How To Have Sex On Mars Pt 02

How To Have Sex On Mars

Part 2 of 16

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Mars. For millennia, the Red Planet has fired humanity's imagination.

Scientists like Percival Lowell thought it was an "abode of life" with irrigation canals transporting water from the polar icecaps to farms in the warm equatorial region. Novelists like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, and Robert A. Heinlein imagined Martian civilizations.

NASA spacecraft revealed that Mars is a cold desert, but that vast amounts of frozen water can be found just below the dusty surface. Today, members of groups like The Mars Society are making plans to build a permanent colony there.

That work would be done by people like our protagonist, Mike Russell, an astronaut who spends years working and living on Mars. What would it be like to be one of the first people to call Mars home? For Mike, it includes the discovery that sex on Mars is very different from on Earth - and Vive la différence!

Here in Part 2, Mike describes the long, unpleasant flight from Earth to Mars..

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I hate space. Hate hate hate it.

I know I'm not supposed to say that. Some folks consider it rude. Ungrateful. So many people spent so much time, effort, and money to launch me on the voyage to Mars that the polite thing to do is never say anything that might be considered negative.

I remain very grateful for the opportunity to go to Mars. Words can't express the depth, breadth, and width of my gratitude. But I think it's time for somebody to be honest about the fact that prolonged time in weightlessness - as we experienced during the seven-month trip from Earth to Mars - sucks in so many ways that you end up hating it.

Media accounts make it seem that weightlessness is better than the ultimate amusement park ride. You see videos of people experiencing weightlessness for the first time, and they always have blissful expressions on their faces. It is true that my first feelings of weightlessness were very pleasant. That lasted about one hour. For the next seven months, weightlessness was a constant problem that made every part of daily life difficult, uncomfortable, and inconvenient.

My trip to Mars started with a breathtaking ride into orbit, when we briefly experienced enough acceleration to make us feel almost seven times the force of gravity on Earth. Once we got to orbit, our rocket docked with a tanker so we could refuel before going to Mars. We all got out of our seats, removed our spacesuits, and enjoyed how it felt to be weightless. Of the 40 people going to Mars, the only one who'd been to space before was our commander, Capt. Elke Brandt. All the rest of us were newbies.

We were told to expect that we'd probably experience some nausea at first. I didn't get sick enough to barf, but a few people did, and that made the air smell just as unpleasant as you can imagine. The people who got sickest did their best to make sure every drop stayed in their barf bag instead of floating around the cabin. They succeeded. Mainly.

Our rocket was completely automated. It was possible to override the controls, but we never did. By this time the people who designed spacecraft were able to make them so well that they virtually never broke down. Robotic spaceships made all of us much safer, but it also meant that we had nothing to do from the time we launched until we landed on Mars. It made the trip very boring.

It also gave us more time to think about how damn uncomfortable we were. I was constipated most of the trip. The doctor recommended enemas. This made things messy and difficult when I used the zero-gravity toilets.

My appetite almost vanished during the trip. Space veterans say it's particularly important that astronauts continue eating regularly because it reduces complications like bone loss and a drop in blood volume. Most of the meals I had during the trip to Mars were joyless events where I forced myself to eat food I didn't want. Astronauts reported similar experiences as far back as the days of the Mercury program.

Toward the end of the trip, I experienced some of the vision problems that astronauts have during long-duration missions. Eyeballs tend to become misshapen without gravity, and this makes it hard to focus. I hated that. Hate hate hated it. The problem disappeared shortly after landing on Mars, thankfully.

There was just one duty we had to perform: exercise. I enjoy working out, but the types of exercise that work best in space require complicated machines that use compression bands to simulate lifting weights. I prefer going on runs, swimming, riding my bike on scenic trails, and lots of other types of exercise you can't do in space. Using those awful machines got very boring very fast. I usually listened to music or podcasts when I exercised. That the was only thing that made the experience tolerable.

