I am rarely attracted to anyone these days.

The cod-psychologist in me tells me it's my brain's way of acknowledging the futility of the situation - stuck in a sexless relationship with someone you love and don't want to leave, there's nothing more frustrating and dangerous than taking a fancy to someone who's definitely out of bounds.

Weirdly, when I masturbate, I rarely think of V, or even of men. I think about girls. My experience with women is limited to a one-shot deal - an ill-advised guest role in a threesome with a couple I wasn't remotely attracted to and didn't even like. But still, girls feature heavily in my fantasies. More cod-psychology - it's so painful and alien to me to imagine V, or any man, being attracted to me, so far removed from real life, that I focus my attentions on something so unlikely to become reality that it's actually less threatening and more believable. I know, I know, I'm full of psychobabble bullshit. Dan Savage believes in a kind of in vino veritas (in masturbato veritas?) - the gender you wank to is the one you really want. But for once I disagree with him. In fact, I've rarely been attracted to women in real life past the point of "Ooh, she's nice/pretty."

But yesterday, out at a little music event in town, I spotted a girl who turned my crank so far it nearly broke right off.

I'd be the first to admit she wasn't your classic beauty. A good 40lbs overweight, her yellow t-shirt clung to her belly tightly enough to see the dint of her tummy button, and her jeans were a bit too small and low cut for her wide hips. She had long, auburn, centre-parted wavy hair, pale skin, and a little rosebud mouth which frequently spread into an apple-cheeked smile. She was manning a table full of leaflets, bands playing on a little stage next to her, and she danced behind it with a complete lack of self-consciousness.. It was the way she moved her hips that did it for me - she shook them left and right, occasionally grinding out a full circle and hip-drop like a belly-dancer, but not for sexual effect, just for the joy of moving her body. She was having fun, smiling, laughing, chatting. I just couldn't take my eyes off her. Once I'm sure she smiled in my direction - she probably thought she knew me, I was staring so much - but I was with friends and didn't dare go over, although my pussy was throbbing with attraction and I could feel my nipples poking through my bra. I felt embarrassingly obvious, like there was a huge sign over my head - "Bea has a lady-crush!"

V's away for the weekend, visiting family. For once, the whole flat is my playground - no quiet, subtle, two-digit masturbation under the duvet once he's asleep. As soon as I got home, I stripped and flung myself into relieving the tension. Kneeling up, knees apart on the bed, I pushed a pillow between my legs, imagining the girl's plump body beneath me. I kneaded and stroked my own breasts and her imaginary ones. I visualised her legs around my hips, and as I rocked my hips back and forth, drawing my pussy across the pillow over and over, it became her own pussy, wet and open with a fine covering of soft red hair, mashing up against my cunt, her clit rubbing against the rough lace of my underwear and teasing me until I couldn't take it any more. I pulled off my knickers and dove my left hand deep into my cunt, covering it in my juices, then fell forwards onto my elbows, licking and lapping at the pussy-scented wetness on my hand, imagining us a 69 position, her clit hard against my tongue. I slurped and drank at her juices. My right hand became her tongue lashing into my own slit and over my clit. When my shoulders began to ache, I lay back to grab my big yellow dildo and work it into my pussy with one hand while I circled my clit with the other. In my mind's eye her hands controlled the toy and rubbed me, and she was squatted above my face, legs apart and her pussy inches from my lips. My tongue flickered out of my mouth and I imagined darting it over her clit, then pushing her gently forwards, parting her magnificent ass cheeks with both my hands and swirling my tongue over her asshole as two of my fingers screwed with determination into her cunt, hooking forwards to find her G-spot, and my thumb rested on the nub of her clit, holding firmly as she bucked and rolled her hips against it. When my imagination conjured up her orgasm, and her asshole and cunt throbbed on my tongue and fingers, my own orgasm contracted my body, jerking me almost into a V-shape and pushing the dildo right out onto the bed.

I am supposed to have been doing homework this afternoon, but this experience - the attraction and the subsequent vivid fantasy - were just too earth-shattering not to document. I still haven't got it out of my system - I've been thinking about her all weekend, and have masturbated several times, even while writing this. I doubt I'll do anything more about it - I have no idea who she is, no way to find out and, frankly, wouldn't want to risk the reality not living up to the fantasy. But in a way, while I feel mildly disloyal for fixating on a real person rather than a kind of faceless generic woman, it might be quite nice to be able to masturbate visualising a real person, with an aura and an "imperfect" body. And it's quite reassuring to experience strong physical attraction to someone so far removed from society's ideal - it gives me hope that someone, somewhere, might feel the same way about my imperfect form.