Bastard Life

Natural selection. Bobby from Seattle, Washington is an avid reader of BastardLife he tells us, but as for our advice, he writes in to say, "It has yet to help me with my particular problem. I don't want to sound conceited," he continues, "but my issue is that I don't have to work at it at all. At any bar, on any airplane, in any restaurant, party, club, or at any job—I walk out with a hot girl who will let me have it all with her. At first this gift was nothing short of a miracle and I lived to the fullest with my great luck; but lately, I wonder how to choose which girl I will bed. What should be my criteria: Her body? Her mind? The shear fact that she's making the moves on me? Shouldn't I slow it down and stop using all these women for sex?"

Well Bobby, since our advice hasn't helped, perhaps that of your fellow BastardLife readers will.

Debbie from Portland says, "Don't underestimate the women that are drawn to you; they want it as badly as you, if not more. It's not like you're taking advantage of us honey; rather, be careful of the women taking advantage of you. Oh, and some of us women will use you just as harshly as men use us, making you feel just as empty as we do sometimes after a 'pump and dump' lay."

Lisa from New York tells us, "For god's sake don't start intellectualizing this. Just take us. We wouldn't be there if we didn't want to be. Men forget that women are just as much 'the guy' as you boys, where getting laid is concerned."

Julliet from Paris writes, "I stay away from men who 'wonder' whether or not to bed me."

Alison from Sacramento points out, "Your letter is very revealing. 'How to choose who I will bed,' makes it very clear you are having a blast and have no interest in dating or a long term relationship. If you are truly a chick magnet, then just sit back and enjoy the ride. We obviously want it just as much as you, and trust me, as an older woman now not quite as hot as I once was, I look back upon my many very hot conquests and thank my lucky stars I didn't think my way out of them."

Key Tip: Bobby, if you're playing the field, then play the field and don't over think things. Trust your gut and do what feels right—even if that means a new girl every night, you lucky bastard.

“I want to learn to give head like a man,” she said. “Tell me how it’s different.” In a drunken moment of openness, I had told her about my bisexual past, a youthful experiment that I was growing out of in my early thirties. Usually, when I was trying to pick up women in bars, I kept this information to myself. A lot of women were turned off by a man who’d had sex with other men, but then, once in a while, the truth crept out, and luckily, this particular woman—Tracie was her name—was intrigued, wanted to know all about it, was obviously turned on by the very idea. I supposed that one of the reasons my secret had slipped out was because we were getting along so well, and my guard was down. We were both singing along animatedly when an old song by the Smiths came on the jukebox, and the topic of conversation had very casually taken a turn from the singer Morrissey’s alleged asexuality to sexual orientation in general.

When I’d admitted to having had bisexual experiences, she asked me whether men or women gave better blow jobs, and I said—because it’s generally true—that beyond a doubt, men do. A man knows what it feels like to receive a blow job, and so it’s obvious that a man would have a better instinct about how to give one. It was clear to me that this got Tracie’s feminist dander up. She was very competitive, she said, and thought she should be able to learn to do this as well as any man could, despite the drawback of not having a penis of her own. Besides that, she’d been told by men that she was very good at it, but as far as she knew, none of those men had ever gotten head from another man. So the challenge was on, and I took her back to my apartment to discuss it further.

It was a short walk from the Greenwich Village bar to my place in Chelsea. We laughed and flirted all the way up 7th Avenue, talking about our lives, getting to know one another. She was a copy editor, and I was a techie doing various types of freelance computer work from programming to web design. She was a native New Yorker, and I was originally from Alabama. Her father was South American, which explained the slightly ambiguous ethnicity that I found exotic and interesting about her. Along the way, we made fun of people we saw who were dressed poorly or acting bizarre, such as one typically sees on a Friday night in Manhattan. A casual observer would have thought we were old pals, would never have guessed that we just met an hour before in a bar. When I opened the door to my apartment, though, I immediately came back to the reason we were here—a lesson in sucking cock like a man.

“First of all,” I told her as I flicked on the lights, “you have to really want it, and not like you want a piece of candy. It’s not a lollipop. You have to want it like you want a piece of steak. You have to be ravenous for it. And you have to ache for more of it when it's in your mouth. You have to want to suck and drink from it as if your life depends upon it. If this seems odd, try masturbating and cumming while his hard cock is in your mouth. Nothing is better."

