1. I'm 41. I was married when I was 25 and widowed at 38. Since then it's as if my whole sexual identity has changed and I've played around trying things I'd never done before. I don't have a regular partner now but I enjoy sex and I let myself have it as often as I want, when I can find someone.

2. My first time was when I was only just 15. We both went to a group at a YMCA and eventually got thrown out for too much kissing. After that we went on getting together. He was 18. He really liked me but he wanted to be having full sex and he was worried I was too young. He thought we should finish. I knew he didn't really want to. I decided I was ready, old enough to make up my own mind, and I'd rather lose my cherry than lose him so I went to his place one rainy day and made him an offer. He accepted.

3. Before that we'd touched each other a lot but never been naked together. He used to touch my breasts under my clothes and I'd never felt anything so exciting. I was shaking the first time he undressed me. He was very kind and gentle and even though it hurt I was really happy. He was too. After, I knew I'd been right. I was really, really ready. And it got better, too.

4. We used to talk a lot in bed as well as exploring each other and it was a really good way to begin. I got a lot of confidence and I think if you have that with your first you can take the bad times when they come later. We talked about all the things I could never talk about with my parents. That's fantastic when you're in your mid teens, in love, and naked in bed with your first lover. I always like to take it slow and talk while I'm getting it on with someone. Words can be a huge turn-on. If they're the right ones.

5. We did it out of doors a lot in summer. I've never felt anything as sensual as a warm wind over my naked skin and him playing with me. Sometimes I still go out and lie naked in the sun and wind. Sometimes, even, with a man. Or a woman.

6. I masturbate more days than not. I use my fingers or a toy and I've got a collection of those. Sometimes I do dp with them though I've never done it for real. That can blow me away. It's one of my big fantasies to do it although I don't know if I'd ever meet two guys I could trust, who were both up for it, at the same time.

7. I like to strip in front of the mirror. Slowly. While I touch myself. Is that narcissism? Don't know, don't care.

8. I like being looked at. Naked. What I've learned is that people like confident women who like being looked at and don't care, they think it's hot. And I like that. It gets me going.

9. I've modelled for life classes and sometimes afterwards I've gone home with one of the men. Or a couple of times with one of the women. I can always tell the ones while I'm sitting there. Back at their place I like to pose for them, in a way that shows off everything. They have to look at me for a long time, and maybe sketch me, before I let them touch. I like to turn and move and feel their eyes on my flesh.

10. I didn't go with a woman until after my husband died. I wanted sex but somehow it didn't seem possible with another man, not for a while. So one day I was round at a friend's and feeling both weepy and hot and she started to give me a cuddle. I'd had a couple of glasses of wine and I just went with it. She told me she'd been attracted to me for a long time. Actually I got a lot of that after he died. Men I'd thought of as just our really close friends started to come on to me. I didn't always understand what was happening at first. When I did, I felt complimented and insulted at the same time. As if all it was about was not having someone to fuck. But with her it was ok and somehow not like betraying my husband because it was with a woman.

11. I think for women younger than me, the idea of going with another woman is easier to cope with. When I was growing up no-one talked about it and you felt somehow bad if you even thought about it. If I hadn't been widowed I don't think I'd ever have been open to it; but that changed so many things. I had to start all over again when I hadn't expected to, and all my feelings about my body and my sexuality were different from the first time around. Accepting my husband's death, accepting that he'd never strip me, touch me, penetrate me, come in me again, was like diving into a deep pool and coming out as someone else. Letting that woman do the things she did to me was like diving in again, only it was easier the second time.

12. I really, really like the messy bits of sex. My juice, a man's sperm - I always would rather have him come in me without a condom though of course it isn't always wise - a woman's wetness on my hand or my face. Even blood, in season. It's earthy and real. Life flowing between my / her legs.

13. I'll sometimes get flashbacks to things I felt intensely as a child, and then forgot. The sensuality of things around me. Warm winds over my skin. Playing in waves, feeling the water splash up my thighs. Holding a warm loaf of bread to my stomach. I didn't know, then, what it would become. Looking back now, I think it was me getting ready.

14. Once, when I was about 6, I peed in my knickers. Deliberately. It felt bad and daring and exciting and I loved the hotness and the rank smell of it and the feeling of release and how it went on and on. All things I got to love about sex later.

15. Horses: oh, horses! Their strong bodies, shiny coats, beautiful eyes, their rough hot breath, the way they smell... and the males when you see their erections. I never rode but as a teenager I used to fantasize sitting astride one, bareback, naked, my legs gripping his body.

16. Maybe that's why one of my favorite positions is astride my lover. Also my husband was a very big man and I loved riding him. Feeling both in control and that I was on top of someone powerful enough to throw me and do what he wanted with me. Is that what riding a horse is like?

17. I like to give the breast to another woman. To see her face nuzzle into it, feel her mouthing it. To cradle her. Both of us naked. So much tenderness.

18. After really good sex, I sometimes get a kind of wild energy, craziness. I can do hand-stands, or run naked out into the garden in the rain.

19. The first man I made love with after my husband was a stranger. It felt important that it shouldn't be anyone I knew and also I'd never done that before - just gone with someone I'd just met - and I felt like I needed to do something different. We met at a conference and I went back to his hotel room. I pretended to myself that I was a prostitute that he'd picked up. It helped me to go through with it. I never told him that.

20. When I married, I put my sexuality into the marriage. Pretending to be a whore is a way of taking it back. I still do that sometimes, to re-affirm that. Though I don't tell the person I'm with.

21. I don't like abusive language from men but I get hot if it's a woman. A woman calling me slut or bitch or whore can get me to come really hard. Only she has to be gentle with it. I don't do aggression.

22. I do have times, maybe for as long as a few weeks, when I feel completely non-sexual and then I come on again and get really sexy. Needy. Needing to go and find someone.

23. I still sometimes get it on with the woman in no. 10. I feel like I lost my virginity again with her. She's married but her husband doesn't know and I like the secrecy, the hiding, the subterfuge - pretending we're going to go out together but just staying in at mine and getting naked together.

24. One woman artist did a really fantastic nude study of me (in her home, not at the class). I sat for her a few times and when it was finished she kind of made it obvious that I could have it if she could have me. So I did what she wanted. I still can't decide if it counted as selling my body but thinking like that about myself gets me excited and often looking at the drawing I do too.

25. Friends have started to tell me I should find another 'life partner' but I'm different now from when I married. I might go back to monogamy one day but for now I like the unpredictability and the variety of being with different people and never being sure who the next one will be.