ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

I'm going to get a bunch of details wrong in this post, I bet, because I'm too lazy to verify my memory, and that's not the main point, anyway. Following up on my last post, on first kisses and asking permission:

Back in the mid 90s, Antioch University (I think) decided to deal with a problem they were having with date rape and sexual harassment on campus by making a rule that a person had to verbally ask his or her partner's permission before taking a makeout session to the next level. There was a big stink about this on college campuses everywhere (or maybe just mine) and in a variety of newspapers. Absurd! they decried. How unreasonable!

Well, it did strike me as stiff, but after thinking about it a bit, I realized that it could actually be incredibly sexy to have a partner ask, if he did it in a creative way. No eye rolling or heavy sighing, but if he did it with a twinkle, so that it was an anticipatory rush, or a tease. He could ask permission to take off my shirt, and then not do it, leaving the potential to blossom in my mind. I could ask if I could slip my hand into his pants and watch his eyes react to the idea...

And that's when it occurred to me that asking permission to kiss someone could be entirely sexy. There are the other classic ways of making a first move, and they have a lot going for them, but in a setting where you want to be sure not to make an unwanted advance, and you think there is a not unreasonable chance of misreading signals, I go with the explicit question every time. And it's not even a fall-back. Try it; you'll like it!

Posted by ClueChick at 6:17 PM in Q&A , misc tips | Permalink | Comments (7)

I will return to the first kisses topic tomorrow or Tuesday, but tonight I have two items of miscellany:

First, does anyone reading here have information about swingers' groups in the Boston area? If so, I'm all ears.

Second, I think one of my favorite things in the world is having someone's hands on my hips, or the curve of my waist, whether in a sexual or social setting.

Yes, indeed. And with those scintillating points, I'm off to paint my toenails or something.

Posted by ClueChick at 8:13 PM in | Permalink | Comments (5)

I just got my first email from down under, if I read things right! This fellow is newly single after a long time:

So now I am exploring the world of casual loving and am loving going on dates, meeting new people and all the excitement. I've had some great experiences, have come across a problem I've never faced before at the age of 33 - first kisses. Just about all my relationships/shags involved me be seduced rather than the other way around as is usual. Now I have to start making the first move! ... I can sometimes tell when the right time is when the girl is giving me all the well-known body language signs, lots of eye contact and we are generally having a good time. No problem there.

But there are other times, I think when the girl is more reserved that I'm not sure...

So what are some amusing/fun/disarming ways a bloke can go in for the first kiss?

I love this question, and not just because I was fantasizing about kissing on my drive home tonight. Kissing is really great, and it gets short shrift in the world of casual sex; people are often rushing ahead to the main event, missing a lot of great scenery along the way.

I think I'd like to address this question in the course of multiple posts, because there are so many great ways to make a move, and I'd love to hear from readers on both sides of the first kiss (kisser and kissee, if it went down with someone initiating, or kissers both, if it was entirely mutual). What are first kisses that have gone well? What are moves you wouldn't make again if someone paid you? What's a trick that didn't go smoothly but worked out anyway?

But first, let me tell you a first kiss story that has come up several times recently, and that is a very fond memory:

There's this boy. He's super cute, and at the time this story takes place, I'd known him socially for a handful of years, but only peripherally. Around this time, I was getting to know him and his wife better, and we all ended up at a sex party together, where he and I spent some time chatting about a variety of things, including how weird it can be to be at a sex party where it's kind of unclear what your role as an observer is... but that's neither here nor there.

So we're chatting, and partway through the conversation, I was struck absolutely stupid by the desire to kiss him. He was still talking and, apparently, I was, too, though I really don't know what either of us said, because all I could think about was kissing him, and here we were surrounded by people in various states of undress and somehow, I was not in the middle of kissing him, and that was causing me all kinds of consternation.

But, a real problem here is that I'm shy. Oh, sure, I flirt like nobody's business, but when it comes to making a move, I'm about as smooth as a thirteen year old boy. So, of course, I went with the classic route of hoping he'd kiss me. But it wasn't working and thus, we still weren't kissing.

Well, this went on for an embarrassingly long time, until his wife came collect him for bed for the evening. Seeing my moment escaping from me, I decided to leap, and before I tell you what I did, I want to say that in retrospect, I think this is a classy approach that I would recommend to anyone:

We were wrapping up the conversation (I still don't know what we were talking about at that point) and I looked him in the eye and said, "Would you mind if I kissed you?"

He made an eyebrows-raised surprised face and then said, "No, I'd like that!" So we did, and it was awesome. Contrarily, I'm still shy to initiate with him (though, actually, that might add a little bit of fun to our flirtation), but I've had a hell of a lot of fun kissing him from time to time, and I look forward to doing it more in the future.

