The 7 Most Preposterous Sexual Positions People Claim to Use

I can only assume upright sex was invented as a way to shame the weak and enfeebled who are incapable of holding up an entire second person while engaged in coitus. I struggle to keep my mind on not embarrassing myself during most sexual encounters. The added stress of keeping another body aloft would be far too much, and the end result would likely be my severed dingle and her greatly bruised ass with my foot in it.

I don't feel like there are many upsides to sex in this position. It's possible the woman enjoys some kind of lofty, weightless feeling, being tossed about like a sack of potatoes, but as a guy who could probably hump a sack of potatoes if I were so inclined, I'm not seeing the benefit. In fact, I just went to my kitchen, grabbed a bag of potatoes and held it close, and no, nothing. Even if I had put my dick in it, I feel like it would have been a loss for me.

As far as my brain is able to help me recall, this was the third sex position I was aware of. I knew you could be on top, I knew you could be behind, then somehow I knew you could gobble each others' hogs. I'm sure I picked it up in a conversation in the schoolyard, or maybe in an errant porno magazine I had gotten my hands on. Whatever the case, the 69 is a staple of sexing, and I challenge you to find someone who does not have at least one sad 69 story. It may be as popular as hell, but every sex advice website lists this as a "least favorite." It's like the Nickelback of humping.

The problem with 69ing is entirely logistical. On paper it sounds awesome -- you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, then later we lick crotches. High-five! But in practice, you're kneeling and squatting over faces, things don't line up right, you miss your mark and have breathing issues, one of you forgets to hold up your end of things, a stray teste in the eye detaches a retina, and the list goes on. It's really impractical, reversing the natural order of things for the sake of some monkey shines.

Anup Shah/Digital Vision/Getty Images "You put what where? LULZ!"

Now, sure, if you and your partner are of a similar size and complementary shapes, this may work out like gangbusters. When you ease into a 69 a golden light may flood the room and a soft, warming hum may fill the air to comfort you both and egg you on in your oral machinations, but likely most people fit together like a bulldog trying to get into a chihuahua's sweater.

Of all the yard tools in your grandparent's shed, do any of them evoke fewer sexy feelings than the wheelbarrow? Is "barrow" a word you want associated with your personal lubricants? And if the name isn't bad enough, it's basically the same manual labor you'd be engaging in with an actual wheelbarrow, only now there's a penis in it. If you went to Home Depot and found a wheelbarrow with a dick in it, you'd not buy that wheelbarrow, because now, for all intents and purposes, it's a dickbarrow, and no one wants that.

The wheelbarrow presupposes that the man feels the need to do some lifting whilst doing his thrusting and the lady is so good at doing pushups that she's OK with holding one for the entire duration of a sexual interlude. It's work for both parties on top of the physical exertion you normally enjoy during sex. Now, maybe I'm a pathetically out of shape man-lump (there's no maybe about it: I'm like a sentient beanbag chair), but I can't even begin to imagine doing simulated yardwork while having sex. It starts with wheelbarrows, but where does it end? Pruning? Post-hole digging? Rototillers? My god, the testicular bruising would be unheard of.

They call this position the waterfall because, like the beautiful natural phenomenon it is named after, it will kill you. If you're unfamiliar and unable to discern the logistics based on the diagram, allow me to elucidate. The woman waits patiently on the bed for the man to shed himself of any sense of self-preservation. Then he crumples himself like a crash test dummy over the end of the bed, ensuring his sex bits stay rooted on the mattress while the rest of his body collapses like a drunken fool forever caught during his spastic solo time to shine on a mid '70s episode of Soul Train. His head rests on the floor so he's able to see what he did wrong in pursuing this position.

Justin Sneddon/iStock/Getty Images "Your bush is as robust as mine!"

The woman is allowed to have probably a solid several minutes of hobby-horse riding thrills before the man's ass slides off the bed and sends her crashing onto his already impaired carcass below or, assuming your sheets have a bit of texture and aren't letting you creep away so easily, she gets the same thrill she'd get if she sat on a pickle. The man, at this point, is likely blacking out from his blood having no idea which head it needs to settle in, but at least there will be some back cramping and maybe the ever-elusive ass Charley horse. Try massaging that one out without people looking at you funny.

The terrible reality of pool sex is far removed from the sexalicious fantasy. To start with, if you were going to rank lubricants, chlorinated water would be near the ass end of the list, above root beer but below Sriracha. The other issue deals with the ebb and flow of tides. As nasty as it is for you to groinally ingest pool water, so too is it nasty for you to hose down that pool with your internal squirtings. As an impartial third-party swimmer, I can say with absolute certainty that if I were swimming along and ran face first into a semen barge, I don't give a fancy fuck how much chlorine is in that pool, I'm going to shout obscenities like a drunken sailor stubbing his toe. No one needs to play Marco Polo amidst your love jellyfish.

byfins/iStock/Getty Images Gross.

Logistically, this is also a letdown because basically you're just having sex standing up again, which we already know sucks, but now instead of potentially just losing your grip and falling, maybe you drown your partner. Plus, when switching over to any of those fun-time mouth maneuvers that are so popular in the sexplay these days, you're going to be met with a mouthful of clammy, cold pool-waterlogged flesh that, yes, probably is tainted with pee.

I assume this position was invented by a man who hated his wife or by an exuberant Amish man who really loved his wife in the way he loved his work and switches religiously between this position and the ol' "barn raiser." It's a thin line, I'm sure. The gist of this position is that you're using the woman the same way you'd use a butter churn, which is basically a skinny barrel in which you plunge some manner of stick (in this case your dinky) over and over again to turn cream into butter. Of course, in the sex way the barrel is a vagina and the cream is, you know, sexing. If you somehow make actual butter, please see a doctor.

Fuse/Fuse/Getty ImagesSexy. And better for you than margarine!

There are some issues with this position, not the least of which is that it requires the woman to take her entire weight plus the force of man-thrusting on her neck. Why would that be appealing? Also, so the man isn't left out of the discomfort, his penis needs to be entirely vertical and at the 6 o'clock position, which is just about the opposite of where it should be at any given time. The penis, contrary to some beliefs, is not a Mr. Potato Head appendage.

Once you're in position and the woman has blood rushing to her head and her breathing somewhat obstructed, you just start pogo-sticking her for all its worth in the hopes that, somewhere down there, you're not stepping on her face and she's really digging your moves.