Features

Bombarded with messages from "sexperts" about their inadequate sexual expressions, Josie Adams and Tristan Fernando gave in to Cosmopolitan magazine’s tips for spicing up their sex life. Armed with questionable advice, the two Cosmonauts embarked on a weekend of terrifying sexcapades. Here, in gratuitous detail, they describe the ensuing misadventures and explain the unlikely benefits of terrible advice.

Josie: It all began with the stinging cry my flatmate hurled at me one bleak afternoon. “VANILLA QUEEN,” he screeched, aggressively knocking my sorbet off the bench. I stared at the mess, pink and frozen like my vagina. I knew what “vanilla” meant: it meant I was the worst part of Neapolitan ice cream and, as I discovered when I began to dry my tears on a nearby issue of Cosmopolitan, it meant I was unexciting at sex. The garish newsprint glued to my wet eyelids told me I was uninspired, bad at sex and at life. This was terrible news.

“Is our sex more like a warm summer afternoon, or Space Mountain?” I sobbed over the phone to my boyfriend, “and have we ever had sex outside of a bed?” We hadn’t, although we’d apparently once done it with the blankets off. We immediately resolved to treat Cosmo like the sexual Bible it was, and set about enacting what would become the most uncomfortable bangathon I’d ever had.

Tristan: Cosmo is more stacked with sex than its readership is filled with hormones and optimistic delusion. Teens like nothing more than to pretend they’re adults, so Cosmo’s editors indulge them with stats about uni students and living with your boyfriend – but their ads give the game away by marketing anti-acne cream and what to do for your school ball. The readers know nothing about sex and the editors keep it this way by cutting anything that looks remotely recycled (read: “sensible”).

Of course, Cosmo writers see themselves as real journalists, so they pass over the sex for interviews with Gaga about which ice cream cones to use as a bra. The sex writing goes to the interns, inept or intoxicated. This leaves the reader with a column of inane dribble edited down to just the phlegm. But I digress: we’re talking about my girlfriend and the things she made me do to her.

Josie: A good place to start was foreplay. Dry humping and spanking were the tips on hand, so we put them to work. It started out nicely, but about three minutes in the damp patch from my southern dungeon had become an unsexy, jelly-like deposit. Impatient, we moved on. A tentative hand reached around to the back of my damp underwear and brought itself shakily into contact with my arse. He was hesitant, aware that if I were a child, this would be a crime. I assured him that had I actually been underage, he’d be in jail for a totally different kind of abuse. I thought he might start crying, but with each spank he grew more confident.

“Does this feel weird?” He had paused the spank attack to check on its progress. Yes, it felt weird. He then moved into a squeezing motion, which was actually kind of hot. Then, in the spirit of journalistic exploration, I got the tittyspank – a move he later revealed was gleaned from a porn he once saw, but only because he “thought it was Pirates of the Caribbean.” I sat in a stunned, sudden vacuum of arousal as he batted my breasts like a cat with tassels. Hanging over him, subject to gravity’s cruel effects, they swung to and fro like fat-filled punching bags. This was the moment my breasts lost their sex appeal forever.

“Can we stop?” He agreed readily. His hands seemed to spasm with the dark memories of what they’d done, and he rolled his face into the pillow. I thought the muffled noises were giggling, but the damp spots I found later suggested tears.

Tristan: It’s not okay to masturbate in your girlfriend’s bed – try to include your girlfriend in activities you enjoy. Why couldn’t Cosmo say this instead of “leave midway during sex,” which, instead of “driving me wild” as Cosmo said it would, left me considering routes that would allow me to maintain an erection without glazing the sheets in semen.

Cosmo had convinced her that absence makes the dick grow longer, and I wish that had been the case. Instead, her adorably conscientious absence had led to me shivering in bed, as flaccid as a fish. I love my girlfriend very much, so I didn’t want to explain that she’d successfully swapped vanilla not for spice but for compost. I could hear her walking back, either giggling or gurgling, and realised I’d have to muster an erection.

She stood over me with hot and cold glasses of water, making sexy eyes, while my penis shrunk back into my body as if it had had enough of this life and was reverting to its pre-pubescent form. “I hope those are for me,” I lied as she kissed my neck. My attempts to seem enthused were unsuccessful so I attempted some dirty talk. Unfortunately, the only sexy thing Cosmo had told me to say was “rub my clit” and, as I didn’t have a clit, the plan failed. I anticipated the screams of “what the fuck” and “am I not sexy?” but instead the only thing coming out of her mouth was the shaft of my cock.

I wasn’t quite sure what was happening at this point. I was expecting her to be crying, because her lustful lips wrapping around my wrinkled willy were the perfect analogy for the one-sided endeavour this had become, but instead all I felt was a burning sensation in my loins. This wasn’t the blood flowing to my penis and rejuvenating our relationship, but rather the near-boiling water rushing around my dick.

