Girl on the Net

Regular readers might be aware that I have very strong feelings about sofas. A decent sofa can make all the difference in a romantic or sexual relationship. You need one that’s good for snuggling and fucking, and which will ideally allow you to do both of those things without either permanently staining it or giving yourself neckache. But until recently I hadn’t realised that I need to write the same rant about good beds for fucking and bad beds for fucking. So pull up a duvet, snuggle down, and I will tell you why furniture shops in the UK are ABSOLUTELY SHITE AT anticipating people’s sexual needs.

Beds ain’t just for sleeping

Let’s start with the obvious one: most people who buy a double or kingsize bed will at some point want to share that bed with someone else. Not everyone, of course, but most people. And of those people, a large proportion will want to not just fall asleep in a cushion of cosy softness: they will want to fuck.

I realise it might be hard to get a tube advert approved if your tagline is ‘Steve’s Mattresses Will Make You A Sexual Superstar’ but as yet I have seen very few mattress-manufacturers acknowledging the Sex Thing. I have found other websites that do, though, indicating that fuckability is an important factor in purchasing decisions for quite a few people, not just me. This mattress-sex guide is my fave, FYI.

So: mattress-wise, personally I want something really firm. Not rock-solid, so it’s impossible to sleep, but as solid as you can get without feeling like you’re sleeping on a flagstone floor. If I’m on top I need to get purchase, and I need to be able to bounce. I can’t bounce effectively if I’m kneeling on what is effectively suspension made of clouds. And I certainly can’t bounce if your mattress is covered in a layer of quicksand AKA memory foam AKA literally the worst thing ever to appear in my bedroom since the cat got scared and shat under my bed.

But mattresses are just a tiny fraction of my issue with beds here. More importantly is the frame.

Bed frames as chastity devices

I’m going to need to use some examples here, so I’ve picked Bensons for Beds at random because they were the first bed shop I could remember the name of. As you may be able to guess, I am in the process of buying a new bed. And LET ME TELL YOU it is not all it is cracked up to be. Mostly because people who design beds seem to have a personal vendetta against me, and the ways in which I would like to have sex.

Firstly, take a look at this bad boy. It’s faux-leather, which means an instant ‘no’ from me to start with. Although it’s slightly less atrocious than actual leather, it still has a whiff of plastic stickiness about it that makes me imagine my sweat shining in pools on the surface of the fabric. Like that single line of post-workout butt-sweat that you have to wipe off the machines at the gym.

More importantly, though, the headboard has absolutely nothing to which you can either attach anything or cling to in the grip of desperate passion. I appreciate this might not be everyone’s priority, but it is certainly mine, and I am baffled by the idea of a headboard that I would use for anything other than trying to hook your ankles behind while you’re being pounded hard enough to see stars.

Strike three against this bed: no footboard. Footboards are very important to me for the same reason it is important to me to have more than one size of saucepan: you can just fucking DO MORE STUFF with it. If you want to have sex where one of you is crouched on the edge of the mattress and the other stands on the floor while they fuck away at you, you can do that on the side of the bed. Adding a raised footboard gives you another height-level to play with, as well as a different (harder) surface over which to bend. This bed has a useful height footboard, and it’s cushioned for comfort so you don’t get bruises on your hips. Still nothing to attach cuffs to, though, so it’s not for me. There are many other beds with footboards too, but as yet I have not found one that is as perfect as my old bed was in terms of bend-over-and-spread-em height.

I want a footboard you can chain someone’s ankles to, stretching them out in a spreadeagle over the duvet cover, while you torture them deliciously with a powerful sex toy of your choice.

Bed construction and confidence

All the things I have mentioned above are possible to get in a bed. They are. They are rare to find all together, and even when you do you will come up against the gnarliest problem of all: how do you really, truly KNOW that this bed will be a good one to fuck on?

Naturally if you buy a bed on the internet you can read reviews, but as a general rule people are a little shy about writing ‘Five stars. We banged like rabbits and our bondage equipment fit like a glove.’ What’s more you can only really get a feel for things if you go and see them in person. You need to feel how solid the bed is, if it might become rickety over time. You need to test the height of the frame and mattress and see how it works with your and your partner’s respective heights: no point getting an excellent-fucking bed if the height is slightly off and one of you always gets cramp when you’re doing doggy perched on the edge of the mattress.

You need to know, too, if it squeaks. The greatest bed in the world can’t calm your anxious mind when you’re worried the neighbours are keeping time to each of your strokes.

All of these things are important questions. They are valuable and vital questions. Because you’re going to be spending a lot of time in your bed, and if you’re a fan of fucking then a lot of that time will be spent doing the one thing bed manufacturers never talk about: boning.

Though I realise this sounds like a defensive statement that I’ve written after being accosted by security in a furniture shop, I promise I don’t actually do this when I go bed shopping. I simply look longingly at the beds with wooden slats and high footboards, then I bump them with my hip and nine times out of ten they wobble like a newborn giraffe.

Demand good beds to fuck in

For the record, all I want in a bed is:

• kingsize, to allow for extra spreadeagling
• a mattress that lets me work whatever magic I can muster on a good day
• below-bed storage so I can have pull-out containers for all of my sex toys/kink equipment
• a slatted headboard for being restrained to
• a slatted footboard that is higher than the mattress that I can bend over comfortably with my thighs strapped open
• ideally a free test-drive with a partner of my choice, during which we can put it through its paces to ascertain sturdiness and squeakiness as well as bangability

The first few bullet points almost certainly exist in a bed that’s out there somewhere, unfortunately right now actually stumping up the cash for one feels like too much of a gamble. So come on, furniture retailers, it is time to solve this problem. The Science Museum does late night opening now, just for adults. London Zoo does it too. And if you’re enough of a celebrity I hear that Tandy’s in Norwich will oblige you as well.

It is time for late-night opening of bed shops. No children. No shaming. No shoes. We all get to go in and test out the beds however we want, checking their compatibility with our favourite sex positions, their squeakiness, and their all-round suitability. All we need is one furniture shop to understand the value of this, and the world will be a better place. A sexier place. A less squeaky place. And most importantly a place where I get to mimic sex positions without getting chucked out of Furniture Village.

WHO’S WITH ME?