Don’t you just love the Internet? I mean, there’s hardly anything (information-wise) that you can’t find on the darn thing. And it’s all so very easy! You just get online, move around a little mechanical mouse, and type in a few key words. In fact, for most people, it’s almost impossible now to imagine the world without the Internet, and I for one can hardly start my morning without reading the top online news stories of the day and also checking to see if I have any emails that need to be answered. And that brings me to my little story.
Awhile back I was trying to figure out which online news story I wanted to click on first when off on the far right-hand side of the screen I happened to notice the words, “AOL Love and Sex Coach.” And when I glanced down below that rather provocative title, there was another very interesting sentence which read, “Great sex every time.” So, I of course did what every other red-blooded American male would do when confronted with the possibility of learning how one goes about having great sex every single time and clicked on those words to find out what I have been doing wrong all these many years.
Come to find out, the detailed information I was after was apparently going to take a whole lot more time and effort than I had hoped (you had to join an online workshop or something), so I just quickly skimmed through the information that was readily available and I learned that the AOL Love Coach had also written a whole book on the subject, “a multifaceted gem of her rich experiences working with couples at all stages of life’s most intimate journey.”
Geez, I thought to myself, here I am slaving away at the newspaper while there are apparently some really great jobs available out there like being a sex coach. But the more I thought about it, the more questions I seemed to have. For instance, wouldn’t a good sex coach who took his or her work seriously have to do much more than just write a book about it? I mean, I’ve never heard of a coach who hasn’t been on the field with his or her players. And would you get to have a whistle? It seemed to me that you would definitely need a whistle, you know, to stop the action when someone wasn’t doing something right, or worse yet, when someone was doing something really wrong. And if they didn’t give you a whistle, then a good megaphone would probably be a must. Plus, all the coaches I played for in high school and college had lots of assistants and you would think that a good sex coach would need to have their top assistants in the room with them. You know, someone to keep stats on a clipboard so that the players would know afterwards how they statistically measured up to the rest of their peers, not to mention someone to work the chalkboard and diagram all the really tricky stuff. And I would think you would also need someone to signal in specific moves and techniques. Oh, and you would definitely need to have a couple of easy-to-warm-up substitutes nearby in case one of your players got really tired or injured and needed a quick replacement. So, the more I thought about it, the more it was starting to seem like the first thing a really good sex coach would have to do is get used to working in a pretty crowded environment!
Anyway, I was mentioning all of this to a good friend of mine the other evening and he said, “Daryl, just take my word for it, there are no sex coach jobs out there, and even if there were, I’m sure they’re looking for someone a lot younger and better qualified than you!”
“Well,” I said, “all I know is that some lady on AOL is getting to be a sex coach, so there’s got to be openings for that kind of work somewhere else, too. I think it said she had a bunch of college degrees, so maybe a person can go back to night school or something to qualify? I’d even be willing to start out part time and work for minimum wage!”
“Did it say anything about references? You’re probably going to need some references, Daryl.”
“Yeah,” I said, “good references could definitely be a problem.”
“Plus, if you ask me,” said my friend, “you already have a great job.”
“Well,” I admitted, “I have been at the paper for more than 25 years now, so I guess it would be kinda hard to start a whole new career this late in my life.”
“Now that’s more like it,” said my obviously relieved friend. “You’re starting to think sensibly again.”
“But I wonder how much they pay a good sex coach nowadays?”
“Who knows?” answered my friend. “Probably not all that much, although I imagine some of the benefits would be pretty good. But you’re perfectly happy with the job you have now.”
“That’s true,” I admitted, “although it really would be great to have a job with a whistle. But come to think of it, I guess what I’m doing now is actually a lot like being a sex coach anyway.”
“How so?” asked my friend with interest.
“You know, one of those jobs that more or less ends up being a labor of love.”