Free Kissing Toads by Jemma Harvey Page B

down, I worry about hygiene issues and have to go and wash them before he can resume. I don’t mind not being turned on, but it’s no fun when sex is actively stress-making. But I controlled myself, and let him lick away, trying not to wonder what my toes tasted like. Nothing – nothing on earth – will make me reciprocate.
    (The good part is that Alex is nuts about my shoes. He’s the only man I know who gets a hard-on for Jimmy Choo stilettos.)
    When it comes to sex, men fall into roughly two categories. There are those who like sex the way a chocoholic likes chocolate: it’s a delicious indulgence, they crave it, they savour it, but they know, for all the strength of their craving, that it isn’t essential to life. And then there are the guys who fuck to live, to feel alive – the intense types for whom sex is bread to the starving. The sort who never waste time on the outer limits of your body (like your toes) but zoom straight in on the principal target areas, and have got inside your bra and twisted your knickers into a thong before you’ve even offered them coffee. Ben Garvin was like that – but I don’t want to think about him. No point in dwelling on mistakes. When I want someone to think about there are always Viking raiders and leopard-print Tarzans and so on. Anyhow, Alex is a chocolate guy; he dips into sex like it’s a box of Belgian truffles, lingering over every flavour. It’s lovely to feel desired and lingered over like that, even if it does make things rather long-winded sometimes.
    I’m supposed to be a sex symbol, and sexy women are women who like sex. You can’t possibly be sexy if you don’t. I read Lady Chatterley when I was a teenager (the dirty bits, anyway) and what struck me was how, when poor Constance wasn’t getting laid, she went all wan and droopy, but when she started humping the gamekeeper she became sleek and opulent again. Mind you, this is a man writing, saying that if you don’t fuck you’re not a Real Woman, which is what any man would say, though they don’t usually take a whole novel. It left me with the impression that if I didn’t shag regularly my tits would droop – a worry that has lurked at the back of my sex life ever since. So I make sure Alex and I do it a lot. He feels replete, my tits stay full and bouncy, and I can catch up on orgasms later, by myself.
    In Scotland, I would have to go without; I flirt, but I don’t do infidelity. Too risky. When you’re a celebrity, there’s always someone watching. But it was only for a few months. There would be chances to visit – my tits wouldn’t start sagging just yet. And privately, in the inmost corner of my Self, I really was looking forward to it.
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    Ruth
    Working for VivaTV wasn’t one of the highlights of my life. In fact, if your life can have lowlights, that was it. (Or them.) Ongoing lowlights, every day. The producer was a plump, pasty-faced woman who ate too much sugar to counteract the constant fear of losing her job. She passed her stresses on to me, shouting when she didn’t need to and changing her mind every ten minutes, and I, willy-nilly, passed them on to the researchers, though I tried not to. Some writer or other once said: ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation’, which may or may not be true, but of one thing I am sure: most women lead lives of vocal desperation. The studio environment seethed with it. On location, we seemed to spend too much time standing around outdoors, waiting for our prey to emerge from office or home, or filming alfresco activities like bicycling poodles, pro-celebrity streaking, and a performance artist who claimed he was turning into a tree. The winter, instead of being merely damp and chilly, was cold, with falls of rather gritty snow and the kind of wind that blows through the hollows of your bones. I had borne far worse in Eastern Europe – but