reflection, thankfulness, and a question

by nicoleantoinette on November 25, 2009

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I like it because it’s simple. It’s food and family and friends and the mindful act of appreciating just how lucky we really are. I don’t do that enough, because I’m usually too caught up in the whirlwind frenzy of my head to step outside of myself, look around, and say, “Huh, it’s not all hearts and stars and unicorns, but shit is pretty awesome.”

And really? That’s enough to be thankful for right there. But there are other things too.

I’m thankful for newness, for the chance to start over, with anything, at anytime. I’m thankful that I finally realized that it’s never too late to swim in new waters. I’m thankful that I had the balls to take advantage of that chance, that I made a decision, picked a city, and am working on stacking the building blocks of my life together.

I’m thankful for nuance, for details, for the in-between-the-lines stuff.

I’m thankful for honesty. And sex. And friends who let me talk honestly about sex. I’m thankful for sunshine, for a perfectly mixed cocktail, for scarves and soft cheese and for all of the travel photography that has me desperate to live to the edge of our world.

I’m thankful to be surrounded by friends who are so talented, I never know whether to be jealous or elated.

I’m thankful for the upside of my insomnia, because it means laying in bed thinking how delicious it is to be 24 years old at a time when the possibilities exploding around me are better and better, second by second.

I’m thankful that this year, there’s just so damn much to be thankful for. Like getting to spend Thanksgiving in San Francisco, in the company of someone who lights my mind on fire in a maddening way.

I’m thankful for that. And for iced tea. And for those who are doing their best to leave each day better than they found it.

I’m thankful for the community of people who read this blog, people who somehow seem to find it at least mildly endearing that I’m completely batshit crazy.

I’m thankful that technology makes my world bigger and smaller at the same time. And I’m thankful to have a mother who reminds me when to unplug from it all and just be.

I’m thankful that I’ll never be too old to appreciate lollipops, never be too tired to say goodnight, and never be too self involved to forget why we have one mouth and two ears.

And, more than anything, I’m thankful that I’m finally learning how to let people in.

What are you thankful for?

{ 29 comments }

how to be a woman

by nicoleantoinette on November 20, 2009

Lately, I’ve been struggling a lot with what it means to be a woman. I lay awake at night and I think, “How did I get here?” I ask myself if this is what it feels like to be a real adult. I wonder if there are other women, in other beds, unable to sleep, questioning the relationship between their past, present, and future. Women who are teetering while trying to fill the four inch stilettos of their heroes and role models.

Here’s what being a woman has been for me:

Move from England to Southern California. Start high school. Stare open mouthed at all the blonde, all the skinny, all the tan, all the designer clothing. Wish desperately for invisibility. Wander aimlessly and shyly through freshman and sophomore year. Give up on trying to fit in. Put all your energy into academic success. Focus madly on applying to NYU. Get in. Plan your escape from superficiality.

Settle into your dorm. Wonder how the hell you got out of California without a raging eating disorder and full blown skin cancer. Tell yourself that this is college, and that you can be whoever you want to be. Decide to be sexy and adventurous. Start wearing heels. Fall blindly into a life of excess. Too much drinking. Too much studying. Too many late nights. Too many guys whose names you don’t remember and whose tongues you wish you could forget.

Share your living space for the first time. Think having roommates will be fun after a lifetime of being an only child. Forget to set boundaries. Try to navigate the complexities of the female friendship. Get jealous of each other. Choose passive aggressive behavior over communication. Lash out. Repeat.

Fall into an intense relationship. Forget to set boundaries, again. Lose yourself in his identity. Forgo your own achievements to help him reach his. Break up. Work out. Obsess about your body in the absence of anything else to control. Count calories. Have rebound flings. Repeat.

Put yourself back together. Wonder why you aren’t more competitive, why everyone around you seems to pulse with the fierce drive for success while you’re content to bake and clean your boyfriend’s apartment.