During the first few days, I spent a lot of time feeling bad about the abrupt end of my romance with Carol. I wound up torturing myself by reading and re-reading the book she gave me as a going-away gift. I love the way old books look, feel, and smell. I spent a lot of time savoring the experience of turning pages made of paper and reading type printed with ink. It seemed to symbolize all the things I was leaving behind - especially Carol.

The one pleasant activity I enjoyed during the trip was getting to know the other astronauts. We were all casually acquainted because we'd gone through training together, but the trip gave us our first opportunity to have long, relaxed conversations that let us learn about each other.

"Is that a book? A real book?" asked my colleague Adeline Remy when she spotted me strapped against the wall while reading my gift. I didn't know it at the time, but this was my first opportunity to have a serious conversation with the woman who would soon be my girlfriend and would someday be my wife.

"It certainly is," I said, holding up the cover so she could see the title.

"

The Martian Chronicles

," she said. "I recognize the author's name. I read a book by Ray Bradbury when I was a child, but I don't remember the title."

"What was it about?" I asked.

"A totalitarian society where books were illegal. Very spooky," Adeline said.

"That was

Fahrenheit 451

," I said. "Great book. It's been made into a movie three times. All three of the films are outstanding."

"What is your book about?" she asked.

"It's the story of the colonization of Mars."

"Very apt," she said. "Is it good?"

"It's one of the finest books I've ever read," I said. "It was published a long time ago, but it's a beautiful story."

"How long ago?" she asked.

I looked at the title page. "1950," I said.

"1950! Sacre bleu!" Adeline said. "How old is the copy you're holding?"

"It's a first edition. Look," I said, showing her Bradbury's autograph with the inscription "Mars is heaven!"

"A signed first edition?" she asked.

"That's right," I said.

"It is in very good condition for a book that's a century old."

"They made books from better materials back then. Better paper. Ink. Bindings. I'm planning to wrap it up and put it in a safe place after I finish rereading it. But a gift like this is meant to be enjoyed," I said.

Adeline smiled. "That is a very French way of looking at things," she said.

"Should I take that as a compliment?" I asked.

She smiled again. "Oui. I meant it as a compliment. Do you think I should read that book?"

"Yes, you should," I said. "You can borrow it anytime. Right now, if you like. I've read this book at least 10 times."

"Non! Non non non non non! I would not risk damaging it. I'll read a copy on my tablet," she said.

"I'm sure there's a digital copy in our library," I said. "I imagine we have copies of almost everything ever written about Mars," I said. "I have a question for you. Why do French people say the phrase 'sacre bleu?' What is sacred about the color blue?"

"That's an easy question," she said. "For centuries, many French people used the phrase 'Sacre Dieu!' as an expletive. People who don't like saying the Lord's name in vain say 'sacre bleu' because it sounds so similar that people know they're saying a sanitized version of the same thing. It's like the way you Americans say 'gosh darn' when you mean 'God damn.' Same meaning. Less profane."

"I'm not American," I said. "I was born and raised in Canada."

Adeline smiled again. "I think I like you a little more now," she said.

It was at about this moment that I noticed she was smiling a lot. It felt a bit like she was flirting. That seemed unlikely. Adeline was still mourning the end of her romance with Claude, the man she left behind on Earth. At the time, I decided that she was just being friendly because she knew that all of us going to Mars would be living in very close quarters for the next few years. We needed to get along, so we needed to be on the friendliest terms we could manage.

Now I know I was wrong. Adeline was flirting. Definitely. When I interviewed her for this book, she said "Of course I was flirting. If you'd been born in France you would know that without me having to explain it."

When I asked how a woman could flirt so soon after the end of a relationship, Adeline said, "I am very good at math. I was part of a crew that had 32 women and eight men. I did not want to remain celibate while I was on Mars, so I flirted with all the men. I wanted to scoop up a boyfriend as fast as possible because I knew that if I didn't move fast, the other women would grab all the best prospects."

And that, boys and girls, explains one reason why sex on Mars was so different than sex on Earth. Mars had too many women and not enough men. Adeline and the other females knew there weren't enough men to satisfy all of them. It would take a few months for that idea to sink in, but eventually, we were forced to find a solution to the problem.

