It stayed with me. He was (compared to his wife) a softer thing, more approachable, more down to earth. What my friend implied made sense, though; I could imagine his sexuality being deeper, inherent, less about his physicality and obvious beauty. I imagined him being more intense in practice than her. I imagined he would make you come at least twice and make you laugh while doing so, too.

Kim Kardashian, a woman who has made 100s of millions of dollars selling her sexuality, notoriously became famous via Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Early in the release of the show, the entire plot centres on the ‘unauthorised’ leak of a sex tape she made with Ray J. It is still available to watch in various places on the internet, for those who are curious/care (it’s not hot).

The thing that always struck me, when I first watched it, and watching it again, is how passive she is. She is already deeply self-objectified. She has already assumed a sex-doll-like role, only really caring about how she looks, how she sounds and his pleasure. She is hyper-aware of the camera and not of him, or the act.

I say ‘his pleasure’; it appears to me that she doesn’t really care about his pleasure, not actively. As she manoeuvres through the motions, she doesn’t appear to be that actively engaged or aroused. She is, for want of a better expression, allowing herself to be fucked like a fleshlight. A masturbation tool, just for his orgasm. Of course, it goes without saying that her whole performance in the tape could be, in itself, deeply intentional. Not too explicit, not too genuine, not too pornographic, just rude enough to propel Kardashian to superstar status.

What Kim does have, for sure, are strong physical assets: her face and body (if you are attracted to her type of beauty), which she uses to her advantage by often appearing in near-naked photos. No slight to Kim, I think she’s physically hot, but I can’t tell how sexual she actually is. What I do know all too well, in fact, is that the two are often unrelated.

We’re all taught to ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and yet when it comes to sex, we all do. All. The. Time. We make assumptions based on our identities, genders and sexual orientations. By our clothes and how revealing they are, hair, jewellery, tattoos, accents, age – everything.

We assume so many things about a person’s sexuality based on their presentation of self. We assume that a leather-wearing bear must be into BDSM or must be promiscuous, or that someone who dresses elegantly won’t be as sexual as someone who dresses in a way that might be perceived as cool or sexually provocative (i.e. more naked).

I can give many personal examples of times I have been mistaken by a person’s self-presentation in relation to their sexuality, in both directions. The beautiful musician with the huge chest tattoo who refused to sext (which killed our romance in between seeing each other). The nerdy writer who wore tortoiseshell glasses and dressed exclusively in Margaret Howell, who fucked me like he wanted me to remember my own divinity. Or my female friend who dresses fairly conservatively, who organises intimate sex parties for a select group of guests at her and her husband’s loft several times a year, and my female colleague who wears Japanese avant-garde designers, who piped up in a meeting recently, when editing a writer’s work: “I had to keep emailing her back and asking her to make it dirtier.”

My point is, when it comes to sex, the most sexually liberated and integrated among us are not screaming about how sexual they are from a rooftop, certainly not in a way that is expressed purely via identity. They are probably not self-objectifying. They probably don’t own any latex. If they do, it’s probably not on their Instagram. They are probably holding that part of themselves back from public consumption, not needing to identify or evidence their sexualities outwardly because their sexualities are fully ingrained into the fabric of who they are.

A hot tip for finding yourself a dark horse, if that is what you seek:

It’s always in the eyes. Eyes don’t lie.

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I asked him if he had tried to talk to his wife, he said she simply wasn’t interested. The blame seemed to lie directly with her. He said they had done a few years of couples therapy, but the issues never really changed. The issue was not just about sex, she had accused him of being distant and emotionally disconnected. He felt he gave enough emotionally, that he was open ‘enough’.

When a relationship breaks down it obviously has a big impact on the depth and quality of a couple’s sex life, but theirs wasn’t deeply ruptured. By all accounts they were mostly happy and comfortable financially too, there wasn’t too much stress in their home.

Love and sex are so deeply intertwined and yet so separate too. I have thought so much about why someone wouldn’t want to create a deep physical and sexual bond with the person they loved? Why wouldn’t she want to have orgasms regularly and to give him orgasms back? Why wouldn’t he not want to soften to her, to meet her too?

