These are my letters from the Edgelands…

“You’re overreacting.”

“You should just be grateful to be out of pain.”

“No one cares about this except you.”

When I had a hysterectomy, I was concerned about what would happen to my sex life and what would happen to my creative life afterwards.

I had no reason to fear that either would suffer as a result of the surgery – except for my intuition and my growing sense of unease that both of these vital aspects of me were slipping away.

I knew that, in many cultures, the womb/uterus is regarded as a sacred creative centre. I also knew that I didn’t subscribe to my ‘womb’ as the source of all my creative power. I’d never made a baby, but I’d created a whole heap of other things.

The truth

Hysterectomy was a line in the sand – I couldn’t cope with the growing fibroid and my shrinking quality of life any longer – but, in truth, I’d been noticing the signs of loss for months before my uterus was actually taken away.

Maybe it was perimenopause. Maybe it was being on the brink of burnout. Maybe it was the mask slipping after decades of trying to be a productive member of society and being the strong one, no matter what.

Whatever the catalyst, my hysterectomy and the physical, hormonal, emotional and spiritual changes that followed meant I could no longer pretend that life was the same as before.

What do you do when you can no longer do what you used to do (because you can no longer be the person you used to be)?

Of course, I rebelled at first. Clinging desperately to the belief that I just needed to try harder to ‘get back to how things used to be.’

Then, for a while, I think I may have almost given up. It felt futile to keep trying.

I’d lost my words. (My beloved words!)

Lost my identity. (Who was I if I wasn’t a writer?)

Lost the intimate relationship I used to have with myself and others. (How could I go ‘there’ if the old routes that took me there no longer existed?)

If my life were a movie, this would have been the scene where the camera panned out to show me sitting on the floor in a bare room, sombre music filling the space. There were no more words. I was fading to grey.

“You’re being overly dramatic.”

But that’s how it felt.

A quiet and lonely grief. No one cared or understood. I was alone with my loss.

The eternal flame

There’s a recurring metaphor I’ve used to give hope to myself and others: the pilot light.

That small flame that keeps flickering even when there is no fire.

No creative fire. No sexual fire. But the potential is kept alive.

A single ray of light falls on the seated figure. She glances towards the window. The sun has risen on another day.

I surrendered.

Surrender is different to giving up.

Surrender requires faith. Trust. Some hope and belief that you’ll get through this – you don’t need to know how, just that you will.

If I were a religious person, this would be the moment when I “let go and let God.”

And maybe that is what I did. Except my God is not a bearded man in the sky; my God is the ever-changing sea, the hum of a bee in a foxglove, and the comforting warmth of my hand on my chest.

I wanted to understand what was happening to me. I wanted the cognitive clarity of explanation, but first I had to find meaning that didn’t rely on words.

I let myself play

Can you imagine! I gave myself permission to play. To take part in creativity that wasn’t about productivity but about the process of making.

Crocheting dragons. (So many dragons.)

Tearing apart images to collage something new.

Drawing shapes without names and colouring outside the lines.

Reminding myself, over and over, that it was safe. I was safe. My creativity was not lost. I could still access it – just not with words, not now, not yet.

I’ve subsequently learned that this pre-verbal form of creativity exists in my body. My whole body – it was never just my womb.

I always thought that I used my body to write – especially when writing erotica. There was a strong connection between my somatic experiences and my cognitive ones. I’d feel it in my body while I was writing. And I loved that feeling of being turned on by my words.

I didn’t lose my creativity. I lost the connection.

I’ve been describing it as a void – the place where words should be has felt empty, echoey and cavernous a lot of the time. The sparks of inspiration that came to me as story ideas, lines of poetry, or juicy metaphors just weren’t there anymore.

Still in the void, I put down my pen and picked up a crochet hook or a glue stick. Or I went outside and looked for butterflies. Or I sat on the beach and let the sound of the sea fill the space where I used to hear my ideas speaking to me.

Permission…

Surrender…

Allowing space for my body’s wants…

It’s no coincidence that the very things I needed to reconnect with my creativity are the same ones that help me connect with my sexual self, too.

My creativity and sexuality have been interconnected all along.

And I have hope that this new pathway and language for my creativity will help me to enjoy my sexual self again, too.

Maybe I won’t write any more erotica. Or maybe I will. That’s no longer my burning question.

Rather, now I want to explore more of that pilot-light potential.

What safety do I need to surrender to pleasure?

What new routes might take me there?

And how do I give myself permission to go on the journey without my expectations getting in the way of divine intervention and inspiration?

It would be so nice if this were a tidy end to the story

If I could say, “I made it through the Edgeland and out the other side. I know who I am and where I’m going again.”

But life doesn’t work like that.

I still have many unanswered questions.

The line between the Edgeland and what comes next is blurry.

And just when I hoped I might be emerging, I find myself facing other challenges and unknowns.

I’m still living in a body that experiences a lot of daily pain, and my mobility has been progressively deteriorating.

I can’t do what I used to do.

I can’t be who I used to be.

I haven’t learned how to surrender to this scenario yet.

These Letters from the Edgelands are letters to me as well as to you

There’s a wiser part of me that I can hear most clearly when I write.

But I can’t always reach the words.

If I can surrender to experiencing through my body rather than relying on my mind, I can allow the meditative movement of my hand drawing wobbly lines on paper and feel gratitude for my salt-stained skin from time spent cradled by the sea.

Inhabiting my body brings its own challenges, however.

This is another Edgeland to explore.

Will you send me your letters?

When I was a kid, I had a penpal in Austria and another in London. I also wrote letters to my best friend when my family moved and we became separated by over 200 miles.

There have been letters to friends while they were going through cancer treatment. Letters to lovers. And even letters to God.

I’d love to receive your letters from the Edgelands.

I’d love to know how you are experiencing these times. Your questions from these spaces. Any wisdom you find. Your messy middle stories - no tidy ending required.

If you’d like to share your letter with me, please email it to anna@annasansom.com

Or, if you’d like to hear more about my vision for The Edgeland Project first, please drop me an email. (I’ll be sharing more soon with those of you who have already expressed an interest - thank you!)

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Sandra Trujillo, the owner of the mannequin factory, notes that girls as young as 15 are asking for boob jobs for their birthdays. “It used to be easier to be beautiful,” she says with sad resignation in her voice. “Society is very demanding.”

It’s my birthday next week, and as often happens when I pass into another year, I’ve been reflecting on “then” and now. Not only how things used to be but how – and who – I used to be.

If you saw my last couple of posts, you’ll know that I did a live reading of an erotic story that I’d co-written with Orlando Silver (“A Boy at My Feet”). If you follow Orlando too, you’ll know that “Orlando”, as a pen name and writer of extraordinary truths, has just retired from public life.

The conversation we had to introduce the story – and the reading itself – felt meaningful on a level I didn’t fully realise at the time, but now makes a lot of sense.

Orlando said, “I can’t write what’s not fucking bleeding out of me...”

What an incredible gift it is to offer words that come from such a raw and vulnerable place. And maybe it’s no surprise that that level of authenticity can only be sustained for so long.

I wonder if it used to be easier to write this way – before ‘content creation’ and AI mining, and before being in the public realm meant exposing yourself globally and forever.

I’ve written about intimacy and eroticism for over two decades. I needed to. My yearnings formed a pressure in my heart, my head, and my cunt. And this pressure needed to be released (or subsumed) somehow.

I picture blood-letting ceremonies with leeches – maybe they could have sucked the truth from me.

I had questions and curiosities. I had a hunger for more.

I wrote those words at a time when my hide felt thick. My heart felt strong. And my desires felt so close to the surface that the smallest scratch would make me bleed profusely.

That was then.

And now…

My skin is wrinkling and thinning with age. My heart has become more discerning and erratic. And my once-clamorous desires are subtle whispers – audible only to me and those I choose to intimately share them with.

“It used to be easier…”

It’s so easy to romanticise the past.

The better days.

The easier days.

I’ve been straddling worlds for some time.

One foot in ‘then’ – with my commitment to share my “living experiment of desire” – and one foot in ‘now’.

Except the ground under my feet ‘now’ keeps shifting.

I really am in the edgelands.

An unknown territory, neither one thing nor another, not yet ‘before’ and ‘after’ but somewhere in the middle of the story.

I’ve been struggling in this place.

But then the oddest thing happened:

I caught a glimmer of a new landscape, and I felt anticipatory grief for the day when I emerge from the edgeland. Perhaps the unknown has become my new normal?

“It used to be easier to be beautiful.”

I’ve never been conventionally beautiful.

I’ve never been conventionally anything.

And there’s always been a freedom in that for me.

I wonder if the edgelands are a place of freedom too?

Did you notice?

This blog used to be called “Desire Lines 2.0” in reference to my more-than-a-memoir, Desire Lines. It was under this banner that I wanted to keep sharing my “living experiment of desire in queer midlife.”

You can find my most popular Desire Lines 2.0 Substack posts here (the sweet spice of desire), here (what if it’s just a phase?), and here (queer or straight, we all have this in common).

You can find my erotic stories in books and scattered across the internet here (Down By the River), here (in Monsterf#ck), and here (my novel, Coming Close).

You can find my more-than-a-memoir Desire Lines here.

And you can read my chapter – Masturbation Saved My Life – in the anthology, Sex Meets Life, here.

Increasingly, my curiosities are leading me to a different kind of experiment.

Now my driving question is: what lives in the edgelands?

What does each person’s unique landscape look and feel like?

Are there pathways or way markers leading through the edgelands, or are we without a map?

And how can we support ourselves during these times of transition and unknowns, and be self-compassionate during the process?

Which is why I’m relaunching this Substack as “Letters from the Edgelands”.

I hope you’ll stick around.

I’ll also understand if you decide this new enquiry is not for you and choose to unsubscribe.

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Last night. Oh, last night.

I had the absolute joy of chatting with about why we write (you might be surprised by the answers), and then we read “A Boy at My Feet” - the story we co-wrote last year.

I’m still feeling the effects of the reading.

We bring our characters to life on the page. But perhaps we breathe life into them when we speak their story out loud.

Perhaps words truly are spells.

I certainly felt spellbound by the end.

If you’d like to listen to the full reading (and our conversation that preceded it), you can get access by becoming a paid subscriber to either this Substack or ’s. It costs about as much as a cup of coffee to join us for a month.

And if you’re already a paid subscriber - thank you! - the full video should already have been sent to your inbox.

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There are four of us sitting around my kitchen table. We each have a notebook, a pen, a mug of tea, and a plate that holds a licked-clean fork and a few tiny crumbs of the delicious German kuchen my friend lovingly baked and brought for the occasion. The smooth, creamy custard topping has left a lingering mouth pleasure that has us all smiling with contentment.

It’s the inaugural meeting of our self-titled “Success Team”. I feel we are off to a good start.

I initiated the group after reading a book by Barbara Sher. In it, she offered the “success team” model as a way to stay accountable and overcome goal paralysis. Just as the book instructed, we go around the table, each person taking a turn at sharing their dream and life vision, while the others offer encouragement and help brainstorm solutions.

