On Adrian Colesberry

Carrying on for a bit with the trend of posts on books, I will be taking look at a book that has recently grown very near and dear to my heart: How to Make Love to Adrian Colesberry by Adrian Colesberry.

See? The cover is even nice and discrete. No one will know what you're reading about.

Now, with a title like that, you would assume that it must be a joke book. It is certainly a funny book, but to consider it nothing more than a humor book would be a major discredit to it. The book is, ostensibly, is exactly what it sounds like: a chronicling of everything the author likes in bed. Written well, that’s already enough to hook me, but I realize I’m not quite in the majority there. However, literally half the book is annotations. In these annotations, he tells anecdotes about his own life and relationships. Though the book is already full of information on him and his exes*, the annotations give an extra layer of depth and character to the author that make the book really feel like you know the guy.

And who wouldn't want to know this guy? Clearly the woman behind him does.

Again, though, I realize that I’m happy to just hear about other people’s sex lives for days on end without complaint, but that’s not for everyone. So what makes this book worth reading for everyone (and I do mean pretty much everyone)? Well, aside from being very, very funny, it’s genuinely informative. For women, There aren’t too many good sources for sex advice. Sure, you can learn Ten Ways to Turn Your Man to Mush from Cosmopolitan, or whatever the kids are reading these days, but really, does anyone listen to that shit? I really, deeply hope not. What this book does is lay out in meticulous detail everything a man likes.

Now, I don’t mean “a man” to mean “every man”. Surely you know, you savvy read-my-old-posts reader you, that everyone is different, and just because one person likes something doesn’t mean that everyone will. What’s so great about this book, though, is it tells you ALL about what one person likes, in a lot more detail and honesty than most women will ever get to hear. Further, the anecdotes provide a huge number of examples of how he found out he liked (or didn’t) like something in bed, and the stories are, aside from interesting, an insight into how you can find out these things for yourself. But you're already a guy, you say? I personally found his self-reflection enlightening for myself. The way he digs into himself is infectious, and it makes you want to consider things about yourself. You may not be that much like him, but even the things that are different are interesting, as most of them aren't necessarily gender-specific. In other words, much of what he says could apply to either gender, so so it's still super informative for men.

And look here: information can be sexy.

Another things that I find absolutely fantastic about this book is how up front Adrian is about his own peculiarities in the bedroom. I don’t mean kinky stuff (though there’s plenty of that, too), but, for instance, he can only come from missionary position, and even then not often. By the time I read this (halfway through the book), I was sure that he had to be the greatest lover of all time, and this threw me for a loop. Of course, not being able to orgasm easily has nothing to do with being a great lover. I know this, but this book cemented it more firmly in my head with such a concrete example. There are infinite more moments like this, where in learning about his (and his exes) differences you remember why sex is so great: because it’s not the same for any two people. Again, these are things we hopefully already know, but this book gets it across in a much better way than simply saying it outright (like I do). I’m going to quote him at length here as an example that struck me as especially fascinating of something that takes great self-awareness and honesty with one’s self to even recognize.

For Adrian Colesberry, lust feels a lot like aggression.** He’s been aware of this for many years, so he’s not going to get confused, like teenage boys often do, and say something mean when he really wants to touch your boobs. He’ll just touch your boobs (if and only if that’s already a part of your relationship). That way, you don’t get your feelings hurt and you do get your boobs touched. Win-win.Once you start fucking him, you might think that his feelings of lust would clarify themselves, seeing as they are being directly addressed, but just the opposite is the case: They get closer and closer to aggression in an asymptotic approach. Again, he’s in control of this and isn’t liable to get confused and insult your mother when he likes your mother fine but wants to flip you into doggie-style. He’ll just flip you into doggie-style without a word about your mother. And assuming that you enjoy getting vigorously fucked from behind, that’s another win for the both of you.

He then goes on to explain a number of different ways he gets this aggression out (dirty-talking, spanking, hair-pulling), etc. This is the sort of thing that I'm sure plenty of guys can relate to, but may not notice about themselves very easily. He is full of wonderful insights like this.

Finally, this book is great because Adrian is so sex-positive. Of course he would be, you think, given the topic. But he goes well beyond the call of duty. He doesn’t just fill his prose with parentheticals like the above, reminding you that consent is important. The line I have quote most often since reading the book is on the topic of orgasms. More specifically, he lays out all of his past girlfriends orgasms, ie if they happen, how they happen and how far into the lovemaking they happen. At this point he mentions he’s dated a few women who never came with him (some only came from masturbation, some just didn’t come) and that though he likes getting you off, if you have a hard time reaching orgasm, that won’t stress him out, and it shouldn’t stress you out either. Because, as he puts it, “fucking towards a goal creates a possibility of failure where there shouldn’t be one.” Absolutely genius.

On the same note, it would be very easily to treat his exes like chattel throughout this book, as he's cataloguing all of his sexual experiences with these women. Instead, he manages to treat them all with the utmost respect, even when using a story about one of them as an example of what not to do. ***

This, I realize, isn’t so much a book review as most of these posts will be. This is my outright telling you to buy this book. It’s really, really good. It’s funny, it’s disarming, it’s informative, and it will just make you happy to read. Do it.****

* And I mean full. He graphs them with various data sets early on, giving information like height weight and cup size. But it's not at all dehumanizing, like it could sound from what I just said. Far from it, he treats all of these women with the utmost respect. More on this later.

**Yes, he talks in the third person for the whole book. It’s annoying for about three pages, then you stop noticing. And actually, even though the book is by nature unabashedly self-involved, not seeing “I” and “me” written all over the place makes it seem less so.

***In fact, he uses in one (and only one) place in the book my new favorite term for all of his exes together: the pantheon. Exquisite.

****If you’re like me and just can’t get nearly enough of this guy when you’re finished with the book*****, he has a blog, too. It puts mine to shame, so I shouldn’t actually link you to it, but I’m going to anyway, because he hasn’t been writing for a few months, so he’s not competition. Go! It’s amazing.

*****Yes, I'm kind of in love. Yes, it may have caused some problems in other relationships for me.

images via amazon.com, blog.creativeloafing.com, blog.okcupid.com