(Full disclosure: After I told this story to his wife, recently, she then passed it on to him, and he came back to me and said, "But hadn't we kissed the year before at that other party?" And, I'm embarrassed to say he's entirely right, so this isn't actually a first kiss story, but it acts like one, so I'm just adding this addendum onto it, even though it makes me look silly for forgetting the first first time I'd kissed him!)

Posted by ClueChick at 10:16 PM in Q&A , cluechick encounters | Permalink | Comments (3)

Wanna know what I love? I love the guy who asks me for advice and then shoots down every suggestion I have.

Okay, maybe I don't love that so much.

Yes, I've got this here blog, and I have a few opinions every now and again, and I also have that handy little link in the sidebar so people can write me with their questions. Often enough, I don't really have much useful to say about people's dilemmas. Much as I'd like to have all the answers, I really only have like half of them. And it often seems to be the wrong half. (Use a thin coating of soap on the bathroom mirror to prevent fogging. See?)

But I do assume that when someone writes or IMs me with a question, that they, I don't know, want advice. But something that seems to happen pretty frequently in these circumstances is that this person wants me to fix the issue at hand, to give advice that doesn't require work on their part, or, if the problem is that he's having trouble getting laid, then obviously I'm obligated to sleep with him, as that would solve his problem.

Really, people, didn't your parents teach you anything? Complaining is entirely allowed, but don't ask for advice if you just want to complain. And if you ask for advice and then shoot down everything your friends or anonymous internet chick suggest, my advice is that you should expect them to get annoyed and hang up.

Posted by ClueChick at 8:15 PM in misc tips | Permalink | Comments (1)

Oh, hey, look, it's Valentine's Day! I suppose the obvious tip for today would be something like, "Buy your chocolates tomorrow!" But instead, I'd like to say a few words about something that has nothing to do with that, nor with picking people up online. Rather, I'd like to talk about one of my favorite things in sex: noise.

When I first started having sex, I was incredibly quiet. I'm naturally fairly quiet and internal (not that you all would know that about me, so just trust me on that) and my first lover practically had to pry any noises out of me. Part of that was shyness, part of it was the fact that a lot was going on in my head and without practice, I didn't know how to translate that into movements and sounds to clue my lover in on what was good, and part of it was that incredibly stupid desire that many teenagers (and adults!) have that their lover should somehow read their minds to discern how to touch them.

So my lover made me make noise, and after a while, that came to be more natural, though there's also part of me that loves playing in settings where it's important not to make noise. (In fact, one of my favorite places for solo play, when I can get away with it, is on airplanes.) And now, in karmic revenge on his behalf, one of my big frustrations with men is their inclination not to make much noise in bed. So let me tell you why you, whether you're a man or a woman, should make noise:

1. It's hot. Who doesn't get turned on from getting a reaction from their partner? And how do you know you're getting a reaction? Body language and noises, especially the ones that seem involuntary: gasps, moans, shudders, whimpers. Come on, even reading the words is hot.

2. It tells your partner that you like what she's doing. If I'm nibbling a guy's ear and getting no reaction, I'll assume he doesn't particularly enjoy that and move on. I enjoy wandering around a man's body, don't get me wrong, but I'm also happy to linger at the points that are especially interesting for him. But only if he gives me a road map. Moaning when I lick your collarbone is a good way to clue me in to the fact that you like what I'm doing and want more.

3. It tells you that you like what's happening. This is the one that surprised me most when I first started making noise: Hearing myself responding to the attentions of my lover creates a feedback loop that is self-reinforcing. I hear myself sigh, and my brain says, "Oooh, we're really turned on right now!"

4. As a man, if you make noise, you will be in an extremely small minority, and women will love it. Trust me.

Posted by ClueChick at 11:54 PM in misc tips | Permalink | Comments (1)

It could reasonably be said that casual sex is my hobby. It's a hobby that I take pretty seriously, but that's true of many of my hobbies. It's not that I'm overly serious, I think, but I do buy into the idea that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. And sex is very worth doing.

But casual sex is also somewhat tiresome. One of the best things about being in a steady relationship that involves sex is that you get sex without all the work of trying to find someone you think is hot and then figure out if they think you're hot and then finding a time when you're both free and then having sex and then figuring out if you both want to do it again, all in the context of a relationship, such as it is, that gets less priority in a busy schedule than friends and family and work emergencies and what have you.

Oh, sure, sometimes there's the blissful hookup when serendipity strikes and it all comes together (pun very much intended) without a lot of effort and everyone has a blast and maybe it works out to do it again and maybe it doesn't, but that one serendipitous hookup reminds you that it can be easy being easy.

But a lot of the time, it's not.

Posted by ClueChick at 10:21 PM in cluechick encounters | Permalink | Comments (3)