Page 65 of Sex Ed

‘Oi…’ a voice suddenly booms from behind us. I turn. It’s the large balding man from the table next to us. ‘Get a room,’ he says, laughing.

FOURTEEN

MIA

‘Go left a bit… Down, just there… And right and ooooohhhhh… Yes, harder… Really go for it…’

‘Is that too hard?’

‘No, that’s just right… Yes, yes, yes… Love it…. Right, you can stop now…’ I wriggle my shoulders and pull my shirt back down over my back. ‘You are good at that. I will have to employ your services more often.’

‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ Ed jokes.

‘That was quite funny.’

‘I thought so.’ Ed moves the laptop back onto his lap and I perch my head on his shoulder on this lazy Saturday morning. We haven’t had sex again, Ed and I, not in the last week or so, since he started dating Miss Bell. Am I sad? A little. Because sex with him was different. I could be myself, tell him exactly what I wanted, laugh. But this hasn’t stopped me from being his teacher and today, we are eating tortilla chips and salsa on his sofa and watching porn so I can walk him through some more of the basics.

‘I feel I missed out not getting a blow job from you,’ Ed says, as we watch a woman on her knees, really working on a gentleman’s penis, mouth pumping hard like Pac Man.

‘Well, you’ve obviously heard about my skill set,’ I say, laughing.

‘No, I just mean… So I know what to expect if she goes down there. Like this woman, she’s using hands and also tickling the balls. Is that a thing?’

‘Oh, it’s not just the mouth. It’s the hands, too. Us women are quite good at multi-tasking.’

‘He’s pushing her head. You said that wasn’t the done thing…’

‘Well done, Ed,’ I say, patting him on the back, excited that he retained some of my more vital pieces of sex education.

‘Can I also ask? He’s quite clean shaven down there. Is that a thing? I thought only girls…’

‘Well, I don’t really like a big afro bush when I go down there so you can get your clippers and have a tidy. The worst thing is when you feel like you’re having a floss.’

‘The clippers I use on my head?’ He looks appalled.

‘These can be sanitised. Just have a light prune.’

He nods, eyes still fixated on the screen. I look at his trouser area – the porn doesn’t seem to excite him in any way; he is here merely to be a student, which makes me giggle. He presses the pause button.

‘This. This position. With her legs up by her ears like that… Do normal people do this?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re that bendy?’

‘Not really bendy but I like how it feels, it means you can go deeper, so I attempt some version of that. I perhaps don’t look so finessed and sculpted, shall we say.’

‘Rubbish, you’d look great. You’re much sexier than this woman,’ he says nonchalantly.

I don’t even try to respond to the compliment because he says it so calmly and sincerely. Do I reciprocate? I also find you mildly sexy these days? More than I used to? That doesn’t sound right so I just stuff my mouth full of salsa instead. He goes to another clip that involves masks and chains and I see his eyes widen like saucers.

I reach over and click on something else instead. ‘Definitely not for you.’

You can literally see his mind whirring, working overtime with questions. ‘Can I just ask about the fetish thing? How will I know? How do people find out they’re into things?’

‘They experiment. Sometimes they find out by accident. I sometimes like a bit of role play.’

‘Explain.’