Sinful Sunday: Looking Out the Window

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Last week, Jack and I went away for a couple days without the baby.  We had a wonderful time, and the weather was gorgeous.  We barely left our hotel room, but during a break in the sex, I had the opportunity to take in the view from our window.


See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!

Sinful Sunday

Formspring Friday: Tying the Knot

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If you’re looking for our Flash Fiction Friday story, it can be found here.
Tell us about your wedding night.
Before we can tell you about our wedding night, we should first tell you a bit about our wedding day.  We had a church ceremony, followed by a very lavish reception.  We hosted all of our close friends and family members, and after a sumptuous dinner we danced and partied with all the people we love most.  It was the most extravagant bash we’ve ever attended, and we were the center of attention!  
At eleven o’clock, the party wrapped up, and the afterparty began.  Around thirty guests, mostly siblings, cousins and friends, accompanied us to the hotel suite where I’d spent the night before, and where my groomsmen and I got ready that morning.  There, the celebration continued.  We drank, listened to music, and caroused.  As the night wore on, the dense crowd slowly whittled away, and by the time the afterparty was over at four o’clock, the only people still present were a couple of Jill’s brothers.  We let them crash there for the night.  Jill and I headed to the opposite side of the hotel, and the suite where she and her bridesmaids had gotten ready before our wedding.
As she unlocked the door, I prepared to carry her over the threshold.  “Are you crazy?” she asked me incredulously.  
“What?” I asked.  “It’s tradition.”
She pointed out that I was drunk, and likely to fall and knock us both unconscious.  Or, less dramatic and probably more likely, throw out my back.  In truth, I wasn’t that drunk; I was definitely lucid, and so I stood firm:  “Just for a second.  I’ll lift you, step into the room, and set you back down.”  I’m not sure how I convinced her that she was in safe hands, but she relented.  Now, we’re sure you’re expecting, or even hoping, to hear that as soon as I picked her up I stumbled drunkenly and slipped, sending both of us toppling unceremoniously into our bridal suite, possibly with injuries.  But in fact I did manage to maintain my footing and gently set my new bride down on her feet.
Wait – hoping?  Were you hoping to read that?  Shame on you.
Once the room door was closed, we sat down on the bed.  We each told the other we loved them, and kissed.  While it was a passionate kiss – despite the lateness of the hour we were certainly feeling passionate – it wasn’t the sort of full-blown makeout session that you just know is going to lead to sex.  That is not to say that we didn’t want sex.  We did.  We always do.  But speaking only for myself, it wasn’t the first thing on my mind.
There are several reasons for this.  First of all, we didn’t stop having sex prior to our wedding.  We know that pre-wedding abstinence is popular with sexually-active couples; our friends and some of our relatives took part in this before their own weddings and assumed we would do the same.  We had no intention of ceasing our premarital relations; putting Jill and I in close quarters, giving us privacy, and expecting us not to have sex is ridiculous.  Simply put, for us there was no point to abstinence.  
Sure, there are those who insist that it made their wedding night special, sexier than it might have been otherwise.  I suppose we could see it from that perspective had we retired for the night at, say, midnight as opposed to four o’clock.  At any rate, the notion of wedding night sex was, to us, purely symbolic.  We knew that sex on our wedding night would be fun, sexy, and exhilarating.  But so was the sex we’d had the night of our rehearsal two days prior.  
