Girl on the Net

I hate my sofas. I hate them with every single fibre of my being. I hate them more because I should have anticipated the problems I have had with them, and left them to rot in Marks and Spencer where they belonged. With their shitty sleek design and their evil spindly legs. And their squeaky, ill-placed, uncomfortable cushions.

I cannot fuck on my sofa. And although this might sound like an entitled whine (it is), I want you to be able to learn from my mistakes if you can. Never ever ever buy a sofa you cannot fuck on.

The importance of sofas in a relationship

YES I KNOW that it sounds quite dramatic to hold sofas up as one of the key ingredients in a successful relationship, but I’m going to do it anyway. Sofas are vital tools of human connection and shared experience. A good sofa can make the difference between a couple who are naturally snuggly and a couple who rarely hug. Sofas are the bond that brings people together, enabling closer friendships, cosier evenings in, and occasionally the odd sex party when you sit two horny guests next to each other on a slightly-too-small two-seater and they decide to kick off the fun.

If you like fucking, then you need a good sofa. You need to treat your sofa choices as important ones: like when you pick a house or a job or a Netflix series. Nurture your decision. Give it time. Do not rush it. And above all find out if the damn thing squeaks.

Victorian sofas

A long time ago, an ex-boyfriend and I moved in together. We had a bloody great time doing all the nesting that you usually do when you first move in. Deciding whose pots and pans to keep, which linen to throw away and – thrill of all thrills – what colour of new towels you should invest in together. I quite enjoy that domesticity, if it comes in simple doses rather than in one full-blown rage-inducing trip to Ikea.

Unfortunately, when my ex and I moved in, we did not get to choose the sofas. The landlady chose the sofas. And I can only assume that hated sex and was adamant that none would happen under her roof, because those fuckers were white: pure white, like the driven snow. And they were rigid like the frame was made from steel.

No lounging opportunities. No cushions. No comfort.

My ex and I had previously been used to sharing studio flats and bedrooms, and consequently watched all our TV horizontally – a position from which we could easily switch to fucking if the mood took us. We went straight from casual fingering during an episode of The Wire to suddenly feeling like a polite Victorian couple. He would sit at one end of the sofa, and I would sit at the other end with my hands folded neatly in my lap. I couldn’t casually drape my arms around him any more, because it was uncomfortable. He couldn’t put a hand out to fondle one of my tits because it would be resting on a painful, rock-solid wooden rail. Neither could lie with their head in the other’s lap because there simply wasn’t the stretch space. The lack of physical contact got so bad that at one point I actually took up knitting.

Now I’m not saying that our crappy Victorian sofas were the sole reason we split up. I’m just saying that it doesn’t help. Not only do you miss out on the casual bent-over-the-arm-of-the-sofa sex that in an ideal world would be part of my daily routine, making up after a row is harder when you can’t have a big soggy make-up make-out as you writhe half-naked on the sofa.

Sofas: they are important. And after I’d said goodbye to that ex, I swore that I would never again submit to the tyranny of crappy hard-framed ‘modern’ design sofas.

Sexy sofas

Needless to say, I fucked up. I’d been spoiled by an intervening period of being single and living in my own flat: during this time I’d picked sofas that happened to be excellent to fuck on.

They were sturdy beasts – they made no squeaking noises even when I was bent over the arm and being railed like it was some form of apocalyptic punishment. The arms were wide and padded, so that after aforementioned vigorous railing I wouldn’t stand up and find massive bruises on my hips. The seats of the sofas were long, so a gentleman could lounge in them while I bounced up and down on his dick like I was competing in Olympic dressage and above all they were comfy.

And sure, one of the cushions had a suspicious stain from this one time I Skyped a dude and leaked quim on the upholstery, but by and large they were excellent. They were fucking good sofas for fucking.

Then I got cocky.

“Sure,” I said to my other half when we were staring at something vaguely modern and nice-looking in Marks and Spencer. “I think if we get it in that colour it’ll go nicely in the lounge.”

He nodded and made comments about the look, like a proper adult human. I measured them with a tape measure and made notes like a boring twat. At no point – NO POINT – did either of us suggest waiting until the sales staff had gone then trying out a couple of sex positions.

Because we were cocky and had forgotten the golden rule of sofas: they are for comfort and fucking above all else. It doesn’t matter what pattern the upholstery is if you can barely bring yourself to writhe naked on them. And design choices will be the last thing on your mind if the fucking thing squeaks like a battered badger when you’re just getting into a Saturday night fuck.

Once we’d got the sofas installed, and had spent a week or two ‘using’ these sneaky, uncomfortable monstrosities, I could tell something was wrong.

“Mate, be honest,” I said to him. “How do you feel about the sofas?”

“Honestly?” he replied. “They’re shit. But we’ve bought them now and I’m not sure we can take them back.”

“Shall we…?”

“Never speak of this again?”

And we made a pact. Never would we mention just how much we hated our sofas. We would simply continue to sit on them, praying that some haphazard guest would accidentally spill an entire bottle of red wine or smash one of them to bits in a drunken stumble, thus giving us an excuse to toss them out. We would try and fuck – squeakily – on those Saturday nights when we were too horny to care if the neighbours were in, and we would sometimes put a sheet down on the living room floor so we could get really messy while we watched porn on the big telly.

We would, in short, never speak of our shitty sofas.

There are two possible reasons I’m writing this post, given the vow of secrecy to which I have sworn.

1. I cannot bear to break my USP of being open and honest about all parts of my sex life: including the shitty sofa parts. I truly believe that talking more about fucking will help fuckers everywhere gain acceptance for their kinks and quirks, and will help to quash the judgmental bastards who would tell us how to live our lives. And that sense extends to sofa-based ranting too: I feel like my silence on the matter means the sofa-tyrants have won. And we are resigning ourselves to a life of rigid Victorian posture and knitting.
2. The sofas have degraded our relationship to such a point that my promises to him no longer matter. I care less for the secrets we have decided to keep together than I do about shouting my warning to you all: for the sake of all your relationships – get decent fucking sofas.