Thanksgiving is here, and before I get to sit at the family table, finally eating a meal that I don’t have to pay for or cook, I feel obligated to reflect on what I’m thankful for. This kind of musing is much different from the typical New Year’s resolution, where you promise yourself to change for the positive, and fully intend to, but end up not doing so when you realize how time consuming or alienating it is — think: losing fifteen pounds, drinking in moderation, not smoking, being nice to people, etc.

At least Thanksgiving is honest and your thanks can be as shallow or as profound as you want them to be. They can range anywhere from your new extensions or Xbox to… well, I guess I’m just too shallow to even comprehend anything else, sorry.

For instance, this year I am giving thanks for all the horrendous sex I’ve had. And by horrendous, I mean I would rather talk about blacking out and rubbing my own vomit in my face than having sex this bad. Trust me, I don’t like to relive it anymore than anyone wants to read about it. Well, you’d probably think it was all really funny and embarrassing and be all, “And you still do it even after that?” after every story. But that’s beside the point. I still do it, yes. But I do it incredibly well now, and in multiple positions.

I understand now that the only way to get better at anything is to realize how you sucked at it before. And this kind of realization is not a weak “Well I guess it wasn’t that great” kind of thing — you won’t learn from that. This needs to be a “What the fuck was I doing? Why didn’t anyone slap me?” kind of thing. Come on, the sooner you admit that it took your first boyfriend five months to convince you that blow jobs had little to nothing to do with blowing, the sooner you can heal.

In order to appreciate great sex, you must first appreciate bad sex. No one can dive headlong into great sex; it takes a few trial runs before you perfect anything, and, even then, it may take your partner even more. A few slips and a few “wrong holes” and the mood is somewhat less amorous, and if you lean back in the wrong way, sister, consider him out of commission for the rest of the night. Yeah, here’s one thing I’ll impart to you from my black box of bad sex: If you’re on top and he tells you not to lean back, that doesn’t mean sneak in one or two more degrees. It means stop before you snap it. I felt really bad after that one, but at least now I am extremely thankful that I’ve learned enough from that to not consciously do it again. Sorry to everyone I had sex with who blacked out.

The ultimate goal in giving thanks for bad sex is to be more comfortable with the activity and with yourself, which maybe isn’t as shallow as it first seemed. The more comfortable you are with yourself and the mistakes you’ve made, the more you can love yourself and the freer you are to let others love you. We all make stupid mistakes, and some of us have had more chances than others to make fools of ourselves. But you don’t stop trying to ride a bike if you fall off once. Get back on, bitch! And when you get better, ride faster. And when you get bored of that, do tricks. And when you get bored of that, try a unicycle. See where I’m going with this?

This doesn’t mean, in any sense, you have to grow up in the bedroom. Being comfortable with something doesn’t always necessarily mean acting maturely — I’m a person who moves through life in a broad comfort zone and most of the time I act like a six-year-old whose friend just made a fart noise. Hold on, I’m laughing at the thought. Just know that you’re going to look like an idiot at some point because everyone does, but don’t let that stop you from having a good time.

Sex is, above all, entertainment. Have fun, let your will be known, and don’t let anyone get you down. And if you queef, just laugh because that’s a fart noise, right? Yeah, I’m definitely six years old.

Daily Nexus sex columnist Nina Love Anthony has also learned that term “69” isn’t just a sexual position — it’s a number too. She had to learn that the hard way.