When I first met Tim he turned up at the flat with an ice-cream container filled with caramel slice and a collection of faded pink luggage from his “sister”. My flatmate Shane told me that Tim reeked of virgin, which apparently smells like velvet corduroys. This made me wonder three things simultaneously. How did Shane know what corduroy smelled like? Why the fuck was I flatting with someone who sniffed virgins and had a curious twitch? And did my sexual status have a particular odor?
Things like the sexual scent of your potential flatmates are not always the first details you might consider when moving in with strangers, but perhaps they should be. Sex reveals all. Or, as my flatmates taught me, “it’s the thing you can thank for the fun slippery ride down your mum’s vagina.” Yeah, that bundle of hilarity came from Shane.
But if Shane could sniff and tell so well, he should have realised that the problem for me when it comes to sex is that although I can write as dirtily as the next Erika Leonard, talking about it is another kettle of lubricated dildos [Insert chaste story of girl who grew up in a convent]. The Bible has countless scenes of earth-shattering sex. You just need to Dan Brown those tales and discover the mystery, or Google it. In the end, I have learned that I’m an inherently private person, but flatting has taught me that it’s okay to both be private and talk about sex. Don’t tell me that I sound like a retired minx of a Grandmother trying to be subtle to the bus driver about getting party-roached 20 years ago. I’m just being real. And you know how this happened? Talking about sex with the flat during dinner.
It all started out on a Friday night, when we sat around the table in the lounge, eating sausage and the innuendos that came along with it. Candlelight reflected from Shane’s wine glass as he held it to his lips. We watched as Tim took a sausage up to his mouth. His lips encircled the end, which was dripping with rich red sauce. He masticated hard as his throat lubricated with saliva. Then, around that hard wooden table, the conversation got dirty. And so, like the pubescent fapper of a magazine it is, Critic came wanking along, sweaty for a flash of the topics we discussed.
My flat’s column may be hard to deep-throat, but you might find you like the taste.
We learned to talk about sex, and fuck it was good.
Sex at The Dinner Table | Issue 15
Do we have to talk about it?
