Adler - How to f*ck a woman: *an insiders guide to love & relationships

Copyright 2015 by Ali Adler

All cartoons Liza Donnelly

Some of the cartoons previously appeared in the New Yorker.

The cartoon on page 10 is Liza Donnelly and

The New Yorker Collection 2008.

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Book design by Ellen Rosenblatt

Set in 11.5 point Giovanni

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ISBN: 978-1-60286-283-8 (e-book)

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First edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my kids. If someday you read this,

even if youre very embarrassed

I was the one to say it, know that it had to be said.

And to Elizabeth, my best and final.

Contents

Goodjust like that, but with me.

W omen arent really from Venus. They make up more than half the Earths population. You share your bed with some of them. Yet, even after years of friendship or working together or dating or fucking or love or marriage, most men still dont seem to understand some of the more basic things about women. And I dont blame you for not knowing this stuff, even if other women might. I mean, you cant guess what you never knew. And who are you supposed to ask? Certainly not women, because theyll judge you for your lack of knowledge.

You wonder why shes always worried about things that arent happening. You wonder why shes always cold when youre always hot. You wonder why she gets so upset over what seem to be little things. You dont understand why she never stops planning in advance or sniffing out strange odors that you never even smell. You dont understand why she needs to be in constant communication, when you just want a little goddamn silence.

The thing is, she wonders all these same things in the reverse about you. Plus the bonus enigma of why, after all these years, you dont seem to know how to touch her clitoris with the sensitivity it desperately begs for. So many of these mysteries are pretty simple once theyre explained, and Ive covered them in this book. The fantastic thing is, once you learn the answers to these questions and many more, you can begin reaping the benefits of your knowledge by living a much more peaceful life. One that includes way more fucking.

So. What are my qualifications? Well, I do know the parts because Ive owned the equipment all my life. I mean, if you were born with a Rubiks Cube in your underpants, youd sure as hell figure out how to master it over time. Im not only referring to the parts here; Ive also owned the temperament. It comes free with the vagina. Like the set of steak knives you get as a bonus if you act now. Plus, Im gay. So, just like you, Im attracted to women. Yes, Im also occasionally confounded by my own gender, but I am one, too, so I do have quite a bit of insider information.

The idea for this book came to me while I was a writer for a half-hour TV show. Often, these comedy rooms (the writers room) are a bastion of boys wearing hoodies in various states of elbow-holed disrepair. Testosterone, fear, competitive eating games, and flatulence fill the air. These types of rooms are all basically the same. An old conference table coated with SunChip- (ne potato chip-) greasy fingerprints and ghosts of old jokes (Frasier, your girlfriend is as young as this Beaujolais!). The room has been repainted so many times, its exponentially smaller because of it. Lots of guys sitting around in Dockers and pocket T-shirts, wholly unaware of any changes in fashion in the past decade, stuck in a time-bubble from before Banana Republic used gay-boys to do their ads.

Im usually the only female writer (maybe one of a few) in a room filled with a dozen people. And I have a very privileged window into a world that most women dont get to absorb. I sit with them, and we all share the most intimate details of our lives. Invariably these rooms devolve into discussions of when was the last time you had sex, who you did it with, whose wife/girlfriend allows them rear privilege, and how much would you have to be paid to eat out the bunghole of the pot-bellied location scout. (Did Gary bathe recently? How long would I have to eat it for? Does eating Garys asshole make me gay, or just a whore? Do I have to get him off with my hand, or would he do it himself? Tax-wise, do I have to declare this as income, or would it come in bricks of cash in a shoebox?) Conversations that dont usually come up at work.

At some point in this decadent unproductive soup, the boys ask me to share every single sexual experience Ive ever had. (Because of two pussies!) One show I worked on made this a regular thing. They asked me to regale them every Friday. Like a library story-time for pervy dudes who missed out on sex in their teens because they were studying for their SATs. They called it Lesbian Fridays, and they pined for it with the same kind of longing they had for dim-sum dumplings. Which, not so coincidentally, were also delivered on Fridays.

One of them always played moderator for this weekly occurrence of the discussion of my sexual escapades. He was like a no-sock-wearing, bespectacled, Jewish hipster Charlie Rose. One day, right before Christmas break, another one of the guys chimed in and offered a morsel about his own sexual prowess regarding his brand new bride: Last night, I fucked her hard. Played with her clit And then I watched as he pantomimed his accompanying action. It looked like he was rapidly flipping on and off a very loose light switch. Like the signal to come back from intermission at an amateur playhouse.

I was shocked. As a woman who has sex with women, and as a woman who receives sexual pleasure, no part of me identified with the extreme finger calisthenics that he was demonstrating. I didnt want to shame him, but this had to stop. I had to put an end to this and probably other horrific things that, I could only assume, were being perpetrated in the bedrooms of men such as this.

I brushed powdered sugar Donette crumbs from my mouth. Took a sip of Coke, swishing the fizzing brown liquid all over my teeth. I stood up, resolved to set them straighter than they already were. They wondered what was happening as I closed the door of the room. Some asshole balked: the one who always shoved a