Title: Position of the Day: Sex Every Day in Every Way Author: Nerve.com Publisher: Chronicle Books Publish Date: August 2003 Pages: 376 Genres:: How-To,Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

Rating:

Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey of Nerve.com bill themselves not as experts or “sexperts” (a phrase I’ve always found too cutesy for its own good) but as “near-experts.” They go by Em & Lo, and their author photo, instead of being studio-perfect and polished, shows the two of them, their hair tousled, smiling for the camera. This sense of playfulness is the strong point of their “Position of the Day” on Nerve.com, and also of this book, which is filled with a year’s worth of clever little line-drawings depicting a sex position for every day.

In their introduction, Em & Lo note that they never intended these positions to be tried and tested in the bedroom. Most are acrobatic; some are downright impossible, and an inordinate number seem to make use of a rocking chair, which isn’t exactly a piece of furniture I associate with young hip people having lots of hot sex. Which is to say: if you’re looking for practical sex advice, you’ll probably have better luck elsewhere.

If, however, you’re looking for wit and amusement, you’re in luck. Each position (there’s one position per day, and the book covers a calendar year) has a name, usually a clever one. There’s “The Mud Flap,” which entails a woman straddling her partner, her weight resting on her hands, like those “sexy” cartoon women on the mud flaps of eighteen-wheelers and pickup trucks roaring down the highway. There’s “The Ikea Sale,” which makes use of not one or two but three pieces of furniture: a man sprawls on the edge of an armchair with one foot on each of two kitchen chairs, while his partner grabs his thighs and raises and lowers herself. And then there are the impossible positions: “The Quasimodo,” with a woman holding her bigger and taller male partner on her back, or “The Cirque du Soleil,” which makes creative use of rings and what appears to be one of a set of uneven bars. Which reminds me: I should mention that these are faceless line-drawings we’re talking about here, white on black or grey, or black on white. Beds and desks are simple outlines, and it’s not always easy to tell exactly whose limb is going where.

While the positions’ names are mostly pretty good (though some names struck me as better than others: “The Torville and Dean” strikes me as funnier than “The Reupholst-her”), they are, as you might suspect, not all stunningly original. Coming up with three hundred and sixty-five sexual positions, even with the use of furniture as props, is quite a task. “Raising the Flag” looks exactly the same as “The Knee High,” and “The Gym Membership” looks just like “The Cirque du Soleil.” And in the world of this book, lesbians seem to almost never do anything other than oral sex. (Yes, there are some girl-on-girl and boy-on-boy poses, along with a few illustrations of group sex. Most of this book, though, is hetero.)

But, as I’ve already said, this isn’t supposed to be an honest-to-goodness earnest sex guide. Rather, it’s one of those books that you give to friends or significant others to make them giggle. This book, like most something-or-other-a-day books or calendars, might seem repetitive when you read it all in one sitting, but spread out over the course of a year, might be a good way to start each morning (or end each night) with a smile.