The writer first learned about sex from books – turns out it was all wrong. After years of exhaustive fieldwork, Caitlin Moran reveals the funny, messy, horny truth

“Why do you keep writing books with lots of sex in?” they ask me, as a new release pops up on the schedules. “Why do you keep writing books that start with a teenage girl masturbating, and then go on to describe having sex with a man whose penis is too big, and a subsequent urinary tract infection that feels like the battered genitals ‘are like a castle under siege – with panicking princesses with pointy hats getting jammed in your urethra’? Or a loving yet filthy sex scene that’s six pages long and so graphic that the actor reading it for your audiobook had to have three shots of whisky before they waded into it? Why? Also, Mum, where is my lunchbox, and have you seen my gym kit?”

My name is Caitlin Moran, and I write books with lots of sex in them. My teenage daughters hate it, because of course you don’t want your mum writing books with lots of sex in them. This is an interesting paradox, because I primarily write the sex in my books for teenage girls.

This is because, when I was a teenage girl, sexy books were my main source of sex information, and although there were some great ones – thank you, the blessed text that is Jilly Cooper’s Riders: courtesy of page 32, I’m always gonna find nettles sexy – most of the sex I read about was humourless, unrealistic and frankly alarming to a fat teenage virgin girl, trying to find out about this incredibly important thing that she intended to do as soon as she found a) a nice blouse and b) someone to do it with.

I thought I would never be able to have sex until I got a passport and lost four stone

Henry Miller, Ian Fleming, John Updike, Martin Amis, Philip Roth – they all wrote about having sex with powerful, mysterious women with perfect breasts and “nipples like hazelnuts”, in scenes where these demanding, often slightly mad chicks would have to be shagged into submission.

The sex would happen in weird places like “on a boat”, or in Monaco; the women would always be wearing amazing white silk dresses that fell to the floor “like a puddle of cream”, and the narrator would often later discover that the woman had actually had sex because she was trying to get revenge on her husband or kill James Bond, or had rampant daddy issues. No amusing, nice, fat woman ever had sex, in leggings, in Cannock, because she was horny. That never happened. Presumably, that kind of sex didn’t exist.

The result of reading all this was to make me very sexually confused – for starters, I thought I would never be able to have sex until I got a passport, lost four stone and went mad.

But when I finally started having sex – thanks, smashing blouse! You really worked! – I found out that absolutely no sex was like the sex in books. Ever. In the subsequent 25 years in which I’ve been having sex, neither I, nor any woman I’ve met, has had sex in Monaco, or because they wanted to kill James Bond, or because they’d been rocking nipples like hazelnuts under a white silk dress that they just chucked on the floor, even though it was dry-clean only. Women just don’t have sex like that. Their motivations are totally different. For starters, they know that floor dust can actually stain – yeah, you heard. Fictional women’s reasons for having sex never seemed to encompass the real funny, silly, dirty, horny and true inspirations behind women who actually exist taking off their knickers and jumping into bed with some intriguing fellow.

So here, in the interests of balance and information, is all the sex that is actually happening, outside books. Here is: All The Sex.

Sex when you’re single



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Set and props stylist: Hannah at Propped Up. Furniture and bedding: Dunelm.com. Hair and makeup: Dani Richardson at Milton Agency, using MAC. Photograph: Jay Brooks/The Guardian

The ‘got to get the practice in’ sex

You’re 18. You’re inexperienced. Your ideal shag would be the painfully shy Edward Scissorhands – but only after an operation that made him Edward Handyhands: don’t want those shears near your nunny – but he’s not around, and this pleasant-looking bloke called Ian is, instead.

Neither of you feel any kind of heart-melting sexual attraction, but you’re both in a room together, it’s Thursday, there’s nothing on telly, and it seems very unlikely this man will try to murder you, because you’ve just spent 10 minutes talking about how useful his varifocal glasses are. Really, you might as well both take your trousers off and have a bit of a fiddle – to “get the practice in”.

At this point in your sexual career, you’re basically like a trainee Olympic swimmer. One day, in front of a roaring crowd, you will put your heart and soul into an athletic, expert performance that people will talk about for years.