Of course, sexuality is a spectrum, and I wonder if she might actually be asexual? Some people see their sexuality as a chapter of their life rather than something to be in dialogue with throughout adulthood. Now that she had her family had she simply moved past that part of her life? Did she not feel safe enough with him emotionally, or do they simply have a misalignment?

I’m not close enough to her to ask.

In my 20s I lived in the US for five years and I was married. I got married young to someone 12 years older than me. It went very badly wrong, a period of my life that has taken years to repair and understand. To understand my role in the relationship, and how our childhoods and woundings lead to a perfect storm.

I do not recommend getting married or into serious relationships before your frontal cortex is fully developed - age 25 at the earliest but perhaps even 30.

I had just turned 21 when we met. At the start our sex life was very good, but by the middle he started to shame my sexuality, my libido, my bids for connection and my desire to have a lot more sex than we were having. By the end we hadn’t had sex in almost a year and a half, and I no longer wanted him to touch me. The relationship was dead, and so was the sex.

In the depths of the relationship breakdown I devoured Dan Savage’s podcast Savage Love and I remember him repeating over and over:

‘If you are aligned in every aspect of your life but not sexually, then you are still not aligned!’

Of course he doesn’t mean don’t put some work in, but if someone is historically very vanilla and you have explored BDSM for a decade plus, you may never align your desires. Sexual misalignment is something that people think they can get past, an issue that is workable, when often it is the very thing that leads to resentment, deception and, of course, relationships ending.

I think it’s a fair thing to say that for a lot of women, we only really enjoy sex when we feel safe.

Feeling safe with another is not something that can be rushed or faked, you either do or you don’t and your body probably knows before you’re cognitively aware if you don’t.

I say this without judgement, but if you enjoy having sex where you don’t feel safe, you probably have unresolved trauma, or ADHD, or both, and as hot as it might be in the moment, I would personally take a look at what pattern/wound or if dopamine is running the behaviour. There are, I can attest from experience, healthy ways to recreate these dynamics within a loving and safe relationship.

I also have to hold my hands up and argue that a little uncertainty creates incredible chemistry, and chemistry is an important part of love and sex. Part of my life’s mission is to understand and teach how to cultivate strong sexual chemistry within a long-term relationship.

I recently read a post about what constitutes a ‘safe man’ by a male wellness coach. I think a lot of these apply to all of us. But I do like the idea that the masculine, not the feminine leads with emotional safety.

Re-posting his points here:

1. He takes responsibility for his triggers and talks about them.

2. He notices her feelings and he will ask things like “something has shifted, are you okay?”

3. He brings curiosity towards her experience. He asks questions to understand what’s going on, seeking to know and love all parts of her.

4. He treats sex and intimacy as sacred. A safe man upholds sexuality, her body, and the connection with the highest honour.

5. He makes space to process his emotions. He doesn’t repress them or withdraw. He communicates if he needs space, he doesn’t just disappear.

6. He dives deep into understanding his patterns. A safe man acknowledges that his old stories, wounds and defence mechanisms can interfere with how he relates to others. (This one especially applies to all of us).

7. He initiates conversations about emotional safety. He leads these. He is proactive and responsive to working to nurture emotional safety in relationships.

8. He stands up for what he believes in and for her.

9. When ruptures happen, he seeks to repair. A safe man does not sulk, run away or sweep things under the rug. This means unpacking what happened, taking responsibility for his part and creating a plan to repair.

I don’t think I’ve encountered a man who is fully like this, I am sure men like this exist and perhaps this is my own mirror. A mirror to where I should and can also expand and embody a fully healthy feminine – one that deeply trusts men (I’m the first to admit that I have trust issues remaining from my marriage).

In Western societies men are also not raised to be deeply in touch with and expressive about their emotions like women are, so perhaps this is not just an individual’s fault per se but also societies. And it’s fair to say that I know that a lot of women can’t handle men when they are emotional, that we expect men to be stoic.

A mirror for both sexes, for where work needs to be done.

Every relationship in our lives is a mirror.

My friend and his wife are reflections of each other. Both standing by their positions, refusing to meet each other, both withholding, him with emotional connection, her with sexual intimacy.

Sometimes it’s positive, sometimes it’s negative.

Facing the mirror always feels hard, but in my experience, hard is always worth the work.

