Maybe, if you close your eyes and think really, really hard, there can be an upside to the tragedy of bad sex. Okay, maybe there’s only one and it’s kind of a stretch: bad sex can be sort of a catalyst, whether as a deal-breaker in a situation you were looking for a way out of, or as a friendly note-to-self that maybe sex for the sake of it doesn’t work if you’re not getting off. Or it can serve as fodder for a wickedly funny personal essay. Inducing as much laughter as it does empathy-pain, Jonathan Goldstein’s take on Bad Sex – recounting the hands-down worst handjob he’s ever received – is full of gleefully f*cked-up similes and wry observations. And, hey, after three hours of thankless manual stimulation, we’re impressed that he could manage such coherence, let alone wit.
“So used to the way I handjobbed myself, it took me a good ten minutes just to acclimatize to another person's touch. Once we got going, I needed a lot of encouragement — reassuring talk, oils, balms and constant repositioning. Plus, a decade of self-abuse had rendered my dick pretty much aristocratically indifferent. I had to practically slam it in a doorjamb to get it halfway turgid. So a typical handjob usually took anywhere between twenty to thirty minutes, with me shouting 'harder!' and 'faster!' like I was whipping a team of snow dogs across the tundra.”
Check out the entire essay here, one of Hooksexup’s 10th Anniversary “10 Funniest Articles.”
— Caitlin M.