We’re in our mid-to-late 30s, and each of my friends wants something bigger and better related to their career. One wants to leave academia to retrain in Shiatsu, another wants to turn her photography hobby into her day job, and the third aspires to be a non-executive director for an environmental charity.

By the time each person finishes speaking, they have a list of ideas and actions jotted down in their notebook. We’re taking our success seriously.

I go last.

“I want to quit my job and write erotica,” I say. “But I doubt I can make a living from that.”

“What about audio porn?” my friend suggests. “I reckon it’s going to be the next big thing. And you do have a lovely voice.”

I diligently write “erotica recordings” in my notebook and promise I’ll have a go at recording a story using my old tape cassette player. It’s the same one I used to record my band practices on when I fronted a group called “Wild Honey” in the late 1990s. It’s been a while since I performed anything.

^{Wild Honey, CC Blooms, Edinburgh, 1998}

…

Then, somehow, nearly two decades pass

I’ve stuck to writing smut and have dabbled in recording guided meditations, but I never followed through on the audio erotica idea.

(That industry really took off around 2018, thanks to the tech and apps that finally replaced the pre-internet phone sex lines and the later, amateur recordings hosted on erotic writing sites. I could have been ahead of the curve, but maybe now I’d missed the boat.)

My meditations reach over 100k plays on YouTube, and I get commissioned to write some more for the Breethe app. Someone in the comments jokes about the way I say “earth”. (I say “earth” the way any person with a Scottish accent does: with a rolled ‘r’ and a soft ‘th’. I think it’s beautiful.) Another commenter tells me my voice feels like a warm hug - offering some gentle respite in a harsh world.

…

Then a series of events happen…

I post some spoken-word poetry on Instagram.

I notice that one of my favourite posts on Substack has hit its first anniversary.

And then I do a Brave Thing.

Which brings me to this big announcement:

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Yes, I will be reading the part of High Femme Mistress.

will be reading the part of transboy sub. (They have an Australian accent that will give you butterflies!)

We wrote the story together, and now we get to read it together. Separated by over 10,000 miles, but joined in our mission to (in Orlando’s words) ruin you ;)

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The edgelands are the between times: when the old life no longer makes sense but the new ways have not yet been found. They are the places we may want to rush past. But we can’t just “skip to the good part”. We need to journey through the messy middle. These are my letters from the road.

Picture it…

There’s a burnt-out shell of a car. Windows and doors long gone. The remaining metal frames and springs that once made up the seats look like the broken skeletons of robots left to rust.

The ground is shades of grey: a mixture of gravel, dirt and dust. Dotted here and there are sparse crops of stunted weeds.

The scene is bleak. Abandoned. Disused.

I take a slow step and hear the crunch of stones beneath my shoes. I scan the horizon for landmarks, but all I see is wasteland.

I take another step.

The pineapple weed beneath my feet emits a beautiful scent when I tread on it. I didn’t expect that in this place. I didn’t expect tropical sweetness amidst the grey.

I wonder what else I might find if I look hard enough, listen closely enough.

If I move my attention away from my discomfort and towards possibility.

^{Pineapple weed. Introduced in the UK in the late 19th century, apparently.}

Illness is an edgeland

I’m gradually coming out the other side of a pain flare. It took me by surprise (as they always do), and I found myself caught between fear, distress, and resigned acceptance. I gently packaged my plans in brown paper, wrapped them in string so they were safe, and allowed myself to surrender. This is new for me. Usually, I do my darndest to fight my way through. It rarely works.

But this time, I stopped trying to turn away from the discomfort and turned towards it. That’s when I remembered the pineapple weed.

It’s a real thing (you can look it up), and I’ve always been fascinated by the way it appears, growing through cracks in pavements, lining the edges of tracks and roadsides. Small, easy to dismiss, but tenacious. And, yes, it smells like pineapple.

When I first learned its name, I felt - just for a moment - that the world made sense.

^{Collage zine making: I love that rusty old yellow truck.}

Making sense of the messy middles

We’re bombarded with “success stories” every day. The before and after images. The often sanitised and marketable “If I can do it, so can you” world of storytelling.

But it feels important to share something about the time we spend and the places we visit between before and after, too. When the old ways don’t fit, and the new ways are still unknown. When our very sense of identity is in flux, change is unavoidable, and there is no guaranteed endpoint.

Maybe we can only make sense of the messy middle of our stories in hindsight. I don’t know.

I don’t even know if ‘making sense’ is the goal.

Maybe the invitation here is not about retrospectively applying meaning, but rather about staying with our story before we know the end.

What happens if we tell our stories from that place? What happens if we stay with the unknown, the uncertain, the unexpected? Can we notice the pineapple weed, or are our eyes too full of tears? Can we gently cup grief in one hand while holding hope in the other?

I’ve struggled to put words to my edgeland experiences (- oh, the irony of writing that here). Instead, I see them as landscapes. (The burnt-out car is a recurrent theme.) And I feel them as questions. (Curiosity has always been my superpower.)

I’m exploring ways of telling these stories that aren’t (just) about stringing words and sentences together into a coherent tale. (I’m experimenting with collage, blackout poetry, zine making, meditation, and more.)

I want to play with the feelings in the edgelands - even if I can’t explain why they’re there. I want to lean into excitement whilst allowing space for fear. I want to embrace anger as fuel while also letting myself be nourished by joy.

I want to explore these edgelands as creative spaces of possibility: places where we might discover self-compassion and a new understanding of ourselves and our stories.

At some point, I might be able to make a map of the edgelands - piecing together mine and others’ experiences. But for now, I’m an explorer without even a compass.

^{That’s not a tree… It’s a photo of rivers and watercourses meeting the sea. Cool, huh!}

Are you in the edgelands too?

I have a vision of a bunch of us sharing our stories.

The last time I got a group of people together, we were all writers exploring the question “What happens to your sex life when ‘life’ inevitably happens?"

(If you’re curious about that question and folks’ answers, check out the book Sex Meets Life.)

But I think the Edgelands Project needs a different approach.

I picture us creating stories together.

Exploring our landscapes.

Not to leave a breadcrumb trail for others to follow (because each person’s edgeland is unique, and the crows would eat the crumbs first anyway), but rather to honour these times that are often never spoken about because they are deemed too ordinary, too complicated, or too difficult to explain.

(You might enter an edgeland at times such as illness, bereavement, menopause, changing a home or career or relationship…)

I want to find out more. Do you?

This is a genuine question. I’ve applied for funding that would support me to create The Edgeland Project off the page, as well as here. At some point (if the funding gods are on my side), I’ll be seeking expressions of interest from those who feel called to join in. If you’re already curious to know more, pop a comment below, and I’ll keep you in the loop.

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“I think you want the bookshop next door.”

Prude Mag; Daddy! the healing power of big/little play; Monsterf#ck

Okay, it’s a rubbish joke.

But I tell you what’s not rubbish: these three amazing new publications that I’m privileged to have a story in.

They might seem like unusual bedfellows, but isn’t that the nature of our intimate selves? We can be more than one thing, and different occasions may call for different parts of our erotic personalities to come out to play.

In the last 12 months (or so), the period when I was writing and submitting my stories to these publications, I have embraced being a prude, explored the healing potential of age play, and released my raw and animalistic nature. And more. But let’s focus on these three for now…

Prude Mag

Prude Mag is a Canadian zine with the slogan “FREE BY OUR YES. FREE BY OUR NO.”

The zine reclaims the term “prude” as “a refusal of sex necessarism. We promote ‘prude pride’ as a celebration of our autonomy and boundary setting, a resistance to our sex-necessary culture, and a liberatory lens in which ‘no’ is sacred.”

Now, you might be thinking, but Anna, you write erotica, how can you be a prude?

The quick answer to that is, I can be both. As Prude Mag states, “We believe strongly in prude-slut solidarity and prude-slut simultaneity.”

The longer answer is that, alongside writing erotica, I’ve had times in my life when sex has been a place I just don’t want to go to. Illness, bereavement, menopause, and hysterectomy have all created times when this part of me is no longer pleasurable or accessible.

When I’m feeling that way, I could beat myself up about ‘failing’ at this part of life. (Because that’s a great thing to add to already challenging times like when I’m grieving!) Or I can say, “You know what? I’m only failing if I believe sex is necessary, and if I believe that my worth is intrinsically linked to whether or not I’m putting out.”

I wrote a piece for Prude Mag Issue #3 about “Becoming Crone”. Here’s an excerpt:

Becoming Crone requires a slowing down. Sex, intimacy, and pleasure were once short-lived fireflies illuminating the space around me, landing occasionally, but never for too long. Now they are ancient dragons residing in caves far underground. Their roaring wants may take longer to come to the surface, but when they do, I feel the resonance deep in my core.

…becoming Crone means letting go of the sexual fantasies of my younger self, and surrendering to the liminal space of not knowing what comes next. It means expanding my definition of the erotic and embracing the fantastic realities of imperfect intimacy.

Now, when I give my attention to the smouldering eddies of my “no”, I can also recognise the hot dragon’s purr of my “yes”.

Buy Prude Mag here

Daddy!

Sex has nearly always been a healing space for me. Okay, there have been times when it was “just sex”, but mostly my intimate encounters have been a place for pleasure, for play, and for remembering my power and potency.

Daddy! the healing power of big/little play (edited by Bear Phillips and Ellie Rose) is a collection of work that encompasses a very specific healing dynamic. This dynamic may or may not be sexual for those who explore it, but it can offer the “transformative potential of inner-child work, role play and conscious kink.”

(In case you’re not familiar, big/little and Daddy/boy/girl/they relationships involve consenting adults.)

I have an erotic short story in this collection called “The Golden Hour”.

Her fingers pick up speed, and I squeal loudly as my body is pushed and pulled on the sofa. It hurts. But it’s a good hurt. It makes me cry out: a long, juddering “ahhhh” in time with the thrusts.

“Good girl,” Daddy reassures me, “you’re such a good girl.”

I want her to go back to the place that feels nice on the outside, but she’s curled her fingers inside me like she’s playing the ‘hook a duck’ game at the funfair and doesn’t want to let me drop. “Please, Daddy,” I beg.

My story sits amongst mainly personal essays from other authors who write vulnerably and beautifully about the role of big/little relationships in their lives.

As I wrote in my more-than-a-memoir, Desire Lines:

Life and fiction have blurred beautifully for me, as they sometimes do. If you are at all interested in being or finding a Daddy (or Mommy), the Daddy! book is an excellent companion.

Buy Daddy! here

Monsterf#ck

Now, how about those monsters?

When my favourite publisher, Incision Press, shared a themed callout for their next anthology, Monsterf#ck, I immediately knew the story I had to write. Not only that, but I felt like I had permission to write the story – no holds barred.