She seemed to hear my startled scream and stop, just to skull the second glass of cold water and restart. I was sure the sobering climate attack on my penis would have been a good reason to stop, but instead she seemed to think I was totally into it. I would soon learn that “soft cocking” was another Cosmo tip to make blowjobs more comfortable for the female involved.

Josie: People have no idea how small a butthole is. I learned this the hard way. Arse-spanking hadn’t worked for me, but groping was a bit better. Perhaps, my boyfriend reasoned, groping it with his penis and from the inside would be ideal. As I was in the middle of discovering my inner deviant, I couldn’t knock it before trying it, so knock-knock at my back door he went.

Despite MacGyvering some canola oil lube and my best attempts to “just relax” (pro tip from Cosmo there), we were only half a centimeter in before there were tears, and I don’t mean crying. He immediately withdrew, and from behind I heard him gasp, “oh my God. It’s ripped.”

I threw him my phone, hoping to see a picture of the damage so I could write it up accurately. Unfortunately, he opened Snapchat. I’d like to apologise to the four friends who received a glimpse of my torn arsehole last month.

We couldn’t give up on such a potential goldmine of literary inspiration as anal; we’re committed/ stupid journalists. “Easing into it” on a friend’s recommendation, Tristan slid a solitary, lubed, and condomed finger into my rear during our usual foreplay. “Is this okay?” He waited for an affirmative before moving the finger. It didn’t feel entirely okay, actually, but I figured I might get used to it. It wasn’t long before I realised that it would never be okay, ever. He pulled out.

I could feel my naked butthole open to the air, tightened as though it, too, were holding in a scream. Despite the condom, I could hear him weakly whispering something about “never being clean again” before bursting into a stream of Hail Marys.

Tristan: No matter what Cosmo says, don’t buy a cockring. Cockrings are power bracelets for your penis that make them vibrate and supposedly block cumming. Bionic boners seem cool and futuristic, making the wearer a sex cyborg or bonk-bot, so we named it Steve Austin after The Six Million Dollar Man. It was a fitting name because just as the 70s wasn’t ready for a cybernetic crime fighter, I wasn’t ready to become an aphrodisiac android. There was no doubt that she was enjoying the cockring and even started jokingly screaming “Steve.” This isn’t my name.

I was less taken by the new technology, and felt more akin to a Russian peasant who’d realised a tractor had taken his job. I’m jealous of a cockring. Josie was clearly not moaning because of my penis but rather because of the silicon rumble pack attacking her clit. I decided to say “fuck you” to the cockring and came so hard that it burst through the anti-cumming barricade and ended the sex.

However, instead of Steve leaving the bedroom and my life, she politely asked me if I could “just hang out there for a bit” while she finished getting off from the vibrations. Sensing my anxiety, she assured me that I wasn’t redundant and that the cockring was nothing without me, contradicting the shop assistant who “always used it to masturbate.” Sometimes in relationships you have to make sacrifices, so I bit my lip and persevered with a perfect view of her face and my nemesis pleasuring her. The machines had won.

Josie: I was still yearning to unleash the latent sexual kinkmeister I was sure lay inside me, so he suggested that we follow the example of those who’ve died of deviancy: trying erotic asphyxiation. In researching this, I found out about Sada Abe, who infamously killed her lover with sexy suffocation. I, too, wanted the power to bring death by snu-snu. We waited until we were really getting into the groove of things before I put my hands around his neck. His moans of pleasure quickly became “urghs,” and he managed to gurgle out a “stop.” In the interests of fairness, he then started to throttle me.

I think my loins were enjoying themselves, but to be honest, I was distracted by the rattling of my own non-breaths, which sounded loud due to the fact that I had ceased being able to hear any background noise. Next, edges of my vision got a tad blurry. It wasn’t erotic, and when I asked Tristan if he’d felt any effects on his boner level, he simply said “I couldn’t tell, I was busy being suffocated.” On a side note, we can both see ghosts now.

“I want you inside me,” I exhaled into his ear, locking eyes with my lover, as per the magazine’s instructions. “Try some dirty talk,” Cosmo had said. “Tell him what you want!” He returned my sexy gaze, and brushed his lips past my hair: “I am inside you?” He sounded confused rather than turned on, which couldn’t be right. I didn’t understand; we mustn’t have had the correct level of eye contact. I widened my eyes and tried not to blink.

Now that we were confirmed mid-coitus, I could use the power of words to “heighten his climactic potential.” “Harder,” I moaned, “deeper.” I had now used all the phrases I knew from porn, so I repeated them in what I hoped was a sexy voice. “Deeper!” “IT WON’T GO ANY DEEPER, I’M WEARING A COCK RING.” Oh. Seeing my sadness, he kindly appealed to the other writer inside me, suggesting that I try describing our earlier spa sex, “in the form of an erotic novelette.”

