I’ve had grown men try to convince me that it’s fine for the plumbing if they flush their used condom down the toilet, nervously asking me what I do with the cum-filled bins at the end of my shift. As if the brothel in which I work is running an underground sperm bank for all …

As the coronavirus erupts, people are panicking. Me, I’ve worked for seven years with the threat and awareness of illness and violence. My body has always been on the frontline with my work; viruses and infections are a risk with every client. Vigilantly checking he doesn’t finger me with the same hand he just used …

Monday night – hardly prime real estate for a date, but it was December, and so the days were bleeding into each other, weeknights taking on that languorous pace usually reserved for weekends. We sipped our beers, ran through the standard topics. I didn’t particularly like the way he put his hand on my thigh …

I remember my very first time. As I walked up to the house my mouth was dry. I knocked on the door, nervously clutching my character sheet and bag of dice. I was 27, going through a painful and messy divorce, and about to live out a long-held dream: I was going to play Dungeons …

While I’ve outgrown the items in the musty dress-up box, I never outgrew my desire to dress up. My collection no longer comprises ’70s velour nor does it have that insipid mothball stench I remember from my childhood.

This is the fourth part of “It’s All About Aly”, a series about friendship between a trans man and a cis man living together in New York City. Read parts one, two and three. This article contains graphic sexual content and discussion of body dysphoria. Please use reader discretion.   Two weeks later, Aly, Emily and I …

This is the third part of “It’s All About Aly”, a series about friendship between a trans man and a cis man living together in New York City. Read parts one and two. This article contains graphic sexual content and discussion of body dysphoria. Please use reader discretion. For the next few weeks, every time …

We’ve made it to the end of 2019 already. How did that happen?! We’ve published some really great pieces this year, and we’ve seen some of our old favourites maintain their popularity. To celebrate the end of 2019, we’re sharing with you some of our editors’ picks: a combination of our most-read pieces of 2019, …

Human bodies are trouble. They’re frightening and chaotic and often riddled with insurmountable paradox. All at once they are us – the site of our sensations, experiences, identities – not us – governed by unconscious, primordial systems, sometimes fiercely at odds with our desires and internal self-concepts – and perhaps most frighteningly, ours – like …

I’m standing in the middle of my aunt’s living room in my underwear. My belly, breasts and limbs are covered in course black hair, echoing the dark stubble along my jaw. My secret revealed. I’m 13 years old. My mother is holding my arm with one hand and pointing at me with the other. “Do …

This article was first performed under the title ‘Unity’ at Queerstories for Newcastle Writer’s Festival.   That space between leaving high school and starting the next thing is bizarre. Whether that be uni, work or just, you know, taking up residency on a couch with a bong in one hand and a pipe dream in …

I’m concealing a crop underneath my clothing. It peeks out of my skirt as I move into the car, pressing painfully into the flesh of my thigh. “Where are you folks off to tonight?” “Just a club,” we both mutter, looking anywhere but at each other. The driver nods and says no more. He doesn’t …

Content warning: this article discusses sexual assault and trauma.    I distinctly remember my first time. I was in middle school. I was standing in front of a shop to buy some snacks and my body froze as I came to the realisation that someone’s hand was feeling up my privates. Years later, when I …

This is the second part of our new memoir series by Finnegan Shepard. “It’s All About Aly” details a time in Shepard’s life in which he lived in a tiny studio apartment in New York City with a cis man and shared a kind of merged identity with him. Part one can be read here. This …

I wanted him to have a safe space to discuss sex before he got into it. I wanted him to have somewhere to go to talk about the weirdness of sex and how it all works and how awkward those first moments can be.

It was a Thursday and I was at work, sitting at my desk in a second-floor open-plan office with no windows. I walked over to the printer, swiped my staff card and waited while the pages of my report assembled themselves into a neat pile. Then it happened again, more powerful than before. Images flashed …

You hardly need to be told that break-ups are awful. Even if you haven’t experienced one yourself, you’ve likely witnessed the ordeal of a friend or, at the very least, heard songs, seen films or read books that dwell at length on the topic. I recently experienced my first break-up. To add insult to injury, …

Embracing this identity has enabled me to seek sexual fulfilment in a different set of ways, and to engage my hyper-sexuality, rather than deny it.

Slut is a word that rolls off the tongue a little too easily for many of the men who call me looking for phone sex, and why wouldn’t it. Traditionally under patriarchy, women have only served two roles, the prude and the slut, and working in this industry, evidently, I am deemed the latter.

This is the first part of our new memoir series by Finnegan Shepard. “It’s All About Aly” details a time in Shepard’s life in which he lived in a tiny studio apartment in New York City with a cis man and shared a kind of merged identity with him. Part two can be read here. “The …

PTSD can erode the relationships around you and it can erode yourself. For me, the safest way to reconnect with my body has been through my own touch.

The desires to perform for the camera and for a Dom partner are comparable – and complicated. Naked, adorably chubby and covered in white body paint, I turn to the camera and shout, “I think it’s time for a spaghetti shower!” The footage jump-cuts to show my 24-year-old self pouring canned spaghetti over my trembling body while screaming, “Spaghetti shower! Aaah, I’m gonna get so clean!” This continues for …