What I Enjoy in the Bedroom (a bit of NSFW standup i'm working on)

My favorite position when it comes to sex is, and I realize that this might surprise many of you, the position known as missionary.

Hear me out.

I know that many of you, simply from the fact that you know me and follow my work, likely run with a fairly hip, bohemian crowd, and as such the majority of you like different things, very different things in some cases. And trust me, I understand and completely respect that. That’s beautiful. Your bodies and their myriad sexual desires are beautiful and deserve to be celebrated, because all bodies and all sexual desires, within certain bounds of sanity and consent, deserve to be celebrated, and as such I’d be the first to raise a glass to yours. The Heart wants what it wants, after all, and I would never deny The Heart that which it desired.

On an unrelated note, I’ve nicknamed my penis “The Heart” recently, I think it’s going really well so far. But that’s neither here nor there.

The point is, while I respect, indeed applaud, whatever you might indulge in in the privacy of your bedroom or neighborhood sex-dungeon, for me it will always be missionary style sex that at the end of the day drives me wild. I don’t know why, it’s more an instinctive desire than an intellectual one. And really, shouldn’t all sexual desire be too primal and visceral to properly put into words? Some aspect of missionary sex puts me over the edge, and perhaps it’s best simply to enjoy what I enjoy and not put too much thought into it. Because it’s sex, and sometimes over-thinking the matter only detracts from enjoyment of the act.

So no, I can’t quite verbalize precisely why I love missionary sex the way I do, I just know that I do.

I love every part of it.

Travelling around the world.

Experiencing different cultures.

Meeting interesting new people.

Having sex with them.

Trying to convert them to the type of sex that I enjoy.

And let me tell you, the type of sex that I enjoy does get weird. Converting people to it isn’t always easy to do, however much I might think they’ll love it if they just keep an open mind. Missionary sex can be long, hard, sweaty, punishing work, it can exhaust you physically, mentally AND emotionally, and leave you so drained that you can barely move. There are moments when you feel you can go no farther, can take no more, where the end is nowhere in sight, when the sun’s about to come up and you suddenly realize that you have to be at work in two hours. And in moments like that, yes, I’ve been tempted to give up missionary style for good, tempted to accept that I’m growing older, that I can no longer behave as though I were eighteen years old, and put missionary sex aside in favor of other, less taxing erotic pursuits.

But, when my gasping new convert is there, on his or her knees, in front of me, hands in the air, eyes wide in a mixture of shock and ecstasy, sweat glistening across fevered face, head thrown back as though to scream “Hallelujah”, and I know I’ve made a new believer, it makes the whole process worthwhile, both spiritually and, every bit as important, physically.

Is my attitude toward sex and sexuality old fashioned? Perhaps a tad. Does it carry with it certain parochial, Eurocentric colonialist baggage? It might. The Heart does, nonetheless, want what it wants, and by The Heart I again mean my penis, and I apologize for none of my desires in any of their bizarre, twisted glory. Nor should I. When you love something, after all, it’s natural that you’d want to share it with the world, and I in no way regret one moment of my time spent evangelizing.

I’ve loved every moment of it.

That’s why I love missionary sex, and why I make such a good Sex-Missionary, one who wears the title and all that comes with it both freely and proudly.

I likely always will.

Now, if you happen to have a moment to talk further about this issue, may my associate and I come in?

How I Found Religion

It was, all things considered, a pretty good set.

Which shouldn’t have surprised me, I’m a pretty good comedian. I’m not amazing, but I’m funny, and I can kill at a local club easily enough. Could probably middle for somebody funnier than myself too, were I inclined to live in hotels in small towns nobody’d ever heard of whilst doing it. I’ve clocked a bunch of practice on stage from various gigs, improv, musical theater, other standup clubs, so all in all yeah, there should have been nothing surprising about the fact that I did pretty well.

I was, nonetheless, surprised, because I’d been seriously thrown off my game by a gentleman sitting at the back of the house as I took to the stage, and I’d worried for a moment or two if I’d be able to get it back in time for my fifteen minutes.

He didn’t DO anything to throw me off my game, I suppose. He was just… off-putting, somehow. Distracting.

