WHEN I MOVED in with my longtime boyfriend a few months ago, I honestly thought we were going to have more sex. We'd be seeing each other more often, my theory went, so naturally – mathematically, even – we'd get around to doin' it more often.

It turns out the first half of my theory is correct: we see each other all the time. I see him every morning at 6:30 as he leaves for work. I see him every night when I get home at 10. We share an hour of watching one of our Tivo'd favorites, then he gets into bed and plays Game Boy while I watch reruns of Will and Grace and blow-dry my hair. A quick cuddle usually follows, then mutual passing out, assuming one of us isn't already unconscious.

Confounded by this remarkable and inexplicable lack of sex, I finally turned to the one resource that hasn't failed me since I was a prepubescent looking to find out if Andy Braverman really liked me (he totally did!): women's magazines. And as any Safeway shopper will have guessed, they were all more than willing to offer some advice. Being in no position to quibble over target demographics, I read the gamut, from chirpy Ladies' Home Journal to slutty, slutty Cosmo. I wanted better, hotter sex more often, and I wanted it now.

And so my quest began, with an Elle article called "Sexercise" in which one learned to employ exercise as an aphrodisiac. I had my doubts – mainly because I never feel like having sex after working out. But I'd discovered the article at the gym, which seemed like a sign. Plus, there was hard science behind it: various doctors weighed in, pronouncing that exercise – especially exercise of a vigorous nature – increases your sex drive, not to mention your partner's lust factor when you come home "glistening with sweat." I kicked it up a notch on the elliptical and drove home wearing my gym clothes.

My boyfriend (let's just call him M.B. for short) was doing the dishes. I came up behind him and put my sweaty arms around his waist. He made no indication he was about to throw me on the kitchen table and ravish me. "I'm veeeerrrry sweaty," I said, encouragingly. "Mmm-hmm, I see that," M.B. said, more intent on getting leftover flower crud out of a vase than examining my glisten. Then my mom called.

By the time I hung up, M.B. had made dinner, which was quite thoughtful but didn't provide the ideal segue for my next tip, courtesy of Redbook: flash your tits on the street. (Non-Redbook readers may find it difficult to credit such a genteel publication with such a Mardi Gras-inspired suggestion, and granted, that wasn't the exact phrasing, but it was the general idea.) However, ingenuity being an essential women's mag ingredient in spicing up one's sex life, after dinner I came up with a clever story about wanting to go out for dessert. Half-listening to M.B. talk about problems at work as we walked, I waited for a conversational opening and then sprang my surprise. "Cheer up, honey!" I said, while lifting my shirt.

M.B. was basically aghast. "There are people on the street!" he said. Hysterical laughter prevented me from answering. Still I managed to flash him three more times before we reached a painfully fluorescent late-night cake shop. I couldn't help it. It was as if Redbook had given me permission to be, if not a sex magnet, at least ridiculous. Perhaps M.B. thought I was suffering from some kind of temporary Tourette's.

Hilarity aside, the whole thing seemed to have been a failure. And then, strangely, on the way back from dessert M.B. whispered, "Do it again." This time I was shocked. "There are people on the street!" I said. "That didn't stop you before," he replied. By the time we got home, I'd flashed him eight more times, and we were both in hysterics. Then we walked in the door, and the only thing M.B. pulled out was a book.

I got in the shower alone, trying to recall a few more Redbook strategies that might save the situation. I ruled out putting on a short, flirty skirt and convincing M.B. to tango with me, as Redbook had suggested in "Twelve Easy Moves to Make Your Sex Life Hotter." I debated another "easy move," putting on skimpy lingerie to do housework, but decided that donning a teddy and starting to Swiff at 11 p.m. would probably come off more scary than sexy. In the end I just flipped on Will and Grace and plugged in my hair dryer. And then, before I could turn it on, M.B. put down his book and pulled me over. He said that just seeing me drop my towel in front of him – hardly unusual – turned him on. I knew better: it was women's magazines!

My reading, it seemed, was working out well, so I turned to Ladies' Home Journal next, mainly because it was the only magazine available at my gym that day aside from Black Enterprise. You'd be surprised – at least I was – at how much explicit sexual and romantic advice can be found in LHJ's pages. Expecting articles on children's ear infections, I instead got "Send Your Sex Life to Summer Camp." I leafed through it, ruling out anything in the been-there-done-that camp ("Splurge on new underwear!" "Men love massages!") and any tips destined to make me crack up, like playing an "intimate" version of Twenty Questions. That eliminated pretty much everything, but I decided to combine two tried-and-true tips – dinner by candlelight and sustaining eye contact for at least four seconds – with one that won points for originality: eating mint ice cream. (A doctor at something called the Smell and Taste Research Foundation had discovered that mint sends blood to the "pelvic region.")

When I came home that night, however, M.B. was tired and cranky. LHJ hadn't provided specific instructions, but intuition told me it was the wrong moment for candlelit ice cream with a side of eye contact. I bided my time. Unfortunately this meant waiting until 12:30 the following night for M.B. to get home from a concert, by which time I was, while still fully committed to the plan of attack, exhausted. M.B. walked in. I struggled to my feet, cornered him by the door, and forced him to close his eyes, another stroke of ingenuity on my part. Leading him into the kitchen, I fed him a spoonful of mint chocolate chip. "Now," I said, "open your eyes." M.B. did, but instead of gazing into mine for the recommended four seconds, he looked down at the quart of ice cream. In my sexy voice I explained about the power of mint. "Do we have to eat the whole thing?" he asked.

We did not eat the whole thing, nor did we have sex that night, and I was getting desperate. After some public nudity and a few laughs, it seemed we'd soon be back to our usual routine. It was time to pull out the big guns. It was time for Cosmo. Of the many offerings – spray a "libido-lifting" fragrance like lavender on the linens, slip a hand in his boxers right before the alarm goes off, draw him a color-coded sexual map of your body – I went with "transport your sack session to a place that feels naughty or taboo."

That night, as it happened, we were going to a house party in the South Bay. I knew I would end up getting totally drunk and passing out during the long drive back to the city. There would be no sex, just me falling asleep in my clothes. With Cosmo by my side, I decided to take preemptive measures. "Hey," I said as we neared our destination, "remember that time we made out for, like, an hour in your car at the airport?" (Reminding your man of a previous sexy encounter is a much-proffered tip.) "Yeah," M.B. said, scanning the various identical apartment complexes. "I could kind of go for something like that again," I said. "Like, right now." "Yeah?" M.B. said. I noted an increased attentiveness, accompanied by a matching decrease in focus on the road. "Yeah," I said. "So ... just park somewhere and let's do it in the backseat."

And that's pretty much what happened, as soon as we could find an empty enough office parking lot in which to go at it like teenagers whose parents think they're at the movies. We nearly got caught twice, but, just as Cosmo predicted, the "naughtiness" only added to the allure.

At the party I felt a renewed sense of mushiness about M.B. that wasn't entirely alcohol-related. And though I still passed out on the ride home, I remained proud of my accomplishment. I'd figured out that I could read every sex tip in the book, from Allure to Vogue, but nothing would ever take the place of spitting out three monosyllabic, easy-to-pronounce words: "Let's do it."