Here’s a teaser from my story, The Switch:

Her clawed hands reached out at lightning speed and grabbed the Daemon-woman’s shoulders, pulling the soft body to her and piercing the fragile skin in one swift move. “Yes!” the Daemon shouted in Lilith’s voice.

Her claws dug deeper, and the tang of hot iron filled her nostrils. The need to taste it overwhelmed her. Keeping the Daemon firmly held with one hand, she brought a claw to her tongue and licked the blood from it. She wanted more.

Lilith’s nostrils sniffed out another scent: the sweet musk of the Daemon’s cunt. As she inhaled the flavour, she felt her cock grow stiffer. The turgid baton ached with a ferocity that Lilith had never experienced before. The tip bulged and dripped. The need for release was urgent.

Lilith growled, then swallowed and summoned her unfamiliar tongue and lips to form words. “I want…” she said, her voice deep and foreign in her ears. “I want to fuck you.”

(Yes, I did write “turgid baton”. And no, I will not apologise for that!)

Monsterf#ck is an anthology of queer and dark desires. As the back cover blurb promises, this anthology will “bring out the salacious monster lurking inside… Bring your lube and remember, it’s only weird the first time you try it!”

Buy Monsterf#ck here

A confession…

It’s tempting to leave this post here, and if you have already gone and are currently clicking “add to cart” on any of the above publications, thank you!

But if you’re still here (and have maybe bookmarked the pages so you can buy the books later), I have a confession to share…

I don’t know that I’ll ever master the vulnerability that follows sharing my stories with you.

Maybe if I wrote sci-fi or whodunnits I’d feel differently.

But sharing anything erotic or intimate feels like a leap of trust.

It’s said that intimacy can be translated as “into me you see”. When you combine that with societal taboos about sex, pleasure, and claiming these parts of life on our terms, it’s perhaps not surprising that sharing erotic works feels vulnerable.

I accept this even if I haven’t mastered it.

When it comes to the Prude, the Daddy, and the Monster, I’d love to sit at a table with them in that bar (before we all head to the bookshop next door) and shine a light on the shame that can accompany each of those identities.

I’d love to buy them each a drink and celebrate their unique contribution to my erotic life:

And if you’ve made it right to the end of this post, thank you for sticking with me.

Here’s a link to my Daddy/Mommy, three-part story, Sweet Before Spicy (read it here) as a thank you.

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Welcome to the Edge Lands

Imagine you’d just been deposited in a wide expanse of wasteland. You can see city lights far on the horizon, and when you turn around, you can just make out the rugged shapes of forested mountains way in the distance. But you are between these places. The scenery is unfamiliar. There are no roads or footpaths. You don’t even know which way is north. And you have no idea why you’re here.

But here you are.

You quickly discover that the lifetime of stories you carry have no weight here. Your past desires did not travel with you; they’re tucked away in a padlocked trunk in a lost luggage office somewhere. Dusty. Decaying. No way to identify that they once belonged to you. You can’t get your old desires back. The only option is to let them go. And in doing so, you release all the past versions of you, too. There is only now. Only this. Only you.

There is no map.

So what else is there to do but explore? Be curious?

You know your life is not how it was, and also not yet how it could be.

You don’t feel ready or adequately prepared to head toward the city or the mountains.

There’s something you have to do here first.

This is a place of Becoming.

You are in the Edge Land.

The journey

After the last few years of craving the person I used to be, I may have finally come to a place of acceptance about where I am now, and dare I say, excitement about who I am yet to become.

Perimenopause + hysterectomy + menopause have been a lot. Physically, emotionally, and creatively, disturbing my self-confidence, self-esteem, and pretty much my sense of Self in all areas of my life (work, relationships, sex, writing…).

I’ve had at least eight years on a rollercoaster I didn’t know I’d stepped onto – until that first, stomach-dropping, breath-stealing, head-first plummet left me shaken and whimpering, wondering WTF was happening to me.

The ride has slowed down, but I don’t think it’s over yet. If I am anywhere, I am in the Edge Lands.

Like a Virgin

I’ve been watching Channel 4’s ‘Virgin Island’ reality show. In it, twelve people, who haven’t had sex and have limited or non-existent dating history, work with therapists and surrogate partners to overcome the ‘problem’ of their virginity, increase their confidence and self-belief, and take their newly learned skills and positive experiences back into their everyday lives.

I’m interested in this show for two big reasons:

1) When I was in my 30s, I worked in a sex therapy setting as a surrogate partner. I’ve written about this experience in my book, Desire Lines, but to sum it up, it was one of the most profound, moving, and rewarding roles I’ve ever had. I worked one-to-one with clients, supporting them to have embodied experiences of their sexuality. All of them touched my heart in some way. Several of them were virgins, and the therapy programme outlined in the show (involving consent, boundaries, touch, play and orgasm) has lots of similarities to the time we spent together.

2) Over the course of their two weeks at the tropical island sex camp, the people taking part reveal how their past histories, limiting beliefs, and debilitating fears hold them back from experiencing pleasure. As viewers, we get to see them step away from those old versions of themselves and step into new possibilities. Often interviewed immediately after an intimate encounter, you can see the light in their eyes and the newfound hope in their hearts.

I asked myself:

What would it be like to explore my current point in life like being a virgin again?

What if I shed my past stories, hurts, and sadness about what I’ve ‘lost’ in midlife and, instead, embrace the opportunity to start anew?

Not trying to ‘get back’ to how it was before, but asking:

What do I need now? Who am I now? What matters to me now?

I think you would worship me

(press play)

There can be no intimacy without presence

I’ve written about the paths I took and the stories that shaped me to become the sexual being I was by the time I’d reached my mid-40s. (Desire Lines)

I’ve also curated and contributed to a whole book of people’s stories about what happens when life throws you a curveball and your sex life cannot stay the same as it once was. (Sex Meets Life)

Now in my 50s, Edge Lands is the next phase for me.

I know who I was.

I know who I no longer am.

I’m curious about who I will be next.

But that means staying in the now.

Staying present to what I don’t know.

Allowing grief and hope to co-exist. Questioning, exploring, and ultimately choosing where I go next.

My invitation to you

If this was your new beginning, what would you ask for?

How is this different from before?

What have you learned about your desires in the last few years?

You could journal, collage, paint, dance, ponder…

And you’re welcome to share in the comments if you’d like to be witnessed in that way.

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“Edge Lands” collage © Anna Sansom

It’s been 6 months since I last wrote to you.

In the world of “content creation”, this is unforgivable. But in our world – the one where we care more about depth and meaning than superficiality and speed – I know you’ll understand.

I want to write to you about bright, life-giving passion and desire and the expansive nature of erotic connection (with oneself and with others). But…

For the last 6 months (longer, if I’m honest), that place has felt like a remote destination.

Instead, my days (and nights) have been spent either in a place hidden underground where the only light to reach me comes from the faint dotted patterns of glow worm memories, or illuminated and numbed by LED, caught in a spiral of comparison and lack.

Yeah, not very sexy.

In a galaxy far, far away…

I’ve repeatedly said that I’m in a writing drought. But it’s not that my words have dried up; it’s that they feel like they’ve moved to another plane of existence. Like a wormhole opened and sucked them away at supersonic speed. Like they were taken before I had a chance to throw myself after them.

Until now.

Until I asked for a sign and I was told, without a doubt, “Start before you are ready.”

Until my partner idly told me that the area of ground we were walking on was called an “edge land” in geographical terms. And something in my soul lit up, remembering the time she told me about another geographical term, “desire lines”.

Desire lines are the routes we take when we are unconstrained by societal expectations. They deviate from the expected path and show that a person once moved toward something, somewhere, or someone they needed.

Edge lands are liminal spaces. They are the spaces where urban and untamed meet. Often derelict, not one thing or another, yet providing a haven for life that has nowhere else to go.

In my mid-40s, I reflected on the desire lines I’d walked on my journeys of sex and gender, and shared them in the book I call “more-than-a-memoir” because it’s not actually about my stories – it’s about yours. (click here for Desire Lines, the book)

Now in my 50s, those once-trodden paths are less visible to me, and I find myself in the edge lands.

A semi-wild place with no way markers.

A new landscape to explore.

I don’t know what I’m going to find, but I know there is life there.

I want to write about that life.

And I want to invite you along for the ride.

What I can’t promise you…

• Regular updates.

• Erotic stories.

• Writing here because I feel I should.

• A map, the answers, or a definitive endpoint.

What I can promise you…

• Unfiltered and unedited truth.

• The voice of my embodied soul.

• Writing (and other forms of creativity) that explores what it means to retain a desire for desire - no matter what.

• Questions, curiosity, and compassion.

Edge lands can be scary places at times.

When I wrote Desire Lines, I was feeling bold, and I had the backup of the “brave space” – a writing container held by Nicola Humber of The Unbound Press and my fellow explorers in our Unbound Writing Mastermind group.

I feel less self-assured these days.

I am willing to walk in the wilderness alone if I have to.

But I’ll feel less alone knowing you are reading these letters (because that’s how it feels to me, like I’m writing you a letter, with words indenting folded paper, and an envelope dirtied from its travels).

I strongly suspect that you know about edge lands, too.

Liminal spaces in your life where you’re not who you were but not yet who you are going to be.

Perhaps we can explore together.

Please scroll down for Book News, an erotic teaser, and ways to show your support…

Book news

A while ago, I found the opening of the wormhole and took a wild ride in response to a callout from Incision Press for their new anthology Monsterf#ck.

By the time the wormhole spat me out, I’d gathered enough words for a story.

It’s just been published in Monsterf#ck, along with 29 other queer and trans writers sharing stories of dark desires.

The back cover invites you to:

“Delve into your deepest desires and get slippery with us. Bring your lube and remember, it’s only weird the first time you try it!”

Find out more and get your copy of Monsterf#ck here.

Excerpt: The Switch by Anna Sansom in Monsterf#ck

CW: blood play

What would it feel like to fuck myself, Lilith wondered. And with that…She blatantly assessed the Daemon’s beastly appendage.

Summoning her courage, she told the Daemon, “I want to do it. How do we switch?”

The instant she expressed her wish, everything changed. Now, instead of looking at the Daemon, she was looking at herself. Colours were brighter, and the outlines of shapes in the cave were sharper. The sputtering of the torches on the wall sounded louder. And, she quickly realised, her mouth was salivating from a deep desire to sink her fangs into the tender woman-flesh in front of her.

Her clawed hands reached out at lightning speed and grabbed the Daemon-woman’s shoulders, pulling the soft body to her and piercing the fragile skin in one swift move. “Yes!” the Daemon shouted in Lilith’s voice.

Her claws dug deeper, and the tang of hot iron filled her nostrils. The need to taste it overwhelmed her. Keeping the Daemon firmly held with one hand, she brought a claw to her tongue and licked the blood from it. She wanted more. Lilith growled, then swallowed and summoned her unfamiliar tongue and lips to form words. “I want…” she said, her voice deep and foreign in her ears. “I want to fuck you.”

---

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2011.

