Innocent Loverboy

Love, sex and interminable pop-culture references

Ask ILB: Why don’t you play the guitar any more?

April 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Away above my head
I see the strangest sight
A fiddler on the roof
Who’s up there day and night

I’ve always been of the opinion that musicians, in whatever form, are sexy. Maybe it’s the camaraderie of being able to play music together, perhaps there’s something in the skills you have to play the music. It certainly has a certain number of other effects on me as well – maybe there’s a certain attraction there (requited or otherwise). Maybe you’re just seriously into music.

Or you want to fuck one of the band.

I have given a lot of my life to music. When I was younger, although I never went all the way, primarily I played violin. I did only take it up because it looked similar to the lyre played by Cacofonix in the Astérix books (and my school didn’t offer lyre lessons), but I was still playing it by the time I got to university. The band in which I got called a wanker was a brass one, so I switched to percussion for my three years of ritualistic verbal abuse.

But I always wanted to be a rock star… so, at 15, I started to teach myself guitar.

Hey now, you’re an all star

Like a few things that keep reminding me who I am, like James, Woodcraft, Knightmare and Surrender Cinema, playing the guitar has been a huge and crucial part of my life. While I never really made it into a rock band – well, not one that played gigs, anyway – when all became too much, there was something incredibly freeing about being able to pick up, play, and sing along.

From my humble beginnings when I only knew one Tom Lehrer song, through to janky James covers and eventually any one of the 250+ songs I’ve written myself, there has been a strange mix of comfort and excitement in being a guitarist / vocalist. I was never good at either, and it isn’t as sexy as bass and playing music never made anyone want to fuck me…

…but it was part of me.

And there was nothing quite like those “wow” moments when you played a song perfectly all the way through.

You’ll never shine if you don’t glow

Who is the greatest drummer ever and why is it David Baynton-Power?

A couple of years ago I noticed that playing the guitar was becoming a little difficult because of the loss of mobility in my arms. I made my way, with a little effort, through the annual musical meetup that I go to (just about the only time I ever get to play with an audience), sang with 47 and bought a guitalele for want of something easier to play.

Last year I did the event singing along to backing tracks and once or twice actually playing guitar. I had a quarter-sized acoustic my cousin no longer wanted and surprised everyone, myself most of all, by being able to strum my way through a couple of my songs. And people applauded, too.

On the first of February this year I wrote some lyrics, sat down with guitar in hand, tried to strum a chord and…

…I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t hold the strings down. Couldn’t get my hands in the right position, Couldn’t even drag my thumb over the fretboard to get as much as a single note out of it.

I’d lost it. I’d lost the skill. My body had failed me.

And it brought to an end twenty-six years of being able to do perhaps the one thing of which I was most proud.

Gone.

My world’s on fire, how about yours?

Before you ask, yes, I have tried all sorts of things, and no, none of them work. Yes, I have a keyboard and yes, I have lots of percussion lying around; no, I can’t play the piano. Plenty of well-meaning friends have made their own suggestions, ranging from pedal steel guitar to Appalachian dulcimer. I’ve even tried an autoharp, and will never be able to afford an omnichord, and I can’t even play any of those, so I’m stuck where I am.

Tomorrow is the first musical event I have where I’m genuinely unsure if I’ll be able to play anything at all. I have printed lyrics, a few hand instruments to hit and shake, and a set of pitch pipes used to tune a violin and that’s basically it. I don’t have the confidence to attempt anything else. I’ll have to sing all my songs a capella with occasional beats on a cajón if somebody brings one.

…I can’t sing either.

But this is where I am. A lost musician unable to create music. “Frustrated” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Why are you fishing for sympathy, you talentless self-victimising hack?

I’m not, actually. Writing this post – a decidedly not sexy one – is just a way of getting my feelings out on screen. The last year has been a difficult one for me, simply because I was scared to pick up a guitar and discover that my ability to play one had abandoned me. I didn’t play anything at all during the off-season – if I didn’t know, it wouldn’t affect me, right…?

Right…?

Writing this out hasn’t really made anything feel better. Not really. It is, however, a way to get my feelings out and I suppose that was my aim.

Oh, and if you ever actually hear me sing, I’m really sorry. Nobody deserves that.