Make no mistake, I spent much of the day fairly aroused.  In fact, prior to the ceremony I told Jill off-handedly that I wanted to have sex with her in the limo.  (It didn’t happen; even had we gotten a moment to ourselves, there was no way she was going to risk messing up her dress before the wedding.)  It’s just the way I am; I would be thinking of sex while in an audience with the President of the United States*.  But that night, our priority was to prolong the party, and to bask in the feeling of love and togetherness – not just between the two of us, but our family and our friends as well – for as long as we possibly could.  
We took off each other’s clothes and got into bed, lying in a warm embrace.  I was enjoying the buzz I’d been riding, and the sense of emotional well-being I got from being a newly-married man.  I fully intended to drift off to sleep, then wake to early morning sunshine pouring in.  The thought of starting our first full day as husband and wife put a smile on my face as I fell asleep.
“I’m going to need you to fuck me,” Jill said.  Though my eyes stayed closed, I returned to a semblance of consciousness.
“You want to?” I asked.  I probably shouldn’t have sounded so indifferent.  I blame being almost totally asleep.
“Don’t you?”
My eyes opened.  “Hell yes.”
“I just want you inside me,” she said.  “I know it’s late and we have to be up early.  I just want your cock inside me.”
“Of course,” I said, and moved her onto her back.  I would indeed fulfill her request, though I had something else in mind first.  I began with cunnilingus; she was highly aroused, her pussy wet, and very tasty.  Long, slow strokes of my tongue over her vaginal lips brought her to the edge of orgasm.  Her fingers tangled my hair as I slowed my rhythm, the sounds of her labored breathing filling the quiet room.  
Despite my fatigue, I kept her on the brink of climax for around twenty minutes, her thighs pressing ever tighter against my face, her hands growing more demonstrative as she steered me where she wanted me to go.  When I could tell that she needed release, I switched from slow strokes on her lips to more rapid flicks on her clit.  She came explosively, writhing and moaning as her pussy ground against my face.
When she had come down, I asked her how she wanted it.  She chose doggy style, and moved to the edge of the bed.  As I stood on the floor at the side of the bed, Jill lowered her face to the sheets, and raised her ass up to meet my cock.  I slipped inside of her still-dripping pussy, gripped her hips, and buried myself as deeply as I could go.
Jill moaned as she felt my cock slide against her G-spot.  My thrusts were strong and confident, their profundity matched only by their intensity.  I moved faster, intent on my own orgasm which I knew was not far off.  I was tired, yes, but I wanted the sex to last.  I wanted the whole night to last.  I tried to distract myself – I don’t usually think of baseball, but it was something like that – and managed to hold my climax at bay for another several minutes.
Soon, though, it became clear that I couldn’t hold off my orgasm forever.  Jill’s pussy felt too good, her naked body before me looked too good, and the noises of pleasure she was making sounded too good.  I gave in.
“Where do you want me to cum?” I asked breathlessly.
“My mouth,” she said.  “I want to taste it.”  
At that moment I announced my orgasm and pulled out.  Jill quickly rolled over onto her back, hanging her head off the side of the bed.  My cock plunged between her parted lips, her throat relaxing as she sucked me deeply.  As I ejaculated, I moaned ferociously, suddenly forgetting that it was nearing five o’clock in the morning.  Jill swallowed hungrily.
As we drifted off to sleep, I remember thinking that Jill’s choice of doggy style for our first sexual position as husband and wife was further evidence that I’d found the right woman, and her initiative in finishing me off by mouth was moreso.
If you want to ask us anything, drop us a line on Formspring, or use the handy Formspring widget on the right-hand side of our blog.  We like sexy questions!  To see who else participated this week, visit Twitter and search for #FormspringFriday!
-Jack
*I would not be thinking of sex with the President of the United States.

