unwifeable

Talking Dirty Taught Me I Am Terrible at Talking Dirty

<em>Crazy, Stupid, Love</em>
Crazy, Stupid, Love Photo: Ben Glass/Warner Brothers/Everett Collection

I’m not a porn person. I used to be, but then I discovered the trashy world of Kindle erotica — and a particularly ridiculous fetish: bimbo transformation.

I’ve spent my entire life trying to be the antithesis of a bimbo. But when I started reading stories with titles like A+ Bimbo Slut, From Brainiac to Bimbo, The Bimbo Clinic, and the sure-to-be-Pushcart-nominated Dangerous Curves: A Breast Expansion and Bimbofication Story, I discovered that the idea of doing the exact opposite of what I had done my whole life, like, really (giggle) turned me on. So recently, I made a decision to give this new fetish a go by trying to turn the slut up a notch in the bedroom.

After ten days of this low-rent role-play, here’s what I learned: I am so not cut out for the fake-bimbo racket.

They say that those who can’t do, teach. Here are a few of my most cringe-inducing lines. Please, I beg of you, learn from my mistakes.

Night No. 1: “Do you want me to show off for you?”
It’s a very sexy, very bimbo-y concept, isn’t it? But the problem with this line is that I’m no good at the whole showing-off part. Are you familiar with the long national nightmare that was Olivia stripteasing on
The Bachelor this past season? After I slipped on the stilettos and bent over, I looked a little like that.

Pat smiled cheerfully and put a supportive hand on my leg. “Just be you,” he said. I pouted in my sparkly lip gloss, at which point he stopped stifling his laughter. Not the reaction I was hoping for.

Night No. 2: “Do you think I’m a good girl?”
Now, this line is fine — tried, tested, and true. It’s obviously absurd: I’m 40 damned years old. But it sets up a sweet, trusting dynamic that is innocent and naïve. The problem was that I was acting like the world’s most aggressive submissive. Giving super-specific director’s notes with a heavy-handed verbal cue doesn’t exactly set the mood. We had been enjoying the delicious weighted tension of silence until, as is often my way, I got uncomfortable and set out to control it all. My husband ignored me and carried on. I got the hint.

Night No. 3: “I’ll do anything in bed for you.”
Too on-the-nose, Pat’s look said. The moment I heard myself break the silence, I realized I’d interrupted a moment of intense, loving appreciation out of an anxious impulse to divert attention away from my naked body — and onto my willingness to please him. Obviously, Super Slut Supreme is a fun role to slip into in the bedroom, but not at the expense of a true moment of vulnerability.  

Night No. 4: “Do you like that?”
This is a no-no for almost anyone over the age of 25 or who is no longer a virgin. It reeks of “How cool is it that we’re fucking, am I right?” It’s the verbal equivalent of prancing around in six-inch clear stilettos. What a ham.

Night No. 5: “I love dick.”
This one has its own brand of charm in that voracious-sex-monster-appetite kind of way. Except, if your tone isn’t perfect and perfectly timed — as in, if your partner isn’t getting off on the same brand of nympho kink that you are at the moment — it just comes across as “Hey, guess what, I’m thinking about other dudes!” I wasn’t. So don’t try to win Best Supporting Actress in a Bedroom Performance. It’s thirsty.

Night No. 6: “I love pussy.”
As Margaret Cho once said, “I’ll eat pussy. It’s just not my first choice. I’ll eat pussy, if they run out of what I really want. No more chicken? I’ll take the pussy.” Here’s what it comes down to: I’m saying this mainly to try to get my husband off, and it reads that way.

There are certain girls who really turn me on — especially strippers, whose moves can feel especially intoxicating and hey-the-whole-world-is-burning-down-let’s-fuck — but when you’re not authentically feeling something, don’t try to sell it in the room.

Night No. 7: “Do you want to punish me? Have I been a bad girl?”
First of all, anything that reads like bad movie dialogue (“He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?,” “I’m getting too old for this shit,” “Why are we whispering?”) is begging for that big fat red rewrite pen.

Secondly, it’s a request disguised as a question.  

And there’s a better way to do it — silently. Be direct. On hands and knees, arch your back and “present” to your partner. Getting on all fours has been effective since humans stood up on two legs. It’s animalistic, it’s primal, and it’s so much more of a turn-on than something that smacks of Urkel-esque “Did I do that?”

Night No. 8: “You feel so good inside me. You’re so hard.”
Sure, in general, guys like to hear this line. But that’s the problem. It’s like buying off-brand hazelnut spread: generic, boring, and sad. And WTF, the Nutella was right next to it on the shelf! My husband says every time a girl has told him “You’re so hard,” he was actually half-hard. “It read like false encouragement,” he said. “Like she was trying to upgrade me into a first-class erection. Like she was complimenting a shitty Christmas tree. Like she was marveling over a child’s drawing … ” He went on with metaphors for a while.

Night No. 9: “Oh my God, I’m going to come.”
This reads like a perfectly orchestrated faked orgasm. You know what a girl who is fake-coming says? “Oh my God, I’m going to come.” Do, don’t say.

Night No. 10: “I’m good; you can finish any time.”
By this point I had given up on my super-smutty antics, realizing that all of my attempts to live out some porno fantasy had just ended up driving a wedge between us. “That’s a terrible thing to say,” my husband said after he finished. “Want to know some more terrible things to say? ‘Are you fucking hard — or hardly fucking?’ ‘I like it; I don’t love it.’ ‘Is that really all you got?’”

I asked him for an example of a dirty-talk line that would turn him on while also playing into my bimbo fetish. He came up with this Shakespearean bit of poetry: “Use my fuckhole like a fuckhole.”

Of course, this presents another complication: No one likes laughter during sex. And that line is too over the top to not be funny.

All in all, I’ve realized that the best thing for me to do is return to the dirty-talk classics — by being clean. I’ve gone with the perversely polite, the weighted implication — etiquerotica, if you will. Like “Yes.” “More.” “Please.” And “Thank you.”

I’m done trying so hard — on either end of the spectrum.

So be on the lookout for my new Kindle single, From Braniac to Bimbo … to Vulnerable, Authentic, and Emotionally Open in the Bedroom.

It’ll get you super wet.

A Week of Spectacular Fails at Talking Dirty