But, for now, you’re just a novice shagger, metaphorically splashing around in a municipal pool in Nuneaton at 7am, getting your lengths in. You and Ian are learning Synchronised Kissing. You both keep drowning a bit, but that’s OK – this is a Sex Apprenticeship.

The ‘maybe you’d be more interesting if we had sex’ sex

This party/club/pub is proving a little dull – the music is too loud for you to have a proper conversation and, because you’ve had four ciders, you’ve got the notion into your head that the man you are currently desperately miming at in the corner might prove to be more interesting if you put him in a very different conversational environment, ie underneath you, in your bedsit, naked, with his discarded trousers draped over a lamp.

What makes the difference between Sexual Adventure and Dodgy Shag is whether or not it’s in any way your idea

“There is no better way to find out what someone is really like than to bring them to stupendous orgasm,” you think in the cab home, unbuttoning his shirt. “We can short-cut weeks of small talk – it’s the perfect ice-breaker, and we will have bonded over a communal experience. Sex is a great way to make new friends! I’m gonna give this nice guy a chance to shine!”

This tactic can have mixed results. Sometimes you end up in a glorious postcoital chat until 5am, enthusing over a mutual love of Squeeze B-sides, and realise you have a friend for life. Other times, you realise that 10 minutes of tipsy mime really isn’t a reliable criterion for judging sexual and intellectual compatibility, and that next time you’re bored at a party, you might be better off getting everyone to do the rowing dance to Oops Upside Your Head.

The ‘fine at the time – but now you look back and are not an eager-to-please 18-year-old, that was super-dodgy’ shag

“Have you ever dabbled with… whips?” “You haven’t really had sex until you’ve had anal sex.” “I’ll pick you up outside your school – keep your uniform on.” “Do you think your friend would be interested in a threesome?”

At the time, you think you’re a great Sexual Adventurer – boldly striding into the Sexual Hinterland, guided by this older (it’s always an older) guy, who is very kindly fast-tracking you past vanilla sex and into all the more niche situations. How thoughtful of you, older guy, you think. Seeing all this edgy sexual potential in me. And until your late-20s, you always used to recount these experiences as part of the odd and hilarious variety involved in “getting about a bit”. A hoot.

However, in more recent years – as you get older, as #MeToo kicks off, as, perhaps, you have teenager daughters of your own – you’ve started wondering: is it really a “sexual adventure” if none of it was your idea? If you’d never thought, or mentioned, these things? Would we think of Buzz Aldrin as a brilliant, brave pioneer if, when he went to the moon, he was at his first term at uni and a really big astronaut had kept nagging him to go to the moon – even though the only place he’d ever said he wanted to go was Margate – and he cried a little bit on the way there and, afterwards, rang his mates and went, “I wasn’t really into it, to be honest, and last night, in the pub, I saw the other astronauts pointing at me and sniggering about it”?

In the end, what makes the difference between Sexual Adventure and Dodgy Shag is whether or not it’s in any way your idea – if it was a mutual situation, involving both people’s desire – which leads us to…

The ‘doing it for the anecdote’ novelty pumping

He’s Canadian. Or he has a moustache like Mr Pringle. Or he has a pet rabbit. Or he’s a DJ, “legendary in a very small community”, or he’s got a tattoo of Rik Mayall on his leg, or his mum was your teacher, and there’s something appealingly kinky about banging Mrs Schofield’s son, when she gave you such a shit time in PE once. (You were on your period, yeah? And besides, no one needs to learn how to climb up a rope in this day and age – hello, we’ve invented stairs now, you old hag.)

Whoever he is, he’s not the usual kind of guy you go for, but he’s clearly up for some cheerful, meaningless sex, and you’re into it because you’re half turned-on and half already amused imagining telling your friends about it tomorrow.

All the pressure on the actual deed is off, because you’re doing this for the anecdote – your vagina is basically in an episode of Quantum Leap, jumping into a mysterious new life, and seeing how it copes, and you’ll be telling Al all about it in the morning. This kind of sex very often overlaps with…

The straight-up awful hump – a tale you will tell for the rest of time

My literal entry for this was back in the 1990s, when I went back to the house of a famous comedian who, as we began the “opening monologue” on the sofa, reached around for the remote control – and put on his own TV show.