Flash Fiction Friday: Hunting Game

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Image: source unknown
“Can you see?”  He tightened the blindfold.  She could not.  She crossed her wrists behind her back without being told, and the cuffs locked into place.  The cold metal stressed her flesh, and she sat for two full minutes before realizing that he was gone.
She couldn’t believe he’d done it to her again.  He was going to get his just desserts.  
At least he hadn’t tied her to the chair.  She spent forty minutes blindly groping her way along the walls to the staircase.  She navigated each step precariously in four-inch heels, and found him sitting in his den.  Just where he was the last time.
His voice was congratulatory in the darkness:  “Good work, pet.  You found me.”  (120/129)
Behind the Scenes
After another week’s hiatus, Ram the Sunlover is again filling in for the absent Panserbjørne with another Flash Fiction Friday prompt.  In addition to the photo above and a 129-word limit, participants were asked to include a semordnilap, or a word or phrase that spells another word or phrase when read backward.  A semordnilap differs from a palindrome in that a palindrome must spell the same word or phrase when read backward.  
As I enjoy a fun challenge, I immediately began thinking of examples of semordnilaps.  The obvious ones – saw/was, dog/god, star/rats, stop/pots – were too easy, and I dug around for more obscure word pairs.  I considered using straw/warts, as in “last straw/warts and all”.  It didn’t seem to fit the story.  I also considered diaper/repaid, but I couldn’t make “diaper” fit the story.  I eventually settled on stressed/desserts, although the use of “desserts” does seem a bit melodramatic in the context of the story.
After completing the story, I thought of drawer/reward, a pretty obvious word pair that could have fit beautifully into the story.  I hope one of my fellow Flash Fiction Friday participants used it.
In retrospect, while I enjoyed the new dimension to the concept of the required word, being forced to include two different words was a bit of a limitation.  Had there been one single required word, I might not have had to use the majority of the word limit in the fashion that I did; I could have thrown in the one random word and structured my story in a more natural fashion.  This, when coupled with the relatively short maximum word count (especially when compared to that of the April 6 challenge), made this week’s Flash Fiction Friday particularly challenging.
The title has a double meaning:  While “Hunting Game” brings to mind thoughts of Karamojo Bell  hunting elephants in Africa, in the context of this story the unnamed protagonist, searching out handholds, is the hunter.  Her Master, awaiting her arrival in the den, is the game.  Regarding the alternate meaning of the word “game”, I selected a title that directly references the familiar game shared by the two lovers.
Deleted Scenes
None.
Soundtrack
The Marvelettes’ “The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game”.  It’s pretty obvious, but in my mind, everything about it fits.

