[zuckerman]

I remember being at the fag-end of a party at the house of a friend of my then lover. The two of them were chatting alone in the kitchen about anal sex and I stopped in the hall where I could overhear what they were saying without being seen.

I had been interested in trying it but my lover didn't even find a finger inserted comfortable so we hadn't progressed. Her friend however, clearly had tried it and I overheard her saying how revolting it was to go to the bathroom afterward because the semen stayed up inside the rectum and lubricated the outgoing material! She added suitably squelchy sound effects. Certainly didn't do anything to persuade my lover to change her mind.

Eighteen months later, I started a relationship with the other woman. Obviously, I'd only gotten part of the conversation because she was a fiend for anal. But it turned out that My Little Chap was a bit squeamish about the whole thing. He really wasn't keen to go in anywhere where he might meet something unpleasant coming the other way.

The obvious thing to do was wear a condom. But she was dead against it. Absolute no-no: it was bareback or nothing!

I couldn't reconcile that with what she'd said in the kitchen 18 months before – she'd been absolutely clear that at least that part of anal made her feel "physically sick". Curious.

Then one night we were screwing in the spoons position. I slipped out of her pussy and I must have half-penetrated her ass trying to re-engage. She was delirious about that and urged me to go deeper. OK, I thought, but the whole thing began to degenerate into a fumbling farce. Tight little buggers, aren't they? In the end I thought, what the hell?, and tried to slip back into her snatch.

She almost jumped out of bed and started lecturing me about hygiene and the risks of bladder infections from going ass-to-pussy. Fair enough. She, after all, was the expert and I was a complete novice.

But I finally realised that "dirtiness" was the whole point for her. She thought anal sex was totally filthy and the reason she wanted her lover in there bareback was as a sort of proof of desire: you wanted her so much you'd put your cock in her shit! Always wondered if that was a major factor (for either partner) during anal.

In the end, we worked out a compromise: I'd discreetly probe for obstructions with a finger before entrusting MLC to that perilous passage. It became a kind of joke between us, like testing the direction of the wind by sucking your finger and holding it up in the breeze. If I ever wanted to make her blush bright red in polite company I'd just find some conversational excuse to make that gesture – wet finger held in the air. Then she'd be gagging to get me alone as soon as possible.