Give it time…

April 3, 2026 / / 2 Comments

The thing that I notice first is that it’s amazing I’m up at all, when one considers the fact that I was out of bed from some time approximating 3:45am until 11:59pm the previous day (and awake for even longer…). Assuming as I had been that I’d be asleep for all-of-Thursday, I woke up… eventually. So here I am, awake, moving about (to a point), drinking lemon squash because the milk has gone off and so I can’t do coffee.

I haven’t yet put pants on because I spent the whole night thinking about porn and really ought to get whatever that is out of my system.

It’s a relaxing experience, wanking to porn. The more ‘classic’ image – greasy old man from Slough or spotty teenage herbert hunched over in front of their keyboard whacking off to a pair of boobs it took their 56k modem a while to download – isn’t my experience. I like to take my time – if I have 47 minutes to spare before my wife gets home, then I’m going to use my 47 minutes. After all, I tell myself, the journey is just as fun as the destination.

That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

So, as I cue up the porn that I had been thinking about and take my dick in hand, I’m anticipating an enjoyable time. I have an afternoon to have a lazy wank and, considering how horny I already am, this will be a blessed relief from what has been, frankly, one of the most baffling weeks in recent memory.

I need this – it will centre me. Give me the thorough grounding that I only get from being ILB. And it will relax me. I need that too. Plus, I have hours. I don’t need to orgasm immediately. Could go through the porn for a bit and then see what’s happening on Chaturbate ’cause I have an account now. I even have some erotica to read, and there’s always my imagination. If my dreams are going to invent situations like being in a relationship with a pair of very different girls – sisters, in fact – then I’m sure I can wrangle my thoughts into something hot…

…I have options, basically.

And that’s what I’m telling myself.

But of course, if you really, really, really need to finish, because that’s the release you’re looking for and you can always go back to bed afterwards, then the fact that you have all that time dickmarked doesn’t all have to count, right?

Because that’s what I’m now telling myself, with increasing desperacy, to justify the new fact that, less than fifteen minutes after I started, I’m rearing back, fluttering my eyes closed, and releasing a week’s worth of jizz all over my fist, stomach, and feet.

Being told we’re also-rans does not make us Joseph fans

March 23, 2026 / / 0 Comments

A conversation with myself:

I’ve not been sleeping well. I’m aware that’s nothing new. In fact, with the new medication and CPAP machine I’ve been sleeping more than usual. It’s just that…

It’s just that what? I know what you’re talking about. You’re just going to have to say it out loud, or it doesn’t count.

The dream?

The dream. Tell me about the dream.

Where do I start?

At the beginning.

It started with her writing a poem, although you could hear it. It was like an audiovisual thing, with lots of colours and wavy text. And it made a noise – like a swish, swish sound… like that beat I made for one of my songs, you know the one?

I know the one. So she wrote the poem, it moved around and it had your beat. Carry on.

Right, so the poem was about her exes, including her husband, the one whose name I don’t know. It was all about them and what they’d done for her. They each had a stanza, but it was all free verse, so there wasn’t any rhythm, or rhyme.

You’re sure it wasn’t prose?

No, definitely a poem. I’ve read her poetry; it’s all like that.

So what was the problem? You are definitely one of her exes. Was it something she said about you?

No. That’s just the point – she said nothing at all about me. I didn’t get a stanza, or a line, or even a sentence. I was ignored. Deliberately. I felt so expendable, so forgettable, like an also-ran. I felt like that just after she dumped me, and I felt it again last night. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

You weren’t mentioned at all? But what about the side text?

There was side text, I suppose, explaining it all like that in Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. Just little bits of prose. My name was in it all of once, and even then it was to fill out a sentence.

Which sentence was your name in?

…it was well-timed, like with [Boyfriend X] and [ILB] and [Boyfriend Y}…

In a list? Ouch.

And the other boyfriends in that list were expounded upon in the poetry, and the notes. I may as well not have existed at that point.

You know that’s not true, right? Think about it. You were a couple for almost three years. Throughout that time you shared a very intense love, a degree of loyalty and commitment you rarely see, and you were probably the most sexually compatible couple around. You complemented each other perfectly, both in life and in bed.

But then it just stopped. She stopped loving me.

I don’t think she ever really stopped loving you.

It hurt. It hurt so badly. It still hurts.

I know it does. The question is: why are you still having dreams about her? If it’s been ten years – fifteen, even – since you last saw her, why is she still relevant in your life? What is your brain trying to tell you?

