The Bad Sex Awards
There are no winners here, only nominees
I wasn’t scared about turning 30. A pandemic, an eight month marriage followed by a five month (and counting) divorce, and several country moves taught me not to plan too far ahead. So I didn’t have some huge list of things I wanted to achieve by that age, which made it a mere day in the calendar, like any other, except with people saying Happy Birthday and giving me presents and buying me drinks. But there were a couple of things that I had expected turning 30 might mean I had aged out of, two of which I will discuss here, linked together neatly by one person who shall not be named: bad sex, and ghosting.
Let’s start with the bad sex, so those of you with more delicate sensibilities can skip ahead to the ghosting part, although I’d venture to say that people with delicate sensibilities aren’t familiar with ghosting, or are at least lucky enough to have never experienced it.
I’ll begin by saying, obviously, there is no such thing as across the board, one size fits all, everyone loves this move, good sex. I’ve come to realize in my many sad years of one and two and three night stands, that good sex actually is just being able to listen and then action the feedback you’re given. Much like an annual review, it’s about leaving your ego at the door, nodding, smiling and taking notes, and doing what’s best for the good of the company. There is, however, one thing that I think can be considered unilaterally bad sex, based on the facial expressions I saw on my retelling of this story to friends, and my extensive research, and its prevalence in popular culture. Ladies and gentlemen (I think there are at least two gentlemen reading) I present to you: the jackhammer.
For fans of Sex and the City, you might recall a particularly horrendous scene where Carrie is unable to stand up straight at Charlotte’s second wedding because she threw her back out (or more accurately, had her back thrown out) by a man we presume to be in his forties, for shame, performing what is known in the US as ‘jackrabbit sex’. ‘That night, Howie and I had sex like we were teenagers again. Meaning: he had no idea what he was doing, and I didn’t say anything.’
The jackhammer, for anyone too lazy to click on the link above, is the process of a man using his penis much in the style of a pneumatic drill, with the presumable goal of puncturing a hole in your cervix, for reasons unknown. Well, not reasons unknown per se. The reason is porn. A moment of silence for the porn actresses who have to undergo this type of sex on camera, multiple times a week. Beyond the complete lack of any kind of pleasure, sensation, enjoyment or intimacy, the jackhammer is humiliating. You are, for the time it takes for the man to achieve his ultimate goal of breaking through the cervical wall to the other side (mercifully, it usually doesn’t take very long), just a dick-vessel with a face. You are a human sized version of his hand.
My personal gripe with the jackhammer, beyond the fact that I cannot believe people of my age and beyond are actually still doing this – for which I would just like to take a moment to unequivocally blame their former partners for not fucking saying anything – is that it also makes YOU look bad in bed. For the sole reason that it is impossible to do anything while you are being pounded apart from closing your eyes and praying for death. The man who created the term ‘pillow princess’ was presumably a jackhammer, not realizing that his very jackhammering was preventing said princess from moving BUT AT ALL, not out of laziness but rather out of terror that if she moved then he might come unstuck and end up ploughing into her eye, or the wall. The most you can hope for in these situations – and I sincerely hope no-one among you ever needs this advice, being presumably endowed with much better luck than me – is that he will tire himself out from all the completely unnecessary cardio and you’ll find a moment to pretend to be too drunk to carry on, collect your clothes and run the fuck away.
This brings me to point the second: ghosting.
The yarn that threads these two seemingly incompatible concepts together is that after I bade my fake drunk goodbye to the jackhammer, as he will henceforth be referred to, here and in my memoirs, I had second thoughts. He was such a nice person, so kind and attentive, and a good kisser. Surely this had just been some kind of glitch in the matrix. Maybe he was possessed, or forgot to go to the gym that day and thought he would kill two birds with one stone. He also owned a flat in East London. There were a lot of things to consider. So I decided to be the bigger person, and not be like those women I earlier condemned, allowing him to go forth onto Hinge and ruin the genitals of numerous other unsuspecting women. I deigned to give him a second chance.
And then HE ghosted ME.
Ghosting is despicable, and pathetic, and cowardly. It is the modus operandi of men (and women, I say reluctantly, although I feel the relevant percentage might JUST sway in our favour) with no conscience. For the two men reading (one of whom is married and the other of whom is engaged so will never need this knowledge) – don’t fucking do it. I had to give this same lecture to my housemate this week, who is only 26 and still needs to be taught the ways of the world. He was in the middle of performing what he referred to as the ‘fade-out’, whereby the recipient keeps thinking they’re getting ghosted, gets over it, listens to Little Mix’s oeuvre and moves on with their life, and then they text you again. The fade-out is arguably much worse than ghosting, because you can make excuses for it: they’re busy at work, their hamster is sick, they got hit by a bus etc etc and that’s why it’s taking them three business days to reply. At least with ghosting you can just be like oh, fuck you, and tell it as a funny story over dinner.
But I couldn’t help but wonder (à la Carrie Bradshaw): are these our only options?
Maybe 40 will be my year.
One good thing:
My friend told me this week that I’m not her only 30 year old divorced friend. She also told me I’m not her only poor friend. Where my breadline divorcees at!
I also watched this vlog which was sent to me by my pal, where two friends decide to try and knit an entire balaclava in one weekend, with delirious results. I don’t know what ASMR is but I think it’s this.
One bad thing:
You know that office dramedy TV show scene where the hapless intern accidentally loses the company a bunch of money or completely derails a marketing campaign through sheer incompetence?
In my defence, I’m 30 years old. I shouldn’t be using a fucking Franking machine.
To my DEAREST DARLING READERS: thank you for all the likes last week. Apparently yelling works. I thank you for not punishing me for Substack’s shitty user interface that makes it nigh impossible to like something you’re reading. An especially large thank you to my friends R, O, J, E, Z, A, K, S and H (whose full names have been redacted coz I’m not sure what GDPR stands for but I think it’s probably something serious) for going back through and liking every single one of my posts. You’re the real ones.
(N.B. – please keep up the liking.)