"You see," I leaned in and told her simply, "Typically, women suck cock. Many of them quite well. But men—we devour it, and I suggest you do to.”

“An interesting distinction,” she said moving in closer to me and getting onto her knees. “Judging from my wet underwear, I think I will do just that."—D.P.

Photograph by Erwin Olaf

I am married to a man now. I don't know how we lasted this long—we'll have been together for eleven years this spring. I got the idea from my friend Tom’s dog-eared copy of The Hitchhikers Guide to Glory Holes. Tom understood—but my wife Suzan would have fainted if she knew. “I would expect that from a degenerate,” she and most of my friends would certainly say of people who do what I was about to do. 

I walked to the spot, in the heart of Cleveland, mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, one of those days where the late-day sun is so bright you wish you could just take the night out from your breast pocket, like a fistful of crystals, and throw them toward the sky to blot the sun. The sun smirks too much, reveals too much. Especially when you’re walking into an adult bookstore smack in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon and ammonia is wafting up from the floor. I march past the front room, eyes trained straight ahead. Just keep to the left, says the book, and hang a right at the end of the hallway. There they were: a long row of telephone-booths, one with its door opened a crack, a pair of eyes scanning me, a porn bass line buzzing.

I entered the booth next to his, past a smattering of men all with wedding bands on, too, lurking in the dark and waiting for any subtle invitational signal, when I here Tom's voice eclipsing the din of porn groans and cheap porn orgasm screams.

“Make him show his penis before you slide your dollar bill into your video machine.”

“Don’t let anyone ever ejaculate in your mouth—no matter how urgent your need is.”

“Did you bring paper towels to wipe the hole before you do anything?

“Do you have enough singles? Bring singles. You never know how long it’ll take him or you to cum and you might need to keep pumping the video machine until he does. He might be a $5 man.”

“Are you wearing black jeans? Always wear dark jeans. And don't touch that floor, in the dark, you don’t know how filthy it is.”

Mother of god, I think, I am a sinner, and this is too complicated. Who have I become? But my urge is too strong to turn back now.

Odd thing was, the booth didn't have a hole; the opening from which a thick and slightly pink penis with a perfectly helmeted head emerged was a 2-inch tall opening at the base of a tall window. I approved what I saw and nervously slid two rumpled dollar bills into the video machine—that were immediately rejected. My hunger was urgent now. With two smoother bills that I tore out of my wallet in a panic, I had more luck. The light inside the booth clicked off. Only the intermittent flash of television light from the pornography illuminated me, and the penis now hard and stretched out from the opening. When I got on my knees I smelled crotch.  I slipped the condom I had hurriedly pulled out of my pocket on him and it instinctively began pistoning in and out of my mouth when I took it in. I closed my eyes and feasted, feeling the contours and the hardness of his member.

While he explodes in a fury, filling the condom in my mouth with semen, I too surge and climax. Still on my knees, the penis disappears from the opening. I can see my reflection in the window when I rest my head against it, and exhale from a long overdue release. 

At a dinner party with our coupled friends years later, Tom, who in his younger days was the out one and the one who loved to experiment sexually, placed his hand on mine and laughed with a wink, "Eleven years this spring I have been married to this 'degenerate?'"—R.L.

One, two, three. It's not like our friend Sal is a polygamist or anything, and neither is his wife Beth. They're relatively clean-cut Bethesda, Maryland types. He works for the Department of Agriculture, and she watches the kids, and even finds time to masturbate between feedings. "Very tough to pull off," she tells me sitting at her big round kitchen table.

Maybe she's bored or viewed too much double penetration on youporn.com, but she recently asked Sal to invite one of his co-workers, Trish, to share their bed. This worried Sal, because Beth is smoking hot, and he's well, not so hot—and he knows it. He thought maybe something was wrong with their marriage. She assured him no and that in fact, it's never been better, and then pushed his head down between her legs and spoke with gravity, "You have nothing to worry about."

But just because Beth says yes, does that mean that Sal is ready for a threesome? Here is how we advised Sal:

1. Meditate on the threesome idea for at least two weeks. Discuss at length, and explore with Beth the worst-case scenarios: what if she likes your co-worker better than she likes you? What if you like her better than Beth?!?