I wish I knew. I haven’t even mentioned those other dreams.

The ones where you’re still together and she’s cheating on you?

Those. I’ve already gone though life feeling unlovable. In those dreams I feel unwanted.

Do you think she cheated?

No. No, I’ve never thought that. I’m just well aware she could have if she wanted. I always saw her as very desirable. She was pretty, clever, witty, high-achieving, and she even used to be cool in her youth, so I heard. She could have had anyone else. And she was excellent in bed. I almost always felt like nothing compared to her.

Well, that’s the reason, isn’t it? You felt like, as you say, nothing, and therefore you dream about her treating you like nothing. You have internalised the hurt, and your brain is interpreting it as distressing situations, manifesting as your greatest fear of loneliness? You tried as hard as you could, and still failed, and so your brain casts you as the forgotten one – as you say, an also-ran.

I was. I think about that a lot.

She hit you once.

I think about that a lot too.

I can’t say anything else. I don’t have an answer to any of this. Maybe I never will. Maybe you won’t either. Perhaps this is just one of those things that happens, you know, that you did or didn’t do, like the girl you had a crush on who you turned down or the girl you didn’t kiss. Everyone has those stories.

She didn’t.

Maybe she did. You just remember things. Not everyone has your labyrinthine memory.

But there’s still a problem, isn’t there?

Yes, there is. And how do you feel about it?

Honestly?

Honestly.

Hurting.

ILB’s Fantasies: Spotlight

March 12, 2026 / / 0 Comments

This… is ILB’s new fantasy.

“Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening!” he trills as he walks out onto the stage and casts his eyes out over where he assumes the audience is. He can’t quite see, because of the lights. But he can hear them. There’s a smattering of polite applause.

“Whoo!” shouts his wife from the back row.

“And welcome to my show,” he presses on, walking up to the lectern with his tablet already running and displaying the right page. (It doesn’t even take that much setting up, of course, but he likes to be prepared. He’s been here for an hour already.) “Who’s already seen one of these? Okay, don’t put your hands up, I can’t see. Can we get the house lights up?”

House lights go up. ILB’s usual utterly bewildering demographic is in again. There are some pleasantly familiar faces in the mix. Some have clearly wandered in by accident. A sizeable number, it seems, have come just to get a look at him.

“For those of you who don’t know what’s going on, hello, I’m Innocent Loverboy! I’m a sex blogger.” He clears his throat. “So, this show is for adults only. If you’re under 18, then you shouldn’t be here. But then if you’re under 18 you shouldn’t be up this late, either.”

There’s a ripple of laughter.

“So here’s how this show works. I’ll read out some of my blog posts. They’re all free on my blog itself, of course, but I’ve always thought that if they hold up well enough on a page, they’d translate just as well to the spoken word, so that’s what I’m still going to be doing. And it gives me the chance to talk about me, so that’s always a bonus.”

He steps forwards, looking to the lectern.

“The paper on your tables is for requests,” he adds. “In the interval I’ll come around and collect them. It it’s related to love or sex I’ve probably written about it at some point. If there’s anything that rings a bell, I’ll pull up a blog post and read that. Basically, you’re writing the second half for me. But for now…”

Californication starts to play in the background.

“…I’ll start with a post about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. To whit, I may as well get you in the mood…”

And, by the end of the song, the audience are hanging on his every

Sext

February 20, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Ding ding. Ding ding.

I picked up my Nokia 3310 and opened the Messages menu to see the name of the pretty blonde I used to talk to. Her messages were usually teasing without going to the point of being ribald – having only physically met her once, I had no idea exactly how far she would go in the flesh. From the impression I got, it was pretty far.

I’m sure we all went that far in the end. But she was an early bloomer.

is it true that
when you’re
horny about me
your phone locks

That was all it said. I pressed the button to scroll down to check if there was any more to the message. Of course the screen didn’t move one iota. Maybe it would move up. Nope, no movement there either.

I went into an immediate and very brief blind panic. My ‘phone may have broken. There was no way I would be able to afford a new one – the things were expensive. I’d inherited this one from my sister. What would I do without it? I’d never be able to text people. Not that I texted many people, but I had pretty blonde friends who sent me things like this. It was almost like my ‘phone was locked.

…oh.

…oh!

…OH!

The last horse crossed the finish line before I texted her back.

