At a hostel in the ancient city of Taormina, Sicily, a pretty girl greeted me at the front desk. As she checked me in, a man standing behind her checked me out with a big smile in the way I’d come to learn Italian men do.

He was several years older than I, had dark thinning hair, and had the gaunt look of someone who was malnourished.

Even though I did not find him attractive, I was grateful for his gaze. …

For a long time, I put a lot of pressure on myself to have an orgasm during sex. I mean a lot a lot of pressure.

If he came and I didn’t, it meant I failed myself and him, and the sex couldn’t have been so great. And if I did come, it meant I was a sex goddess and he was a sex god, and the stars were aligned.

That’s what I mean when I say “a lot” of pressure.

But then I read the New York Times best-selling book Come as You Are, and it completely changed the…

Hello Medium friends,

Thank you for reading me these months, years, however long you’ve been with me. I’ll keep this short.

I put together this short survey about sex and love.

It’s completely anonymous (unless you decide to add your email at the end). It would mean a lot to me if you could fill it out.

Thank you!

TAKE THE SURVEY

I was sitting on the edge of the tub, rubbing lotion into my body, mildly enjoying the pressure of my fingers on my damp skin, when I noticed him staring.

He was lying in the water with his head back, eyes wide.

And the idea of him watching me, him captivated by my body, started to arouse me. The mild pleasure from my hands on my skin began to intensify, eroticize, as they joined his eyes in caressing my shoulders, breasts, and nipples.

He asked me to bring the candle closer, and if I wouldn’t mind opening my legs? …

In a recent video interview, I watched a few Medium stars discuss how to do well on this platform, and one of them said something that struck a chord.

“I’m doing this as a side gig, but a lot of people are trying to do this full-time, and you can tell. You can smell it in their writing.”

When I heard this, my first reaction was, well, shit. I am one of those people trying to make a full-time income here. Are my readers picking up on this thirst for money? This desperation for clicks?

Can they smell that halfway…

I’m often not in the mood for sex. I don’t feel horny all of a sudden when I’m looking at a hot model on a poster or when my crotch brushes against a sexy sofa.

I don’t always want to rip my partner’s clothes off at the sight of him entering the bedroom with his shirt off.

And even though I enjoy it when I’m doing it, I rarely masturbate. I just don’t normally feel a strong pull towards touching myself when I could be reading a book or watching Netflix.

It simply doesn’t work like that for me and…

On vacation in Bangkok for my 25th birthday, I met a professional poker player. He all but made me drool.

Max was traveling through Southeast Asia while gambling online. He would go from city to city, beach town to beach town, while “working” for an hour or two from the common room of whatever hostel he happened to be staying in. This covered his travel expenses and then some.

He was basically on perma-vacation.

I wanted what he had. So when I got back home, I made a plan.

I had already been thinking about transitioning into the world of…

If you have been paying attention to the latest sex research, you may have heard of a little something called “the orgasm gap”.

Basically, researchers collected data on men and women of various sexual orientations and found that 95% of heterosexual men compared to only 65% of heterosexual women reported usually to always orgasming when sexually intimate. Hence “the gap.”

When I first heard this, my feminist spidey sense went off.

I thought, Those straight males at it again, taking more than they deserve. Not only do they make more money for the same job but they’re taking all the…