Twenty Tones of Red (5 page)

Her firs
t exploration was in the dusty IT room of her secondary school. They hadn’t yet got a connection at home and none of her friends had Internet access so she arranged to stay behind after school with the clear intention of seeing what she could find out about sex. She tapped questions into search engines and got the most amazing answers. She asked how often it was normal to masturbate and found an astonishing range of responses. Most women would confess to pleasuring themselves a couple of times a week. Some, like her, about once a day, and others proudly confessing to indulging three or four times daily. She was amazed how they found the time, but then it seemed that a lot of America’s soccer moms had a lot of time on their hands – as well as having a lot of their private parts on their hands. The chatty conversational tone on the forums and websites was also reassuring. Women of all ages from all over the world viewed the topic in a jokey matter of fact tone and that helped. There was no judgement and the general consensus seemed to be that everybody should try to enjoy themselves as much as they could.

Reassured she moved on to the vast array of chat concerning domination and submission. Here again
there were lots of resources and information. What quickly became clear was that she was not alone. Not by a long way. There were literally tens of thousands of English speaking women out there who loved being tied up and dominated. She found real life stories as well as fantasies and photos.

She re
ad and read and then when she’d picked up courage started to post comments and chat. Again the vibe was endlessly positive. ‘Enjoy yourself girl’ they said, ‘try this and if you like it then why not try that’. As with nearly all the women’s and girly sites the only element of complaint seemed to be about the men. A lot of them weren’t very interested in dominating their lovers. A lot of them weren’t very good at it an even worse a lot of the women couldn’t find a man to play with at all.

Some of the sites were blocked by the school’s security system and frustratingly those seem to be the ones with the most pictures and video
s. A lot of the text-only sites still seemed to be available and it was on these that she read accounts hundreds of other like-minded women describing their fantasies and their desires in intimate detail.

A few months later her own parents registered with an Internet Service Provider a
t home and this new world became easily accessible to her. This was still in the days when the World Wide Web was slow and had to be accessed via a dial up modem. Even so, the choice was bewildering. She found photos of women doing all the things she had imagined in her many fantasies and she even found some wonderful video clips. She now knew that her fantasies were normal, they were part of the human condition and there were millions of women just like her all across the globe who took pleasure from similar thoughts and scenarios.

The impact of her research was hugely positive she began a long transition from a time of doubt and guilt to one in which she realised that he
r sexuality was part of who she was. She became more comfortable with herself she became more at ease with her exploration and experimentation.

She was soon able to afford a second-hand laptop of her own and this only increased her curiosity and the amount of time she was able to spend researching her sexual passion. There was the added benefit of increased privacy. In her early days of browsing she had frequently made the classic mistake of leaving her history visible to the next
computer user. Both her father and mother had clicked the back button on the browser to discover images of naked bound women and she had had a difficult time blaming them all on her older brother. Now she had total control she could sit in bed in the privacy of her little bedroom with one finger on the controller that moved the cursor around the screen and the other on the tender little bud of her sex.

Her electronic
explorations were a godsend because in real life she was having trouble finding a suitable relationship. In her early teens her male peers were so acutely self-conscious and under confident that even getting a good strong snog was difficult. Most of the girls in her year had developed much more quickly than the boys and most were taller and stronger. Many solved the maturity gap by seeking out boyfriends in the higher years and would then come back to brag about their sexual activities. She didn’t seem able to find anybody suitable at all and for a couple of years her relationships took a nose dive.

Looking ba
ck she realised that perhaps at that time she was still giving off an uncomfortable and slightly shy aura. She was still getting used to the changes in her body and although her confidence was building it would be a while before she felt ‘complete’ and ‘ready’.

The big break came when she was fifteen. At around the time of her birthday she started to feel fully happy w
ith herself and her body and when she went to parties she drew the attention, seemingly for the first time, of some of her friends’ older brothers. Best of all was the tall dark and handsome Simon. He was an eighteen year old engineering apprentice and when he came to pick up his little sister Amy from a party she could see him watching her from the doorway. He stood rattling and jangling his car keys in the way boys did when they’d only been driving a few months and she found his gaze very intriguing.

Somebody had sneaked in a
small bottle of brandy and they’d been sitting in the back corner pouring big shots into their cokes. This meant that they’d quickly got very giggly and were soon trying to outdo each other on the dance floor. The music was excellent. Brit pop had just happened and it was one of the most exciting times to be becoming interested in bands. She identified first with Oasis because like her they were northern and down to earth but then Blur had some great songs too. The media tried to create drama and conflict between the two groups and some of the boys at her school took sides and tried to argue about who was best. In her little group of friends they had very early on decided that there wasn’t any real rivalry and besides they liked them both. Music was dramatic and exciting and you didn’t have to choose which camp you were in. You could have it all.

It wasn’t all the jangly guitar sounds of the
Brit Pop bands. There were also a lot more poppy ‘girly’ tunes that they all enjoyed. They loved a really silly song called
Barbie Girl
by Aqua and she was dancing to this when she noticed Simon watching her from the bar near the door. He was looking at her in the way that the more confident boys did. He was appraising her. She knew he was studying her body as she moved and she shamelessly put some extra seductive wriggles into her routine.

The song was a big tease any
way and beneath its saccharine veneer it was really quite naughty. The lyrics were fantastic. She absolutely loved the lines ‘undress me everywhere’ and ‘I can beg on my knees’ and here and there they seemed to throw in the line ‘Hanky Panky’ for no reason at all.