It’s odd that very little is written by women about ‘taking’ a man’s virginity

As the theme-tune boomed out around the room, I had to ask myself, “Should I continue with this terrible situation – gathering more material for a story I will, surely, be telling for the rest of my life – or do I feel this is, already, a bounteous repast of narrative?”

Deciding that it was, in fact, the latter, I ceased proceedings with an apposite, “And that’s all we’ve got time for! You’ve been a wonderful audience – goodnight!” and ordered a cab. While I waited for it to arrive, he very kindly read me some of his terrible poetry – thus doubling the sheer gold of the anecdote without me having to take any more clothes off.

In later years, I found out that this comedian had been many, many other women’s Awful Shag, which led to much bonding, and the formation of some manner of community of women, all of whom would go, “Oh my God, let me tell you my one!” as soon as they learned you were “one of them”.

The ‘I am going to sort this problem out’ shag

This is where a woman engages in the kindly act of relieving a very nervous man of his virginity before he actually explodes.

When we do this shag, we tend to pretend we’re a warm, bosomy village strumpet from a 19th-century novel; a-going to the market to sell our fine cheeses, and then having a roll in a meadow at sundown as some mad fiddle player cracks out an enormously long jig, and everyone in the village gets hammered on mead. It’s a jolly old romp, in which everyone has a good time.

It’s odd that very little is written by women about “taking” a man’s virginity, when the “taking” of women’s virginity is so endlessly chronicled. By and large, the losing of a woman’s virginity is one of her worst shags – the hurting, the blood, the statistical unlikelihood of coming, the slight edge of terror you might get pregnant, even though you’ve made him put on six condoms.

When a woman “takes” a man’s virginity, on the other hand – respectfully, enthusiastically, with care and joy – there isn’t really a downside; save him coming in under one second flat, then lying on his back and laugh-crying, “Oh my GOD!”, before being ready to go again six seconds later. In this situation, everyone is a winner.

He’s just the most fascinating, hot dude you’ve ever met, you’re both into each other and he makes your knickers cry every time you see him

No more need be said, save: happy pumping!

Sex in a long-term relationship



Facebook Twitter Pinterest There is such a thing as Sexual Administration, and you will feel the better for ‘ticking it off’. Photograph: Jay Brooks/The Guardian

The ‘maintenance shag’

This phrase was coined by my friend Sali and it recognises a vital phenomenon: the point, in a long-term relationship, when it’s “been a while” – 10 days, two weeks – and neither of you is particularly up for it, but you know, from your deep wisdoms, that you need to “do a sex” now to keep everything ticking over.

For the first 10 minutes or so, you’ll be a trifle desultory – you’ll keep thinking of your to-do list, or remembering a funny cat on Twitter, and laughing – but then, sex being what it is, you’ll suddenly get into it, have a rare old time, and then go back about your domestic business; both pleasingly conspiratorial and sated, because you literally Took Care Of Business. There is such a thing as Sexual Administration, and you will feel the better for “ticking it off”.

The ‘at your parents’ and their sheer appallingness makes us horny – quick, go and do it in the shed’ sex

Are visits to your parents/in-laws often quite… fraught? Is there a terrible, stifling air of unhappiness, and frantic over-tidying, in their house? Do they snap at each other with all the brittle tension of 45 years of loveless marriage? Is there a sofa you’re not allowed to sit on, or a complicated system of outdoor shoes/indoor slippers, or a clock that ticks very loudly in an otherwise tensely silent room? Congratulations – you’re about to become so horny that you’ll run off and do it in the downstairs guest bathroom, against a wall, disrupting the carefully ordering of the special pink towels on the towel rack. “I am chaos! I am humanity! I am life!” you will gasp, as your husband bangs you so frantically, the White Company potpourri falls off the tiny spindly table and confettis to the floor, like a metaphor in a bad pop video from the 1980s.

‘Mummy, what are you doing?' has prevented more sex than religion and Donald Trump’s face combined

The “unhappy people make me horny” mechanism is also sprung into action when visiting friends who are divorcing (you will drive the car 800 yards around the corner and frisk in a layby), and also when on holiday with terrible people. There can barely be a holiday cottage in Devon sleeping eight or more that has not seen a tense barbecue (“Well, William here got the wrong charcoal. Again.”) followed by one couple subsequently sloping away to frantically vibrate in the weird disused room with the ping-pong table and spiders in it.

