title: Want by: Anderson, Gillian published: 2024-09-05 read: 2024-09-13 preview

A rare thing that I read a book before the reviews were out. I was told it’s a must read for young men – I am not – and it piqued my interest. Probably right; it should be recommended literature for people who are venturing their way into sex. And well, aren’t we all.

The book, partitioned into sections called “On fantasies”, “Rough and ready”. “To be worshipped”, “Off limits”, “The captive”, “Kink”, “Strangers”, “Power and submission”, “Exploration”, “More, more more”, “The watcher and the watched”, “I always have a thing for…”, and “Gently, gently” gives the reader a large number of letters, written by anonymous women, describing their sexual fantasies. Those letters were sent after Gillian – known from playing a sex therapist in the Netflix series “Sex education” – sent out an ad requesting such letters for publication.

The collection is diverse, exciting, boring, revealing, and everything. One such letter:

I want to be used. I want to be a fuck hole. I want to exist only for pleasure. I want all my holes filled. My mouth, full. My pussy, full. My ass, full. All at once, as my hands greedily grasp for more cock. I want to be fucked by strangers. I want a line of men waiting to go next. I don’t care who those dicks belong to. Only that they are all for me. I want to be watched. I want an audience to entertain. A crowd to cheer as I come, again and again. I want to be an object instead of a woman. I long to exist in this primal state. To escape from the never-ending mental load. This is where I reach to when inspiration is called for. She is my release.
Irish • Atheist • Between £29,000 and £49,000 • Heterosexual • Married/in a civil partnership • No

The last line, present in all letters, contains different levels of demographic information (the final “No” indicates children).

Another short one:

Period sex, whether it’s heterosexual, lesbian or somewhere in between. There is something very raw about having sex on your period. It’s messy and it’s natural. It’s sweet and ‘nasty’. Something so stigmatised I believe can bring people closer together. To fall in love with a person even when they’re bleeding and cramping. To find beauty in the ability to bear children. Period sex is hot. It’s fun and it tastes good :) I love it.
White • Buddhist • Between £15,000 and £29,000 • Bisexual/pansexual • Single • No

I have many more examples which I found worth quoting, but feel a bit like spilling the beans. Most are not that short, and some span several pages of homoerotic or heteroerotic more or less descriptive wishes.

Wishes? No, not at all. Fantasies. Nancy Freitag, author of the 1970s book “My Secret Garden” which I review elsewhere, and which book was the inspiration for this one, said about fantasies “once shared, half their magic, their ineluctable power, is gone”.

Luckily, there are still many, many fantasies out there. As many female as male ones, I am sure. Traditional porn industry made the latter more opaque, but is that still true today?