. I wonder if I can make it clear.

YOU HAVE TO BE 100% HONEST WITH YOUR PARTNER UPFRONT

Otherwise you run the risk of being a massive lothario dickhead, and we don’t want that now, do we? For example if you are feeling like some no-strings sex it wouldn’t be very nice to promise the person you’re trying to bed a long and healthy relationship, would it? No, it would make you a monstrous shitweasel. Similarly, pretending you don’t want a relationship when you do because you’re worried it might scare a potential partner off is cowardly.

If everyone was ALWAYS upfront and honest when it came to dating and sex the ice cream industry would go bankrupt in days as no one would have to sit next to a silent phone shovelling Häagen-Dazs in their gob whilst weeping WHY HAVEN’T THEY CALLED?

The only reason to lie is to make yourself look better or because you’re scared. Don’t be a douchebag. Man up. If you’re a big enough boy to have sex, you’re big enough to talk about it honestly.

T
he jury is still very much out on WHY the animals went into the ark two-by-two given that, in the animal kingdom, nearly ALL mammals are massively into free-love. Only a handful of species mate for life, which is also called being ‘monogamous’.