'I write about sex for a living, but there's one thing I refuse to ever do.'

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"Hey baby. Pull down your pants. Good. Now put your fingers between your legs…"

CRINGE.

That's how I imagine phone sex sounding, and it makes me want to throw my phone out the window.

But here's the plot twist: I'm a sex writer. You'd think I'd be up for anything once, a kind of professional obligation to embody the adventurous, insatiable version of womanhood people expect me to be when they hear what I do for a living.

And yet, I can't bring myself to do phone sex. I can't even do dirty talk without wanting to crawl out of my own skin.

There's just something about it that feels more theatrical than authentic. Like it's all for performance, not connection.

Watch: Liz Gilbert on Using Sex as Currency for Love and Validation. Post continues below.

I remember this sexual encounter with a man who absolutely needed me to narrate the experience for him. How much I liked him. How sexy he was. How good he was at giving head. How badly I wanted to see him again. Mid-bang, he ordered me to say it all 'sexily'.

I went along with it, partly because I was curious — would I feel the same cringe actually doing it, or was it just in my head? — and partly because, well, he seemed like he really needed it.

But no sooner had the words left my mouth than I wanted to reel them straight back in. I felt my body shudder from the inside out.

The problem was, I didn't mean any of it. I didn't particularly want to see him again. We'd known each other all of one night, so "I really like you" felt absurd. And yet, here I was, performing lines I didn't believe in, to soothe the ego of a man I barely knew.

It made me feel super uncomfortable — icky, even. He didn't seem to notice, or maybe he didn't care. In fact, he seemed pleased with my narration, and rode it all the way through to orgasm (his, of course).

What struck me was how strangely disconnected it all felt. The irony was wild: he needed me to assure him I wanted to see him again, that I liked what he was doing when, in reality, I felt neither.

My words gave him exactly what he asked for, but he never once checked if they were true. Instead, he pressured me into giving him the performance he craved, at a moment when refusing would have felt even more awkward.

Most of my experiences with sexual words have felt like this. Whether it's been sexting, dirty talk or phone sex, it feels like stepping into a conversation that doesn't belong to me. It doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel like connection.

It feels like I'm there to provide lines for someone else's benefit, to say the 'right' thing, the thing they 'want to hear,' while my actual feelings don't matter.

And it's not even a good, hearty, two-sided conversation. It feels like all I have to do is say the 'right' thing, what they 'want to hear' and there's no care or even awareness of how I'm actually feeling.

To be honest, I hadn't thought about phone sex in a long time. But recently, I was overseas for almost three months and my boyfriend was missing our physical connection. So, he suggested it.

"Why don't we try phone sex?" he asked.

My stomach tightened. I was taken back into the same body-feeling I've had every time someone has asked me to "talk sexy."

"What struck me was how strangely disconnected it all felt." Image: Instagram @lauraroscioli

I tried to explain to him why I didn't want to do it, why it felt like such an uncomfortable experience for me — but I couldn't. I couldn't put the feelings into words. I felt as stuck as I've felt in those previous "sexy talk" encounters with other men.

But this should be different. This is my boyfriend. The person I love, who cares deeply about my pleasure. So why couldn't I do it?

Here's my theory: maybe it feels so fake because we don't really have a language for sex and pleasure. At least, not one that feels true to me.

The only "script" available in a mainstream sense is the male porn script: breathless commands, exaggerated moans, endless assurances of how big, how good, how much I want it. Words designed to feed general male arousal, not to translate each of our experiences individually.

They're pretty empty, generic phrases too. They're centred around anatomy "working" within sex, penises being big and hard, vaginas being swollen and wet. But what about how we feel? What about the truth?

Anaïs Nin wrote that "eroticism is one of the basic means of self-knowledge, as indispensable as poetry." She believed the erotic lies in knowing ourselves and our desires deeply. But if we don't have the words to explain ourselves — if we know how we're feeling but can't quite find the language — then no wonder dirty talk feels unnatural.

It might fit the narrative, but it doesn't fit how our bodies actually feel.

For women especially, we can't just get off on the script. So much of female arousal relies on being turned on emotionally, which means a few empty words about our anatomy — words that often feel laced with pressure — don't really do the job.

And honestly, I'm not sure the sexual script really serves men either. Sure, they might be able to climax to us telling them we're "dripping wet" because their "dick is so big," but that doesn't invite them to go into their own bodies, to be present, to notice how they actually feel.

Which, I'd argue, speaks to a much broader problem in our culture: we've been taught the script and are rewarded for following it; not encouraged to create one of our own.

Sex scenes are famously the hardest to write. All the great novelists say so. Film and TV writers too. "In your mind you may picture a moving, romantic interlude, but down on paper, you find it reads like melodrama—or worse," explained renowned writing advice editor Jane Friedman.  

But why is that? Because the language we have for sex is missing nuance. It doesn't speak to the in-between moments, the tingly feeling you get in your hands and the warm flush that rises from your groin all the way to your face before orgasm.

To narrate actual pleasure feels like telling a story you've never told before, with words that have never been heard in that context. 

So, I didn't end up doing phone sex with my boyfriend while I was away. But there's still a part of me that wants to make peace with sexy talk in general.

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When I told him how I felt while writing this piece, he had an amazing suggestion:

"I think we should try phone sex by talking about past sexual experiences we've actually had. That way, we're drawing on moments that were real, things that genuinely turned us on at the time."

Genius. Truly. I immediately don't feel cringe narrating experiences we've actually shared, because they belong to us. It feels less like regurgitating a script and more like finding the words for moments of actual pleasure that we've already lived. Like having a sexy daydream out loud.

And maybe that's the practice of dirty talk: broadening our sexual language so it isn't just borrowed porn lines, but authentic words we can reach for when we want to ask for something, describe what we like, or revisit the things that have brought us pleasure in the past. 

Because if I'm going to say something dirty, I want it to be something I mean. Something that brings me personal pleasure. 

Feature Image: Supplied/Instagram @lauraroscioli