He was huge, for starters. The size of two men, broad and strong looking, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was taller than me by a good six inches. I’m hardly tiny myself, but there was no comparison. Also: I’ve never seen a guy actually go out in a toga. I mean, drunken frat-style house parties I’ve seen guys in makeshift togas, but his was no bed-sheet, it was a full-on toga, and this was no house party. It wasn’t even House Party II.

So: Three-hundred-plus pounds of imposing presence clad in a toga, sitting at the back of the room as I hit the stage to do my set. Yeah, I was thrown off my game.

Still, I’m a performer, and while I can be thrown off my game no amount of batshit-crazy at the back of any room is going to KEEP me off it, so I launched into my set.

I compared myself to Jesus Christ (unfavorably), I accused newborn babies of being racist, and I closed with jokes about the genocide in Darfur. I got laughs, I made people profoundly uncomfortable, overall it was, like I said, a pretty good set.

By the end, I’d nearly completely forgotten about the weird giant dude sitting at the back of the club. By the time I hit the bar for my first drink of the evening, I was feeling pretty good about the night.

However, before my drink could arrive, a huge hand was placed upon my shoulder and I was spun around to face the giant, weird dude. Or to “chest” him, I suppose, since I was right about the height difference. He was easily seven-four. Maybe taller.

“Greetings!” His voice boomed, and I was shocked by how loud he was. He cut through the club’s sound system like it was nothing. “Your comedy has pleased me greatly this night, and I extend my hand to you in congratulations!”

He extended his hand to me. In congratulations, I suppose. Intimidated, but always willing to be told how entertaining I am, I took it, realizing as I did how much larger than my own hand it was.

“Erm, thanks.” I responded. “I had a great time up there. Glad you liked it too.”

“Oh, I did. You have done me proud.”

It sounded off, in a way I couldn’t quite place. “Done you proud?” I asked, hoping for clarification.

“Yes, proud indeed! Allow me to introduce myself, I am Dionysus, the ancient God of drink, and of song, and of laughter and madness. And, while temples to my honor no longer exist upon this mortal plain, I am everywhere that drink flows freely and men exchange japes and barbs! Your comedy this night has done me a fitting tribute, and it only seemed fitting that I congratulate you personally!”

I have no idea what it was, maybe the twinkle in his eye, maybe the timber of his voice, maybe the fact that I was slowly growing to realize that I appeared to be the only one in the club who could actually SEE this man, but I believed him. This was, perhaps, a survival strategy my subconscious kicked into play to stop me going mad.

After all, either the ancient Greek God Dionysus was congratulating me for a fifteen-minute standup set at a small, local club, OR I was losing my mind. And like I said, I do love being told how entertaining I am. Sometimes, things happen in this life that you can’t explain. And when they do, you just gotta roll with them.

“Well thanks!” I responded, beaming. “Heady praise, considering who it’s coming from.”

“Indeed it is, my small friend, indeed it is. And I too would “tap” Zooey Deschanel. Now, drink with me!”

It sounded more like a commandment than an offer, but what could I do? I do sing, I do drink, and I do jape. I’ve been called insane more than once, both affectionately and in anger. Were ever a deity purpose built for my lifestyle, it was the one standing before me. How could I deny the request?

“A jug of Keith’s, barkeep” I called out in my best old-timey prospector voice, “And two shots of Jagermeister!”

And that’s all of that night I can remember, so I assume that, in terms of the “drinking” and “madness” portions of the evening, that first snowflake turned into a blizzard.

But I will tell you one other thing.

When I woke up the next morning, I had no hangover. At all. My apartment was fairly trashed, as though I’d tripped over every single piece of furniture in a drunken stupor over the course of the night, and the remains of a failed attempt at cooking 4am eggs stained the bottom of a frying pan in the kitchen, but my head was clear, my stomach was settled and I felt absolutely fine. Better than fine, in fact. I felt like I could take on the world. Energized, both physically and creatively.

I wound up spending most of the day finishing a short story I’d been tooling around and writing a good ten minutes of new material about how the city of Winnipeg uses the souls of the damned as an alternative energy source for my next standup club night. And as I did, I realized: I’d not just been congratulated on a set well executed, I’d been granted a great boon. Freedom from hangovers. Days of creativity to follow nights of debauchery for the rest of my life, and no more to have to choose one over the other.

He was a relatively minor deity, even back in ancient Greek times, but you’ve really got to hand it to Dionysus.

He knows how to take care of his people.