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The brand is pretty much built and ready to go… with an incredible team, strategy, product, in place. It’s there. The creatives and experts I consult in theses areas tell me so.

Money men, not so much. Money men, oh, money men!

When I hit another road block I often think about the book ‘The Obstacle is the Way’ and have a little ponder as to why the block may be showing up on the path right now. What growth is this serving? I always think it’s some kind future preparation, an initiation.

The further you pull back the arrow the further it goes, type thing. Distance = time over tension…

Last month we hit a big obstacle and it derailed the current strategic plan. I was selling a small development project that would have funded various parts of the next part of the Stellfox journey. The sale fell through just as we were due to exchange contracts, and buyers for development plots are thin on the ground currently.

I had a little think and thought: carry on, get back out there and raise the money you need.

I thought about the overall brand offer and decided to launch with with the thing that we as a team are dying to make, which are all the parts that make the Stellfox marketing strategy.

The marketing strategy is the thing I have put the most love and thought into. It is an expression of the our core values, mission and purpose.

The thing that scares/excites me personally the most.

(I’m going to be slightly vague here because I don’t want to give away the goods before we launch it).

We took the last element of the brand world and made it the first.

We need £100k to run this part of the business for the first 18 months and to see it through to sustain itself.

Hard things don’t just shape the path they are the path.

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Then they really get to work. If they are sloppy, the mask slips very quickly. Sometimes in weeks, sometimes months.

If they are highly skilled and intelligent, it might take years. In my experience and through observations with friends, even when it does take years, there is almost always a red flag early on. Some small indicator of what is to come. When you’re young, and when you move fast, they’re easy to miss.

Dating, like life itself, is a dance. Chemistry and desire are intoxicating states, and most of us long to be consumed by them. If we are lucky, these states are signs of genuine alignment and the possibility of real love, if that is what we seek.

If you are simply looking to fuck, then this article may be irrelevant to you. If you seek what I will refer to as soulmate sex (I know, I know) within the container of an exceptional relationship, you may need to approach things with a evolved strategy.

The desire to get swept up, to be utterly consumed by another, is one of the strongest drugs there is. Knowing how to hold intensity – hot desire in one hand and cool restraint in the other, is the key to not falling prey to any of the above-mentioned characters in my first paragraph. This gives you time to discover if the object of your desires also desires the exceptional sex/love relationship that you also seek.

Knowing how to hold these dynamics means you won’t go so fast that you burn out. Or freak yourself out. It means learning how to play with the energy of your co-created experience of the other in a sophisticated way: how to create space without withdrawing safety, how to create tension, how to lean back in to reignite intensity. Hopefully, you’ll save enough fuel in the tank for year three, year six, and beyond.

Handled correctly, these dynamics can turn into a love that is true, deep, and transformative in the purest sense, however long it lasts. Not everything meaningful lasts forever. Forever is not the point here. Passion, depth, truth, and trust are.

I am not saying don’t dive in head first if the desire is so strong you simply must act upon it. Do. But do so with your eyes wide open and your wits about you. End it swiftly if there is a big red flag, no matter how strong your feelings are.

Having erotic intelligence means knowing what you are looking for. Knowing what kind of relationship you want and the kind of sex you want, and then giving yourselves enough time to see if you want to (and can) meet each other there.

As a shop, it occupies some of the most expensive retail space in the world but is, like most of the sex shops in Soho, a traditional and cheap iteration of the genre, a hangover from the pornography shops of the 70s that once filled major cities.

Historically, these shops made sense. Magazines were specific and people wanted to know what they were buying. Sex shops were often near brothels and in less residential parts of the city, and Soho and Times Square fit that criteria. Today they sit next to Palace and Supreme, Lina Stores, JW Anderson and Fiorucci. The old guard next to the new.

These days, sex shops don’t really sell porn. Their main products are sex toys and underwear, but their aesthetic identity has not changed at all. They are still, at their heart, pornographic. This version of the sex shop is the same all over North America and Europe. A singular vision of sex. Cheap and male-gaze-centric.

There are few exceptions to this vision.

And I know this sounds like a criticism, but it is not really. I love old Soho, and I don’t want all of these types of sex shops to disappear, and I love a proper working man’s pub, with actual working men inside who would rather that I was not drinking there. The places that have been there for years and have not been touched. My issue is that this should not be the only iteration. Sex shouldn’t be only cheap, only pornographic.