Got me! That’s hilarious!

It was, at least, better than the ASCII art of blowjobs that another, slightly grosser female friend used to send me.

just sending something funny to my friends. but good to see ur horny about me 😉

I mean, I hadn’t been horny about her… up until that point. But I’d made up my mind to keep that text – it was a clever trick, however it worked. I would send it to Esque at one point, who would be similarly amused.

But I was particularly restless for the remainder of the night.

Soft Porn Sunday: Danielle Petty & Ron Jeremy

February 15, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Do people really want to have sex with men just because they have a larger-than-average penis? It seems like a fairly suspicious trope to hang an entire plot on. It’s also probably not very realistic; I’ve got an UNUSUALLY LARGE PENIS and I went through an incredibly long period of nobody wanting to have sex with me.

I find it a more realistic assumption that women may want to have sex with Ron Jeremy because he’s Ron Jeremy. He’s big, he’s famous, he’s funny, he’s more talented than you think he is, and he does a rap in Emmanuelle in Wonderland, but we’ll ignore that.

The fact that he’s on this playing himself is also an incredibly Ron Jeremy thing to do. Massive dick or not – this is the ultimate self-insert fanfiction in televisual form, matched perhaps only by Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Appearance: Black Tie Nights, Series 1: “The Legend” (2004)
Characters: Sandy & Ron Jeremy

Danielle Petty (credited as "Kennedy Johnston") and Ron Jeremy in Black Tie Nights (2004)
I took better snaps than this, but the nose thing is difficult to resist.

I had to look Black Tie Nights up as I’m not over-familiar with the concept, but from memory: it’s an anthology series with the link being a dating agency, the eponymous Black Tie Nights, run by Cooper Snow and Olivia Hartley (Tiffany Hendra and Amy Lindsay respectively). The stories revolve around the people who hire their services – a bit like Bedtime Stories, although this one doesn’t have Kim Dawson as Belle continually getting her kit off. As much as I enjoy those bits, you understand.

In this episode we get Ron “Ron Jeremy” Jeremy, bored with women sleeping with him because he has a huge dong, asking the agency to find him someone with whom he can find a genuine connection – he wants brains as well as beauty – and a personality to match. (If only he could manage that without having sex he’d be a perfect candidate for Too Hot To Handle.)

Sucks to be him, then, as everyone still appears to be interested in his dingaling. This scene even begins with Sandy (Danielle “Kennedy Johnston” Petty, who in keeping with the script should be playing someone called Kennedy Johnston, but isn’t) feeling it. Ron, of course, is classically erudite:

I don’t want to sound crude or anything, but most women cringe a little when they put their hands on it.

Ron “Ron Jeremy” Jeremy as Ron Jeremy

There’s some more dialogue after this, which I won’t repost here as it contains preconceived notions about both Mediterraneans and mathematicians, but it’s all delivered believably enough, and I am somewhat entranced by the way Petty’s nose moves as she’s talking. She’s certainly very pretty, but it’s the nose I’m really interested in.

No, I can’t explain that any further. Let’s press on.

The actual “sex scene” bit of this sex scene starts at 00:30 of the slip I’ve got, but it moves along fairly swiftly. There’s a kiss, disrobing, and oral sex by 00:52. All very efficient.

Danielle Petty (credited as "Kennedy Johnston") and Ron Jeremy in Black Tie Nights (2004)
This is how John Cage composed music.

I’ve never seen Ron Jeremy do softcore before and I do have to say he’s not too bad at it, although for the majority of this he doesn’t do much apart from remain between Sandy’s thighs, and the camera remains trained on Petty, who has a lot more to do: moan, flail, kick, and play the piano backwards.

Oh yes, I should have mentioned this earlier: Ron is eating Sandy out on a piano. Part of her rôle here is to play random jarring notes with her flailing hands, which both add to and distract from the actual scene music (a generic thing with a drum beat and piano chords, nothing special, but it’s not meant to be). Danielle Petty herself is also being musical in her own way, and by 01:58 Sandy appears to be having an orgasm, which would usually be the end of a scene.

But hey, this is Ron Jeremy and his associated enhanced badoinkadoink, so there’s more.

Danielle Petty (credited as "Kennedy Johnston") and Ron Jeremy in Black Tie Nights (2004)
Just out of shot is Jackie Weaver telling them that they have no authority here.