The email was sent just a few minutes after midnight.

I slept on, oblivious. Back then, email was still something I only accessed through my computer. Ignorance was bliss, yet a part of me desperately wanted to believe that I would feel something when the time came – how could I not?

I did feel instant trepidation when I opened up my inbox. This was never going to be good news. I held my breath as my finger left-clicked.

“It’ll be okay” had been my personal mantra since the day her cancer was diagnosed. After two failed bone marrow transplants and months in hospital, I couldn’t say those words out loud any more. She was not going to be okay. And neither was I. But I needed to retain some glimmer of hope: our bond would survive this experience, even if her body – and my heart – would not.

Over a decade later, when my cats died, I was wracked by uncontrollable sobs. But it took months for my tears to land after the death of my lover and soul friend – my anam cara.

Our relationship had been both tumultuous and fated. I was a moon drawn into her orbit, circling her until I picked up enough courage and momentum to declare my undying love. She didn’t understand (nor want) the fullness of my desire for her back then. She thought she knew best about everything; in her eyes, I was a puppy, and she wanted a lion.

I roared, but I was never loud enough for her. Until, that is, I wrote my heart onto the page.

Words became spells, and I cast them with the full intention of reeling her in.

Sharing my words in handwritten letters – disclosing my desires and dreams – was the key that opened the door to a corner of her heart. Her heart housed many during her lifetime, but she told me that corner was mine alone.

We wrote our fantasies for each other and enacted them passionately. Not all of them – but enough to satisfy the mutual itch of curiosity and yearning, and enough to know that we had something remarkable.

Years passed. I grew from puppy to cub to lion, finally becoming the person she believed (and wanted) me to be. Eventually, however, our gravitational pull shifted, her tides stopped being drawn by my moon, and we drifted apart.

Our lives diverged, but a golden thread – that which exists beyond the superficiality of bodies and lust – still bound us together.

Now, fourteen years after her shift into another dimension, we are still bound. I’ve kept writing – just like she’d wanted me to – and have surpassed every goal she ever set for me. I wonder if I’ve finally done enough.

When I first declared my undying love, I was right. And every anniversary of her passing stirs something in me that needs to celebrate the extraordinary person she was (and will always be), and give thanks that I got to journey with her for a while.

So here’s to you, my anam cara.

I love you absolutely.

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I don’t have a pussy between my thighs

I have a dragon.

She sleeps in the cave of my sacrum,

Curled nose to tail in a tight ball,

Releasing gentle puffs of smoke

In time with her snores.

I feel the weight of her there when I walk,

As my hips swing and sway,

Rocking her with a locomotive lullaby.

~

I don’t have a pussy between my thighs

I have a dragon.

When she wakes,

She roars.

Her hot breath sets off the sprinklers in my cunt and

As she licks me with her insistent flames,

I beg her to sink her fangs into my plump flesh,

Releasing the blood and want

And a hunger that feels as ancient as she.

~

I don’t have a pussy between my thighs

I have a dragon.

She purrs her appreciation

As my fingers pet her.

She consumes the silicone sacrifices I offer

And feasts until she is sated.

Before slinking back to her cave

To dream of more.

~

I have a dragon between my thighs.

She may sleep awhile

But she will never be tamed.

If we’re connected on Instagram, you’ll maybe have seen my recent dragon exploits.

(Or maybe not. You know how fickle that platform can be.)

Over on “the IG”, I’ve been sharing cutesy crocheted creations. That’s the censorship-friendly version of my latest obsession.

But here, where it’s just you and me without anyone looking over our shoulders, I can tell you more…

(So many dragons…)

I can tell you how dragon has been a recurring theme for me for the last few years, featuring in my aptly titled book: Wake Up Your Dragon (and reclaim your power in midlife), as well as being the muse for a new fiction book (only a few thousand words so far) about a middle-aged, butch dyke called Harriet (Harry to their friends) who goes on a unique and unusual quest…

The crocheted dragons have been keeping my hands and mind occupied while I’ve been going through some tough times.

And most recently, my meditations have been full of dragon imagery – including the one who does indeed sleep in my sacrum (most of the time) and (occasionally) wakes famished and needy.

It’s probably no coincidence that I’ve been writing more about fucking with daemons as well.

If you’ve read my more-than-a-memoir, Desire Lines, you’ll have met the Daemon already. I was inspired to bring them back out to play in response to a callout from the edgy and delicious for their upcoming Monsterf*ck anthology.

And I’m delighted to tell you that this new story, The Switch, has been accepted for the book! The publication date is set for February 2026.

I have to admit, I’m enjoying the juxtaposition of cute and carnal.

It seems to pretty much reflect where I’m at these days: alternately experiencing my sexual self as a hibernating dormouse, wrapped in its own fluffy tail, dreaming of sweet berries and summer, and a mythical, rampaging beast, desperate to consume pleasures of the flesh.

Enjoy my writing? You can have more!

Here’s where you’ll find me:

Sex Meets Life is an anthology, edited by me, featuring a diverse and talented group of authors all writing about their experiences of navigating times of change in their sex lives. The Foreword is by Meg-John Barker (celebrated author of several books about sexuality and gender), and there’s a chapter by me called “Masturbation Saved My Life.”

Desire Lines is my more-than-a-memoir, featuring Lilith and the Daemon erotica as well as stories from my life. It includes coming out in the 80s, an intimate account of my work as a sexual surrogate partner in a sex therapy clinic, and exploring kink and gender in public and private.

Coming Close is a lesbian BDSM novel, a tale of infatuation and self-discovery.

Wake Up Your Dragon (and reclaim your power in midlife) is a picture book for folks going through the menopause. In turns sombre and uplifting, it’s the story I needed to get through these times.

You’ll also find my stories in:

• Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 10 edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Cleis Press)

• Big Book of Quickies edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Cleis Press)

• I Write the Body, edited by Orlando Silver (Incision Press)

• Take it Outside, edited by Cash Torn and Orlando Silver (Incision Press)

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I choose to write about queer, midlife sex, desire, love and lust to offer alternatives to mainstream narratives: offering perspectives and stories that might not otherwise be brought out into the light.

Thank you for joining me.

Yesterday…

The soft, overgrown grass broke my fall. I rolled a little way down the slope until gravity beat momentum, leaving me on my side, knees drawn up in a foetal position, grateful I could still see the path above me. Heaving onto my hands and knees, I crawled back to the path. By the time I got there, my partner had reached me, offering a hand to help pull me to my feet.

“Are you okay? What happened?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” I gestured to the imprint of my body in the flattened grass below us. “It was a soft landing. There was a hole in the path. I was figuring out how to step around it when I lost my footing. I’m having a wobbly day.”

I’m having a wobbly day.

This phrase has become useful shorthand for the days when my legs are like unbendable concrete pillars attached to my waist, and I feel like I’m walking on a sea of rolling pebbles while wearing ice skates.

Yeah, those days.

Thankfully, those are the worst days. And the worst days aren’t every day.*

She held my hand for the remainder of the walk, and I agreed that, yes, I’d bring my walking poles next time, and yes, it was better to have them and not need them than the other way around.

I’d had a near miss earlier on the walk, too. If I hadn’t grabbed hold of a nearby tree, the root-studded, impacted earth would have been much more unforgiving than the gentle grass. So much for our relaxing Saturday morning outing.

Later that day, we made out.

For the first time in too many days, I felt the heavy rigidity of my body become fluid. My hips pulsed, my body writhed; I felt strong and capable. My body danced with pleasure.

I didn’t have to think about how to move; I could simply allow it to happen.

~~~

Nearly two decades ago, I went to ‘5Rhythms’ dancing. Devised by Gabrielle Roth in the late 1970s, this dance style has no choreography. Instead, it’s described as a moving meditation; structures designed to help you be in the moment, still the mind, and connect with your body and community.

I experienced 5Rhythms as liberating and non-performative, and I can just about remember how my body felt awake with pleasure afterwards.

But in the intervening years, my dancing has become limited to an occasional hand jive in the kitchen while I wait for the kettle to boil. Sometimes my partner joins me and we step and twirl together – no music required; she lets me set the pace.

~~~

In her book, Maps to Ecstasy: Teachings of an Urban Shaman, Gabrielle Roth shares this wisdom:

I can’t remember exactly when these things stalled for me, but I’m pretty sure it was around the time my body started to shift towards menopause.

It’s not just menopause; other ‘life’ things have happened in this last decade or so. I’ve had to relearn the landscape of my body and my emotions over and over again. Going through two major surgeries, navigating illnesses and bereavements, and simply living through the (multiple) global challenges of this time have all meant I am not the same person I was in my younger years.

Perhaps surprisingly, I’m fairly confident that my body still wants to be a site of pleasure.

Because, along with those days when everything hurts and I feel like I’m turning to stone, there are times when I experience myself in a different way. Although often fleeting, these moments are powerful.

When I’m weightless in a wild sea, tasting the salt on my tongue, and feeling the brine between my thighs.

When I strip in the middle of the day, so that I can run my palms over my breasts and belly before lubricating my fingers and casting spells on my cunt.

When the attentive touch of my lover makes my atoms vibrate at such a frequency, I become molten and free from the constraints of mere mortal flesh.

These are the times when my body stops being somewhere I want to escape from and becomes a place I want to inhabit.

~~~

In my younger years, I used to faint whenever a doctor or nurse stuck a needle in me. (I fainted with every one of my piercings, too.)

Now, after Covid jabs, blood tests, and general anaesthetics, I’ve become much more robust about being punctured.

So much so, that I’ve finally been brave enough to try acupuncture. I’m tentatively hopeful that it’s helping my back pain and mobility. Mostly, it feels like it’s freeing up something that was very, very guarded and stuck.**

As I practice my physiotherapy exercises, I use my memories of my fluidity to encourage me to keep going.

I know the health condition I live with will always be something I have to manage, but I also know that the trajectory of my transition through menopause is not set in stone. There will come a point when my hormones – and I – feel rebalanced.***

I imagine it will feel like a peaceful sigh.

I imagine I will feel my power, potency, and pleasure in new and expanded ways.

I imagine myself dancing.

~~~

*I need to acknowledge those people who have way more hard days than easy ones. The folks with long Covid, chronic illnesses, and bodies or minds that aren’t adequately supported and celebrated by a society fuelled by ableism and capitalism.