2. When you decide you are going to go through with it, be clear on the game plan. Designate a person who will be the primary focus of the pleasure.

3. Be open to the unknown, but play out the choreography and positions you want to experience before the threesome takes place. Does Beth want to be on her back with you pleasuring her while she pleasures your guest? Knowing exactly what you want to happen gives you a chance to visualize what will take place and builds a greater comfort level.

4. Communicate with your potential guest. She too must know the goals, the desires—and the game plan. And consider the risk of intimacy with someone you work with—it rarely works and can cause unnecessary problems, even get you fired. If there is anything that is strictly forbidden in your intimate life, like anal or oral or filthy talk, now is the time to make that clear.

5. Post-coital etiquette. Be clear about how you want the wind-down to go. Some couples prefer that the third party leave relatively quickly after climax; others invite their new partner to stay the night for a cozy threesome sleep over. Others that I've known have asked her to move in and squeeze into a French maid outfit and do the housework.

When you are ready—and you are as sure as Sal's wife—a threesome can be one of the most beautiful and intense extensions of your intimacy, expanding your pleasure capacity beyond your imagination. Play safe.—N.B.

The couch tour. "This is not the economy to be taking lots of days off I know, I know. But my husband works from home and he is constantly calling me throughout the day (which I love) and describing all of the things he'd do to me if I were there working from home with him. Basically, just from his hot calls, I stay turned on at work—all week long. When I get home, instead of sex, it's homework with the kids, dinner, reading time, and that herding of kittens that is getting our children to bed. By 9 or 10PM when I have a chance to be with him, frankly, I'm not that into much else but sleep.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, so I decided to take a day off. My husband and I walked the kids to school together then came home. Hotter than any phone call he could have ever made, he just calmly closed the front door, locked it, turned to me, and tore off everything I had on. Then he proceeded to do me from behind on our ten thousand dollar couch, fulfilling my deepest pleasurable needs. It was as if he were being paid to do it. A total pro. It was one hell of a day off. I highly recommend it."—Ashley, R. Southampton, UK

Photograph by Igor Amelkovich. On sale now, and worth it.—N.B.

Mine, too. After yet another rapturous and sweaty afternoon romp in their favorite six hundred dollar a day Midtown hotel room, curtains closed, the cacophony of traffic far below them, Colin looked at his cell phone and got pissed. “Fuck!”

“Again?,” Bea teased, “I don’t know if I want to go back to the office walking like a rodeo cowboy….”

Colin wasn’t playing along. “No, it’s my wife,” he said, “she texted me an hour ago and I didn’t respond.”

“Well, how could you,” purred Bea, stroking her lover’s wavy blond hair. “You were wearing my ass like a hat. Tell her you were at the gym and your phone was in your locker and you….”

“Bea,” Colin interrupted as he thumbed a reply—in meetings all day..c u ltr. “I don’t go to the gym during lunchtime on a Tuesday, and when I do go to the gym I don’t put my cell phone in the locker.”

Bea, annoyed at Colin’s tone, turned cold: “Did you check your sense of humor in the lobby downstairs?”

“Yeah, sorry,” replied Colin. “I just want to make sure we stick to our plan so our others don’t catch on. We don’t deviate from patterns. We erase all texts, incoming and outgoing, immediately, and never text each other by hitting reply, always create a new message.”

“I know, I know,” said Bea, her black lace bra hanging off her shoulder, rolling her eyes at once again hearing Colin’s refrain, “and never call at the house, when possible use a payphone, always pay cash at the hotel and at meals…yada, yada, and yada. You know, you fuck me like an animal and then you get all nervous and brainy, like you forget what your balls are for as soon as you’ve shot your load.”

Colin rubbed her shoulders and fingered the pearl necklace she left on. “Sorry, I just want to make sure our agreement still stands. We meet for lunch, an occasional business trip out of town, hot tub, anal sex, and that’s that.”

“And you’ll lick my ass,” interjected Bea, playful again.

“And I’ll eat you out like I’m a starving Somalian because your husband forgot where your vagina is,” replied Colin.