“CLANG,” says the piano as entwined hands herald the start of a doggy style scene done in a curious way reminiscent of the Zoom call I was on the other night. It does eventually switch to a full-screen shot in which they mostly appear to be doing it standing up, accompanied by a muffled “whuh” from Ron which made me chuckle. More vocalisations from Sandy, a bit of thrusting from Ron and continued dischordant piano banging are the order of the day for the remainder of the scene, and the whole thing ends with another presumably screaming orgasm (she certainly is screaming).

While she comes down Ron plays a little six-note melody on the piano, which I suppose is one way to finish.

So what do I think about this scene? Well, I certainly like Danielle Petty as Sandy. She’s attractive, flexible, gung-ho, and, upon my life, is this woman loud. Whether or not the script called for it or the actress herself decided to scream like a banshee I’m not sure, but the amount of noise she’s making here really does make you believe she’s enjoying herself.

Danielle Petty (credited as "Kennedy Johnston") and Ron Jeremy in Black Tie Nights (2004)
Ron: ” RON JEREMY HUNGRY! RON EAT EAR! OM NOM NOM!”

The piano thing isn’t exactly new – ten years prior to this the same thing was done in Emmanuelle: QotG – but it certainly adds something to the bump’n’grind, even if that thing is decidedly avant-garde. The scenery is pretty good too – a nice collection of things in the room, from peacock feathers to glassware to some very nice-looking lamps. Overall, it works.

However…

There really isn’t a lot of Ron Jeremy in this scene. He’s certainly involved enough, but doesn’t get a lot to do except pleasure Sandy, and for half of that you don’t even see his face! While I will admit that I’d much rather see her body, and this is softcore so we’re never going to really see his Jonathan Thomas Esq., this is Ron Jeremy! Wouldn’t you think there’d be a little more focus on him? He’s the main character!

Still, can’t complain. This is playful and sexy and there’s a piano in it, and I’ve never seen Ron do softcore before, so now I’ve experienced practically everything.

[And with thanks to the reader who suggested this scene.]

Ask ILB: How do you write a sex blog when you’re not really feeling sexy?

February 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I dialled NHS 111 and ended up in an ambulance to the closest A&E. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, of course; I hadn’t, however, fallen down somewhere or had another heart attack, so there’s that. This time I merely had something swell inside my lung, but additionally this time, I wasn’t given a bed. Four days in hospital and I was in little more than a chair.

Being in hospital does weird things to my sex drive. Sometimes I go in and I’m suddenly really desperate for sex. Dodging into the patients’ toilet to masturbate, pulling my curtains to get a bit of privacy, or scrolling through porn on my ‘phone. Once I had a sponge bath from a friendly HCA just to feel something.

It works the other way, too. Last time I was admitted I spent a couple of weeks not really considering anything to do with sex. One does have to wonder what may have been written in my notes if I wasn’t expressing any sexuality. One of the lowest tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and I wasn’t showing it. For shame.

This time I went in was different for that secret third reason.

Since mid-January I have been feeling decidedly unsexy. I’m not having sex with anyone besides myself anyway, so that’s not really an option, but even if the opportunity were to present itself, would I even take it up? My usual repository of softcore has been found wanting. I have a lot to say about Pandora Peaks which remains unsaid. I’ve tracked down a copy of Emmanuelle 7 and haven’t yet finished watching it…

…eventually I reached a point where I couldn’t even think about having sex without beginning to feel nauseous. Sex, my body had decided, was something that other people did. I was well and truly over it.

And I began to disconnect from ILB.

Being ILB is almost definitely the part of my identity that I’m the most comfortable with. I sit here, I drink cups of tea, I write my blog, I watch porn and I flirt with people. I’m good at that – it’s been my life since 2007 and I’m content with that. Not being able to feel the sexy any more puts a stopper on practically everything; how does one consider sex when one no longer desires it?

Isn’t that the point of sex, that it is by nature desirable?

But I wasn’t feeling it. And I was feeling it even less when lying back on my reclining chair in the emergency ambulant care unit, eyes closed, in the same clothes because I hadn’t been given any new ones, and the same shoes because they didn’t ask me to take them off, feeling dirtier than ever because there was no shower.