The Naughty Hangout: Opening Up

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This week’s main theme at The Naughty Hangout is “Characters”.  While we had lots of ideas for this one, we’re out of town and we had neither the time nor the resources to make any of them happen.  Someday you’ll get to see me all done up like Julia from Cowboy Bebop*, but not this week.  Instead, we decided to go with the second theme, “Open”.

 Jack and I have considered opening up our relationship to no-strings-attached, emotionless sex.  I don’t think we’ll ever actually do it, certainly not in its truest sense.  But we find the concept of non-monogamy appealing, especially as we don’t believe that human beings are biologically wired to have sex with the same partner over the majority of a lifetime.

Last year, we read Sex at Dawn, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá.  This year, we are reading Opening Up, by Tristan Taormino.  The former presents evidence that monogamy is contrary to human nature, while the latter examines in an unbiased and sensible fashion the various models of non-monogamy practiced worldwide.

 Open robe and open legs, not to mention the “open relationship” theme of this open book.
Since the third theme is “Rare”, do we get bonus points for this rare glimpse of my open eyes?

Our First-Fuck Anniversary

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Eight years ago yesterday, Jack and I had sex for the first time.  We spent the anniversary of that day on a little vacation away from the baby.  I hesitate to say that we are “reconnecting”, as although we know many couples with children who find that parenting requires them to occasionally take time to reconnect or rediscover each other, we really don’t find ourselves in need of such a thing.  We probably have more sex than any of our friends and relatives with children, and although we’re pretty sure that sex won’t always come this easy for us, we’ll always put forth our best effort.

No, we’re not exactly reconnecting in that way.  Instead, we’re enjoying a little one-on-one time, free of all distractions, and remembering what it was like to have sex without having to worry about interruption or intrusion.  We weren’t even planning on having sex non-stop, though that’s mostly what we’ve done so far.

We got to our hotel just before one o’clock in the afternoon, checked in, and brought our bags to our fifth-floor room.  We were both tired.  If you follow us on Twitter you might have realized that we sleep less than the average couple raising a child, and because of this the urge to take a nap was nearly overpowering.

Jack lay down on the king-size bed.  He looked so cozy that I had to lay down beside him.  We cuddled for a few minutes, enjoying the carefree feel that comes with not having to listen for a baby.  I stroked his chest lazily, first through his shirt, and then underneath it.  I loved the way the hairs on his chest felt against my fingers.  We didn’t speak.  There was nothing that needed to be said.

Soon we found ourselves kissing deeply and passionately.  We kiss like this quite a lot, but this time it felt different, somehow even refreshing, knowing that we were alone.  I unbuttoned Jack’s shirt, letting it hang open as I kissed my way down his chest.  I unbuckled his belt, opening his jeans and letting loose a very hard, very needy cock.  As I swallowed it to its base, Jack scrambled to pull his jeans all the way down.

As I fed myself of him, I heard Jack’s breathing speed up.  As a means of reminding him that we were alone, I turned up the sound effects.  I slurped wantonly on his swollen head and moaned hungrily, making no effort to stifle myself.  If anything, I was a little bit theatrical about it.  He began to throb between my lips, his hips rising from the bed to meet my mouth.  Soon, Jack had my hair tangled in his fingers, fucking my throat with abandon.  I could taste pre-cum, and I anticipated my reward.

