Slut

I’m not really a slut in the classic sense. I’ve had my fair share of sexual partners, sure, but they’ve all been people I’ve known for some length of time and given some thought to. Even my one and only one night stand was with someone I’d known casually for years. Despite the fact that there are people in my life who have more or less called me a slut, and the fact that my mother still worries about my reputation, I’m not what most people would consider a slut.

But there’s a word – a bedroom word – that makes me weak in the knees. Rachel Kramer Bussel thinks everyone has one, and she may be right, but I know for certain that I have one.

It’s slut.


I get a little shivery just typing it, actually. I had fantasies about that word for a year or so before someone finally unleashed it on me. It was one of my most secret fantasies, because (as a 14 year old feminist) my rational brain thought it was horribly degrading. How could I be so turned on by something so against my politics? But one afternoon, after we’d been having sex for about a year and a half, my high school boyfriend pinned my arms above my head and whispered “You’re such a little slut” into my ear.

I went absolutely wild. I locked my eyes with his for a second, and then I was finally able to act out the fantasy I’d been having in my head for years. It’s not a very complex fantasy: the person I’m with calls me a slut, and I say I’m sorry for being such a slut, and then he (or she) has his (or her) way with me (this is one of my few equal-opportunity fantasies). Of course, he brought out the s-word because he’d seen it in porn and read it in erotica, but it didn’t matter to me where it came from. All that mattered was that my dirty little secret was out in the open.

For the rest of the time we dated, he expanded on the “slut” theme. Words like “cockslut” and “cumslut” became part of our bedroom vocabulary. I’ve said a lot of mean things about this particular ex and his sexual prowess in the past several years, but I’ve got to hand it to him: he knew how to talk dirty.

Why Slut? My theory is that it allows me to let my sexually ravenous side out. After all, if the person I’m with knows my dirty little secret – that deep inside of this innocent looking blonde girl is a debauched, wanton harlot just waiting to make her appearance – well then, why hide it?

Years later, I was up against the wall of my dorm room, pants around my ankles, being done with such force that I thought my knees would buckle. Call me slut, I pleaded in my head, tell me I’m your dirty little slut. I wasn’t quite ready to give voice to that taboo desire in the context of my new-ish relationship, though, and apparently my telepathic skills were a little out of practice that evening.

When it was over, we collapsed onto my bed and I curled up against his chest. After a few minutes of conversation about the power-structure of our sexual relationship, he tentatively asked if there was anything I was particularly opposed to. Was he asking what I hoped he was asking? I began a faltering answer, unsure if he really meant what I thought he did, but he cut me off.

“Any words, I mean,” he clarified.

He was asking! I told him in a rush that I wasn’t easily offended and in fact I love being called slut, and he let out a long breath and told me that was the exact word he’d wanted to use, but he hadn’t wanted to offend me. Apparently my slut nature is more obvious to the people I sleep with than I realized! We spent the rest of the evening proving to each other that the label was an appropriate one.

So there, now you all know my dirty little secret. Just for the record, it doesn’t work unless I’m already attracted to you – if someone walked up to me on the street and called me a slut, I’d punch him in the balls and be done with it. But in bed… mmmph. Hearing that word makes any sex better.