Adeline wasn't the only woman moving fast to snag a boyfriend. During the seven-month trip to Mars, I found myself drawn into many intimate conversations with women on the crew. I might have figured it out faster if I'd been born in France, but even a clueless Canadian like me realized eventually that my female colleagues were doing a lot of comparison shopping as they got to know us men. I found it difficult to think about romance so soon after losing Carol, but it was very nice to receive so much female attention during an otherwise long and boring trip.

Although I enjoyed being with ladies who were so motivated to get to know me better, I did not take advantage of the opportunity to become intimate with anyone except Adeline. There were several reasons.

First, Adeline is a magnificent woman. She happens to be extraordinarily competent and determined. When she decided to make me her boyfriend, it took her about a nanosecond to succeed.

In addition, she had a French accent that immediately captivated my attention. She was beautiful. One of the things that was special about Adeline was the passion she expressed every time she spoke. All of us were passionate about the prospect of building a permanent home on Mars, but none of us expressed that passion more eloquently than Adeline.

There's a stereotype about French people. Some say they have deeper emotions and more profound insights. Although I know stereotypes are unfair and unreliable, Adeline fits that stereotype perfectly. It's a big part of the reason I eventually asked her to marry me.

There was a second reason I didn't make much effort to be intimate with anyone except Adeline. Here's the dirty truth: it's almost impossible to have sex in space. Adeline and I tried - we tried a lot - and we had very limited success.

From the early years of the space program, people have speculated that amorous couples trying to copulate while floating around in zero gravity would experience marvelous, satisfying couplings. No. Not even close.

It's almost impossible to fuck when you're weightless. Think about it. Consider the missionary position. The man is on top, going in and out of the women. Gravity pulls the man down and gives him something to push against as he rises up. When you try that in zero g, both people go flying off in opposite directions. What's satisfying about that?

This isn't discussed much publicly, but astronauts have known it for years. Way back in the 1990s, a group of astronaut trainees decided to see if they could determine what it would be like to have sex in space. They did some experiments at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at the Johnson Space Center, where there's a 6.2 million gallon pool that's 40 feet deep. Astronauts use it to practice spacewalks. It gives a good idea of what it's like to move around in space.

Two astronauts attempted to see what would happen if they tried to have sex. Keep in mind that they were wearing spacesuits; all they wanted to know was whether two people could get into the positions and duplicate the motions of sex.

The answer? No. It can't be done. They were able to determine that if a third person assisted, it might be possible, but the whole rigamarole was so awkward that someone would have to be very motivated to even try.

And this is where I admit that Adeline and I were very, very motivated. We tried. We tried and tried and tried. Since the name of this book is

How To Have Sex On Mars,

I think I need to tell you what Adeline and I did after we decided to become lovers. Just be advised that we had almost no success.

During the trip to Mars, we slept in claustrophobic little bunks mounted in cubicles with curtains that provided privacy. Insomnia is common in space - it's just one more reason I hate it so much - but at least we had privacy. Still, it was too crowded when Adeline and I tried to have sex. When we tried the missionary position, we discovered quickly that we ended up bumping around inside that little confined space.

The bunks include straps that we used to belt ourselves in when we slept. It kept us from floating around while we were dreaming. We tried belting Adeline to her mattress, then we'd hug each other while I tried to get my cock into position.

It didn't work. If we hugged each other as forcefully as we could, it was almost possible for me to push inside. Almost. This was one of the most frustrating things I've ever tried.

Picture it. Adeline and I were naked. She looked so sexy and beautiful that I ached with desire. That little enclose smelled strongly of sex almost immediately, but no sex happened.

We tried something that was sort of like doggy style. Adeline put her knees on the mattress and her hands on the section of wall next to her head. I got behind her and put my hands on the ceiling so I could hold myself down. It almost worked. But there wasn't enough room to get into the right position. All I could do was get a case of blue balls.