It took him longer to climax than it usually does, but it was so worth it.  His orgasm was an explosion, his delicious groans building to a crescendo as I felt his fist tighten around my hair and his cum splash the back of my throat.  I swallowed heartily, showing my appreciation with a very genuine “Mmmm!”

While Jack caught his breath, I took off my clothes, then pulled his jeans off.  “You want another?” I asked.  He was still rock-hard.

“It’s your turn,” he said, and took off his shirt.  Who was I to refuse such an offer?  When I got on the bed, Jack positioned himself between my spread legs.  He began to rub his cock against the hood of my engorged clit, then kissed his way down my body just as I had done before him.  While he licked and sucked on my clit, he put three fingers together and slipped them inside.  I felt that familiar pressure on the front wall of my pussy, and gripped the bedsheets tightly.

My orgasm was every bit as eruptive as Jack’s, but he didn’t let me stop at one.  I lost count, though somehow I didn’t lose consciousness.  When I could stand it no longer, I felt the relief of his cock entering me.  We came together, our sexy noises so loud and unrelenting that we were certain someone had heard us, and we suspected they were calling hotel management.  It was a good thing that it was almost three o’clock in the afternoon and not three o’clock in the morning.

Jack still inside me, we lay together for a few minutes after our orgasms had subsided.  Our hearts beat in sync.  Then Jack pulled out and moved next to me, and we listened to the silence.

-Jill

Retro HNT: I’m Ready!

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“I’m ready!”, posted May 20, 2010
In 2010, we posted fifty-two consecutive weeks of pictures at OHNT.  We’re posting them on our blog, one per week.  They can be found here, along with background information and all the comments they received.

TMI Tuesday: April 17, 2012 – Illicit Skills

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If you are hesitant about confessing crimes…lie…be creative.

Jack’s Answers

1. Do you know how to pick a lock?  Have you ever used this skill to gain unauthorized access?
Yes, I know how to pick a lock.  I own a lockpick kit that includes several picks and tension wrenches, and I’ve used the kit on occasion, though mostly for fun and not in the sort of situation where I’d have to get a motel room for the night.  Once, while I was still doing office work, I picked a file cabinet lock, thereby restoring access to the Ma-Me file drawer.  I was an office hero for about a day and a half.

2. Do you know how to open a safe with a rotary combination lock?  Have you ever used this skill to gain unauthorized access?  What did you find?
When I was a kid I had a piggy bank that looked like a safe.  It was a cheap piece of crap, and while it did have a working combination lock, if someone really wanted in they could have basically spun the rotary mechanism until the door opened.  Hell, if someone wanted the handful of coins that I kept inside, they could have given it two whacks with a hammer and access would be granted.  I can open that sort of safe with no trouble, but the sort where I would be arrested, or beaten to death by hired goons?  That one I can’t open.

3.  Have you ever made a copy of a key you were not supposed to have?  Did you use it to gain unauthorized access?  What were you looking for?  Did you find it?
I’ve never made a copy of a key I wasn’t supposed to have, but I once bogarted my way into the locked bedroom of someone for whom we were house-sitting.  We knew they had a four-poster bed, a luxurious white marble bathroom with a jacuzzi tub large enough for two to sit comfortably, and a walk-in shower.  Additionally we’d always wanted to have sex on their balcony three stories over the swimming pool.  No sooner had we set our bags down in the guest room than we headed upstairs to the master bedroom, intent on getting naked and christening the place.  One problem:  The door was locked.  Disappointed, we went about the business of befouling every other room in the house, from the living room to the cabana in the yard.  During the first night of our visit, we were kept awake by the rhythmic beeping of a smoke detector with a dying battery.  We investigated the sound and realized that it was coming from the master bedroom.  It was so persistent that, half-insane with fatigue, we ended up sleeping on the living room floor.  The following morning we called the homeowners to tell them of the situation, and they directed us to the key to the master bedroom, which was taped to the ceiling of their hall closet.

4.  Have you ever stolen or guessed a password?  Did you use it to gain unauthorized access?  What did you do?
No, but I once ripped out someone’s eyeballs in order to foil a retinal scan.  (I’ve said too much.)

