The human body can produce upward of 200 different sounds, and none is less appropriate in a sexual situation than a fart. Farting during sex is like breaking out your Three Stooges impression during a funeral or trying your hand at some of your favorite movie serial killer quotes while on the toilet in a mall bathroom.

It is with no small amount of irony then that the very act of having sex is also easily described as the act of hammering large quantities of air into a tight, moist space such that massive, squeaky farting will occur shortly thereafter. It can't be helped, and I submit that no one told you this prior to your first experience. For guys, this is actually a kind of added bonus to the whole event, like dinner and a show, a sort of fun, theatrical end to the night's festivities. For women, it's like finding out you're adopted and your birth parents are Danny DeVito and sasquatch. Well, that's not fair; I like to think one or two of you ladies, when first presented with a post-coital q***f, clapped your hands delightedly and laughed like you just saw outtakes from Step Brothers. But I suspect I'm right when I assume that most of you reacted with something that placed you between mortified and suicidal.

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"Oh my gawd! I could just die!"

The sad (or happy) truth is that the q***f is as much a part of sex as bunnies are a part of spring. They pop up and wiggle their little noses and frrrp in that cute way they do and it's enjoyable. We should love those flappity little air bunnies. And we would if anyone had ever let us know they were going to be joining us.

Even back then I understood there was a difference between me and this latter-day He-Man. This guy would have fucked a hole in an oak tree. But I had no idea at the time what a marathon sex was going to be. Nor did I realize until some years later that cheap-ass pornos will loop footage to make the whole session seem longer, which in turn makes you feel worse for not measuring up when you compare yourself.

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"I hump better than you do anything."

At the moment I seem to have outed myself as a dude who has no sexual stamina, but I don't feel that's a fair assessment. What is fair is saying that people in porno seem to eat sandwiches laced with amphetamines and Viagra all day every day so that all they can do is just thrust madly at something, and once a director applies an orifice to their wang, they call action and the ensuing hour pretty much takes care of itself. I'd happily have sex for an hour straight if I could, but I'm not even convinced it's humanly possible, and not just because I'd have an aneurism and die on the poor girl at the 40-minute mark, because I think at 30 minutes her vagina would be squealing like a worn brake pad at the end of a high-speed chase.

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Pictured: Some kinda metaphor or whatever.

Of course, you can have a sensual, sexual time that spans an entire day if you so desire, but you need to realize it's a lot of stopping and starting. You're going to need water nearby for when you get dehydrated, and maybe a fan or the AC on if it's warm out so you don't knock yourself unconscious after the insane workout you're about to get. If you're doing the sexing right, it's going to get sweaty. Way sweatier than in porno, and way, way sweatier than sex scenes in Hollywood movies, which must all be filmed in meat lockers.

Once you hit your stride, it's a hell of a workout, and sure, you can go for a long time, and I'm sure my fortitude is shamed by ubermensch all around the world, but damn is it surprising when you get into it and realize it's like trying to do all the parts of a triathlon at once. So maybe it's a good thing that Ron Jeremy is out there to ameliorate the situation and make it seem like there's at least one guy who needs to eat a sandwich in between thrusts besides those of us not fortunate enough to find our niche making vaguely unsettling pornographic movies.

You can never understand just what this means until you've walked into a room right after someone has had sex. In an intellectual way, you can probably wrap your head around the idea of sex stank -- you have two people sweating and mashing their genitals together, that's got to create some kind of musk -- but it's as close to reality for you as the chupacabra is. Someone can tell you about it, but come on. That s**t ain't real, is it? Oh, it's real. Real clammy and kind of thick.

The issue with sex stank is multifaceted. For one, you won't notice it nearly as much as everyone else will. It's like spray painting in your basement -- eventually the fumes start cooking your brain and you don't notice it anymore. But if someone else walks in, they'll reel backward in terror as the humid beast grapples with their olfactory bulbs like a wrestler made from ass sweat.

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"I am the great El Swass!"

You have to appreciate that a serious sexual situation is going to have fluids that are born deep in your insides just rolling out over your thighs, sluicing through your ass crack, and settling on your bean bag chair. As the humidity rises, so too does the funk in whatever closed space you're working in, to the point that, when you open the door, it's like discovering an ancient mummy's tomb and the curse is being set free. So remember that if you're trying to be discreet and/or anyone else is likely to enter your room in the next five hours or so, because they're going to know and very likely be able to ever so slightly taste it at the back of their throat.

To clarify the point I'm about to make here, this only occurs when you're not using condoms. If you're the safe sex type, you may have yet to experience this, but my keen sense of observation tells me it's a treat. I'm talking, of course, about the spillway. That slow, creeping ooze, like the Blob easing its way out of the alley next to the movie theater to consume panicking victims on the street.

It stands to reason that what goes up, or down, to the side, whatever, has to fall victim to gravity eventually, but it's doubtful any of us considered this before that first time. And then it happened, like a pudding cup that sprang a leak, and since the sex is all over, it just seems like a nuisance at that point, dribbling away and making you scramble for some kind of tissue or errant T-shirt to plug the gap until you can get to the bathroom.

There are a lot of criticisms levied against porn, some valid and some not, but one of the most overlooked is one perpetuated by porn but established thoroughly and pervasively throughout the entirety of the modern world via all branches of pop culture -- the idea that men want, need, and think about sex at all times. I'll be the first to admit that, yes, I think about sex a lot. Obviously I'm thinking about it right now. This morning I made a bagel, and when I spread cream cheese on it, I giggled to myself, because I had the word "spread" in my head and then I made it dirty. Any time I have to pump, tweak, juggle, stroke, poke, slam, jab, thrust, squeeze, lick, slurp, or degrade something, I have pretty much the same reaction. I have a tainted soul. That said, some nights I'm just beat down tired. Lots of dudes are. Some guys have bad days, or stressful days ahead, or myriad distractions that mean, at any given moment, maybe they're not thinking about sex, and yes, realistically, they don't even want sex at that moment.

The idea that a man doesn't want sex at any given time, despite sounding perfectly normal on paper, is so against what we're led to believe through this goofy pop culture condition that says men think about sex every seven seconds or whatever the myth of the week is, and so against the porn staple of a dude just having a hard-on nonstop, that we've come to accept it. A woman can, and I assure you she will, take it as an insult if you don't want sex. Why don't you want it? Men always want it. What's wrong with her? I was literally punched in the face, full-on fist right in my mouth, by a girl because I wouldn't have sex with her once. I couldn't. I'd recently had surgery and I literally couldn't. She didn't see how they were related and assumed there was something wrong with her and I was an a*****e for leading her on that far.

The sex drive of a man is pretty much the same as that of a woman. Sure, some dudes will always be ready to go, just like some women are. But if a woman can imagine a time when she wouldn't feel like having sex, then so too can a man. And it happens. But it's so antithetical to what we believe about the idea of men's sexuality that you risk a punch in the chops over it.

Ladies, don't take it personally. Plus, I probably do want to have sex with you. But maybe something awful happened to me. Please check back in a week.