If Only Mark Foley Had Read Em & Lo...

Considering the current state of affairs in Washington, it's especially hard to get sex off the brain this morning. We long ago learned that birds do it, bees do it, and now, through an AOL IM weblog, we know Republican Congressmen in charge of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, do it--nay, "Spank it!"--too.


But children, sex (when not forced on a 16 year old page by a repressed 52-year-old Republican) can be quite a glorious thing! This is not to say that even after one hits the age of consent that all of its mysteries are revealed to us. Even if you figure out what goes where, sex and everything that relates to the excitement of those vital organs, can remain a perplexing and difficult topic. Fortunately, two of my very good friends, Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey, aka Em & Lo, have just come out with two amazing new books that help explain all the ins and outs of REC SEX and SEX TOYs.

No doubt you're already familiar with Em & Lo's bona fides, but if you're not, a brief resume: Em and Lo have worked together for the past 7 years developing their informative but fun brand of sex talk. They are the authors of The Big Bang, Nerve's Guide to Sex Etiquette, and the bestselling Position of the Day. Not only were they Nerve.com's first sex advice columnists, they actually CREATED the form for Nerve personals. They've been on The Today Show, CNN, MTV, Discovery Health and other shows and they're currently contributors to NEW YORK magazine. In other words, not only do these girls got it going on, they know their shit cold (hot?).

Anyway, with Chronicle Books they have just published these two new must-reads. Rec Sex is an A to Z Guide to Hooking Up. For instance do you know what the Groucho Marx Syndrome is? It's "Not wanting to belong to a club that would accept you as a member-i.e., finding it a turn-off when someone likes you too much, or wanting only those you can't have." (p. 73) (ed. note: I knew that one already.) Well how about "Google Goggles"? Turns out, those are "The rose-tinted glasses through which one views a new paramour after an exhaustive Internet search on them yields very impressive results." (p.72) (ed note: I've found this can work in reverse, too.) But these are just two examples--and just from the randomly chosen letter "G." The book provides almost 200 pages worth of these essential definitions, and let's be frank, in a sexual situation, ignorance isn't bliss, it's just embarrassing, so the faster you can get up to speed on your vocab, the better your orgasm. I'm just saying...

Now speaking of orgasms, their other book Sex Toy, is an A-Z Guide to Bedroom Accessories. And by "accessories," the girls do not mean duvets and dust ruffles. I'm guessing readers of this blog are already a bit knowledgeable about sex toys, so I won't go into what a sex toy is per se, but I will tell you that even if you're educated on such matters, as I realized after reading this book, there's A LOT left to learn. A Lumina Wand is not something Harry Potter would use (unless Hermoine asked him to). I, personally, had never heard of honey dust, and now I can't believe I've gotten to this ripe age without trying it. This book is full of incredibly useful info and since Chicago's Berman Center found that "women who use vibrators experience higher levels of sexual desire, higher levels of sexual satisfaction, and higher rates of success in achieving orgasm," well, if you're a woman, you pretty much owe it to yourself to buy thee this book.

If you want more information on Em and Lo and all the stuff they're up to, definitely check out their website, www.EmandLo.com. They have information on where and when they'll be doing book readings in various cities, they have fun sexual horoscopes, and they often have questionnaires for you to fill out to help them research their upcoming articles.

I can't say enough about these two smart, funny women. Their writing is as seriously informative as it is seriously hilarious and if you're looking for some outstanding bedtime reading, these books can't be beat (although I'm sure they can suggest something with which to beat yourself if that's your thing).