The ‘we told each other our fantasies and it went wrong’ shag – AKA ‘I can never talk to the UPS delivery driver again’

Self-explanatory. “Spice up a long-term relationship – by telling each other your most secret sexual dreams,” sex experts say. Absolutely never do this. It is terrible advice. If you’ve got by for 15 years without telling each other about your thing for Martina Navratilova, don’t disrupt your delicate sexual ecosystem by suddenly throwing it into the mix on your birthday, when you’re pissed, in your knickers, holding a tennis racket. It’ll ruin Wimbledon for ever, for a start – and it tends to bring awful consequences. Unless you happen to be married to one of Britain’s great character actors – Paddy Considine, say, or Toby Jones – suggesting role-play is likely to be an agony you will never forget. Your average 45-year-old husband’s ability to convincingly play – without rehearsal or script – a hot pirate or sexually-curious-yet-repressed Victorian doctor is likely to be quite low.

The role you will end up playing, after half an hour of self-conscious Scottish accents and hat-wearing, is that of a frustrated Hollywood director, saying, “Let me tell you a bit about Dr Sexington’s backstory. I think it would help give you more range”, while your husband sadly detumesces and wishes he was in Equity, so he could make a complaint about hostile working conditions.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Every so often, in a long-term relationship, you will have sudden, mad, hormonal weeks of terrifyingly intense pumping.’ Photograph: Jay Brooks/The Guardian

Doggy-style

Not the position – although, word to the wise: if you do it with the lights on, it is apt to cause you to notice a pile of dirty washing you kicked under a chair last Tuesday, and exclaim, “Oh, that’s where my dungarees are! I was looking for them. You see, the shed key is in the pocket, and I could not for the life of me remember where I’d put it. Now I can mow the lawn!”, which can put everyone off their stride – but the situation.

If, some time into your relationship, you get a dog, you will quickly learn that dogs become very upset when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much. They will analyse the situation as, “People who give Dog meat are fight! This are danger to Dog!”, and attempt to Kofi Annan themselves in between your warring genitals.

You will fly at their Blue Harbour trousers like a woman possessed, as they weakly say, ‘But we did it last month!’

This scenario tends to upset the delicate balance of your sexual compatibility – as one of you (the “Sex Monster”) is fine with locking the stupid bloody dog in the kitchen and hearing its distant weeping, while the other of you (“David fucking Attenborough here”) definitely isn’t. You will end up having to put on the TV, in order to drown out the sounds of Dog Sadness, which is a whole other barrel of pickles in itself (“Just put anything on. Quick! Dr Sexington needs to make his rounds!” “All I can find is Homes Under The Hammer, or some documentaries about the Nazis, and they both make my fanny shut like a clam.” “A DVD on, then!” “I can only find Peppa Pig, Davina’s 15-Minute Workout and season three of The Wire! Why does no one put these DVDs in the right boxes?” “Oh… forget it. Dr Sexington has died”).

All the above is, of course, directly transferable to “having children”, too. The querulous utterance of “Mummy, what are you doing?” has prevented more sex than religion and Donald Trump’s face combined.

The ‘unexpected purple patch’

This handily describes both the phenomenon, and the visual state of your genitals when it happens. Every so often, in a long-term relationship – the onset of spring, or the purchase of a particularly rakish cardigan – you will have sudden, mad, hormonal weeks of terrifyingly intense pumping, where you do it so much, you both end up semi-injured and have to circle each other warily in case more humping breaks out.

“Stop looking so irresistibly sexy,” you will say to your ageing, careworn spouse, as they try to mend the waste-disposal unit in the sink. “Are you trying to make me lose my mind? You saucy little minx.”

You will then fly at their Blue Harbour trousers like a woman possessed, as they weakly say things such as, “But we did it last month!” or, “My hand is still wedged in the innards of the unit – be careful!”

At this point, you are literally having All The Sex, and if you don’t want to end up in A&E, you probably need to have another child, in order to put the brakes on the whole painful shebang.

Caitlin Moran’s new novel, How To Be Famous, is published by Ebury Press on 28 June at £14.99. To order a copy for £11.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. For details of Moran’s UK tour, go to caitlinmoran.co.uk.

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