“This really exists? Then why hasn’t anyone made a whole magazine or something about it ever?” I can picture bad relationships, bad love even, bad breakups, but not plain ol’ bad sex, unless you’re counting boring sex, and then if you do, boring sex rules half the world and is often the norm rather than the exception.

Bill pauses and puts his hand on my knee. “You want me to show you, Kenna?”

I laugh. Bill is my sweet friend, my occasional fuck buddy, and about as obsessed by sex as I am. He’s a Pig, as in the Year of, defined quite appropriately as a sensual hedonist. I know this fact because I work as a research librarian—an “information specialist” they call us nowadays—and I get so many calls this time of year about Chinese astrology that I keep the chart by my desk.

I hike my black leather skirt a little higher as Bill watches, smiling. “Hell, you know what I like, Bill. Most anything that moves.” To put it mildly. “What exactly would you do to show me bad sex? Take me home and fuck me for five minutes in the missionary position and then roll over and say good night?” I don’t talk this way around work, of course, where I wear my wavy red hair up in a bun, skip the leather, and leave the contacts home for my everyday glasses.

Bill offers to rape me if I want, which hurts my brain to think about. Everybody knows rape is not about sex. But if I let him rape me, is it still rape? I’m such a pervert I’d probably like it no matter what.

“More stories,” says Bryan across the table from me, probably trying to deflect the conversation away from rape, which nobody ever talks about but most everyone fantasizes about.

“Define ‘bad,’” Mary says.

I wave my little librarian hand. At least I can add this. “Did you know that the word ‘bad’ is thought to originate from two Old English homophobic words from about the thirteenth century—‘baeddel’ and ‘baedling’—which were derogatory terms for homosexuals, with overtones of sodomy?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I can’t recall why I remember this, but maybe it caught my attention because of those overtones of sodomy.

Everyone around the table goes on to tell their own “bad sex” story. The boys almost always involve not being able to get it up, but that strikes me as “bad imagination” or even “bad ego” rather than bad sex. Let’s face it, women know. They make enough cocks down at Good Vibrations to keep us girls happy for the rest of our lives.

I notice a trend. Every bad story seems to supply bare-bones details, a gasp, and then trails off into “and it was so awful….”