Many of you who are old enough will remember Coco de Mer at 23 Monmouth Street in Covent Garden, founded and opened by Anita Roddick’s daughter Sam. Sam opened Coco in 2001. A lifetime ago. Her vision of the erotic, or what a contemporary sex shop could be, has not truly been surpassed or updated since.

Although I loved Coco, it looked back a little too much for me (and to not the right decades).Many loved the interior, but from my perspective the space felt heavy, with so much burgundy, chocolate brown and gold. It was the early noughties though, when burlesque, Dita Von Teese, Suicide Girls and others were all having their moment. Coco also used to run workshops and classes for exploration and technique, something that was unheard of at the time. It was elevated and feminine, loved by men shopping for women and by women alike. And unlike Agent Provocateur, stocked a variety of small makers and unique sexual wellness products and books.

Coco de Mer was later sold to sex toy retail giant Lovehoney and was never quite the same again.

RIP the old Coco.

Last week I was fortunate enough to speak with a veteran of the sex toy business. She questioned me thoroughly, and I was grateful for it. It was a moment to test my knowledge and research. I think I held my own. We talked about toy costs, market segments, audiences and channels. She spoke about price ceilings and her perceptions of what consumers will and will not pay. She wanted to know my origin story, why sex toys and why now.

I told her a little about my own openness and how I have always felt empowered to explore my body and my sexuality, but I came back to that pivotal moment in Soho. It was also the moment that led to me having my first orgasm. I have since taught myself how to come with my hands, but toys can do things that hands cannot and are valuable additions to sexual expression, solo or shared.

When you are a sexually aware and curious teenager, it is easy to imagine a gap between what you think the adult world of sex will be and what it actually is.

Of course I had seen some porn by that point and understood it was not a true reflection of real sexual life, but nothing prepared me for the disappointment of reality that day in Soho. After passing rows of explicit fashion and erotica books, a section of the shop I loved and still love, I reached the sex toy aisles. My overwhelming feeling was a quiet kind of let down. I remember thinking, this can’t be it.

Everything felt so cheap, not just in price but physically. There was so much plastic, and a certain kind of plastic and PVC smell, overly bright colours, crass imagery and poor copy. The interior was dimly lit, with old retail units and no attempt at merchandising, just products stacked onto shelves like essentials in a petrol station.

At the time, I would not have consciously understood all the elements that created that impression. This was before any serious design education on my part. But if sex was supposed to be such a grown up and important part of life, why were sex shops like this.

The answer is complex and layered, but it ultimately sits within a broader societal view that sexual pleasure is somehow morally questionable, rather than something to be honoured as a natural and beautiful act. Perceptions of sex and desire have shifted in many parts of the world since then, but these changes have happened slowly and have not fully trickled into the online or physical experience of buying sex toys or sex shops as retail spaces.

Just because you can now buy a vibrator and lube in Sainsbury’s does not mean the presentation and design of these products has meaningfully improved since the people working in the industry in the 70s, 80s and 90s shaped their production. There is sort of overall feeling or sense that these products are not worthy, that don’t deserve serious design consideration. That they should indeed be unseen and single use. Cheap. Unsavoury.

It’s worth noting that in the past two decades, it’s women who have driven the most significant changes in the industry, redefining the erotic. Women such as Sam and Betony Vernon, Adele Brydges, Vanessa Cuccia, Eva Goicochea, Erica Lust and Vex Ashley.

A thread I see among these women, is that we need products that are higher quality, longer lasting and with a slower consumption cycle. Products (and pornography) that feel more valuable, more considered. Products that reflect the important role they play in our sex lives.

We need products (and therefore spaces) that reflect a sense of reverence for sex back to us.

My why.

Since then, I haven’t felt much like writing. I definitely haven’t felt sexual. It occured to me that grief and desire are similar in many ways. They can both consume you emotionally and physically, and leave you changed, in ways too subtle to name. Love (of different kinds) expressing itself in different forms.

Something shifted in me last Saturday, on St Valentine’s Day. I thought about love, how we celebrate it, how we neglect it. How quickly sex and intimacy are pushed to the bottom of the list when life becomes busy and stressful. And I think we owe St Valentine an apology of sorts.