Bea shot back: “And I’ll worship your cock like the religious idol it is because your wife’s turned into a cock atheist.”

“Yes,” said Colin. “Yes. But if you’re gonna start asking for more, then I….”

“Shhhh," said Bea, hushing her lover with her finger planted on his lips. “This is the way it stays. Since we got together my marriage has never been better.”

Just then Colin’s cell phone vibrated; it was a text from his wife—will be home late tonight…Angie’s in town, goin' 4 drinks…c u later. 

“Mine too," said Colin as he slid his hand up Bea’s thigh.—M.T.

I was so consumed by it I couldn’t concentrate at the office. I’m a broker, and the way the economy’s been going, you might be surprised at the thoughts that were filling my mind: last week my girlfriend Alexandra said it’d get her real hot if I talk filthy to her in bed. She said it to me as I raced to find my tie and shoes, like I always do, and fumbled around the top of my dresser looking for my car keys. “So you wanna call me a cock slut later tonight?”

“Huh?” Annoyed, I dabbed some toilet paper at a bloody razor nick on my face—again. She’s been using my Gillette.

I told this to my co-worker Denise—(full disclosure: Denise is a hot 38-year-old, petite brunette, married, mother of two from Long Island, and we’ve shared an occasional lip-lock, tit-feel and nut-rub at drunken company parties)—to see what she thought Alex was up to.

“It could mean she thinks you’re not communicating outside of the bedroom,” she said, as I stared at her red, plunging neckline blouse. “Filthy talk is a great way to open up the lines of communication.” Denise then advised me as a warm up, to talk dirty while I masturbate, imagining having sex with Alex and talking dirty to her.

“Why don’t I imagine making love to Alex while I rub your tits,” I shot back, “and you lick my balls?”

She giggled. “See, you’re getting it, just start slowly like that. Describe out loud what’s happening during sex. Things like ‘I love the way your lips feel on my cock,’ or,  ‘Your pussy is so wet.’”

When I got home, the table was empty, again. Alex, who’s been out of work, didn’t cook anything. She was in the bedroom. I peaked in and a shaft of light from the hallway had split her naked form, creating a perfect symmetry. I joined her and soon we were heating up, exercising our choreographed moves, and then she said it.

“Pull my hair…”

Surprised, with one hand I did as instructed, and with the other I held her hip, and then suddenly I assumed another voice. “You like the sound of my balls slapping against your pussy? You cock slut…”

That’s all it took. After that night, we made lists, writing down different aspects of our personalities, to inspire us to find different voices. We also made “dirty talk” rules: no laughing at one another, and no judgment. In the heat of the moment, we agreed, anything can come out of our mouths.

Soon, we began talking about things that were bothering us outside of the relationship. Alex complained about me being a slob. I told her I couldn’t stand that she sat around all day and didn’t bother making dinner plans. Within a few months, I no longer had to race around looking for my shoes and my tie. And I stopped applying dabs of toilet paper to my bloody face. She bought her own razors.—N.B.

"Most men are in too much of a hurry," she confessed to me earlier that evening, her eyes lowered to her half-empty wine glass.

"It's like they've all watched the same porno too many times, and they think the only way to make a girl climax is by pounding her as hard as they can in as many positions they can think of."

She drained the last of her Merlot and looked up at me.

"And that's so...not what it's about."

It was her first time in my bed. Slightly lazy from the wine, she let herself fall back against the pillows, dark hair cascading over the cool grey linen, and smiled demurely.

"Are you going to kiss me?" she asked.

My entire body was screaming for hers, but I took a breath to calm myself before moving towards the bed.

"Among other things," I murmured.

I started by undressing her, slowly and with extreme care, my eyes always penetrating hers. Each movement, the lowering of a zipper, the unfastening of a clasp, was made with the zen concentration of a Buddhist monk. When she was naked at last I outlined every part of her body with my fingertips, barely grazing the bulb and curve of her breasts, the slope of her shoulders, her soft chin, and the path from her belly button to the very uppermost wisps of secret black hair. I hovered there before letting my hand drift downward, then caressed her hidden curves with the same slow precision, starting at the bottom and following the lines of her labia up to her clit, where I began stroking her with no more strength or speed than a whisper. Up and down, up...and...down. She moaned so softly I could barely hear her; I moved so slowly she had no idea what was happening.