“It was a cold evening,” I began, using my best Marilyn Monroe voice. “It was a cold evening, but the spa was thirty-eight degrees. That’s two degrees hotter than the human body, but still not as hot as the Adonis with whom I was entwined. His kisses burned my skin with heat and chlorine, and when he entered me his strong hips lifted me right out of the whirling water so that I could slide on without getting spa chemicals inside me, which would have been unhygienic …”

“Unnngh!” Was my word-smithing having its desired effect? No, that had been the groan of a man wrestling a sex toy off his rapidly-diminishing semi. I pouted in sexy apology: “I’m sorry, Mr Presideeeent …” A muffled “please stop” from somewhere further down the bed cut me off.

Tristan: We’d used up all the suggestions that seemed vaguely pleasurable and were now being recommended likely causes of eye infections: Cosmo wanted me to come on Josie’s face. Facials are somewhat impractical; was I supposed to be having regular sex and then, mid-orgasm, squat over her face so the beads of semen would hit their target? Or do I jack off in front of her face with her missing out on the fun?

We ended up going for the latter, because several attempts at the first showed that I had worse targeting than Skywalker’s X-Wing. As it turns out, though, there is no better contraception than your girlfriend’s attempts to arouse you without touching your penis and with impatient requests for an update on how long until blast off, so I let my mind wander to pottery.

Peruvians love pottery, especially when it looks like sexy ceramics or clay coitus. Their pounding pottery dates back two thousand years, meaning oral sex, anal and anything else we’ve written about so far isn’t a symbol of our post-porn corruption but rather a hint that our grandparents would read the preceding paragraphs with a familiar smile.

Oddly, none of the ceramic cunnilingus I’ve seen involved coming on each other’s faces; in fact, coming on someone only reached porno’s eye in the 70s to show orgasms (it’s rather hard to show somebody coming inside another without an unsexy and illegal cross section). Obviously wanking on someone’s face doesn’t compete with sex, but there must be some benefit for Cosmo to recommend it. It’s a common belief that facials are to make you feel important and powerful by degrading your partner; but if people saw spunk as a weapon of shame, wouldn’t the girls be crying when they get their facials, instead of moaning with delight? In fact, the whole point behind directors choosing to show facials was to show the orgasm and receiver enjoying sex in the same shot.

As I reached climax I had a new theory about what the appeal was. Instead of being demeaning it seems like people enjoy facials for the same reason they like their partner swallowing or letting them come inside them; it’s nice. Someone spitting out your semen or making you come on the sheets is like saying your sexual climax is gross and uncomfortable, that your orgasm revolts them. Facials seem to be the complete opposite of spitting. It’s like your partner loved the sex so much that they want it to be on their face. I began to run this past Josie as I “blew up the Death Star,” but all that came out was “OH GOD, OH GOD, I’m so sorry, I’ll find some eyewash. Let’s never do this again.”

Josie: Perusing Cosmo, Cleo and their like, we found out that all the time I’d spent bonking Tristan, despite his continued sex appeal, had rid my parts of the anticipatory wetness they’d once spurted gleefully. “It can take up to fifteen minutes to produce lubrication,” said Cosmo. Tristan, who was increasingly becoming a sexual genius, suggested slowing down both foreplay and sex. Ok, I thought, increase the length of time I have to pretend leg cramp groans are orgasmic ululations. I was wrong; it was amazing.

After a slow, sweet morning make-out, he rolled on top and we positioned ourselves for ye olde missionary. It was the first time we hadn’t had to use a couple of fingers to stab my Skene’s gland into wet action since round one: dry humping. Moving onto position number two, the Sneaky Spoon, we spent the next twenty minutes holding hands and shit. Is this what “making love” is?

I’m glad to announce that we reached a more than satisfactory finish. If my vagina hadn’t been irritated from the five million times it’d been penetrated over the weekend, it would have been a perfect moment. I nuzzled his face, which was dreamy with post-coital happiness, and realised the benefit of Cosmo’s sex tips.

Tristan: Porn has hugely warped everyone’s view of what sex should be, and Cosmo suggests even more bizarre practices. These tips are ridiculous and certainly aren’t a guide to better sex, but they do present an opportunity to say “Jesus Christ, stop,” and explain why. We were forced to explain what we really wanted and in doing so realised it ourselves. During our vanilla sex days, Josie could have asked me how I wanted it and I wouldn’t have known. By doing a sharkfull of weird shit we gained a wealth of vocabulary and experience; Cosmo might not know what good sex is, but now we do.

Josie: It was the end of our weekend, and he lovingly gripped my labia majora with a comfortable familiarity, stretching them out to either side and smiling down at his artful vulva manipulation. “You look like you have a demon vageen,” he gushed, “love you, babe.” Aw, I love you, too. God, what’s happened to me?