I used to be quite cynical about the day. If I had written an apology to the Patron Saint of Love back then, I would said sorry for how we had taken his day, a day that was supposed to be sweet and simple and had commercialised it, turned it into a capitalistic holiday of no sincere meaning. Of course, it is and can be partly that, it can be forced, saccharine and shallow – things that we do not want to attribute to love and sex.

But this year felt different, for me anyway.

I celebrated the day by taking myself to see Sweet Mambo by Pina Bausch at Sadler’s Wells. I dressed up. I felt elegant, happy in my singledom, and full of self-love. I was seated in the front row of the second circle and caught eyes with an attractive woman seated on the left balcony, who, at guess, was slightly older than me. She had also taken herself to see Pina, solo for Valentine’s. We smiled to each other knowingly.

Sweet Mambo made me ache for life – more love, more joy, more sex, more of everything. It was sensual and absurd and beautifully funny also.

The journey there and back was a delight in it’s own way, a tube full of couples of all ages, sexes, and ethnicities. On their way to dates, or on their way back, or stretching the date into the night. It was full of people with loving eyes. Full of kisses, flowers and hands being held.

The tube, and London, felt full of love.

I no longer feel cynical about the day. Maybe it’s my age, maybe that I no longer work in hospitality, maybe enough time has passed since my last terrible Valentine’s date that I can almost romanticise it.

Or maybe it’s simply that the world feels so heavy right now.

But when I think and read about Valentine, the patron saint of Love (and bees) – I think my apology would be that I’m sorry that we only celebrate love like this, publicly, outwardly, once a year. That we should dedicate more days to love.

P.S If you are single, and you are waiting for someone else to arrive before you allow yourself beautiful things, theatre tickets, flowers, pleasure — I hope you don’t.

I hope you take yourself. I hope you let love move through your life in all the ways.

My closest friends are messaging me, telling me how worried they are — how will we cope, how will we survive if we descend further, what will life look like? One friend says she just wants to have sex as much as she can. Another says she craves being held tightly, to feel safe. A male friend of mine suggests we hold hands and sleep over together, our naked skin co-regulating our nervous systems.

An artist tells me she feels guilty promoting her work while people are dying and being oppressed. I think about my own work, about pleasure and sex, and I wonder if I should pull back from being so overt. Am I being insensitive?

I think about the world, about humanity and our fleeting moments on this planet. I think about the times I have had sex during deeply sad or traumatic moments, and how cathartic those interactions have been.

The time an ex and I carried on having sex with each other while our hearts broke. The times when two people come together to console each other — the loss of someone they loved, the loss of a period of time, moments of transition. Oneness in grief. Oneness in uncertainty. Moments that act like anchors in huge, unpredictable waves.

I think about how certain people don’t give a fuck about people dying, or about humanity, connection, beauty, intimacy, and how it is often the sensitive ones who censor and deny themselves in times of uncertainty and chaos.

Denying yourself your aliveness, your art, and your passion is giving oppression further victory and validation. The world needs lovers to love even harder right now. Artists to make work that matters. People who are trying to create change to commit even more deeply.

I, for one, will not stop talking about sex. In times of chaos, it is one of the purest, most beautiful, and most human acts we can share with those we love, or like, or even barely know — even if only to remind ourselves, for a moment, that we are here, and that we are alive.

There are a few things that seemed fated about he and I, not least the way we met.

It was late 2018 and someone said to me that I should date in my own pool, so I signed up to a website that I shall not name. This was the only time I would actively use this site. My username was a subtle pun on an infamous couple, and he spotted it right away. I’d uploaded two photos: a photo of my face, lying on my bed with a turtleneck pulled up over my mouth, showing only my eyes and hair. You could get a sense of me but not identify me fully. The other was a very subtle nude.

He was the first person to message, and his profile was elegant and unlike anyone else’s there. I liked his dark interior photographs and his musings about Cy Twombly and light-filled Roman palazzos. Our messaging was slow and steady at first, but building with pace and tension, tiny reveals of what was to come. I remember feeling increased excitement as the time between our responses closed and he asked me if I wanted to meet in person. We had barely spoken about sex at this point; we’d sidestepped that need by finding each other there. Needles in a haystack.