**I have a dragon living in the cave of my sacrum. I have lots of dragon stories to tell.

***I’m doing menopause without HRT. I have very good reasons for this decision, but sometimes it’s hard when the mainstream narrative is focused on HRT being a panacea.

~~~

What happens to your sex life when ‘life’ happens?

In Sex Meets Life, 17 international authors share the challenges and celebrations of navigating change.

Find out more and where you can buy your copy here.

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It’s a casual arrangement. I go to her house every other month, she invites me to strip, and then I just lie back and take it.

Her touches are slow and intentional.

There’s always plenty of lubrication.

And at the end, she gently strokes my forehead.

She’s ever so attentive and wants to make sure I’m having a good time.

She frequently pauses to check that what she’s doing feels good for me.

She asks me, “What do you need now?”

And carefully listens to my response.

Have you ever been asked, “What do you need?”

It’s a surprisingly powerful question, and one that’s not always easy to answer.

Maybe I don’t know what I need.

Maybe I do know, but I don’t feel confident enough to ask for it.

Maybe I know, and I can ask, but then I have a hard time actually allowing myself to receive…

**

In Desire Lines (my more-than-a-memoir), there’s a scene where Lilith (an archetype: she who walks her own paths in life) meets a daemon for the first time.

It’s an erotically charged meeting, especially when the daemon says, “Tell me what you want.”

Lilith had never been asked this before. Of course, she’d offered suggestions to Adam, but they had been mostly one-word requests: faster, softer, there, oh, yes, there!

“Don’t be shy,” the daemon encouraged, “just start with what you’d most like, right now. Feel into your body and speak the words to me.”

Lilith knew exactly what she wanted in that moment. She wanted soft kisses that built in passion. She wanted fingers stroking the sensitive place where her thighs met. She wanted her slickness drawn out of her, her aching need met with fervour, and her emptiness filled.

She told the daemon all of these things in a breathless whisper, her body beginning to pulse and rock of its own accord.

Each confession was received with an appreciative moan.

When Lilith finished speaking, they were both entranced: the heat from their bodies like a fire lit between them, their lips wet and eyes sparkling.

The daemon’s mouth sought out Lilith’s, and they had their first taste of each other. Of all the delicious fruits that Lilith had sampled in her paradise home, none tasted as heavenly as her new lover’s lips and tongue. She drank it in, savouring the sweetness, and swallowing their combined flavour into her being.

Desire Lines by Anna Sansom

**

Today, when I was asked, “What do you need now?” I took a deep breath and felt a rush of emotion when I realised that I felt safe to give my answer: “I need to move my hips and bend my knees.” Then I added, “Thank you for asking. It’s not always easy to say.”

“I always want this to be a space where you can say what you need,” she replied as I shuffled the lower half of my body into a more comfortable position.

So, who is this remarkable woman?

Her name is Caitlin* and she is a massage therapist who specialises in gentle, affirming touch.

It is not sexual. There is no genital contact. There is very little conversation once I get settled on the couch.

Yet, I leave the sessions feeling witnessed and welcomed in my neediness.

My needs are for props, pauses, and a pace that allows my nervous system to slow down and sigh.

She is careful with me, and I appreciate that care.

She touches me with undemanding tenderness.

**

From her introduction on her website, I know Catilin has been on her own journey from burnout to balance, and her empathy comes from her lived experience as well as her innate kindness.

(*Caitlin is a pseudonym – not everything needs to be shared.)

**

I wonder how these experiences in asking and receiving translate to different aspects of our lives.

When a friend asks where I’d like to go for dinner, I’m able to say I’d like somewhere vegetarian or vegan; not too loud, not too late.

When my massage therapist asks if I’m warm enough, I’m able to request another blanket and allow her to tuck it snugly around my toes.

When my lover asks where I want their hands, if I want to add any toys, or if I want them to bite me…

**

Expansion is a word that keeps coming up for me as I write about desire lines.

Expansion is about wanting more: to be more, to have more, to experience more… And yet there are conflicts with this.

One conflict centres on the imperative of knowing and believing that we – each of us – are already ‘enough’. There is nothing lacking. We are already perfect and whole. We do not need another experience or another person to ‘complete’ us; there is no quest for a missing ‘other half’.

Another conflict concerns what we have been conditioned to believe about our wants and needs: the challenges we can experience in even knowing what they are, and then the subsequent obstacles we face in being able to ask for those needs to be met.

Following on from this, many of us have further issues with actually being able to receive: questions can arise about worthiness and deservedness.

It is complicated.

However, I am not sure it needs to be.

Think about that word ‘expansion’ for a moment. How does it make you feel? I picture myself with arms outstretched, ready to embrace the world, soaring, vibrant, alive.

Now think about the opposite: ‘constriction’ or ‘contraction’. Becoming smaller, stagnating, being less and less of who you truly are.

I know which I choose.

Desire Lines by Anna Sansom

**

There isn’t a neat conclusion to this post.

Wanting, asking, and receiving are still all works in progress for me. (Even as a self-proclaimed ‘midlife queer’.) And there’s another post to be written about giving, too.

I’m aware that all the examples I’ve given here involve being invited to say what you need, and that already suggests a layer of safety. How do we ask for what we need when the question is not asked? How do we receive if we can’t trust that what is being given comes from a place of genuine generosity?

And what’s the difference between needs and wants? Is it okay to have both?

(Perhaps wants are the things you would like to have to live comfortably, but they are not essential to your happiness; needs are the things you cannot live without.)

Whether it’s going for a massage and asking for the pressure to be firmer, sitting with the discomfort of needs that can’t be met (in the way or by the person I want them to be), or remembering that I can meet my own needs too, I’m willing to use my daily life as a practice ground for at least recognising that I do have needs.

And in a society that would often rather we stay small and quiet, being able to acknowledge and embrace our needs feels powerful and liberating. And, yes, expansive.

**

The daemon gently stroked one finger between Lilith’s thighs and groaned with desire when his finger made contact with her erect clit and juice-soaked lips. Another finger joined the first and danced over and around Lilith, following the trail of her gasps and cries to locate her sweetest spots and most urgent wishes.

As Lilith’s breaths quickened, the daemon unfolded his wings and danced the tips of his feathers over her back and arse.

“Please go inside me,” Lilith urged.

With a dextrous move, the daemon shifted his hips to slide into Lilith whilst still stroking and circling her clit. Lilith called out freely now, her sounds of pleasure rising in pitch and volume and echoing around the cave.

They moved together, both suspended in the place of wanting to come but not wanting it to end. They rode the wave of bliss until neither could contain it any longer. Their orgasms tore out of their bodies and throats with such force they were both left panting and glassy-eyed.

Desire Lines by Anna Sansom

**

Want to read more about walking the paths of your unique desires?

Desire Lines by Anna Sansom. Tart optional.

Desire Lines includes stories and insights from my own journeys with sex, sexuality and gender, Lilith erotica, and reflective questions for you, the reader, to explore and create a map of your own desires.

It’s for anyone who has been socialised as female, who wants to know more about who they are as a sexual being, and who longs to express this part of themself on their own terms.

In other words, you do not want to simply reflect the image of sexuality and gender that you’ve been shown by society; you are ready to find out your own truths and step into these, seeking and following your own, unique desire lines.

Bold, challenging and inspiring, Desire Lines contains graphic language and descriptions of sex and sexuality, including kink and BDSM, gender and body non-conformity, lust and love.

You can buy Desire Lines here. (Or order from your favourite bookshop.)

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P.S. I write books!

You can find them all here.

In just a couple of days, it will be one whole year since I was wheeled into surgery. My parting request to the surgical team was, “Please can I see what you take out of me?”

The nurse looked a little aghast. “You want us to give you your womb afterwards?”

“No, just a photo will do. Thank you.” I needed this photographic evidence to justify the extreme pain and discomfort I’d been trying to manage for the preceding years.

I needed proof that I wasn’t faking it or imagining it, or was simply too weak to endure it.

My life had shrunk in proportion to the growth of the tenacious fibroid in my uterus. At around 10cm or so, it was classed as ‘grapefruit-sized’ (in some people, fibroids grow as big as watermelons!). Its position meant constant back pain and pressure on my bladder. By the time I agreed to have surgery, the combination of these debilitating symptoms meant I was reluctant to leave my house, and I found it hard to even go for a walk around my neighbourhood.

Sex felt like a tricky place to visit, too.

While I knew I needed to do something to help relieve the pain and open my life back up again, I was initially very reluctant to have the surgery.

I didn’t have a good history of coping with general anaesthetics, and my body had already been through a lot. (I was missing my tonsils, adenoids, wisdom teeth, and gallbladder by this point.)

Even more concerning to me was whether I’d be able to access my eroticism – on the page as well as in the bedroom – after my uterus and accompanying organs were removed.

On the 23^rd of September 2024, I had my uterus (plus its resident fibroid), fallopian tubes, and one ovary extracted through a ‘bikini line’ cut on my belly.

Over the following months, I watched as my ragged red wounds turned into fine white scars.

My body was healing, but it seemed my libido was not.

**

One of the ways that I’ve stayed connected to my sexual self – even in the midst of illness, burnout, bereavement, and more – is to write.

Whether it’s erotic stories – giving my imagination permission to play even if my body is reluctant – or journaling – here and on pages that are for my eyes only – one of my favourite prompts is “what if?”

What if a High Femme Mistress and a hungry Transboy met at a party? (Read the answer here)

What if masturbation is self-care? (Read my response to this here)

**

I’ve been exploring my current “libido situation” with the same curiosity.

What if this isn’t the end but an evolution?

What if I take the pressure off and focus on experiencing a variety of pleasures instead?

What if my eroticism is still there, it just needs to feel safe enough for me to feel it?

**

I wanted the photo of my evicted womb as ‘evidence’.

It turns out I’ve been collecting evidence of my eroticism for a long time.

Every story.

Every blog post.

Every book.

Every memory…

They’re all still there.

I could look at them with sadness – that’s no longer me; I’ve lost something significant.

Or I can choose to look at them with fondness – the younger me chose to enjoy her sexual self, I wonder what the present me will choose?

**

And here’s the truth:

Yesterday I chose to masturbate. (My sex toy died halfway through, and I laughed at the timing. Note to self: keep your toys charged up even if you’re not using them regularly!)

A few weeks ago, I wrote an erotic story and got turned on by the banter and behaviour of one of the side characters (a pansexual “all round snakey slut” called Cobra).

I know my capacity for passion and pleasure, and the ways they help me feel my playfulness and power, are still within me.

I know there are layers to healing.

I know that a year is really not that long at all and that as long as my desire for desire is alive, so am I.

**

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How does one celebrate the first anniversary of a hysterectomy?

I made a zine to support other queer folk.

Before my surgery, I looked and looked for information and support that would speak to my experiences as a queer dyke.

I found lots of useful cishet resources, and the trans community is creating some great content, but I struggled to find anyone talking about issues that affect me specifically as a queer person.

Things like being out in a healthcare setting, and understanding the implications for an erotic life that’s not focused on penis in vagina sex.

