“Talk dirty to me,” I whispered.

My boyfriend at the time blushed and began to stutter.

“Um. Well I might like to put my tongue on your cheek; I mean no, your ear. Am I doing this right?” he stuttered.

He rambled on like that for 10 minutes before I lost hope.

As his confidence evaporated into jerky euphemisms and terrible analogies, so did my desire.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Great sex involves clear communication. Dirty talk is all part of the game.

Sex without communication is like watching your favorite film on mute. The substance is all there, but without the sound it’s just a blur of missed possibilities and anti-climactic moments.

Dialogue makes all the difference.

Dirty talk is just a glorified way of telling the other party exactly what you want. It’s direct, taboo and something of which I’m a huge fan.

Dirty talk is a hall pass to be creative and vulgar, something rudimentary tasks of everyday life don’t often permit. When we permit ourselves a little wiggle room to be creative, sex takes on a whole new persona.

However, sometimes it can be hard to break the ice.

I like to compare sex to baking. You need good ingredients, the right mood, setting and timing. But you also need to preheat the oven. If you rush things, inevitably things don’t harden, and no one likes a flaccid cake.

Dirty talk is like preheating the oven and greasing the pan all at once. If you do it right and with confidence it makes all the difference in how things turn out.

But what makes dirty talk so dire isn’t that it helps you breeze through foreplay, it helps keep intercourse from becoming an awkward attempt to give directions to a lost tourist.

Nothing crushes someone’s confidence like being told, “You’re doing it wrong.”

Dirty talk is like every part of communication – it’s all in how you say it.

“Oh yeah, like that,” or “Right there but harder,” sounds a lot better than, “Um, excuse me, but are you trying?” or “That’s pretty good, but try it like this.”

Vulgarity and communication can mask insecurity and project confidence, even when it isn’t actually there.

If you can dirty talk sufficiently, you’ve accomplished a skill that’s irreplaceable.

I’ll take a shy guy who can tap into my creative sex kitten over a confident one who makes sex into a boring silent film any day.

I can overcome shyness. Silence is as damaging as an insult because it allows me to overanalyze what wasn’t there. Dirty talk leaves no question about what I did right and how I could be better.

If you’ve never tried it and are in a relationship, start slow.

You don’t want to explain to your girlfriend’s voicemail you thought she might enjoy being called a “dirty slut.” I doubt no matter how sorry you sound, she won’t appreciate a left-field degrading insult.

Make sure boundaries are discussed and there is no miscommunication about what is or isn’t OK.

If dirty talk presents itself in a one-night stand situation, just avoid name-calling. Stick to descriptive acts and desires. Things like “I want your lips on me,” or “I want to kiss down your torso,” go a long way. Subtle and vague is better than specific and offensive.

Be careful not to be cheesy, though. If you find yourself quoting Ginuwine or reciting what could be ‘90s rhythm and blues lyrics, cooling it down is probably a good thing. A bad line is just as damaging as going overboard and being too graphic.

Getting started can be intimidating, so I recommend testing the waters with an open-ended phrase or text.

Something like, “I can’t stop thinking about you and I am so turned on,” should get the ball rolling.

Talking dirty takes practice to do it well, but a well placed phrase is powerful. One of the best lovers I’ve ever had was the least confident, but he was a master at manipulating anticipation with words.

One text message from him could send me wriggling with anticipation and squirming with excitement for days, all because of a few adjectives and a bit of creativity. I was about ready to pounce him in public the next time I saw him because he could spark my imagination and tap into the vulgar side of me that even I had trouble expressing.

A partner who can dirty talk is a valuable catch, everything else is experience-based and learned over time.

Next time I ask someone to talk dirty, the winner at the finish line won’t be the guy stuttering, it’ll be the one who smiles and says, “You make warmth run through my body when I think about you.”

Brittany Bradley can be reached at [email protected]