We had our first date in Victoria Park. It was clear there was going to be deep attraction between us the moment I saw him walking towards me. I don’t think we stopped smiling, wry little smiles that betrayed our desire. We spoke a lot with our eyes on that first date, as well as with our mouths. It was a freezing cold walk on one of the shortest days of the year, with a long first kiss on a wet winter bench. We were both going home for Christmas, but there was no doubt we were going to see each other in the New Year.

We developed a private language with our looks. A glance that lasted seconds too long expressed unending dialogues of our wants and wishes. He had the ability to make me wet in an instant.

Our relationship lasted about two years in total. It didn’t have a normal cadence. I think I fell in love before he did, and in a sense that broke my heart even before our ending. We were both somewhat guarded, unavailable to ourselves and to each other, but me less so than he.

Everyone says that desire fades over time. Ours never did and still hasn’t, seven years later. I suspect that it had something to do with our unavailability and our well-matched sexualities (something to discuss in another S*X SCENES).

We fucked as much as we possibly could, at least twice a day when we were together, sometimes more. Throughout the entire relationship, the intensity and quality of the sex we shared never faded. I never saw him not hard.

In spite of our walls, it was the first genuinely safe and tender relationship I’d had, and the sex was transformative for both of us. The impact of feeling safe for the first time in a very long time meant that I learnt to properly let go and to orgasm with a man, something I had struggled with in some of my previous relationships. I think he learnt to embrace the side of him that perhaps he had kept hidden from girlfriends who were not as sexual as he.

When we finally broke up, at a point in our relationship when we were most in love, we didn’t stop having sex. We continued to express our love for each other in the purest way we knew how, even through the pain of that impossibly difficult decision.

It was the sexual union within the container of a relationship that I had sought my whole life. The type of union that I believe is possible for anyone who wants it. I suspect that we wouldn’t have worked long term. I would have felt I had to be someone a little more timid and I think I would have tested his need for certainty and structure – I like to evolve. Our ending led to the current chapter of my life. Our relationship has been hugely formative in the creation of brand I am building and he is still someone I can go to if I need a trusted perspective on anything.

Years after our break-up, I know we still have that understanding of the other that can trigger desire in a moment. It’s made it complex for us to maintain a friendship. We still try because we admire each other deeply and because dealing with the issues of being in each other’s lives feels easier and less painful than not being at all.

All this is to say, the sex life you seek exists. I believe that it can be found and it can be cultivated, with the right perspective, the right person, and the right tools.

Erotic intelligence, when cultivated correctly, is a creative force that permeates all life.

My maternal grandmother, Nora, was a salt-of-the-earth woman, with a sparkle in her eye even on her 80th birthday. In my early teens, a few years before I would have sex for the first time, she used to say to me every time I saw her, “Have as much sex as you can, my girl, because your sex life ends before you will!” I adored her. She was warm, deeply loving and had a wicked sense of humour. She was passionate about family, food and sex (by all accounts). She sometimes cooked for middle class families, did a long stint as the head cook at the local school and was always catering weddings. She was much loved by her community and friends.

She led a pretty normal working-class countryside market-town life, with one difference, she seemed like she had lived even though she barely left Dorset until she was in her 40s, like she had a certain vitality, and few regrets. I sensed she was the textbook definition of a lover before I really knew anything about anything.

Everytime I visited her home I would be showered with love and fed beautifully. Her garden was totally dedicated to vegetables and in summer her greenhouse filled with fruit, grapefruits supported by her laddered old tights. She died very sadly when I was 17, shortly after I lost my virginity (my mother is the youngest of her four children, born when Nora was 35), and I never got to have the conversations with her about sex that I wanted to. As you all know too well, apples don’t fall very far from the tree.

Why am I telling you about my grandmother in a Substack dedicated to sex? Because she was one of the first people I knew who spoke to me about it without shame or prejudice, other than my parents. Those conversations laid a foundation for me that would lead to my outlook.

And although I’ve never really intended to open the door fully to my private erotic world, (I’m far more intrigued by yours and how we can shape the future of sex), on this occasion, a little background is necessary. First, whenever I talk about sex, I do so in the context of sex between consenting adults. Second, is to say that I have always been sexually explorative and instinctively open-minded, long before the decade-long relationship that shaped my entire twenties.