My zine is now out in the world, along with my Queer and Lesbian Hysterectomy video, and my Hysterectomy Healing and Recovery Journal.

One in five people with a uterus has a hysterectomy, so if you or anyone you know ever needs these resources, I hope you find them helpful.

(I have a dedicated page of Hysterectomy Resources on my website, here.)

**

Where to from here?

I started this Substack as my “living experiment of desire in queer midlife”.

That mission remains – albeit with more uncertainty about where that experiment is leading me.

I’m curious about the ‘conditions’ that my sexual self now needs to emerge from her deep hiding place.

Safety is one.

Invitations without expectations are another.

Reminders that pleasure feels good are helpful too.

With that in mind, I’ve charged up all my sex toys.

I have my favourite lube (Sutil) in my bedside drawer.

I’ve reread my ‘personal evidence file’ of blogs and stories.

And there’s a new story inspired by a (so far, unmet) fantasy I’m looking forward to exploring…

**

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What happens to our sex lives when ‘life’ inevitably happens?

Just a few weeks after my surgery, my curated anthology, Sex Meets Life, was published.

The stories and personal essays in this book – written by a diverse and talented group of authors – have given me a deeper insight into how we can navigate the twists and turns of our sexual lives alongside all the other life events we have to manage.

Whether it’s through illness, ageing, menopause, becoming a caregiver, having a sexual awakening, or embracing your true gender identity, these stories remind us that we can choose to reclaim desire and redefine intimacy (over and over again).

You can find out more about Sex Meets Life and get your copy here.

Plus, you’ll find bonus writing prompts to explore your stories with desire here.

**

What happened to the people who shared their intimate stories?

I recently asked the authors in Sex Meets Life, “Where are you now?”

Today, I’m sharing an update from Lily Jenkins – a woman whose libido has soared in midlife.

In her fictional chapter, Lily introduces us to Louise: a woman who has entered midlife, whose children have left home, and whose career is going well. Her husband, however, won’t have sex with her. ‘Don’t You Want Me?’ is a fictional account where Louise reunites with an old flame.

Here’s what Lily told me:

I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year since Sex Meets Life was released into the world! Since submitting my story, and with Anna’s encouragement, I have embraced my inner erotic author. I am writing on Substack – short stories and “erotic interludes” whenever I feel drawn to write. And I was invited to be a founding author for Theo Reads, a new platform for romance and erotic writers, which I still can’t get my head around. I still feel like I am playing in this space!

Writing in this genre has helped me to figure out my wants and desires as a woman entering the next phase of her life – intuitive, wise, hungry. It has helped me to begin opening my eyes to what I want going forward, and what I need to leave behind. And it’s fun! I am looking forward to seeing where this journey will take me next.

Thank you, Anna, for your ongoing support x x.

Find Lily’s Substack and read more of her erotic stories here

Photo by Marcel Haas on Unsplash

There were around twenty strangers in the room, and three other people I knew from our online connections.

I was about to expose myself – publicly, in the flesh.

Up until now, I’d been able to hide behind a screen.

Up until now, I’d been convincing myself that my art was only for me. I could do and say whatever I wanted. Nobody knew who I was.

But in this swanky, London, basement venue, in the middle of the afternoon, all that was about to change.

I sat in a chair facing the room. To my left was a woman I’d only just met. To my right, a kindred spirit who I’d bonded with online over our shared commitment to truthtelling.

The event organiser stood before the gathered audience and introduced us.

As she spoke my name, I held up a copy of my book, Desire Lines. My hybrid memoir-guide, which includes a description of my cunt and how I like to fuck, as well as reflections and invitations to the reader to explore sexual scripts, gender norms, and walking the paths of our authentic desires.

The event was a writing workshop and author Q&A hosted by The Unbound Press.

They’d published Desire Lines just a few weeks before, and I was excited to be invited to talk about my book.

We’d just finished the first part of the event – a guided visualisation and group writing session – and the air was thick with contemplation and insights. The participants had each had a taste of writing from their depths; now it was time for me to tell them about mine.

I felt my feet solid on the ground, exhaled slowly, and smiled at the audience.

Real, live people stared back at me.

Suddenly, it hit me.

Several of these people had already read Desire Lines. A dozen or so more had bought a copy after flicking through the pages of the assorted books piled on a table near the entrance.

I wasn’t just a name on a page any more.

What would people think of me?

*

On the train home after the event, I replayed the Q&A in my mind’s eye.

In response to an audience question, one of the other authors on the panel had explained that she always wrote from the heart. When the same question was directed to me, I admitted that my heart didn’t feel strong enough to write what I write.

“If I only wrote from my heart, my courage would fail me,” I confessed. “I write from here,” I said, placing my palm over my solar plexus, “and here,” I hovered my hand over my belly and cunt.

*

The next day, I felt it.

Vulnerable.

Anxious. Unsettled. Desperate for reassurance.

Urgh.

So unpleasant.

It reminded me of the times I’ve felt sub drop after a kink scene: the inevitable comedown after a peak experience that can leave me asking, “Why do I keep putting myself through this?”

Whether it’s related to my writing or my kinky play, the answer to that question is the same:

If you want to visit your edges, you have to accept that you may end up in some wild terrain.

You may find yourself in a sun-bleached desert, a murky swamp, or being tossed around in a stormy sea.

But there’s always treasure to be found in those places, too. And if you never venture, you’ll never reach it.

*

In the final chapter of my book, I recorded an “incomplete catalogue of my desire lines. It is incomplete because I know that some have been forgotten, some never even recognised, and that there are others yet to be discovered and walked.

In the last three decades, my desire lines have included:

• The desire for desire.

• The desire to enjoy and experience pleasure in my body, just as it is.

• The desire to be authentically ‘me’ in intimate connections.

• The desire for my sexuality, creativity, and spirituality to be united.

• The desire to offer my sexual-spiritual self as healing (for myself and others).

• The desire to explore and play with power dynamics and erotic pain.

• The desire to evolve myself and my desires in relationship with those I love and treasure.”

*

I’ve experienced other vulnerability hangovers after offering out my writing too.

My friend Jennie, a brilliant artist and mindfulness teacher who co-created the short course, Foundations of Pleasure, with me, encourages people to explore their fantasies in their imaginations by reassuring them “no one can see inside your mind.”

As an erotic writer, however, my work is to let you see the darkest depths of my thoughts, feelings, and yearnings.

That’s not all. I’ve recently submitted a personal essay about grief to Open Secrets Magazine. I cried while I was writing it, knowing I was touching a painful edge that lay on the other side of a deep ravine.

Talking about death – like talking about sex – is generally regarded as taboo.

As an edgewalker, I choose not to let that stop me.

*

However, walking the edges doesn’t mean being reckless.

I always carry a compass with me.

This compass helps me to discern and honour my boundaries. It directs me to write authentically and with integrity. And ensures I write “from the scar, not the wound.” (Or at least try to.)

Desire Lines was written and published when I was in my mid-forties.

Now in my fifties, I realise there’s lots more to explore and write about walking our unique paths of desire, including what happens when the mountain feels too high to climb, or when we get lost in a dark, spooky forest and can’t seem to find a way out.

This next chapter inspired the creation of my curated anthology, Sex Meets Life.

In this book, a courageous bunch of authors from all different lived experiences share their own stories about navigating intimacy and desire at times when their lives are going through big changes.

One of those authors is Bear Phillips (he/him).

Bear is an intimacy coach and touch therapist.

In his chapter, Bear opens up about what it might mean to be a “safe man”, how he can be in his power without stripping others of theirs, and how intimate presence can offer healing and wholeness. His journey of ‘Losing My Religion (to Find My Divinity)’ is one from shame to sovereignty.

Excerpt from Sex Meets Life

Losing My Religion (to Find My Divinity) by Bear Phillips

How could reality ever live up to a fantasy? The thought was foremost in my mind as the door to a new, cookie-cutter flat, overlooking the wastelands of East London, inched open.

I had been drawn to this point – of want and desire – repeatedly for years, but never before had I acted on it.

My desire felt so shameful. And it had been with me for years…

To surrender. To be taken.

By a woman…

With a strap-on.

…

My whole life I had understood God to be this judgemental All-Knowing and All-Seeing force, outside of and above me, casting judgement and finding me wanting at every turn. But now, here it was – touched with pleasure – a lotus flower blossoming within me. The divinity within. Deep inside my body.

How could a bundle of skin and muscle and bone, capable of experiencing this amount of exquisite pleasure, possibly be wrong?

Through the blur of body parts and positions, I felt the tension I had been carrying my whole life fall away under her watchful and attentive gaze. I arrived back in my embodied self, no longer separate and divided, no longer outside of my Self.

…

I found my power that day. I experienced the possibility of power within limits, and that perhaps the experience of power was all the stronger for the boundary that contained it. I discovered that power and strength could be wielded with safety.

…

I feel blessed that I get to heal my own masculine and father wounds by providing for others the safe container and the safe holding that I did not know in my own childhood. I feel blessed that I get to model for others that it is possible to be a safe man in the world. One who is not denuded and desexualised, but fully in touch with his deepest desires and ever-evolving fantasies – at peace with the knowledge that the reality of our lives can be better than we may ever imagine.

*

I recently asked Bear what he’d experienced since Sex Meets Life was published (in November 2024).

Here’s what he told me:

"I was fully expecting some kind of vulnerability hangover – perhaps even a shame-shower – at speaking so candidly and graphically of my intimate experiences around sex, kink and power.

As a first outing, it was an incredibly exposing thing to do.

Yet the kick-back didn't come!

There was something so precious in the writing of my story, and the recognition of the arc from a place of pain to one of joy and abundance, that something had alchemised inside of me. Something had resolved itself to a place of quiet acceptance and serenity.

A large part of this was the care with which the entire process of writing, editing and publishing had been held so beautifully by Anna, and another by the sense of being in community with other writers – all of us reflecting on a similar theme and bringing similar levels of vulnerability and authenticity to bear.

What a life-affirming joy this book has been to be a part of. What a joy!"

*

You can find Bear on Substack here:

His website is here.

And you can follow him on Instagram, too.

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Want to read the rest of Sex Meets Life?

How about the book AND a free writing prompts companion zine to explore your own stories with intimacy and sexuality?

You can read more about Sex Meets Life here.

Here’s how the offer works:

Buy the book directly from me, and get a free zine, for only £11 (this price includes postage too – what a bargain!)

Folks in the UK will receive a paperback copy of Sex Meets Life and a printed copy of the zine.

Folks outside of the UK will receive a paperback copy of Sex Meets Life and a digital (downloadable pdf) copy of the zine.

To get yours, please email me with your postal address: anna@annasansom.com

Subject heading: buy SML

I’ll then send you a payment link.

Thank you!

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I’ll be 52 in a couple of days.

52!

Crikey.

I’m incredibly grateful to be 52. Not all of my peers made it this far.

I’m also gently amused. Fifty-two sounds grown up, but it really doesn’t feel that way.

Inevitably, I’ve been reflecting on how I got to be this age and stage, how different my life is from the one imagined when I was younger, and whether or not I’ve made the most of my preceding years.

