Once again I’ve turned to Cosmo for inspiration. This month they’re hyping their guide to masturbation and so I’m doing my personal version. I haven’t read theirs, but I’m guessing it’s probably exactly the same since we’re both pretty much sex experts. Let’s get started, shall we?

Tip #1: Find your erogenous zones. Apparently you can have “happy time” with more than just your genitals and some people can get aroused when touched in weird places. So if you’re not able to have an orgasm it might be because you aren’t touching your eyeball hard enough.

Tip #2: Read something arousing. Almost every book has sex in it somewhere. The bible has it in the first chapter. If you don’t have access to books you can go open all the free fortune cookies at Pei Wei and just add “in bed” to the end of the fortunes. Mine says: “Be respectful of your elders…in bed.” Ew. That didn’t work at all.

Tip #3: Find somewhere private and quiet. Like a locked bedroom. Or a library.

Tip #4: Do what feels good. Unless it’s likely to end with something lodged in you that a doctor needs to remove. No one wants that. Except maybe the doctor because that sort of story really breaks up the day.

Tip #5: Skip masturbating and instead just drink a six-pack of Zima and sing along to Glee. You’re going to feel guilty either way.

Tip #6: Tell your husband that you need some quiet time for masturbation and that it would be really hot for him to think about you while you’re in there and then lock yourself in the bedroom and take a nap. He will love it. (Note: This doesn’t work when roles are reversed. If you tell your wife that you can’t help with the dishes because you’re going to go rub one out, you’re probably going to get punched. Right in the nutsack. I know. No one said marriage was fair.)

Tip #7: Don’t get caught. Unless you like getting caught. In which case, get caught. This tip is surprisingly unhelpful even for this column.

Tip #8: Go masturbate. Technically you could skip this whole column and go right to this tip, and we could have all saved a lot of time. I’d feel worse about this but honestly you’d probably have wasted that time masturbating anyway.