I first heard the term ‘erotic intelligence’ ten years ago. Freshly divorced and discovering a new version of self (both in the real world and on a therapist’s sofa), I came across Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel. I suspect she coined the term in her 2003 article ‘In Search of Erotic Intelligence’, and if she didn’t, she certainly claimed it with authority and has centred her entire career and therapeutic practice around it. Esther says in an interview, “We have an erotic mind [that] is infinite. And eroticism thrives on the ritual and the celebration and the infiniteness of our imagination, and on the forbidden, for that matter, too.”

What Perel names resonated deeply. It is an approach, a perspective, fluency. Somewhere between emotional intelligence and sexual intelligence, but a perspective applied to life, not just sex. Eroticism as a life force. Vitality. An essence. The thing that Nora had.

Emotional intelligence has slipped comfortably into our cultural vocabulary; sexual intelligence, somewhat less so. A quick search delivered Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex and How to Get It by Marty Klein, which joins my ever-growing ‘to read’ list. It’s no surprise that there are more books about sex on my bedside table than sex toys these days, but maybe the distinction is beside the point.

Sexual intelligence, to me, implies a deep understanding of the physicality of sex. Sexual acts, preferences and practices. Technique. And an understanding of tantra and BDSM.

Eroticism, or erotic intelligence, is something other, something intangible. It’s an energy, and it’s knowing how to cultivate, maintain and use that energy that gives a person erotic vitality. Perel says, “If you tell me who you are sexually I will know a lot about who you are as a person, from the micro to the macro. It’s a lens, it’s not an act. An understanding that the erotic is a beautiful, radiant interlude that is massively unproductive. It has no numbers, you can’t measure it; it is a state of being.”

What I sought when I embarked on that period of my life was to understand myself sexually and psychologically, without shame. And to heal, to find vitality again, to embody this state. I got to a place of freedom and renewal, but it meant accepting all parts of myself and confronting my own ways of behaving and relating to others to get there.

There’s no true map for this, you will need to become your own guide, but I hope you make the trip. It is beautiful and rewarding and may even lead you to a version of self that you longed to find. At the very least I hope you have some peak orgasms, love affairs long and short, and collect stories that make you feel alive in years to come.

Exhibition halls are exhibition halls the world over. The entrance to this one is dominated by sex toy company Satisfyer’s banners. Oversized images of their latest designs; a clitoral sucking black and white sheep, a pale green dinosaur toy ‘Din-Oooh’ and a violet seahorse ‘Sea Pony’ not unlike a My Little Pony I had as a kid, all making me feel physically uneasy. These sex toys are plainly infantile. Who uses these toys and who designed them? Why are we contemplating orgasms with small plastic animals? I take a deep breath. It feels depressing even before getting inside.

After a very friendly Dutch welcome, I head in. On the outer corridor of the show I spot the first sex doll vendor. They have 15 female and 2 male dolls. The dolls are lifelessly hanging from the exhibition stand. I let the extremely non-judgmental side of me roll the idea of fucking a male sex doll around my mind. My body responds for me, I know I could never.

Of course, the dolls are all insane. Huge tits, 18-inch waists, minute limbs and tiny, tiny perfect vulvas and assholes. I have touched a sex doll once before, and they are eerie, slightly cold and with a damp feel to the touch, made from super soft fleshy silicone. When you squeeze the limbs, you can feel the thin metal structure of the doll’s skeleton deep inside. They are so alien. The faces are the same, anime-filtered humans; huge eyes, huge lips, big mouths, button noses. The dolls are predominantly white.

There are the usual suspects: condom companies, lubricant brands, the leather section, the super hardcore brands selling furniture and electrical current devices I don’t have the capacity to consider in that moment.

In the centre of the fair are the well-known sex toy companies. Satisfyer and Womaniser pitched opposite each other, the biggest pitches at the show. I venture into the Satisfyer booth, a cheap knockoff of an Apple shop. I chat with a rep and I say I am considering opening a sex shop in London and she walks me through their line. They make over 400 products. She asks me, ‘Have you used Satisfyer?’ I say I have one of their toys, a very simple clitoral vibrator, she nods in approval.