One conclusion I’ve come to is that I now have a very different definition of ‘success’.

I used to think success would be a fanfare event. But now I realise it’s a much quieter and slower creature.

Younger me thought success meant big-number book sales, a seat on the breakfast TV sofa, and never having to work a ‘regular’ job again.

But older, wiser me now views success as…

…showing up to the page

…finding friends and community through my writing

…knowing that even one person reading and enjoying my words matters.

I’ve worked steadily to write and share for the last couple of decades.

And it’s paid off – my stories are in several anthologies (I’m very honoured to be in this one), I have an extensive back catalogue of magazine and blog posts, and I’ve written and edited full-length books.

I still work a regular day job, however.

As I turn 52, I’m also closing a very significant life chapter. It started fourteen years ago with a relocation, a major bereavement, and a commitment to creativity as a path to healing.

Now, as I take another loop around the spiral of time, I find myself in the same set of circumstances.

Again?

*Takes a deep breath*

So, yeah, a new chapter, starting at 52, awaits.

I wonder what stories it will hold.

Meet Maria Cyndi

I can’t think of a better person to share my birthday post with than Maria Cyndi.

We met online a while ago and instantly recognised a shared passion for authenticity and writing about topics that are missing from many mainstream narratives about intimacy and pleasure.

Maria Cyndi describes herself as:

Paraplegic wife, lover, mother, writer, artist and activist for the sexual rights of everyone - particularly the disabled community.

When I first had the idea for my curated anthology, Sex Meets Life, I knew I wanted Maria Cyndi to be part of it. And I’m so glad she said yes to my invitation!

In her chapter, ‘Our Capacity for Passion: Seasons of Sensuality’, Maria Cyndi shares how she reclaimed her body – and her pleasure – during the challenges of medical intervention, motherhood, and menopause. And she reflects on the wisdom and ongoing commitment that accompany her and her husband into their next decade of desire.

And guess what?

She’s now writing a Substack too! I’m thrilled that she’s continuing to share her much-needed perspectives and experiences with us.

Sex Meets Life was published last year, and I recently asked the contributors to share a “where are you now” piece.

Here’s what Maria Cyndi shared:

It’s almost a year since I contributed to Sex Meets Life. At the time, I was using social media to try and change the way society sees sex and disability.

As a disabled woman who is married to a non-disabled man, I find it frustrating to still be living in a society that doesn’t recognise me as sexual. When Anna invited me to join an awesome group of incredible writers, I jumped at the chance to share my reality.

Becoming a part of the Sex Meets Life family has completely transformed my life! In January of this year, I made the decision to take a giant leap of faith in myself and become a full-time writer. Writing every day from January 1^st until June 1^st, resulted in me completing the first of a three-part novel which I have submitted to a competition, two short erotica story submissions to upcoming anthologies (one of which has recently been accepted and will be included in The Best Bi Erotica of the Year, Vol 2) and a non-fiction short story about life with a disability. I’m also learning to promote myself through social media, a new weekly Substack blog and guest appearing on various podcasts, which is a challenge for me as a very private, naturally introverted person.

I’m so grateful to have been included in this amazing project for all the opportunities it’s led me to and the numerous friends I’ve made since.

You can find Maria Cyndi on Substack here.

Her latest post is definitely one to read.

And find her on Instagram here.

I’ll be introducing you to more of the authors in Sex Meets Life over the coming weeks. Their stories and journeys are fascinating.

It’s my birthday and I have a gift for YOU

Sex Meets Life is one of the great personal successes of my creative life.

A phenomenal group of international authors came together to share the joys and challenges of navigating our sex lives through the twists and turns of “life”.

We wrote about courting intimacy through life events like ageing, menopause, illness, and being a caregiver, and about celebrating different stages of our journeys like sexual awakenings and gender explorations.

Sex Meets Life is truly a celebration of diversity!

(You can read more about the book here.)

And here’s the thing:

All of our stories are both unique and familiar.

No matter our age, gender, sexual orientation, relationship style and status or anything else, we all want to feel good in our bodies, to feel loved and appreciated for who we truly are, and to experience intimacy in ways that are personally meaningful and fulfilling.

Which brings me to YOU and a little GIFT…

*Drumroll, please*

I’ve created a companion zine to Sex Meets Life.

In it, you’ll find six writing prompts to explore your own stories with intimacy and desire.

You can pick one prompt or pick them all.

You can write now or save it for later.

And if you don’t feel like writing, you can simply look at the words and pictures and let your subconscious mind explore your answers.

Anna, this sounds fabulous. How do I get a copy of the zine?

I’m glad you asked!

You can download and print it at home for free here.

OR

Buy a copy of Sex Meets Life*, and I’ll send you the zine too.

.

Here’s how that works:

If you’re in the UK, and you buy a paperback copy of Sex Meets Life directly from me, I’ll send you a printed copy of the zine along with your book.

If you’re not in the UK, you can still buy the paperback book from me, and I’ll send you a digital copy of the zine.

As a special offer for my birthday month, you can buy the paperback of Sex Meets Life directly from me for £11.

This includes postage and is cheaper than buying the book from any bookshop.

All you have to do is email me with your postal address, and I’ll send you a PayPal link.

Email: anna@annasansom.com

Subject heading: Buy SML book

.

You can also email me or leave a comment if you’ve already read the book and want to share a review or your reflections.

Or if you want to ask anything about the book.

Or simply to wish me a happy birthday. I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment

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There are others in my life who have lived in multiple countries, who change jobs every couple of years, and cringe at the term “settling down.”

Sometimes the latter folk chase new relationship energy (NRE – it’s a thing), and sometimes they’ve found a person who matches their need for variety and novel experiences, within a committed relationship.

But there’s something all these people have in common:

Whether they actively seek it, welcome it, or try to avoid it at all costs, change is inevitable.

No matter how hard they try to control their external circumstances (where they live, the work they do, etc.), “life” has its own plans.

I fall somewhere in the middle of those two types of people I just described.

I’ve lived in three countries and over 20 different homes (although I’ve been in my current one for 14 years). My jobs are always fixed-term contracts that last a maximum of two years. My partner and I have adventured together for over 25 years.

We’re in the throes of relocating back to Scotland, having been away since 2004.

It’s a chosen change, but a big one, and one that brings its own stresses and anxieties nonetheless.

I’ve had my fair share of unplanned “life” events, too.

In the last 7 years, I’ve supported my best friend through cancer, had three organs surgically removed (my gallbladder, uterus, and an ovary), received a chronic health condition diagnosis, navigated a global pandemic, and ridden the menopause rollercoaster (without HRT).

My parents are ageing, have their own health challenges, and all live at least a 4-hour drive away in different parts of the UK. (I effectively have six parents: my mum and stepdad, my dad and stepmum, and my mother- and father-in-law.)

When I look at my life through this lens of change, I’m not at all surprised that my relationship with intimacy and sexuality has changed over that period, too.

Could anyone truly expect their libido and desire to remain consistent with “life” happening all around?

(Would you?)

I’ve read a lot of perspectives about sex and midlife – everything from increased horniness (no more periods or pregnancy scares getting in the way of a good time, hurray!), to giving up on sex completely (to which some people add, if you’re not having sex ‘worth wanting’, why would you try to keep this part of you alive?).

I have my own perspective (and this is pretty much what I explore on this Substack account):

What if, instead of clinging to a past version of our sexual selves and fearing change, or trying to meet some aspirational version of sexuality that we see in the media, we get curious and treat our lives as a “living experiment”?

For me, this “living experiment of desire in queer midlife” means observing the ebbs and flows of my sexual self with a certain degree of non-attachment.

Because, if I attach too strongly to one state, I find myself either getting sad (is this it then, is this part of me gone forever?) or feeling panicked (does that mean I have to maintain this level of horniness from now on?).

It’s not always easy.

I’ve previously written about my fears of losing my decades-long role as an erotic writer (a role I love).

And about my fears of losing my libido when I lost my uterus.

In the last few weeks, I’ve experienced the heady rush of unexpected sexual excitement when responding to erotic writing invitations (like this story I co-wrote with Orlando Silver).

I’ve also had rotten headaches and migraines that have led to my wanting to escape a body in which pain dominates and pleasure is nowhere to be found.

But still, I refuse to buy into the narrative that says my changing and fluctuating relationship with pleasure and intimacy means that something about me is “broken.”

I refuse, and instead, I stay curious.

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Thank you for joining me in this living experiment. Ultimately, my hope is that it will help you have more compassion for and curiosity about your unique sexual self.

If you’d like to read more perspectives on navigating intimacy and desire through times of change, I think you’ll love this book: Sex Meets Life.

Sex Meets Life features personal essays and life-inspired fiction from a wonderfully diverse group of authors, writing about times in their lives such as becoming a caregiver, ageing, menopause, sexual awakenings, exploring gender, and more.

These authors don’t shy away from the challenges of “life” and also find ways to celebrate change and transformation.

You can find out more and get your copy of Sex Meets Life here.

If you’re going through menopause, I have an extra special book for you: Wake Up Your Dragon (and reclaim your power in midlife). This one’s not about sex, but it is about remembering your fundamental nature and feeling supported as you transition through life stages.

Wake Up Your Dragon is currently only available in the UK.

If you live elsewhere and would like a copy, please email me: anna@annasansom.com

We hope you enjoy it…

The party was hammering a wall of noise so loud that it felt physical, like a weapon through my body. I was here to seek sanctuary. I wanted the dark corners, the secrecy.

It was the boots, first. The long zip down the thigh. I felt helpless, drawn into her orbit. She was straight from my fetish Tumblr feed and into my heart.

I pretended to drop something, right in front of her, and looked up.

.

A boy at my feet is one of my favourite things.

This boy had already caught my attention; I’d noticed them slouched against the wall, their nonchalance betrayed by the furrowed lines between their eyebrows and the tight set of their jaw.

I know what that tension means.

It had propelled them towards me, but if they wanted something, they were going to have to ask. Straight out. I wanted to hear the slight hesitation in their voice, or their mock bravado, or their flustered plea. But it wasn’t their words I wanted; it was their hunger.

.

I was shaking. The music throbbed. I felt myself, helplessly, get hard. Three years on testosterone, and I was still in love with the way my t-dick felt, pressing in my jocks like that, rough against the fabric there.

She smirked at me. She knew.

“Please,” I mouthed, silenced by the music. “Please.”

She arched one finger, making me stand, and pulled me to her.

“Say it,” she growled at me.

“Mistress,” I stumbled. “Please, let me taste you.”

.

I kept my face stern but my cunt was euphoric, instantly slick in the snug-fitting lace of my underwear. The hem of my latex dress skimmed the curve of my arse cheeks; the skintight, full-length sleeves mirrored the shape of my boot-clad legs.

I took in an exaggerated breath, then parted my lips and slowly exhaled like a smoker who’d been waiting all day for their hit.

“Do you want to taste me here?” I touched a fingertip to my carmine-stained lips. “Or here?” I cupped my groin, surreptitiously pressing my clit hard against my pubic bone and feeling my cunt walls tighten with impatient anticipation. “Or perhaps,” I slid one foot forward so the pointed toe of my boot nudged the sturdy toecap of their leather one, “here?”

