Thirteen things I learned from Cosmo, Part … eh, whatever

If there were even 10% truth in advertising, one issue of Cosmo would make me a happy man. Think about it: June’s “75 Hot Mattress Moves” would have yielded (rounding down) seven new tricks to wow my wife. Seven!

. . . which just happens to be the exact number of “boundary-pushing moves all men secretly crave.” All men? We’ll see about that.

50 Ways to Be Closer to Him: will I find five that would work on me?

(Undoubtedly.

1. “Hey, come here.”

2. “You coming to bed, or what?”

3. “Rub this, why don’t you.”

4. (pointing)

5. “Ahem.”

Have I mentioned yet, I’m easy?)

Follow me below the fold for more Cosmolicious (their word, not mine) goodies.

1. At last, the perfect way to escape from a mind-splittingly boring committee meeting: the Cosmo Fake Call.

The next time you find yourself on a date from hell, desperate for an excuse to bail, let Cosmo Fake Calls rescue you! All you have to do is visit m.cosmopolitan.com on your cell phone’s browser and choose a faux “caller” (your boss, a girlfriend, even a French lover!) Within minutes, your phone will ring, and you’ll automatically be prompted on what to say and how to act. Each Cosmo Fake Call costs 99 cents.

Will this work on my Blackberry? Let’s find out.

Yes indeed, Cosmo Fake Calls is one option at Cosmo Mobile Phone (the above address). I can even get new wallpaper for my phone! I wonder if they have Eva Mendes? Okay, okay, no more foot dragging, I’m a-clicking . . .

Dammit! They don’t recognize my US Cellular Blackberry. Guess I’ll have to fake my own fake call.

Nursing Administrator (in perfect monotone): . . . but give us some time to drill down on these numbers. If we look at the rolling three-month average, I’m sure last month’s three hundred percent drop in patient satisfaction won’t look half this bad, and once we roll out our new Andes Mint On Pillow Program, we’re bound to —

brrrring, brrrring!

Dr. Hoffman: Hello? (covering phone, and addressing the hospital CEO and others) Excuse me. It’s my French mistress.

Dr. Hoffman: Yes, Blancheflour? Yes. Yes, dear. Yes, my pink orchid. Con — congested, you say? Just squirt a little neosynephrine up — oh, THERE, congested THERE. And I suppose there’s only one cure for it? Yes, mon belle colombe*.

Dr. Hoffman (to the assembled administrative critters): Will you excuse me? This is a medical emergency.

*No, I don’t know French, but I can make sh!t up.

2. Oh, no — they’ve caught me!

From the Editor, Kate White:

Guys are stealing your Cosmo! Yep, they’re sneaking peeks at the sex and relationship tips—essentially, they’re getting ammo for wowing you in and out of bed . . . . This month, we’ve rounded up a bunch of these cunning dudes and asked them to spill the bits of data that they’ve picked up from our pages and put into practice . . . . Frankly, we’re all for it. The more woman-smart they get, the more satisfied you get.

Yup, some of these are pretty entertaining:

“Dirty talk should never include clinical words from anatomy books . . . especially the V word.” — Mike, 23

Sorry, honey. I never meant to elbow you in the vomer. Did I accidentally pull out a few vibrissae? That’s gotta hurt!

“Not all women are looking to trap me into a relationship.” — Peter, 28

Got news for you, Peter. I suspect few if any women are looking to trap you into a relationship.

“There are real doctors who get paid to study sex on a daily basis. How do I get that job?” — Nikolas, 25

You can start by getting that GED, Nik!

3. I can’t wait any longer. What are the 6 Skills Sex Goddesses Master?

Wise as I am in the Tao of Cosmo, I’m willing to step out on a limb and bet that (A) suppression of the gag reflex and (B) a fervent interest in anal sex are not two of these skills. Am I right?

Oh, baby, am I ever. We have “She Knows How to Build Anticipation,” “She Makes Sex Fun,” “She’s Really, Really Enthusiastic” . . . oh, please don’t make me go on.

Admittedly, each and every one of these traits is a Good Thing. After all, who wants sex to be work? (Yes, yes . . . I do. But no one’s answering my ad for a professional cunnilingist.)

4. There is no such thing as bad sex.

In the sidebar to the preceding article, “Men describe why women fell to the bottom of their to-do lists.” Needless to say, none of these would be disqualifiers in my book. These are men with serious issues:

• “. . . a new girl showed up at my place wearing dominatrix boots and crotchless panties. I was turned off by her eagerness to make our first time so kinky.”
• “. . . she started telling me about all the XXX things she wanted to do to me in explicit language.”
• “A woman I was fooling around with was obsessed with my nipples. She licked and flicked them so much, they started to hurt.”

And so on. You know what these guys deserve? A hairy little bald dude built like Wallace Shawn kicking them in the nads and stealing their girls. That’s what they deserve.

Hmm. I wonder if they were all the same woman . . .

5. Prerequisite for being a Cosmo Cover Girl: no nude photos on the Interwebs 🙁

Not that Julia Stiles is my type (I mean, oy vey, she reads Ayn Rand), but it has become a sort of tradition for me. See cover girl, search for nude photos. The closest I can come to a naked Julia Stiles: these screen shots.

Do erect nipples count?

If they don’t, they should.

6. Does it pay to be jealous?

As I’ve mentioned before, Cosmo usually has one or two thoughtful, worthwhile pieces. Does it pay to be jealous? is one such article.

