No, I like vertical sex and comfort with my athletics. A good fuck chair is itself a lover. It's yielding yet reliable, foreign but anthropomorphic. Chairs have knees and ankles, open and closed arms. Some have shoulders and ears, claw feet, and "hairy hooves," "members," and "splats." From the humanoid to the porno-comical, chair parts refer to body parts and the things we do with them. They're even modified to suit the intricacies of life's needs. The office chair and travel seat, dentist and hairdresser chairs, the invalid's chair and the "throne"--these came into being over the last three centuries, melding form with function, for proletariat and dignitary alike.

And no one does status, comfort and furniture like the French aristocracy. The seventeenth century Rococo period was the heyday for French furniture. Versailles was headquarters--the Playboy mansion of the fuck furniture genre. Swollen fauteuils, "bombs" they called them, were armchairs created for the robust man needing a good blow job. For her there was the Duchesse, a stuffed square stool flanked by two attached armchairs. Cunnilingus in comfort. The Bergere Voyeuse was a couch with an upper railing, separate and padded, that guests could rest their elbows, butts, or other things on while watching the action below. And the Voyelle kept the railing idea but shrank the seat--a chair you could straddle for double-barrelled fucking, giving head, and keeping your hands libre. Inventive!

If you're considering making your own fuck furniture, the eighteenth century can be plundered for a few more ideas. As attitudes of lounging became important, designers explored all variations between sitting and lying. Madame Recamier's day bed, fashioned by Jacques-Louis David himself, had head boards at either end--well suited for wanking sessions face to face. The tete-a-tete was a loveseat with a twist--its S-shaped back snaked through the middle of it. Furniture moved away from the walls to become interesting centrepieces, popular in brothels. The Paphose, named after the birthplace of Venus, was a kidney-shaped couch. A rounded ottoman with central backrests for group clusterfucking was known quaintly as the Conversation.

But the prize for frisky furniture goes to the Siege d'Amour, designed in 1890 for the Chabanais, a Parisian maison-de-tolerance. A richly upholstered, two-tiered chair, it includes two sets of stirrups and sweeping, gilded art nouveau posts for handgrips. This positioned two women opposite one man (that man often being the visiting Edward VII), or more broadly speaking, two bottoms and a top.