And I may have drifted off a few times. Dreams came and went – dreams where my friend-who-is-a-teacher is still alive and I’m getting my quota of sliced baguettes with hunks of cheese and citron pressé. In these dreams I’m stroking cats and getting rich and being cheated on. But they’re not fun dreams. They’re not enjoyable. They’re not sex dreams.

I used to have a lot of those.

I’m bringing sexy back

On the day after being discharged from hospital, I’d usually feel too horny to move and demand of myself an orgasm to help me loosen up. I’d have more regular orgasms towards an arbitrary ‘back to work’ date. Maybe this would help me to centre myself – maybe not. It all depends. But I’d have my dick in my hand at some point.

This time, however, I did not do any of that. For a few days I barely left my bed, being willingly lethargic under the hazy funk of wilt and malaise that threatened to take me. No longer would I stagger to my laptop, drop trou and go to the moon and back. Hours turned into days. Days into weeks. Fortnights. Three weeks. A month…

Last Thursday I decided that I had had enough, and I forced myself to wank. This wasn’t acquiescence – it was force… I wasn’t even watching my usual stuff, deliberately watching something harder, almost brutal. If I was going to come, I was going to have to BEAT it out of myself. But come I did, and the following day too… twice, as it turns out.

None of there were pretty. Or stunning, or even particularly fantastic.

But they happened.

They happened, and in doing so they opened the sluice-gates for something more. Once again I could feel like a sexual being, and so what if I had to try I could bully myself into it and holy fuck i was going to do so i was just going to come so much and so hard and bloody hellfire i’ve missed this i’ve missed it so much and and and

…

…and yesterday, I calmly sat down, watched some of my favourite glossy smut, read a few words, and experienced blessed relief once more.

I’m BACK, baby.

If you don’t fuck around, how will you ever find out?

January 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

[Inspired by, although not officially a part of, a prompt from Laurie Penny’s “write like a person” project on their Substack. I found this prompt too tantalising to resist…]

Hear me out on this one.

I would like, gentle readers, to cancel the following phrase:

“If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

I say this, obviously, as somebody who has been the recipient of said phrase a few times. I try to avoid saying such things to anyone – the same is true of things like “that’s tough” or “serves you right”. I’ve been against these phrases since primary school; I rarely got them, but every time I did, I was incredibly upset.

The reason I’m so strongly against “if you have to ask…” is that it genuinely makes no sense. I’ve heard it from people who have taken offence to something I’ve said, and that’s when it was usually deployed… the reason I asked, of course, is because I wanted to know what I said was offensive! If I need to apologise, I’d like to know why!

Example #1: “It’s a performance school and amateur dramatics club that [my sister] attends.”

She didn’t talk to me for hours afterwards and I got an “if you have to ask…” from her after a while. In the end, I had to relate all this to my mother, who also had no idea. As it turns out, my sister had professional aspirations to the stage and had a crush on her dance tutor. My use of the word “amateur” – true though that may have been – was what had upset her.

If she’d just told me that, I would have known.

Example #2: “You’re allowed to like the porn you like, but why do you like [specific subgenre of porn]? You don’t want to do that in actual sex. It’s kind of weird.”

Okay, fair. I shouldn’t have said “weird”. But I had felt secure enough in our relationship to ask my girlfriend this; it was, after all, the first time we had been watching porn together. I hadn’t been able to say much so far, because I’d been busily licking her out for the past half hour.

Secretly, I think, I was a little jealous. I knew that she had done [specific thing that happens in subgenre] with a former sexual partner. None of my other girlfriends have had any former sexual partners, but I was dealing with this quite well. Exploring the topic in porn I took as a suggestion there was something I couldn’t give her.

Anyway, after sulking at me for while, she deployed the “if you have to ask…”, which further threw me off. Ten minutes later she said, completely out of the blue, that she had no idea why she liked that porn; it wasn’t even something she wanted to do, and it just scratched a particular itch.

If she’d just told me that, I would have known.

Love shouldn’t be a game of Mao

I may be innocent, but I’m not genuinely an idiot. If I’ve upset someone and I want to apologise, then I’m going to need to know what I’ve said. If I’m asking, I want to be told. Why ask if you don’t want to know the answer?

A seven of spades playing card. Image from Shutterstock.
Seven of spades. Have a nice day!