.

I dropped to my knees. I pressed my mouth to her thighs, making her shudder. I tasted the sweat of her there, the heat of her skin flushed against my lips. I wanted to bite her, nip at her like a puppy.

Instead, I felt her long nails as she gripped the back of my head and forcefully shoved me to her cunt, in one quick movement. I opened my mouth, feeling the sheer fabric on my tongue, soaked with her.

I took the task with delirious urgency, feeling the way she thrust hard against me, pleasuring herself on my welcoming mouth. She spilled onto me like the ocean breaking, forcing me to stillness as she gripped me hard.

I wanted to be used by her, like a toy, til she broke me.

.

I steadied myself, then firmly grabbed their jaw and pulled them to standing. I brought my lips to theirs, my tongue carelessly aggressive in their mouth, sucking my juices from them.

I felt their body soften a little in surrender. “Good Boy,” I breathed, my mouth now at their ear. “Do you want to please your Mistress some more?”

They nodded.

“Then face the wall, hands high.”

I smiled as they rushed to comply, then reached around their waist and undid their belt buckle.

.

I closed my eyes and welcomed the darkness. I wanted nothing but sensation. I didn’t care who could see. Then her fingers pushed inside of me and I shouted out.

“Hold still,” she said, into my ear and pushed against me, pinning me. I felt her long nails slip inside, and I knew that if I squirmed, it might hurt. She knew it too, and moved slowly, her breath hot on my neck.

I opened my stance, allowing her. She was claiming me.

“Jerk off for me, baby.”

The feeling of her fucking me, while I stroked my t-dick, was close to unbearable. I felt her presence with me, containing me.

.

The way they angled their arse so it pushed against my groin. The way they spread their legs an extra inch so my fingers could slide that little bit deeper. This boy was headed straight for my heart.

I softened my tongue in their ear and heard their breath catch as they registered this new, warm, wet place.

I wanted to watch their palm wrap around their t-dick, but instead, I wrapped my body around theirs, a human shield to ward off the gaze of bystanders.

This boy was mine. Only mine.

My cunt throbbed with the recent memory of their mouth. I pressed my breasts into their back, circled my hips over their arse. My buried fingers insistently summoned.

They were close, but I wasn't done with them yet.

.

“Mistress, please,” I stumbled with my words. “I need to -”

“But you won’t,” she said, smoothly. “I know you won’t.”

I started begging, my face red. I promised I would do anything. The more I talked, the more her body ground into mine. I felt the way she was using my body to please herself and the thought ruined me.

I should have stopped. I know I could have. But everything I ever wanted was in the way she held me. And it was right there, I just wanted more, more, until -

“God,” I shouted, coming hard, bucking against her, pulling her hand free. Pleasure rang through my body, echoing out, a fierce hot joyful feeling of release.

“Oh baby,” she said, laughing, “Oh my boy. Now you’re really gonna get it.”

Don’t be shy…

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About the authors

Orlando Silver (he/ they) is a transmasc non-binary queer writer, living and working on Darug and Gundungurra lands. (Whose country am I on? Click here)

Orlando is the Director of Incision Press. He is a playwright, fiction writer and poet.

.

Anna Sansom (she/ they) is queer in all regards. A multi-published erotic writer, and former sexual surrogate partner, she chronicles her “living experiment of desire in queer midlife” on Substack.

She is the author of Desire Lines and editor of Sex Meets Life.

So, instead of telling you more about my living experiment of desire, here’s an invitation to find out more about YOURS…

When was the last time you had a conversation with your sexual self?

Our sexual selves are not a static thing.

Mine is dynamic, discerning, sometimes frustrated, sometimes sad, sometimes euphoric. Sometimes just plain horny. Sometimes silent.

Menopause, hysterectomy, exploring the labels given to me by society and by myself, and simply having to be a grown-up in a difficult world all impact what I need and want, and how able I am to express those wants and needs, and try to get them met.

But how can we ever know what we need and want unless we have an open line of communication with this part of us?

How can you have a conversation with your sexual self?

Writing has always been the most powerful doorway for me.

I had a wonderful conversation about giving words to our wants with Gabriella Espinosa, who hosts the Pleasure in the Pause Podcast.

We talked about how writing can let you go anywhere, want anything, and explore any fantasy or desire without judgment or pressure.

I shared some of my top tips for getting started, whether that’s writing in your journal or writing stories.

We also talked about how it feels to do this in midlife (and why that’s important).

You can find out more and listen to the conversation here.

Here’s what Gabriella said after we’d recorded the podcast:

Another way to connect with your sexual self is through meditation.

If that sounds a bit complicated or woo-woo, I recorded a guided meditation to help.

It’s had over 10k hits on YouTube, and you can listen to it here.

Here’s what happened one time I did this meditation:

And then there are books.

Books, books, wonderful books!

Reading erotica can help open up conversations with your sexual self.

I recommend (and have stories in):

• Take It Outside (queer and trans desire), edited by Cash Torn and Orlando Silver

• Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 10, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

• The Big Book of Quickies, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Or how about reading about other people’s experiences and perspectives as a way of exploring your own?

• Sex Meets Life, edited by Anna Sansom

• Desire Lines, by Anna Sansom

Full transparency here: I’m recommending my own books because I would love you to buy them. I write for free here on Substack (although welcome paid subscriptions from those able to support me that way), but for the price of a couple of cups of fancy coffee, you can hold a real-life paperback in your hands (or read as an eBook if you prefer). Pretty good deal, huh?

Finally, let’s not forget about masturbation.

Because sometimes you just have to let your body do the talking.

I’m a big fan of being your own lover and cultivating, what the late, great Betty Dodson called, a “love affair that lasts a lifetime.”

Here’s a masturbation-themed post that readers previously enjoyed…

Thanks for reading this far

Let me know how your conversations go.

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Now I’m going to feed the cat and get back to the sexy shenanigans of my latest character crush.

Happy Solstice to you.

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We gave our crushes nicknames and dissected any conversations we had with them over pints of beer and shared packets of peanuts. I preferred the dry-roasted nuts, but my friends always opted for salted. We’d rip open a bag of each and lay the packets flat on the bar table, reaching for crunchy, moreish morsels between confessional sentences and slugs of ale.

We’d go to the pub each wearing some variation of jeans, a checked shirt, a T-shirt and a waistcoat (this was the 90s; waistcoats were cool). My jeans were from the men’s section of What Everyone Wants; we all bought our shirts from Millets.

One by one, we dared to get our hair cut shorter, eventually realising that the barber was more willing to follow instructions than the hairdresser, who always insisted on leaving an element that was “just a bit softer, just a bit more feminine”.

We allowed our bodies to touch each other on the hot crush of the dancefloor, and knew the heady rush of intimacy we felt must stay confined there. (Except it didn’t always. Friends became lovers; lovers became friends.)

Sex was a game.

We’d canvass opinions on the future of our relationships, finding it easier to be truthful with each other than with the person we were dating. (That, in itself, should have told us everything we needed to know.)

But then…

We grew up.

Life happened.

We got jobs and homes and marriages.

Our conversations stopped being about the excitement of a new crush or love affair and, instead, became about work, mortgages, and holiday destinations.

Decades passed.

And now?

We don’t go on nights out any more, so we rely on early evening phone calls, or daytime café meet-ups with pots of loose-leaf tea and a slice of something sweet. (I’m more likely to opt for a piece of almond-y, jammy Bakewell tart these days; muffins are just not the same as they used to be.)

Now the explicit details we share are about the broken toilet on the long train journey home, and how we thought we’d wet ourselves, or bleed through our clothes, or have a panic attack, or all three.

We talk about anxiety that makes us question our ability to be out in the world, and unbidden rage that makes it dangerous to be so.

We talk about the pros and cons of HRT, cancer scares, broken sleep, healing from surgery, pulled muscles, debilitating migraines…

Bodies that feel unknown and unreliable.

And in quiet conversations behind closed doors, we confess our confusion about libidos missing in action, and our sadness about no longer being the people we once were.

All of this is true AND…

I know that all is not lost.

One of the gifts of ageing is understanding more about phases and transitions.

“It’s just a phase” is a criticism often levelled at the young.

Exploring new ideas and identities is seen as a bad thing.

People are ‘supposed’ to make up their mind, choose one, stick with it no matter what.

I find the notion that we are static beings laughable.

We are always changing and evolving.

The beach I visit weekly is made of large pebbles. Despite the weight and sheer volume of these pebbles, the incoming and outgoing tides manage to rearrange the contours of the beach daily.

Every day is different.

We have our own materiality and tides, too.

We are constantly shifting.

Everything is a phase.

Which means, when I reflect on my sexuality over the last week, month, year, or decade, I can see times when I felt more connected to this part of me and times when I felt less so.

I had around 7 years in perimenopause (with a whole raft of changes to my body and my mood) before my hysterectomy last year and subsequent shift into menopause.

During that time, I grieved the increasing absence of my libido, experienced my body more as a site of pain than pleasure, leant into my responsive desire, and wondered when and how I’d finally emerge from this life phase.

I’m now 8 months post-hysterectomy, and the new shape of my sexual self is taking form.

Yes, it’s different to what it was in my 20s, 30s, and 40s.

But there are similarities too:

• The need to be loved and appreciated for who I truly am.

• The need to share intimacy in ways that are personally meaningful and fulfilling.

• The need to feel good in my body.

These are the same fundamental truths that each of the authors in the anthology Sex Meets Life wrote about.

Each person is at a different stage and phase of their life, but no matter their age, sexual orientation, gender identity, physicality, neurodiversity, or any other aspect, they recognise that their sex life is an ever-evolving and shifting part of them.

After at least a year of wondering if I’d ever feel horny again, the last few weeks have brought about a shift in me.

I can feel my sexual self emerging again.

If I went into the cocoon as a carefree caterpillar, is it possible that I will emerge as a soft-winged butterfly?

Is it possible that this latest messy goo* stage of life was just a phase?

And what new opportunities await me now that I can fly?

My companion text for this time of transition has been the extraordinary collection of personal essays and life-inspired fiction in Sex Meets Life.

When I read other people’s stories – different from mine yet fundamentally the same – I’m reminded again that we are always changing and evolving.

All of life is a phase.

***

*The caterpillar-goo-butterfly analogy was used by the brilliant Alyx Marsh in their chapter, called “Silver Linings”, in Sex Meets Life. In it, Alyx writes about how their rising desire in menopause and a new confidence in their body helped overcome a long-standing fear of intimacy and led to a confession to their husband of 30 years. The life changes that followed were unexpected silver linings.

You can read Alyx’s personal essay, plus the writing offered by 16 more talented and international authors, in Sex Meets Life.

In this daring anthology, you’ll find candid stories about the impact of ageing, illness, relationship changes, exploring gender, sexual awakenings, becoming a caregiver, and more.

From reclaiming desire to redefining intimacy, each story offers a raw, honest look at the challenges - and the celebrations - that can emerge when our sex lives come face-to-face with life.

Click here to find it on Amazon (or ask your favourite bookshop to get you a copy).

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