One thing came close to working. Through trial and error, we figured out that we could almost make the cowgirl position work if we strapped me to the bunk and I held tight on Adeline's hips, pulling her down on my body. She put her hands on the ceiling and pushed.

It seemed promising. We managed to get my cock all the way into her pussy, and she was able to go up and down in a way that felt very satisfying for a short time. But she couldn't get the right kind of leverage in that tiny space, and it took so much work for her to go up and down that she couldn't keep going long enough for either of us to climax. It just made us frustrated. Very frustrated. Did I mention that it made us frustrated?

We experimented with a lot of different positions, and we never found anything that worked. Years later, someone figured out a way to rig up harnesses with stretchy bands that substitute for the force of gravity. But we didn't have access to anything like that. Our efforts to have sex - real sex - failed utterly.

Since normal sex was impossible, we did the next best thing. We strapped ourselves into the bunk, then Adeline gave me a handjob. To give her pleasure, I massaged her pussy until she climaxed. I remember that the first time we did this was wonderful. We had so much pent-up sexual frustration that it was glorious to find a way to give us any kind of relief.

To make this work, we had to take turns. I'd usually massage her pussy and stroke her clit until she got excited enough to have an orgasm.

"I'm getting close!"

she said that first time, overjoyed that we'd finally found something that worked. Her excitement kept building until she started muttering something in French. She sounded sexy as hell.

"Ohhhhh . . . Michel . . . finalement . . ."

Adeline groaned. She bit down on her finger, doing her very best to make as little sound as possible. But Adeline is a very sexy woman who makes very sexy sounds when we are intimate. I'm sure people heard us.

Keep in mind that the only thing separating us from a common area full of other people was a thin little privacy curtain that blocked the view but did very little to muffle noise. Nobody ever cracked any jokes or made any comments, but I could tell from the looks we got that everyone knew what we were doing. By this time I'd engaged in conversations with several women who were interested in a relationship with me, and I thought I detected some disappointment when they realized I was officially off the market.

After I made Adeline climax, it was her turn to take care of me. Handjobs hadn't been an important part of my sex life before, but that was the only way Adeline could give me an orgasm. Just in case you're wondering why I never ate her pussy, and she never sucked my cock, there wasn't enough room in our cubicles to bend ourselves into positions where that was possible.

What was possible was for me to stretch out and enjoy the sensation of Adeline wrapping her hand around my cock and working up and down. She liked to whisper sexy French words into my ear as I got more and more aroused. The first time we did this, I was so desperate for satisfaction that it took almost no time for her to make me climax.

"I'm almost there,"

I told her.

We knew we didn't want to deal with cleaning up the mess if I ejaculated into a weightless cubicle, so Adeline slipped a sock over my cock and resumed working on me. She jacked me up and down, up and down, and she finally pushed me over the edge.

"I'm cumming . . ."

I moaned as she squeezed my cock. It had been a long time since I'd had any kind of sex at all, so I came and came and came, filling that sock with an enormous wad. As soon as I was finished Adeline laughed.

"Mon Dieu!"

she said. She removed the sock carefully, being sure to wipe up every drop, then tied a knot in the end so nothing would leak out.

"Does that feel better, mon amour?"

she asked.

"Much. Much much much,"

I said.

For the rest of the trip, we did this almost every day.

I can't speak for anyone else, but every time I begin a relationship, the same thing happens. I become so overwhelmed with feelings for my new partner that I want to have sex constantly. Every day. Three times a day. As often as humanly possible.

I felt that way about Adeline. But there was another reason I couldn't get enough of her. Our days were almost completely empty otherwise. We had no duties beyond the requirement that we get at least two hours of daily exercise. Most of us watched movies or listened to music, but the rest of the time we were bored. I needed something meaningful to do, and nothing felt more meaningful than spending quality time with my newly significant other.

We spent a lot of time in conversation. Ate meals together. Gazed into each other's eyes. Sat side by side in front of the observation window where members of the crew watched Mars grow larger and brighter as we gradually drew closer. I even read aloud the entire text of

The Martian Chronicles,

sharing my favorite book with Adeline during the long days we traveled through space.