Humans – scratch that; all animals, really – are curious creatures. We want to know things. The average adult human can ask around thirty questions a day (young children do so much more), only about half of which warranting an answer. Questions are a way one gets to understand the world, or the people that inhabit it. “Why?” is the eternal one. It’s one that needs an answer. Nobody really asks “why?” without expecting a response.

Yes, some of the things you are going to say may not be what people want to hear, but “what did I do wrong?” isn’t a rhetorical question. It’s one that deserves an answer.

In the card game Mao, you aren’t allowed to ask the rules. A huge amount of enjoying a game of Mao is trust. New players may be thrown by older players seemingly inventing rules as they go on. One has to trust that there will be a codified set somewhere. There is. It’s just part of the game.

Life shouldn’t be like that. I managed to upset the girlfriend I mentioned above once by asking her to marry me. It’s fairly evident that didn’t, of course, marry her, but at the time, I was somewhere between thrown and distressed by her response. I managed, after many tears, to ask her what I’d done wrong.

“If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

Then how am I going to learn?

One doesn’t simply finish school at 18 and have, by that point, learned everything. Every day is an opportunity to learn something more – I’m 41 in a couple of months’ time and I’m still expecting to not yet know some really interesting stuff. Many of the most engaging eighty-year-olds I know still don’t themselves.

Withholding information from people because you “just think they ought to know” is just cruel. If I ask you why, assume I am going to want to know. In fact, if I ask you why you may wish to assume I don’t know. I myself like to answer questions – I’m not keen, however, on guessing.

Let’s all be a little kinder, shall we, and recognise questions and answers as the way of sharing knowledge and information they are intended to be – and not, as many seem to assume, as veiled attacks?

Because, after all, if I have to ask, then yes, I do deserve to know.

Orgasm Count 2025: A Year In Confusing Orgasms

January 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that this would be obvious, right? I’ve been doing it every year for ages and I’ve even got a special code for it, and I never fail to record them in my diary and I still forgot to do this post? I have no excuse – it’s not like I haven’t got the time for an orgasm count, or even that this is particularly difficult content to write. I simply overlooked it.

This time last year I was in a rather sombre mood. Nothing was particularly wrong; it’s probably the fact that nothing was perfect, either. In 2025 a few things actually did go wrong, but then again, I did have a few perfect days.

I have written a paltry 28 blog posts in 2026. Granted that does average out to more than two per month, or one every two weeks, but that’s hardly anything when you consider that I’m a blogger who used to write at least one post every day. 2024 Escape Velocity would have been more than 40 posts, which doesn’t seem that difficult! I could have – nay, should have – done more blogging, and less worrying about not blogging! Brilliant. Story of my life!

The fact that my most popular post this year was based on somebody else’s interpretation of somebody else’s idea both gives me an idea of what people want to read and reminds me of the recycled ideas in The Machine Stops. How much that actually tell you about me, I’ve no idea.

It’s my job to tell you about me, SO HERE WE GO…

Finally, The Actual Orgasm Count

Once again I’m about to attempt to decode my handwriting, which is so awful it’s becoming a Cain’s Jawbone-style logic puzzle as opposed to simple reading. In order to make it slightly easier to decrypt, I shall defer to my own super secret secret squirrel code, to whit:

☆ – 69. This is the number of orgasms that I’ve had this year. Yes, really. 69. You couldn’t have made this up – let’s have a cheer!

Maths tells me that’s an orgasm per day on 18.9% of the year. Is that good for a 40-year-old man? I genuinely have no idea. But, still. 69! Nobody’s going to take that sort of wanking victory away from me!

🙂 (not an actual emoji; it’s a sideways =)) or, more often, ☆! – 22/3; 17/6; 21/7; 7/11 (the date, not the shop); 12/9, 4/12. These are the days on which I had an orgasm which was, in some way or another, remarkable. I didn’t generally add notes as to what I found exceptional about these wanks… apart from…

FX: Three dramatic chords.

28/9 – This was an absolute record-breaker, earning itself no less than four modifiers, each appended with an exclamation mark and with no further explanation than: Satisfying! Leana! Plentiful! BOING!!!

X2 – 15/2. You’ll be shocked to find out that this is nothing to do with the PlayStation title from 1996 which is a sequel to 1992’s Project-X. It’s simply the one day on which I had two orgasms – both routine, neither one spectacular, but both giving me the relief I needed. You’ll realise from the date that this was the day after Valentine’s, but I’m not sure what that indicates…

Where are the new codes for 2025, you unoriginal, repetitious talentless hack?

