Girly Juice

1. I can never quite identify when our casual catch-up conversations end and our phone sex begins. It’s not like in-person sex where beginnings are delineated by a particularly passionate kiss or a deliberately incendiary touch; it’s subtler than that. Sometimes I muse aloud from my bed, almost absentmindedly, “My skin is so soft tonight,” and his voice drops half an octave as he counters, “Oh yeah?” Sometimes we’re talking about Sex Things we’d like to do and they suddenly become Sex Things we are doing right now. Sometimes his voice just hits me the right way, renders me all melty-hot and small, and I make a squeaky submissive sound he recognizes, and we’re off to the races. I never remember quite how it began. It’s the least important detail of all, anyway.

2. I thought I didn’t like phone sex. I was resistant to those whispered words and breathy moans, paltry stand-ins for the embodied touches I craved. But I guess I just never knew anybody who could talk like this boy does.

It’s not like he’s really touching me; it’s not like he’s in the room with me. That would be an oversimplification of what this interaction feels like, what it means. “I can’t be there to fuck you physically,” he tells me one night, “but I try to take care of the psychological side of things.” That’s exactly what it is: he is fucking my brain, while I fuck my own body.

3. Identifying and understanding someone’s kinks is an underrated skillset. It’s one thing to know how someone likes to be fucked or choked or slapped; it’s quite another to know why they like these things, how these things make them feel, the words and phrases and images that flash through their mind when they’re getting off. It’s shockingly intimate to know a person that well.

And know me, he does. He keeps a “mental model” of me, he says, and updates it each time he learns something new about what gets me panting and dripping. He also keeps literal notes on me, in an app on his phone, because he is a nerd – but I think he barely refers to them anymore; he doesn’t need to. When you’ve fucked someone over the phone as many times as he has fucked me over the phone, and you really listen, you learn which phrases make them purr. You memorize when each particular moan will happen and what it denotes. You develop strategies for pushing them over the edge, and you sharpen your approach until it glimmers. Shockingly intimate, indeed.

4. But it’s not just his words. It’s his voice. So boyish and goofy when we’re joking around. So helpless and smitten when we’re confessing our love. So dark and oaky when he’s dominating me from afar. I could melt into it. I could dissolve in it. I often do.

5. “There is no one else I’d rather be in a long-distance relationship with,” I told him once. What I meant was: we are both verbal, and auditory, and kink-nerdy, and digitally savvy, and all those things combine to make a connection that can thrive through texting and phone calls and giggly FaceTime convos. Only a certain type of person could carry on this type of relationship in this electrically connective manner, and I’m so glad I found one in this world. Phone sex with him is not a stand-in for what I want. It is what I want. Or part of what I want, anyway.

6. The first time he wanted to slap me through the phone, I balked a little. Hurting myself, even at his behest, felt off somehow – a farcical facsimile of the thing we both really wanted: his hand arcing through the air again and again to redden my cheek. But I had trusted him with so much already and it made sense to trust him on this, too.

We experimented with different approaches, and, as two communication nerds are wont to do, eventually found what works best for us. He tells me to place my hand on my face. He tells me what intensity he wants these next impacts to be, on a scale from 1 to 10. And then, when we’re ready, he says: “Now.”

It always surprises me how readily my hand responds to him, as though possessed by his dark dominance from hundreds of miles away. Rationally, I know I could decide not to hit myself, if I didn’t want to do it. But I want to do it. So I always do. And it tugs me down into subspace almost as fast as his slaps do when he is there to give them.

7. We sometimes use the word “snowglobey” to describe time we spend together. It’s that feeling when you and your sweetheart are locked in a close moment, fleetingly frozen, and nothing outside your connection seems to exist. Time stretches endlessly, and it’s also over before you know it. You’re insulated. Embroiled. Snowglobey.

I have a bad habit of checking my phone when I’m supposed to be focusing on other things (these days, don’t we all?) but my mind doesn’t wander when his voice is fucking me. I forget that Twitter and Facebook and Slack exist. You only know what a big deal that is if you, too, live a phone-focused life. If you do, then you know it is a huge deal.

What a gift to give someone: some distraction-free minutes of pleasure, riveting and riveted. What a beautiful gift my love gives to me when he weaves stories so absorbing, I forget my body ever knew anything but bliss.

8. He murmurs filthy things about what he would do to me if he was here, but – vitally – he also tells me what to do to myself, right now.

He chooses my sex toys for me, and decides when each can come into play. He tells me how to use them: “Harder.” “Faster.” “Deeper.” He can tell how well I’m following his directions by the sounds I make. “Deeper than that. Almost. There you go.” It’s his mastery of me, as much as his dominant directives, that renders me a submissive puddle for him. I always do what he says, because if I don’t, he will know – and if I do, I will come. He will make sure that I do.

9. You would think that the orgasms would feel the way they do when I jerk off: quick, easy, small, predictable, perfunctory.

They don’t. They feel the way they do when he fucks me IRL: momentous and monumental, never quite expected, knocking me over like a wave. Afterwards, I lie there, cunt pulsing, breath slowing, all the energy and stress drained out of me. I listen to the rhythms of his voice and his breath, syncing with mine, floating back to earth, and I feel a peace and a connection I only ever previously knew while curled up against someone’s chest after they fucked the life out of me. I never knew I could get here without touching him at all. But here we are.

10. We learned pretty quickly that aftercare matters, even for phone sex. Saying good night just after orgasm left me as cold and alone as I’d be if one of us rolled over after sex, said “See ya,” and took off. My logical brain posited, “It’s just phone sex; it can’t need as much aftercare as an in-person kink scene does, because it can’t be as intense!” But it can be, and it often is, and aftercare is as important as ever.

We catch our breaths. We whisper I-love-you’s. We lie in bed sighing contentedly and giggling like goons. We describe how we would touch each other if we were together, and it feels almost real: fingertips brushing along heated skin. We find our way back to the world outside our little snowglobe. That world is just as harsh and unpredictable as ever, but I feel strengthened by the love I’ve given and received. Like a hot cup of coffee, my love emboldens me, refuels me, warms me right through.

There was a time when I thought I didn’t like phone sex. I wish I could lean back through time to that past version of me and tell her: “Just you wait.”