She was mouthing these words at her friends and doing
as much crazy dancing as she could and whenever she glanced back at the bar he was still shamelessly watching her. He was well built for his age and looked quite tough and already she was imagining him dominating her. Perhaps he would take her away to a remote cabin and be really strict. She could already see scenes where he was making her dance naked for him and kneel and kiss his feet before he manhandled her and squeezed her in his strong arms. She liked the ideas a lot and some of them were to come true. 

They started g
oing out and it was her first grown up relationship, except there was a twist. For the first eleven months he wanted to keep it secret. She had mixed feelings about this arrangement. A hidden romance had built in drama and excitement but at the same time she wanted to show him off and be seen with him. She understood his reasons. Firstly it wasn’t very cool to be going out with one of his sister’s friends and secondly she was significantly younger than him.

Looking back as an adult she
also realised that if they’d had sex when she was fifteen the threat of time in prison must have felt very real for him, and perhaps too, as he was a decent sort, he had felt that it just wasn’t proper.

They very quickly got to exploring their sexuality in o
ther ways. He was the very first to touch her properly ‘down there’ and luckily for her all the experiences were positive. She had heard a host of bewildering accounts of course most of the pornography and forums on the Internet described sexual relations as relentlessly fiery exciting and satisfying. Some of the accounts from her girlfriends were slightly different and a lot of them admitted that their boyfriends’ advances often felt like fumblings which left them feeling confused and unsatisfied. She herself had started to become slightly concerned that there was too big a gap between fantasy and reality but her first few encounters with Simon put her mind to rest. She was thrilled by his touch and the way he held her and kissed her and they started to work through certain stages. She knew from the American teen movies and from all the classroom gossip the steps that couples went through in terms of intimacy and she seemed strangely compelled to follow them.

In their first session of heavy snogging she allowed his hands to explore her breasts and buttock
s but only through her clothes. She herself avoided touching his groin although she could feel that he was hard and excited. He respected her wishes and at the time that was the most important thing. Their second intimate session was on a babysitting assignment for a neighbour and this time she allowed him to remove her top and blouse and fondle and lick her breasts. The feelings were delicious and when his hand strayed to her crotch she was almost overwhelmed with the temptation to let him touch and rub her there.

S
he held back though. There was an order and some part of her feared the idea circulating that she was ‘easy’ or a ‘slag’. The series of bases and levels of intimacy seemed to be designed to prevent this. The protocol at school was that you went on a certain number of dates and reported your activity. Too little and you were dull or frigid, too much and although the other girls were eager to hear all the details she knew that the more jealous ones started to circulate rumours.

             
And the third serious date she let him touch her
down there
and found it thrilling. Her expectations had been low as so many of the girls had reported feeling disappointed but she wondered if perhaps Simon being a little bit older and more experienced had learned how to caress a woman with a little bit more finesse. She came very close to reaching an orgasm but held back because some part of her still felt it might have been embarrassing. On that occasion she also touched him although also held back from giving him complete release. That would be the next date she told herself. She reported her activities to her closest friends and they shared her pleasure and excitement with great enthusiasm, or at least seemed to. The world of girl chat was never that simple. The ones without boyfriends listened keenly but it was clear that many of the others were jealous and she was careful not to make her accounts sound too good.

At the time t
hey talked about little else. Boys, sex and sexuality were the main topics of daily discussion followed closely by diets, clothes, shopping and celebrity gossip. The sexual tone topic of the moment was fellatio, or ‘blow jobs’ as they were more commonly known. They had very limited experience between them but it was clear that every girl would have liked to have been an expert. Some of the more adventurous ones sought out the appropriate pornography on the Internet but the preferred method of learning seemed to be listening carefully to the girls who proclaimed themselves highly experienced.

The mood of the time was summed up in their m
ost popular joke. The story concerned a younger girl with a new boyfriend who was keen to please him orally. She sought out the most experienced girl in the upper sixth form and eagerly asked her advice. The girl proudly proclaimed that the art of oral pleasure was very simple. Once you had taken a boy in your mouth you simply remembered the island. Remembering the island was the key point. Once you had remembered ‘Honolulu’ you simply repeated the word as often as you could and the movement of your mouth and the action of your tongue produced exactly the right sensations.

The younger girl was thrilled with her instructions and on her very nex
t date tried out the technique. When she returned to school on the Monday morning she was sad and downcast. The elder girl sought her out and quizzed her as to why she was so unhappy and it turned out that the date had been a disaster. After taking her new boyfriend in her mouth the younger girl had remembered the island and mumbled ‘Madagascar’. The rapid gnashing of her teeth had created some very unpleasant sensations and resulted in her being dumped.

The joke was probably
popular not only because it was funny but also because it contained some genuine wisdom. When shouting goodbye to each other they would frequently shout the words ‘Honolulu’ or ‘Madagascar’ and this provoked peals of laughter.

There was soon a true story that brought equal hilarity
to the school. A pretty and studious girl called Alison Woodcock, whose surname also added a depth of humour to the situation, had an embarrassing incident with her boyfriend that she was foolish enough to share with her friends. She’d decided to orally pleasure her long term boyfriend for the first time and had knelt in front of him and applied the Honolulu technique. She could see that very quickly he was about to cum but she was uncertain what to do with his semen. She decided she didn’t want it in her mouth or on her face so turned her head sharply at the moment of climax. The result was that his ejaculation found its way into her ear.