I’ve been talking/writing about this a lot lately — not here, but with friends and coworkers whose lives contain exemplars of the two extremes: the pathologically suspicious and the horrifically detached. Not surprisingly, Cosmo’s experts agree with me:

“Jealousy can be dangerous in large doses, but a small amount can ignite passion in a relationship and make partners feel wanted and valued,” says ear, nose, and throat doctor Douglas Hoffman Denver psychologist Jennifer Oilde, PhD. Simply put, getting a little worked up when some chick hits on your man says you care.

But what are us old married folks to do? Karen knows from my past history and present behavior that I wouldn’t cheat. Vulcan that she is, she has logically deduced that I am a low flight risk; and so, as much as I might want her to act a little jealous sometimes, she’s resolutely trusting.

Damn your logic, Spock!

7. Some young men have hollow bones.

Take a look at this month’s Guy Without His Shirt (yes, a regular feature. See what you’ve been missing?)

I don’t know about you, but I’m down with the soft-featured Eurasian look. I think it’s wonderful that Cosmo’s generating an appetite for this kind of guy, and that actors like Russell Wong, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Keanu Reeves are perceived in some circles as Teh Hawt. You see, in ten years or less my son will be prime mating material, and he Must. Provide. Grandchildren. Got it? I’m not about to lose out on the Darwinian lottery, so women had better start craving this look.

What bugs me are his stats.

6 feet tall, only 165 pounds, with muscles like that? What’s he eating for dessert?

8. I’ve found forty-nine fun ways to get closer.

Just like I thought: damn near every single one of these would turn me to putty. I must have the melting temperature of solid helium.

There’s number 4, take a shower together, or number 9, give him a head massage (not THAT head, silly). Or number 16, compliment each other when you’re in front of friends. Yes, nearly all fifty of these are surefire hooks.

All except one.

19. Come up with silly nicknames. Shmoopie and Muffin? So cliche . . . and sickening. Invent more unique pet names for each other that have some special meaning to you. For example, if he’s a smarty-pants, call him Noodle; if you like to shop, he can call you Racks.

If my Vulcan wife starts calling me Priapus, I’m ordering a brain MRI.

9. I’ve been a doctor too long.

It’s a cute ad campaign for Absolut Vodka (my favorite brand, by the way). Yeah, I get it — wouldn’t it be nice if guys got pregnant instead of women?

But that wasn’t my first thought. My first thought: dude has ascites, a consequence of alcoholic liver disease. (Note to those of you who frequently say, “I should know better than to follow your links!” You should know better than to follow my links. ‘Nuff said.)

Maybe not the best ad campaign if you’re advertising in JAMA.

10. I want to be a reader for Cosmo.

Page 120? Best feature ever: “Wild Sex Questions We’re Asked.” Some of these “peculiar” questions are pretty damned vanilla, if you ask me, like the guy with the foot fetish (not my kink, but it’s so ho-hum, you know?) or the woman who wants to know what happens when the carrot breaks off inside of you. But some of these questions push the boundaries of weird.

“Is it possible for semen to travel through clothing?” — Becky

“Is it weird that whenever my boyfriend and I start to get it on, we lick each other’s faces and he sticks his tongue up against my teeth?” — Anna

I can answer those!

(A) If the guy’s semen shows that much initiative, trust me: you want it to impregnate you.

(B) Anything is fair game in love. Anything. Except for biting his toenails and swallowing the clippings — that would be weird.

11. Meaty story number two: guys who become violent after a breakup. Stephanie Booth’s article is a keeper. She identifies two factors which push certain men to violence: loss of power, and a shattered identity. I suspect the former is more dangerous than the latter, but that’s just a hunch.

What are the warning signs? Extreme jealousy, volatile temper, aggressive charm (“His MO: to convince you and the people close to you that he’s a good guy”), and self-aggrandizement. “Showering you with huge amounts of flattery and attention early on, then becoming very critical, is another red flag.”

Scary stuff.

12. Girls Gone Naked: not as preposterous as it sounds.

“Modesty has become extinct,” Cosmo proclaims. Nudity is the new black.

Don’t believe them? A few weeks ago, a mom (my patient) gave her toddler a cell phone to play with. She had pictures on her cell phone, and the boy knew how to tab through them. She had to do something to distract him so that I could take my history and examine her.

So he’s racing around the room with this thing, tabbing through photos, and I catch a glimpse of skin, something blurry and close-up, an arm, perhaps. Perhaps. Zoom — stay away from the electronics! Zoom — don’t touch that! And then I see her naked ass on the cell phone. Then her breasts.

Thanks a lot, kid.

13. Oh, those seven “boundary-pushing moves all men secretly crave”? Wake me up when it’s over.

Cosmo does this to me every time: ropes me in with the promise of broken taboos and feeds me pablum like this:

Be a Voyeur

Place his hand on his penis, and tell him you want to watch him touch himself. Most guys are private about masturbation, yet many are secretly into the idea of doing it in front of a woman.

Um, helloooo? No. Jacking it with a woman right there in your bed is failure. Unless she’s helping. And then it’s not masturbation.

Cosmo, I don’t know about you sometimes.

***

If today works out to be anything like I think it’s gonna be, then we’re talking ugly. As in, tetched by the ugly stick. So ugly it would make onions cry. So ugly the cat tried to bury it in her litter box. UGLY.

You’ll get your linky lurve, you linky lurve-starved masses, but it may not be until the evening. Be patient with me. Remember to bring violins.

Carrie presents: Thirteen obscure (and not so obscure) movies

Kate has a thing for Vermont

Microsoar needs recommendations for a time travel book. Help him out.

(me, too — I’m curious to see what my SF readers recommend)

Who says hating ain’t fun? Dean’s Thirteen Top-Loathed Pop Songs

Lyvvie, I’m thinking of Steve Martin right now: HERE COME THE FOXES!

D.