Then, I used my lips and the tip of my tongue to trace the same path as my fingers had. I told myself that my job was to touch my mouth to every square inch of her body, to annoint her skin, unbelievably tender, like the inside of a rose petal, with my kiss. She put her arms around me, moaning louder this time.

"Please, I want you inside of me."

I gently disentangled myself from her embrace, returning her arms to the bed, spreading them out like a T.

"Don't move, and don't speak," I said, and licked my way from the inside of her wrist to the top of her armpit. Our eyes were locked; we couldn't look away from each other for a second.

I was sucking her right nipple with the awed appreciation of a starving man when I felt her warm pussy begin to tremble under my hand...just the merest tremor. I resisted the urge to speed up my stroking, to plunge my fingers inside her. Up...and...down.

The tremor quickened, she grew slicker and hotter. Her breath, which had been deep and measured like mine, became short. She couldn't help herself. As she erupted, finally, quacking helplessly, I slid myself inside her.

"Nate?" she spoke at last, letting her eyelids close.

"Yes?"

"That's...what it's about."—J.B.

The Love drill. "I hate you, but I want to fuck you, and oh by the way—I love you more than anything." Ok this may not be exactly how it played out, but in a nutshell, this is how love, where vulnerability exists, can play out.

The deeply in love know it: You know you'll never leave, but you say, "Fuck it," slam a door, grab your keys and your jacket and leave (for a couple of hours); You yell out angrily, "I wish we'd never met," then rip her clothes off or push her to the bed and proceed to have angry amazing sex that she thanks you for later; He screams, "I hate you, I really fucking hate you. And if you ever leave me, I'll really hate you," crying, accepting your tissue, then later your embrace.

What the deeply in love don't always know is how to fight fair; but those of you who did, helped us out.—C.D.

Curfew It: Becky from Quebec advises, "Don't let anger stay out past eight or nine O'clock. Being tired, and cranky, makes for cranky arguing that can turn mean unintentionally."

Bomb Shelter It. Tim from Miami writes, "OK, once you're in argument autopilot mode, at the very least, don't drop any bombshell announcements, pronouncements, or hurtful confessions. Save those for calmer happier times. Too much truth can be a nasty weapon."

Breathalize It. Vikki from Leeds says, "Reschedule the fight. Really. Stop it by saying, 'I am happy to have this fight with you, but I'll have to reschedule it for another time when you haven't been drinking.' Because, as we all know, a belly full of pints makes Johnny an angrier arguer."

Terminate It. Jason from LA wraps it up quite nicely with, "The more vulnerable and in love I am, the more intense I fight. But I make it a rule to get out the hard stuff about how I feel, rather than the easier finger pointing stuff that seems like it will lessen that vulnerability. When I force myself to talk about how my feelings were hurt for instance, sure I feel more exposed, but I don't wake up angry the next morning and it often diffuses what would have been a giant argument."

"Never." That's what most people say when encouraged to practice safer oral sex by wearing condoms; others just say, "Yuck."

However, many of our readers have written in about everything from whether it is still necessary to which ones will taste less hideous and how to go about choosing the perfect oral sex skins.

1. Avoid condoms with N-9, as spermicidal lubricated condoms will cause your tongue to go numb; plus, they taste disgusting.

2. Some flavored condoms are rated for safe sex, others are just novelty items, most of them are hideous, rather try flavored lubes like dulce de leche, mojito peppermint, pomegranate vanilla, or chocolate orange at stores like Babeland where you can taste test them. Really, they tasted great; they're also online now and worth it.

3. Remember to stay clear of oil-based food products as oral sex aids when using latex condoms for protection; oil and latex don't mix, as it can degrade the material and leave you unprotected.

4. Consider the use of condoms with those about whom you know very little, as sexually transmitted disease is alive and well in the oral sex arena.

5. The thinner the better—the condom that is, and with thin condoms you can feel more of the contours of your partners anatomy and his body's natural temperature—all part of the sensations that make oral sex pleasurable for you (and him). Durex condoms scored the highest with us; they were thin, tasty, and didn't feel like you were sucking on a hard, bland balloon.—O.P.