Screencap from Disney's "Encanto" (2021).
Oh… Mirabel didn’t get one. [squeaks]

There aren’t any.

This wasn’t deliberate. Stopping short of trying to describe the minutiae of every orgasm I’ve had – my diaries are never that resilient and there isn’t enough pen ink in the world! – it would be a knightmare to even attempt to do that, or even thinking up new codes!

Apologies if you were looking forward to this bit…

I really wasn’t.

Then, all things being equal, it seems a very appropriate way to end this post.

With a heading? You can’t do that.

Netflix and Chill

December 30, 2025 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a difficult month.

That’s why I haven’t been writing much. December has not been easy, despite the fact that it started well enough. My annual about page update and a couple of blog posts aside, it’s been all quiet on the ILB Front for a while. This is some sort of an explanation why.

Simply put, whatever my focus may be at the time, ILB has always been a sex blog – explicit without being rude; sex-positive without being proselyting. I don’t need to be actually having sex to write about it (and, as it stands, I haven’t had sex for about a decade now). I have plenty of sex with myself, of course, and in many ways that is the extent of my sex life – I am completely okay with chatting about sex on the internet, and on account of the fact that I’ve been doing that since 2007, I think that should be relatively self-evident.

Jill the Plumber from the adult Flash game of the same name by Hard Core Toons.
She’s here to check my pipe.

Just before Christmas a workman came to replace a pipe in our boiler system. From basically that time we have had no central heating or hot water. I tried a few methods to compensate (blankets in various places; heating water in the kettle… I even turned on my broken and dangerous space heater once, all the electricity in the flat went out…), but nothing has really worked. Yesterday he came back, with a sidekick in tow, and they spent a while taking things apart. We had about an hour of heating before the system overloaded, water pressure maxed out and everything fizzled out.

I’ve just gotten over a chest and lung infection and I’m already feeling once again like icicles are forming inside my bloodstream. That’s how cold it is.

The amount of temperatures hovering just above zero have more or less put the kibosh on the vague “get back in touch with your sexual identity, you blithering idiot” aim I set for myself a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been having sexy thoughts and the occasional dirty dream – because of course I have, it’s me – but gone are the morning erections, the implications I’m prone to picking up in innocuous conversations, and even the excitement in anticipation of porn, and more porn to come. In fact, a couple of days ago I began to feel sick at even the thought of having sex. I turned off my PC and read a book for a while before looking for something to stream… hence the mention of Netflix in the title of this post.

I can’t think of anything to blame but the cold.

So that’s what I’m doing.

Yesterday afternoon I more or less forced myself to masturbate to orgasm, with the excuse that I was alone in the flat and had some time to myself. While this was, on the whole, a good idea – it certainly felt great and my orgasm was plentiful following days of not doing so – it still felt like there was something missing. Whatever it was. There was a vital piece of the whole process absent, and even my labyrinthine brain couldn’t figure out what it was. I’d been wanking and I came… so what was the issue there?

And yet, hours later, I went to bed solid as a rock, something both unheralded and unyielding.

This morning both workmen came back to check my pipe was leaking correctly. It isn’t – there’s still a variation in pressure. The central heating is back on (although it is still very chilly in my corner of the lounge), but intermittently. It’s almost like a binary switch. Stop, start. Stop, start. Stop, start.

I suppose that’s as good an analogy as I’m going to get. My sexuality is like my flat’s plumbing; it, too, is repetitively stop-start. There’s even a disconnect between the top and bottom halves of my body – my fingers are like ice; my penis a red-hot poker. While the re-appearance of hot water affords me the luxury of having a shower, the thought of taking my clothes off in order to do so is nothing short of terrifying. Would one do so, I wonder, in an Arctic floe?

More so lies the question: do I want to have sex with myself? It certainly felt OK. Not right. Not really. But OK.

It hasn’t been an easy month, and in reality, it hasn’t been an easy year overall. This is the time to look back and reflect, and the more I look at 2025, the more I see it as a milieu of the occasional bright spot in amongst a grey mulch of nothing much else.

Possibly the word “meh” has never been so accurate.

But still.

Forward we move. However cold that might be. We cannot avoid, so we carry our cold with us.

And if anyone has any woolly gloves, that’s be great, cheers.

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