Wrong Jack.
5.  Do you know how to get data from a computer that requires a password you don’t know?
You mean if there’s no way to perform a retinal scan with freshly-excised eyeballs?  ‘Fraid not.
6.  Do you know how to record a telephone call?  Have you ever done so secretly?  Did you hear anything interesting?  What?
Not currently, though I can’t imagine it’s very difficult in the current digital age.  But when I was in my late teens my parents had an answering machine that used standard audio cassettes, and a call-record function the specifics of which I’ve long forgotten.  Occasionally I would remove the incoming message tape and replace it with a store-bought tape, and record late-night phone sex.  Why late-night?  Because it was the only time I could be certain my parents wouldn’t pick up the phone and hear something they didn’t want to hear.  Ah, the things I take for granted as a thirty-five year-old man. 
To everyone under the age of thirty, this is an audio cassette.*
7.  Have you ever used a webcam or nanny cam to photograph someone secretly?
No, but I’ve thought about it.  Let me rephrase that:  As a voyeur, it’s something I’ve fantasized about, though I’m reasonably certain that I would never actually set up a hidden – and for that matter illegal – surveillance system for the purposes of spying on someone.  However, I was told by someone just yesterday that her bucket list included being unknowingly observed during sex, so never say never, I guess. 
8.  Have you ever used an infrared camera to photograph someone secretly in the dark?
Not since my tenure as an FBI agent invesigating Russian organized crime in Brighton Beach.
9.  Have you ever learned anything important by deliberate eavesdropping?
Yes, when I was a jailhouse snitch during my lengthy incarceration.  I curried favor with the warden by informing on the most violent inmates.  Okay, seriously now.  As a writer, I honed my dialogue-writing skills by listening in on the conversations of others in public places.  I didn’t care about the specific things they were discussing, but I liked hearing naturally flowing conversation – I still do – and I’m certain that it made me a better writer.
10.  Do you know how to hot-wire a car?
No, but I can unclasp a bra with one hand, and that’s a skill I’ve had much more opportunity to use on a regular or semi-regular basis.
If you don’t get the reference you’re lame.
Bonus:  Have you ever been paid for your sexual skills?  What skill(s) did you perform?
I gave Jill a baby, and she paid me with a threesome.
Jill’s Answers
1. Do you know how to pick a lock?  Have you ever used this skill to gain unauthorized access?
I don’t know how to pick a standard lock, but I can pick one of those cheap-ass diary locks with a bobby pin.  I have done this to gain access to my sister’s diary.  I also picked the small lock on my brother’s candy stash – sorry, no weed – when we were kids.  Of course, that lock was so wimpy that I could have probably just snipped it off with a pair of safety scissors.
2. Do you know how to open a safe with a rotary combination lock?  Have you ever used this skill to gain unauthorized access?  What did you find?
I’ve never attempted it with a safe, but I have tried to put a magnet on the back of a padlock with a combination, the kind you might have on your locker in high school.  I listened for the clicks to see if I could figure out the combination.  It never worked, and in fact that might just be an old wives’ tale.
3.  Have you ever made a copy of a key you were not supposed to have?  Did you use it to gain unauthorized access?  What were you looking for?  Did you find it?
No.  The only keys I’ve ever made copies of are houses I was renting at the time (or houses that I owned), but I always returned the originals and all copies when I moved out.  My life is not a Barenaked Ladies song, and I have no desire to sneak into an old apartment. 
If my life was a Barenaked Ladies song, it’d be “If I Had $1,000,000”.
4.  Have you ever stolen or guessed a password?  Did you use it to gain unauthorized access?  What did you do?
The only time I ever tried to guess a password was when I was home alone, and needed to look something up on Jack’s computer.  I booted it up, it was password-protected, I made one incorrect guess, and immediately called him to ask what the correct one was.  He’s got so many different passwords that he uses, and I wasn’t about to spend twenty minutes guessing each correct one.  For all I know, three incorrect guesses and the computer erases its hard drive.
Or worse.
5.  Do you know how to get data from a computer that requires a password you don’t know?
Why yes!  Of course I do!  In fact, one time I was home alone and I needed to look something up on Jack’s computer.  I booted it up, it was password-protected, and I didn’t know the password.  Being the super-smart computer-savvy chick that I am, I called Jack and he gave it to me.  If you had read #4, you would already know this.
6.  Do you know how to record a telephone call?  Have you ever done so secretly?  Did you hear anything interesting?  What?
 I’ve never recorded a phone call and I wouldn’t even know how to go about it.  I know my phone probably has a call-recording function, but unless I’ve got an old tape recorder handy I’m not going to be recording any calls anytime soon.  You know what I am really good at?  Recording the audio off of TV shows and movies with a tape recorder.  When I was a kid, before my family had a VCR, I taped the entire audio of Poison Ivy, the Michael J. Fox TV movie I mentioned last week, on four audio cassettes.  I used to listen to it on my Walkman.  In the interest of staying somewhat on-topic, I would sometimes pick up the extension and listen in on my older brother’s phone calls.  Once a voyeur, always a voyeur.
7.  Have you ever used a webcam or nanny cam to photograph someone secretly?
No.  
Since this answer was so brief, here’s a picture of a cute kitten!
8.  Have you ever used an infrared camera to photograph someone secretly in the dark?
No.  I don’t have any of that equipment.  I am not a member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and I don’t have Q Branch designing and providing me with high-tech (and presumably expensive) gadgetry that will allow me to scale a sheer cliff face while sipping a martini, kill someone and make it look like an allergic reaction, or spy on people in the dark for the purposes of blackmail or masturbation.
9.  Have you ever learned anything important by deliberate eavesdropping?
Yes!  Here’s where reading my answers FINALLY pays off!  I have learned all sorts of family secrets I wasn’t supposed to know.  At family parties my sister and I would split up and listen in on different conversations, and then we would regroup and talk about what we heard.  Between the two of us, we would often overhear conflicting or unclear accounts of the same events, and by comparing notes we could usually figure out the truth.  By doing this, we learned about affairs and divorces, miscarriages, elopements, suicides, domestic violence, and various other family matters. 
10.  Do you know how to hot-wire a car?
Oh, I wish!  I would have the nicest car in town.  
Bonus:  Have you ever been paid for your sexual skills?  What skill(s) did you perform?
In straight cash?  No.  But in dinner, movies, and other fringe benefits?  Of course.  A good blowjob (for the record the only kind I give) once got me a trip to Vegas.
How to play TMI Tuesday: Copy the above TMI Tuesday questions to your webspace (i.e., a blog). Answer the questions there, then leave a comment below, on this blog post, so we’ll all know where to read your responses. Please don’t forget to link to tmituesdayblog from your website!
*I was kidding, people.

