1. I'm a 27-year-old female.

2. I love my female body and feel very at home in it, but I don't think my spirit or whatever has a gender. If I woke up tomorrow as a man I would be very upset, but if I had been born and raised in a male body I think I would be just as happy with that.

3. I call myself straight, or when I'm feeling pedantic, mostly-straight. I believe almost everyone is at least a little bit bisexual, but that most people are so much more attracted to one sex over the other that gay and straight are useful functional categories, and that in this case I'm most people.

4. That said, there is a short list of people I regret not fucking when I had the chance, and all of them are women - dear friends who weathered the storms of adolescence with me. We were good kids; we deserved a little feelgood.

5. I have only ever had sex with my husband. We met when we were 20, and got married when we were 23. I am the only person he has ever had sex with.

6. Reaching orgasm with my husband is harder than by myself, but much more intense and satisfying. It takes time and effort and leaves me feeling very drained, so I don't go for it every time we have sex.

7. Lately I have started giving the name "orgasm" to the less-intense surges of pleasure I get for free when my husband chases his own orgasm. I don't always need to come to feel good, and my husband is stuck in the mindset that if it isn't an orgasm it doesn't count as pleasure. By allowing myself this inaccuracy, I validate both my own pleasure and the fact that my husband gave me that pleasure. If you think I'm rationalizing, you're not wrong, but the work of this thought is less than the work of trying to change my husband's thoughts.

8. I still masturbate fairly often, maybe every second day on average, although I tend to go several days in a row off or on.

9. I read a lot of gay male erotica written by women. A lot.

10. If I had an orgasm before leaving home for college at the age of 19, I didn't recognize or remember it. I learned in the unprecedented privacy of my single dorm, destroying 3 vibrators and a value pack of AA batteries in the process. It's one of my proudest memories.

11. When my third vibrator wore out, I switched to using my fingers because I was too lazy to go out and buy more supplies. Now I prefer my fingers - I've bought vibrators since and always end up tossing them aside.

12. When I masturbate I have the most ridiculous fantasies - verging on cartoonish. Nothing that happens in them would be possible, let alone pleasurable, in real life. I think it's the exaggeration that gets my brain going in the absence of stimuli from another person.

13. I don't believe in love at first sight, but I do believe in lust at first sight, because it happened to me. The instant I laid eyes on my husband I wanted to fuck him. After that I met him, got to know him, came to love him, started fucking him and hope not to stop until my heart gives out in my old age. But the lust came first. I maintain that it's the healthiest foundation for a partnership - not the walls and not the roof, but definitely the foundation. If you love someone but you're not attracted to them, what you have is a friend.

14. My husband was already my type when I met him, but he has made the type much stronger since. Virtually every man who grabs my attention looks a lot like him.

15. I don't feel guilty about looking at other men, and I don't get mad when my husband looks at other women. We're married, not blind.

16. The pornography industry makes me very uncomfortable - so much of it seems to be desperation prostitution on camera - and I was glad when my husband decided to give up masturbating to porn. I realize that makes my continued reading of erotica somewhat unfair, but at least with the erotica nobody is profiting off making real people do things they don't want to do in order to afford drugs or food or whatever.

17. Because my husband doesn't masturbate to porn, I don't say no to sex unless I actively don't want to have it. If I'm indifferent I always warm up and enjoy myself in the end.

18. Oral sex is a good illustration of my thing about the validity of sex that doesn't lead to orgasm. I don't orgasm from giving oral sex, or (usually) from getting it, but I still really want to do both sometimes. Giving oral makes me feel powerful, trusted and nurturing, and getting oral makes me feel worshipped. I ask for both regularly. Deep-throating without gagging is an item on my lifetime sexual bucket list.

19. We are neither of us interested in intercourse when I'm menstruating. Gross. Crampy Bloody Week is Blowjob Week.

20. One of the biggest perks of being married is not having to deal with sexual advances. I can be friendly without worrying that people think I'm flirting, I don't have to worry about whether other friendly people are trying to flirt with me, and anyone who goes past flirting into outright suggestion can be shut down instantly with a single reinforcement of my status. I love it; it makes my life so much less awkward.

21. Successful anal sex is another item on my sexual bucket list - both receiving it, and pegging my husband. I've tried a few things, and there is potential there for me at least, but we're kind of stuck. Both of us are grossed out by feces, but not committed enough to try enemas. Also I don't want into my husband's ass bad enough to work through the threat to his masculinity.

22. My sense of fashion and my personality are both mildly butch, and my body is tall and moderately athletic. I suspect a significant proportion of the people I meet assume I am a lesbian. Sometimes I wonder what people have passed me by because of this assumption, and whether my life would be different if I made more of an effort to be feminine. But I don't wonder for long. If those hypothetical people are stupid enough to think that and narrow enough to let that thought keep them from knowing me, I'm probably better off without them in my life.

23. My pubic hair is wiry but very sparse. I love the idea of a jaunty trim but every time I tried to do one the hair just looked scraggly and awful and I ended up shaving it off. Eventually I realized I liked masturbation even more without pubic hair, so now I stay completely bare by shaving and periodically waxing. I just enjoy being able to glide over my skin. My husband admits to appreciating not getting pubes stuck in his teeth but is adamant that I do whatever I like.

24. I don't know what I'm going to do once we have kids. I masturbate quietly, but our sex really makes the bed squeak and bang, and when I orgasm with my husband I tend to shriek. We may have to consider soundproofing.

25. Growing up I was taught to wait until marriage to have sex. I didn't, but the time it took me to work through and set aside that standard was time I spent not getting hurt by users and losers. I was able to go into my first sexual relationship with a strong sense of myself and an open heart, and the relationship grew into the still-ongoing love of my life. I must stress that I was never taught that not waiting was shameful or that my virginity was some creepy talisman, just that waiting was good and important and that I was never, under any circumstances, OBLIGATED to have sex. I do believe that I was helped by the concept of waiting and I will be teaching something similar to my own children.