She gives me a goodie bag with some free sex toys and for the rest of the day I carry around a huge shopping bag with ‘Fun Factory - Home of the Pulsator’ emblazoned across it with a giant pink mechanical dildo seemingly oscillating in 2D. She confirms a lot of things I have assumed about the industry and products for some time. Critically, that China does most definitely make the best sex toys. It’s not just about prices, she says; it’s their technical understanding of tiny motors.

The outside of the Fleshlight booth is merchandised with 30 silicone circles, the ‘mouths’ of the toy, mounted on the wall in a geometric pattern. Most of them are vulvas. Some are just open mouths. Some are just assholes. There is one male Fleshlight complete with huge hanging balls. I am not supposed to take photos, but I do.

A couple of booths along a German vendor is selling dildos and sex machines. His entire range of machines are on and operating with huge lifelike dildos going backwards and forwards at various speeds and rhythms as I walk past. I laugh. He has MAGA style MAKE ANAL GREAT AGAIN red hats and a life-size cardboard cutout of Donald Trump at the back of his stand. I ask him if I can have a hat (a joke for the office) and he says no, loyal customers only. He asks, ‘Will I see you at the VIP beach party tomorrow?’ and I give an emphatic no.

The life-size-headless-silicone-female-torso is a product I see for sale over and over, but on a Chinese manufacturer’s booth, one toy has been manipulated and distorted in a Frankenstein-ish manner. The torso has been reduced in size so it’s handheld, used as a masturbation sleeve, but it still has a life-size vulva. As I weave through a huge American distributor booth, headless female torsos are displayed on shelves everywhere, including their range of entry level price point half torsos (the toy starts at the waist and cuts off at the top of the thigh) and I then notice their diminutive ‘Barely Legal’ range. I contemplate talking to them over the name, but I decide against it.

I quietly and quickly make my way through the rest of the fair, making notes about who I need to come back to speak with and weighing up how fast I can leave so I can head back to the hotel to have a long anti-depression nap. I walk past a crystal dildo brand I have never heard of and have a quick chat with the owner, who briefly tells me he can get any semi-precious stone as he has links to great mines all over the world. I think about the mines, labour conditions and wages.

There are, fortunately, a couple of booths promoting brands I sort of rate. The owner of the distribution company talks me through them. One toy retails for 180 Euros. They have sold 30,000 units. A French brand has a toy that retails for 120 Euros, it is one of the nicest toys I see at the show, but it comes in colours I think are odd choices, navy blue and bright fuchsia. She says everyone told the founder that French women don’t buy sex toys, but in fact she’s sold 100,000 units of that product alone. I am relieved for a second, an ounce of hope for the industry and perhaps for myself too.

I skip the fair on Thursday and head into central Amsterdam, a city that I like, but the least erotic iteration of a ‘city of sex’.

When I return on the last day, I do my rounds efficiently, ensuring I chat with everyone and anyone who could be relevant for me. I talk with a very nice guy in his 30s who works for a Spanish sex toy company called SnailVibe (the name is a reference to the design). They also sell male masturbators. Mechanical sex toys for men are everywhere at the fair, and there is one brand that has linked AI to their sex dolls and male masturbators (I’ll get into this more as it deserves its own write-up). These sleeves are not something I know anything about, so I ask him if he will give me an in-depth run though. Half way through the details on the functionality of the second model (it has a heating mode) I ask him if these are going to ruin human connection permanently and he looks me in the eye and proclaims, ‘it’s good, but it’s absolutely not the same’. I think about anatomy in general and differences between masculine and feminine desires and wonder if a lot of us would even need or use sex toys if our orgasms weren’t so complicated? I don’t know if I have the answer.

The German sex machine guy is nowhere to be seen, and all the MAGA style hats are gone. Donald is still propped up in the corner, keeping tabs on the dregs of the fair. I look towards the booth opposite, a sweet older Californian lady who’s selling hemp sexual wellness products says ‘I think he’s very hungover,’ re the stand being unattended and I laugh, grateful I skipped the party. She gives me a few bottles of organic CBD lube and I thank her. She asks if I will be back next year, I say no. My first, and likely my last, EroFame.