To Comment or Not to Comment: On the Importance of Feedback

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[As a blogger, this is a topic that has been on my mind for quite some time.  Back in December, Lady Grinning Soul wrote a brilliant post listing five reasons why blog-readers should always comment on the posts they read.  In January, Hubman also expressed his thoughts on the subject of commenting.  Rather than reiterate their points, I thought I would  simply give our thoughts on the subject as a whole.]

I just posted a comment on a blog that we follow.  It’s not the most exciting blog out there, but the person who runs it seems pretty nice.  According to the widget on the sidebar of her blog, she has thirty-two followers.  Her last several posts have received an average of one and a half comments.  Three of her last several posts have just a single comment, from Jill and I.  (One of those three posts also has a comment from her in reply to our own.)  I don’t know if she’s ever commented on, or for that matter even seen, our blog.
The blog in question has existed since early 2010, with an average per-month of six posts.  Her first few months saw not a single comment or interaction of any kind.  A particularly active month for her in 2011 – a month featuring eight posts – yielded an all-time high of thirty comments.  Of these, fifteen were her own replies, and four were comments that for whatever reason had been double-posted.  As you may have guessed, the remaining eleven comments were not submitted by eleven different people, but rather three.
Why might a two-year-old blog have so few regular visitors?  Let me rephrase that: Why might a two-year-old blog have so few regular visitors who leave comments?  Clearly there is no correlation between the number of page views and the number of interactions with visitors.  I can only speak for our blog, but while you’re virtually guaranteed to have a significantly larger number of views than comments, sometimes the discrepancy is enormous.  Our most-viewed post has well over two-thousand views, but only one comment.
A fellow blogger once advised us not to comment on blogs that don’t already have any.  Her rationale was that a blogger who doesn’t have any comments probably doesn’t leave any, and likely is not interested in the community aspect of blogging.  Therefore, she suggested, our efforts would be better spent on a blogger who is likely to visit our blog and leave a comment in return.  She was probably right, but when we see a blog so barren, so bereft of interaction, especially a blog that is updated regularly, our first thought is, “This person could probably use some feedback.”  We comment because we have something to say, but often we are also trying to open up a dialogue and/or make a connection with the other blogger.  Commenting is a form of social advertising, if you will.  It is a means of getting the word out about our blog, and many of the online friendships we hold most dear are the ones that began with a comment that was returned in kind.
Generally speaking, it seems that bloggers who don’t have many – or any – comments on their posts are those who don’t make other bloggers aware of their blog by commenting in the first place.  I know that this was once true of us; in the early days of this blog we had no idea how to foster awareness of it, or for that matter how to find similar blogs to read and comment on.  We would have appreciated it if a more seasoned blogger happened upon us and decided to share his or her thoughts.  You might think, then, that a less-read blogger would be grateful, even flattered, that we took the time from our busy blogging and masturbation schedules to leave some feedback, but this is often not the case.  Many bloggers will never venture out into the greater blogosphere, just to see what else is out there.
Why is this?  The most likely reason that someone might adopt an isolationist blogging strategy is because they were never in it for the interaction in the first place.  Many bloggers see their blogs less as a social network and more as a means of expressing things that they cannot otherwise.  For these individuals, blogging may be a means of venting about a selfish or neglectful spouse, a stressful job, or a dysfunctional home life.  It doesn’t matter that no one comments or even reads it; in fact, this may be preferable as the less attention the blog receives, the less likely someone is to discern the blogger’s identity.  All that matters is that the blogger has a means of stating his or her feelings in a private and safe environment.  In such a  situation the blogger does not need, nor might he or she even want, the interaction. 
Before I go any further, I need to state unequivocally that we appreciate your feedback, and we enjoy receiving comments.  It’s not our main reason for blogging, however.  In fact, we’ve always been wary about placing too much importance on the comments that we receive, or at least on the quantity of comments that we receive; we imagine that it would be difficult to ever be satisfied with blogging under such circumstances.  
Case in point:  With twenty-five comments, our HNT post from December 15, 2011, was briefly our most-commented-on post.  Emboldened by the tremendous popularity of this post, we fully expected the following week’s HNT to receive even more.  We were somewhat disappointed when it fell short of its predecessor by eight comments.  We hadn’t even considered the fact that, as it was mere days before Christmas, our fellow bloggers were on vacation, busy with travel and holiday preparation, away from their computers, or otherwise experiencing a break from the routine.  
I’d say we blog about fifty to seventy-five percent for our own sense of satisfaction at having a forum in which we can talk about sex, and twenty-five to fifty percent for the social interaction and the feedback.  It was probably six to nine months before we began receiving comments from people who were not “real life” friends of ours.  We are used to posting things to our blog that get absolutely no feedback.  It happened on occasion in the early years of this blog, and it still does on occasion.  Therefore we’ve always blogged primarily for ourselves, with the hope but not necessarily the expectation of feedback.  
