By Emma Buckley-Hough, who believes thoughts confuse a woman
MY husband and I may choose 1750s domesticity, but that does not mean we are repressed in matters of the bedroom. We leave the oil lamp lit if it’s his birthday.
The debauched fun doesn’t end there. On occasion I have been known to give him hand relief free from the constraints of a lambskin prophylactic sheath, and have even assumed the position adopted by canines in heat.
Yes, I am the oppressed breeding servant the modern world believes me to be, but I also have carnal desires when I am commanded to just like any woman. Once I even glimpsed my own nudity in a looking-glass and felt thrillingly ashamed.
But last full moon I dared too much. Gazing into each other’s eyes across our separate single beds of coarse hessian, I revealed that I had heard a rumour that women, too, could ‘reach climax’.
My husband swiftly reprimanded me, replying that such stories are lies from the arsehole of the devil and had I been attending molly houses to hear such filth? But then divulged he has long nursed curiosity about congress with a woman of contemporary values.
My heart raced like a runaway dungcart. What could be more degrading than tarting myself up as some trollop who respects her personal boundaries and experiences sinful pleasure during copulation? But how exciting!
With my husband at work in the money factory, I gave myself the progressive look his loins desired. A wig made of horsehair and dyed blue with woad. Skinny jeans found by a roadside and a septum piercing borrowed from Bessie finished the look.
Opening a copy of Feminist Thought, I sprawled on the sofa and pretended to leaf through it. His eyes were wild with desire, but I would not let him undress me before taking ‘the Bechdel test’.
After making him ask me for consent, I ordered him to please me with foreplay for the first time in our long marriage like some sleazy dominatrix. Even once his seed was spilled, I maintained the illusion by leaving to ‘get an Uber’ home to my ‘Bristol houseshare’.
It may be just the first step on our sexual odyssey. What deranged fantasy will he dress me as next? A female postgraduate? Mary Beard? I know I won’t get a say, but I’m excited to find out.
