Oops, I didn't Know We Couldn't Talk About Sex

Parents, colleagues, relatives-of-any-sort, in laws and professors, please be forewarned; this blog is about sex. Read at your own risk.


As a slightly late (two years perhaps?) follow-up to my "Advice for Men", which was a bit harsh I admit, I have decided to finally write the blog so many of you have been expecting of me since the day this page went up. Don't act so surprised.

I've spent a lot of time outside of America...and for a country so ingrained in preaching nonsense about liberty (even though we don't allow gay people to get married...but that's for another blog), we have a particularly difficult time with sex and nudity. Londoners are naughty in a sexy office girl sort of way. South Americans, and the Spanish, bottle the smell of sex for cologne. Australians could hum and charm the panties right off you. And oh, Paris. Parisians have 40-foot billboards with gorgeous naked actresses draped across couches, shimmering in the lights, eye fucking the camera. Somehow, the ad is for perfume. Every American in a forty foot vicinity can be easily identified because they're the ones craning their necks skyward, eyes a goggle, mouths agape like drowning turkeys. The Parisians shake their heads, walk away and hate America just a tiny bit more. Ah, who doesn't love the French?

I never understood this- but if any of you know anything about me, and many of you do, you'll know sex, nudity and the idea of porn are slightly skewed in my view. I'm a designer of Intimate Apparel for Playboy. I'm relatively unfazed by naked women (or men) at this point. Half my day is spent airbrushing clothes off women, so I can redress them in my designs. My kitchen cabinets are decorated with the luscious half-naked models of Agent Provocateur (a lame attempt to get my boyfriend to do the dishes) and nearly every scrap of "girly" magazine reading material, poster or movie in our house belongs to me and not my boyfriend. It's mostly research in my head, but who doesn't like to look up from their bed and see a poster of Kate Moss in her knickers? She's beautiful and sultry and stirring in a photograph where she's not even looking into the camera- she inspires the sexiness in us all. And oh, sexiness, dear America, for therin lies the problem.

What's the deal America? Seriously? It's just sex and if many of you can remember the first time, hell the first few times you had sex, you'll recall it doesn't inspire sexiness in your thoughts as much as hysteria. Men might have a slightly more skewed perception of their first times...I assume of course they're 16-year-old selves are so thrilled with the idea of finally getting laid they mostly forget what the hell to do, not that they knew in the first place. Look guys, you've been jerking off in the shower since what, like the 3rd grade? Most girls at that age have only a slight idea of what an orgasm is, few have actually had one and even less believe it's going to happen right now. So thank you for putting the condom on backwards, and no that's my belly button, and holy crap my leg doesn't bend that way, not to mention this hurts like fucking hell and I will never understand how people consider this fun. Yes, ow, I love you too.

Laughing at the handful of first times makes me happily realize how naive and open we all were once upon a time. Eager to please, you probably scoured all the porn you could get your hands on, looking for advice or tips. (even if your parents didn't subscribe, so it was caught fleetingly between the flickering channels and white noise...before internet porn all those born after 1990) Because who of us really ever went to our parents to say, Gee Mom could you teach me how to give a killer blow job? Grade school didn't teach us how to balance our checkbooks either- life lessons that were easily overlooked... And if you went to a school that preached abstinence, like mine (which incidentally saw at least three girls drop out from pregnancy a year) you'd have to experience the joy of lying in bed your first time, praying to god he had a condom and he knew how the hell to put it on. Sexy, right?

I'm certainly not preaching to anyone, and not nearly suggesting you go out and screw all the guys/girls you can. I don't have enough experience in sex or life to tell anyone what to do, I'm simply saying that after a few years of practice, I can sincerely say sex is a hell of a lot more fun than it first was. And if we're basing the scale of fun on the rate of progression, it's bound to be the highlight of my life- and looking back, well there are worse things to highlight one's life. I've done a lot of independent study on the psyche of men, women and sex in general, and I have learned a few things of my own. One is that sex is exercise, it releases endorphins in the brain, (same as chocolate!) makes you feel better about yourself, and apparently, people who have sex 3 times a week burn around 7500 calories in a year- approximately the equivalent of jogging 75 miles- Haha, which would you rather do? The other thing I learned is that too frequently men and mostly women turn down their partners ideas in bed because they're scared, embarrassed or fearful of unknown territory. And while I haven't gone out of my way to seduce the men of Manhattan, I have tried to keep up an active, healthy and diverse sex life, which makes me knowledgeable enough to safely say, relax, and if it feels good, do it. Jokingly, I used to tell my boyfriend I will try absolutely anything once, or until I get it right. Now, after years of coming up with fun new ways to keep our sex life inventive and exhausting, I can say there must be some truth in jest.

So what's all the embarrassment about? Why should something that feels so good cause so much guilt? I have no answer here. But my books about sex, 365 different positions, advice on the perfect lingerie and how to give the best blow job he's ever had are proudly on display on our bedside tables. So what, we've got a stripper pole? It's a hell of a lot harder than it looks, and let me tell you something, more often than not, not very sexy. How appealing does a six inch bruise on your inner thigh while your clinging on upside down for dear life sound? Yeah, that's what I thought...explains black lights in strip clubs. I've got every postcard Agent Provocateur ever sent me up as decoration. There's a whole dresser of drawers devoted to my lingerie, my sex-only lingerie and if you went through my top bedroom drawers you'd find more plastic than lace, and lord knows, you'd certainly be more embarrassed than me. You know how some people keep a little black box full of naughty toys and handcuffs that they tell their sister to go find, should they die, and destroy it? Let's just say, Ashley would have to burn down our entire house.

So why would I tell you this? Perhaps perfect strangers, since the entire world wide web is at liberty to read my blog. To make one tiny dent in your conscience and the ideas you have about sex. If one more person in the world is just a little more open to trying something new, or one more person sheds those cumbersome feelings of shame over sex, it will have been worth the write. I design lingerie for Playboy for Christ sake...it's not too hard to guess what's in my top drawer.

So go get laid. Burn calories, shed inhibition, smile happily, drowsily, stupidly. Relax, it's just sex.