As we have always been free of hang-ups, we are unable to understand the seemingly arbitrary gag order placed by society on something as natural and positive as sex.  Think about it:  we are allowed to discuss in so-called polite company virtually every single aspect of life that we as human beings enjoy.  Even politics and religion are fair game.  Attempt to engage in a thoughtful discussion about sex, however, and see how quickly you are branded some kind of pervert.  Given the difficulty or impossibility of discussing sexual matters with much of our social circle, we highly value the outlet that blogging provides.  For us, that outlet is the primary impetus behind this blog.  The social interaction that we enjoy, and the friendships that we’ve made, began as unexpected fringe benefits, albeit ones that mean more and more to us every day.
It is not my intent to downplay how important feedback is to us.  Every comment we receive tells us that someone liked something that we posted, or perhaps that they didn’t, but still took the time to interact with us.  Even a piece of negative feedback means something to us knowing that the person who left it went to the trouble to do so.  We affected them.  But we must also acknowledge that even if we received very few comments – or no comments at all – we’d likely continue to blog.  It would be a much different experience, and it’s conceivable that we wouldn’t have the same level of satisfaction that we do now, having enjoyed the vocal following that we currently do.  But at the very least our primary motivation would still be there.
As I suggested above, one of the most rudimentary lessons that blogging has taught us is that you’ve got a better chance of flying by flapping your arms than you do of having an equal page-views-to-comments ratio.  In fact, forget equal.  On most of our posts the ratio is at least ten to one, though frequently the gap is even wider.  Lurkers – those who read without commenting – are a fact of the blogging life.  They are the foundation of the typical blog’s readership, so omnipresent that the blogosphere sets aside a day in their honor.
The vast majority of blog readers are not going to volunteer their opinions.  The reasons for this are numerous, including but not limited to reluctance to commit one’s thoughts to the internet (our friend Lisa once confessed that she has “a hard time communicating my thoughts effectively and am certain whatever comment I leave is going to be idiotic”), unwillingness to reiterate a point already made by one or more commenters, or the perception that one’s comment is somehow unwanted.  In some cases, a blogger might just have little or nothing to say about a particular post.  He or she may not fully understand it, and therefore might not wish to sound foolish by leaving a comment that misses the point.  He or she may find that the post doesn’t exactly apply, and that to leave a comment may seem disingenuous.  
We frequently promote this blog on Twitter, and I imagine that relatively few of the people who follow a tweet back to one of our posts are bloggers themselves.  Most are likely unfamiliar with the aforementioned importance of blogging as social interaction.  Therefore, the concept of blogger equiquette is probably lost on them.
What is blogger etiquette, you may ask?  As I understand it, the term refers at least partially to the expectation that a comment on one person’s blog will be repaid in kind.  In other words, if you post a comment on our blog, civility dictates that we post a comment on yours.  And while we do our best to live up to this, we do so primarily out of a desire to further our acquaintance with anyone who has visited and commented on our blog, more than out of a sense of obligation or quid pro quo.  We understand that most bloggers don’t observe the concept of blogger etiquette, so we don’t expect it; and furthermore we recognize that there have been times when we’ve inadvertently neglected to repay a comment left by another blogger, and we prefer not to think that our lapse constituted an unforgivable offense.
First glimpsed (by me, at least) on Hubman’s aforementioned post, the term “blogger etiquette” attempts to depict the blogging community as one of courtesy and good manners, and furthers the expectation that bloggers are refined, considerate, and affable at all times.  And while this is certainly true of most of the bloggers with whom we’ve interacted, there are undoubtedly those who blog because they are so antisocial that they wouldn’t think to hold a door open for someone they know and care about, much less leave courtesy feedback on the blog of a stranger.
To an extent, blogger etiquette exists.  But its continued survival is dependent upon the bloggers who observe it.  While there are many bloggers who are dilligent participants, sworn to uphold this hypothetical “comment for comment” standard, there are countless others who don’t or can’t.  Many bloggers read posts on their phones or other mobile devices, and because they prefer to wait to comment until they have access to a standard keyboard, they sometimes forget altogether.  This has happened to me more than I would like.  Some bloggers, on the other hand, have such an extensive reading list that they can’t possibly comment on – or even read – every post that shows up on their blogrolls.  This is something that should never be taken personally.
As I stated earlier, we appreciate all of the feedback we get.  In fact, though I must reiterate the point that we do not blog primarily for feedback, we would love it if even more people commented on posts that they enjoy than do already.  Without comments, we have no way of knowing what people think of the things we share.  For all we know, the majority of a typical post’s page views are the result of links clicked by accident.  We assume that this is not the case; clearly people are reading our stuff.  The comments we do get are largely positive; clearly people are enjoying what they read.
Actually, I’m not necessarily even talking about commenting on our blog.  We would love it if more people commented on blogs in general.  Doesn’t matter whose blog it is.  Doesn’t matter what kind of blog.  Doesn’t matter if there are no comments or if there are twenty.  Doesn’t even matter, really, if you like what you read.  If you read a blog today, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to leave some feedback.
Nothing can compel you to comment on this blog or any other.  I’m not the sort to claim that if you read blogs but do not comment on them you’re stealing.  Comments are not currency, and this is not a public television pledge drive.  If you enjoy a post, if it makes you think, or moves you in some way, let the author know.  Then, if you read another blog, repeat the process.  You have nothing to lose by commenting; I can all but promise you that no blogger is going to judge any comment you leave; likely he or she will be far too busy appreciating that you went to the trouble.  Your small effort may make a world of difference.
-Jack