Tag: ask ilb

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

April 18, 2026 / Innocent Loverboy / 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.

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

February 11, 2026 / Innocent Loverboy / 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.

Ask ILB: Why don’t you have a Patreon?

March 29, 2024 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

Just before Christmas, with a very limited amount of disposable income, I splashed out a bit and joined a couple of Patreon. I had specifically made a point of not doing so until I was sure I could continue to pay for one ad infinitum, and in the end I made the additional rule of limiting myself to two. I joined Robyn‘s on account of the fact that (i) they are a dear friend and (ii) the stuff they do is smoking hot; I also joined GOTN‘s, which – as it turns out – is a very good investment, even when you consider the fact that I’m not really a fan of audio porn.

If you are looking for a Patreon to join, you could do a lot worse than considering the above.

Someone I know asked me the other day if I have a Patreon. I don’t. There’s a reason I don’t.

What would getting a Patreon entail?

Just in case you weren’t at Eroticon last year, it’s worth mentioning that GOTN herself did an excellent session about running a Patreon and that I actually took a lot of genuine notes about it (my ‘con notes usually amount to things like “a man got his hair cut at this point”, “sandwich tweet means absolutely nothing” and “Zac just stuck her tit to the table”; this was more involved). I even made a list of things I could offer if I did start one:

(i) Abandoned drafts. This is a tricky one since I tend to post pretty much any old shit, but the idea is there. There are a couple of old things I went back to years later and refined, and this practice might also be something I could offer.

(ii) Audio recordings of my blog posts. This is something pretty much everyone does, and since most of my posts are written to entertain, they may transfer well enough to the spoken word. I regularly read them aloud to an invisible and non-existent audience, and I’d do so if I ever got to read at Eroticon again.*

(*I never will.)

(iii) Group conversations. This worked really well the first time I experienced one, at GOTN’s virtual birthday party (exactly one week after my birthday, although I didn’t mention that!). Since I am a chatty ILB, I’m fairly sure I could do that. I’m still not sure the game of “I Have Never” I want to play with sex bloggers is achievable over Zoom, but…

(iv) Flash fiction. I genuinely don’t write a lot of fiction, but I do have a Word document full of the stuff that I’ve never done anything with. I even have my almost-complete novelette set on Rockall. Could serialise that.

(v) Songs. Just to make sure people leave my Patreon in droves.

So why don’t I have one, then?

That’s a more complicated thing to answer. But I do have a reason. A few, even.

The first is that my blog isn’t a commercial venture and never has been. I don’t really count Patreon as being anything more than supporting artists independently, so it’s not the same as – say – a paid-for ad or a sponsored post. However, were I to be effectively putting some of my content behind a paywall I’d be taking a machete to what I produce. I don’t really think that’s fair.

The second is that I’m not even sure anyone would be interested. I’m not as high-profile as some of my blogging mates who already have one, and I’m not even as high-profile as I used to be in the earlier days before the saturation of the sex blogging community. There’s nothing particularly tempting about me or my writing… specifically when all of it’s available for free on my blog to begin with.

And that’s the real reason behind it. I post all my content on my blog and I always have. It’s never occurred to me not to, and when it comes to reading bits of it out, then who am I kidding? I’d do that for free.

I’m genuinely not important enough

I’ve never, ever even really considered joining Patreon, even if my wife told me to when it was first a thing. I have an account and, for what it’s worth, I have been enjoying what I’ve heard so far.

It’s just not appropriate for ILB. I’d rather post all my content on my blog like I have since 2007. If there’s fiction I like, maybe I should self-publish. If there are unfinished drafts, then I should finish them and hit the post button. And I can always read my blog posts aloud to myself (the laughter can be in my head). But, in all these things, the truth is that, even with the best of intentions, I ultimately lack the drive.

And maybe that’s the real reason.