Category Archives: advice

Sex Tips from Magazines, #5

“There’s a clause, though, for manslaughter. Heat of passion. Might be funny if I hadn’t been there, but you should’ve seen the poor girl. Hadn’t moved. Still on her knees. Grey matter everywhere.” 

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Sex Tips from Magazines, #4

-Kim Basinger, of course. Definitive. How many kids you think were conceived in kitchens that year?

-Absolutely. And we hit all the standards at first. Chocolate, honey, whipped cream. He was really into it, we both were. The most time we’d spent in the kitchen since we moved there. 

-So what happened? Chris won’t even try it. Too messy, he says. 

-Right, I know. And if we’d just kept going with that I would’ve been fine. But he got real into it, really, just not the sex part. He started baking. 

-What, like cookies?

-No. I mean, baking, really baking. Cakes, tarts, pastries.

-That doesn’t sound so bad. 

-Sure, I guess. Except when he’s done he wants to photograph them. On me. 

-The cakes?

-Yes. Comes out of the oven and we wait for it to cool, just sitting there. And then he takes it and puts it on my stomach or something and just starts taking pictures. Not one picture, multiples. Close ups of his latest tiramisu attempt. He just bought some really expensive camera. 

-That’s weird. Really weird. 

-Yeah but get this. Yesterday I’m on his computer and find his blog, Jane. His blog. And he’s got all the photographs up. With recipes. You should see the kind of comments he gets. What kind of flour do you use? Did you think to try currants? Oh, and hot babe. 

-So what are you going to do? I mean really. You can’t be okay with this.

-I don’t know. I really don’t know. He’s talking about changing directions now. Making dinners. Casseroles, Jane. What am I supposed to do. 

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Sex Tips from Magazines, #3

-Silk scarves, things like that.

-Watered-down bondage.

-Right. Danger that doesn’t leave evidence. Tomorrow she just wears the scarf the normal way, no worries about stray houseguests stumbling on a pair of handcuffs.

-Seems to almost miss the point.

-Maybe, yeah.

-Could be good, though. Something new. Make you look at scarves different.

-Yeah sure. I’m glad she brought it up, I guess, but I can’t help thinking it’s just unnecessary. She lies there telling me this, looking up asking if I want more danger, if things are too safe, and it’s the last thing on my mind. 

-It’s good enough, then.

-No. Or yeah, it’s good. It’s fine. But when she’s asking if there’s anything dangerous I want to do all I can think is this is probably it. The most dangerous thing we can do we’re doing. Because it doesn’t get more terrifying than the possibility of us making something together, for her to get pregnant. Like the premise nullifies the response. 

-Then this is still good, right? A distraction. Gives you something else to think about.

-I guess, yeah. But that dread, though, the middle of the night dread that maybe this time the science didn’t work. This could just be worse. She gets pregnant while we’re trying to do something dangerous. With colored scarves on our wrists.

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Sex Tips from Magazines, #2

“She just decided this, one day. The day before that dinner party we had last month, you remember? I talked to Mark about it, her brother-in-law, still in school. Says it’s considered a mark of something, trauma, or an associative thing. That’s how it’s diagnosed. But it’s supposed to be tied to something, not grabbed out of thin air like a goddamn insect. But that day she just picks that chair in the living room, the green one, and decides it’s the sexiest thing we own. The sexiest. And that day I’m all for it, you know, she wants me in that chair and I’m there. But that party? That party was weird, man. Because every time someone’s in that chair she won’t stop touching me. All our friends there and it just gets weird. It’s like some kind of conditioning experiment, people just sort of hovering around the chair unconsciously but no one sitting down. Like that fucking dog, man. Except they have to avoid it to keep things from getting uncomfortable. And we’ve been doing this for a month now, a month of dinner parties where she’s reaching out to friends she hasn’t seen in years just to get people to keep sitting in that chair. Mark says these things’ll last for at least six months, at least. But I can’t do it, man. I can’t eat any more canapés. Shake any more hands. I just don’t get where this came from.” 

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Sex Tips from Magazines, #1

“Because I think it’s something you’re supposed to do in bed, lying down. Either after we’ve fucked, or right before, maybe, one of those things. But I come home to two chairs set up for dialogue, for an audition, and she’s there telling me to sit down and face her. The lights still on. And her face is right in mine where she’s staring and she just starts breathing these abnormally deep breaths, loud and painful, almost. I can’t figure it out but she’s got her hand on my stomach trying to get me to breathe the same way, or I guess reverse. She’s in when I’m out, I’m out when she’s in. So all we’re breathing is what’s in our lungs. And it’s intimate, sure, because all I can think while we’re doing this is This is what it feels like to suffocate. This is how it feels to nearly die.” 

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