Talk to Me, Baby—But Do it in That Irish Accent

by Shanna Germain


I’ve a thing for men in accents. I mean, men with accents. It’s like sex for the ears. Think of the almost unintelligible, and yet so dreamy, Australian that falls from lips like Russell Crowe’s and Hugh Jackman’s. Or the lovely Scottish (is that a brogue or a burr? I can never remember)…let’s say the lovely Scottish sounds of Gerard Butler and Ewan McGregor. Or that slightly pompous, highly erotic purr of Catherine Zeta Jones. (God, yes, I know she’s not a man, but have you heard that accent? Damn).

I’m even a sucker for certain U.S. accents. I once had a poetry teacher from the south who didn’t have any accent to speak of—until he read his poems aloud. And then his voice took on the softest southern drawl, working the words over until they weren’t words, but hands or fingers. Lingering. Slow. Drawn out…He could be reading about dying in a marsh, but I promise you—poetry never sounded so fuckable.

One of the things I love best is when you watch an actor—an American actor, you think, with a plain-joe American accent—in a movie or show and then later you hear them out of character and—bam!—there it is. Their secret sex weapon: an accent.

This happened to me recently with actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (he plays Mr. Eko on Lost, and formerly played Adebisi on Oz). On both Lost and Oz, he had this great Nigerian accent. Add in those great eyes and all of those shots of him without a shirt, and I was already smitten.

And then I heard him speak in an interview. What came out of his mouth? A Cockney accent. Oh. My. God. Please just tie me to one of those big trees on that island and talk to me for hours…

Now, there are some accents that don’t do it for me. British accents can go both ways for me. French sounds snooty to me, unless it’s a woman, in which case I just want her to break out her high heels and whips. German accents scare me a little. And accents in real life can be infuriating—I have an Aussie friend that I can’t understand, even though I know he’s speaking some sort of English. We’d get along fine if he’d say nothing more to me than, “My, you’re a spunky shiela. I’ve just cracked a fat.”

The rest of the Lust Biters agree. Whether Irish, Australian, cowboy style or German, accents are freaking hot…unless they’re not.

Anne Tourney says:

My personal fetish is domestic—I love a man with a Southern accent. I'm not talking about a Cracker twang here; I love a slow, mellow, smooth-as-bourbon baritone with a touch of a drawl. I want to lie naked in bed while a Southern gentleman with a few secret kinks reads me Wallace Stevens and e.e. cummings, then pulls out an issue of Penthouse and reads to me from the "Letters" section. I want him to call me “babygirl” just before he leans down to kiss me. I don't mind too much if he's into hunting or football or riding around in pickup trucks, as long as I can wake up with his body wrapped around me and hear him murmuring, 'Hey, darlin'' as he slips inside me.

Yum.

Janine Ashbless admits her favorites:

I have the world's worst ear for languages and accents. I went around Venice wishing people “good day” in Spanish (!). But I can spot the two I do like best: a soft southern Irish and Scottish.

Best celeb accents: Diarmuid Gavin and Ewan McGregor.

Worst accents: Northern Irish, Liverpool, Birmingham, London/Cockney. If you don't live in Britain you might not know how many very distinctive accents we have on these teeny islands.

Olivia Knight weighs in on her hot (and not-so-hot) accents:
An Edinburgh accent makes me go weak at the knees, but Glaswegian is just rough and anyway reminds me of my grandparents which is never sexy.

Apparently, to the French, a pronounced English accent in French is sexy. My Danish friend thinks a German accent is hilarious and sounds like the cookie monster. If any Irish person could explain what accents they find sexy, I'd love to know, because I think the rest of the world unanimously falls to their feet for an Irish accent (with the possible exception of Janine who's clearly mad, sorry darling).

Does anyone in the world find a Swiss accent sexy?

When a man says, "I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana" I get all heated and need to fan myself coquettishly. A Chicago accent just says "I'm going to blow off your kneecaps" and not in a good way...

I'm a sucker for the upper-class-English-twat accent, however reprehensible that may be... oh, and yeah, of course, speak in a French accent—you don't even have to be French, just pretend--and I'll hang on your every word and on some other stuff too.

So, talk to me…what’s your accent of pleasure? Is there a slang or twang that makes your ears—and other parts—get all hot and bothered? Tell me all about it…and can you do it in an accent? I’m just going to drape myself over this tree here, and fan myself while I listen…