Write a 20 page research paper comparing past issues of Good Housekeeping magazine, from the 1950s, to those of today. Try to define modern womanhood. Hate yourself for wishing, just a tiny bit, that we didn’t have quite so many options in front of us, because trying to be everything to everyone is just exhausting.

Totally lose your shit. Decide to graduate early. Sign up for as many classes as they’ll let you take, plus an extra one that you talked your way into. Ponder how persuasive you can be when you try. Think about all the people you’ve manipulated. Feel disgusting. Graduate, with honors. Realize that the only two things that have ever really defined you are sex and academic achievement.

Land a job running a summer day camp. Think you’ll be good at it because it’s a position of power and leadership. Wonder instead if you should be focusing on the fact that it’s a position working with children. Aren’t women supposed to be drawn to kids?

Spend 5 years in charge of the camp. Play it fast and loose with your sexuality, flirting to get your point across, feeling high whenever someone new is attracted to you. Sleep with your superior. Sleep with your subordinate. Realize too late that mixing sex with work weakens your authority and destroys your credibility. Decide to stop using sex as a weapon, because doing so only hurts every single person involved.

Keep your legs closed. Wonder if it’s realistically possible to be both successful and in love. Hold everyone at arms length, especially other women. Isolate yourself in an attempt to not feel everything so damn hard. Walk the extremely thin line between trying to be strong and trying not to be a bitch.

Start blogging. Read other people’s blogs. Find women who are shining examples of what it means to live intensely with great passion, raw intellect, and wild abandon. Sit, awestruck, and wonder how you’ll ever keep up.

Spend two months traveling around the country. Meet new people everyday. Pursue adventure and newness. Get bored. Go somewhere else, with someone else. Realize how easy it would be to just keep traveling, reinventing yourself over and over. Continue on without any day to day structure and a nonexistent life plan. Have a truly crushing anxiety attack about the fact that you feel wholly unproductive as a person. Berate yourself for not accomplishing more, for not being on a shiny path to something incredible. Feel like you’re failing as a woman.

Read more blogs. Find people who’s ideas make your mind scream in ecstasy. Almost fall on the floor when they seem to feel the same way about you. Grow stronger. Finally cut the people who are bringing you down out of your life. Set boundaries. Fall for new guys. Slip. Lose sight of the boundaries again. Stop yourself. Step back. Reevaluate. Listen closely when a friend says that not every guy is worth breaking your heart over.

Struggle with the fact that you genuinely love taking care of other people, because it feels like a weakness. Do you have to be selfish to be successful? Admit the truth: that you desperately need to find a balance between wanting to nurture others and needing to take care of yourself. Realize that the only way to do this is to settle down a little bit, to move somewhere, to put care and compassion into building the life you want for yourself. Feel apprehensive and fearful about having to do it all from scratch.

Lay awake one night and finally come to terms with the fact that being a woman isn’t about being everything to everyone. It’s simply about being whatever you want to be, unstoppably, and nothing more.

{ 66 comments }

phone interviews, san francisco, and the hidden benefits of the brazilian wax

by nicoleantoinette on November 17, 2009

So, here’s my deal. I like to schedule Brazilian waxing appointments right before really stressful events.

It all started in college, mid-hyperventilation over my Food Microbiology and Sanitation final, when I suddenly had the God-like idea to schedule a Brazilian wax two hours before the test. The logic here, clearly, was that after getting all the hair ripped from my vagina, how bad could the damn test really be?

At first, I worried that this plan was a serious contender for the folder of “things that seemed like a good idea at the time.” Like trucker hats. And fat-free cheese. And being a prostitute for Halloween.

Except that actually? I’m a prodigy because this waxing thing worked. Anytime I got to a really challenging question on the exam I’d be all, “Relax. Remember how you had hair down there and now you don’t? YOU’VE GOT THIS.”

So it became my thing. Moving across the country? Get waxed before getting on the plane! Emotional holiday shenanigans with the family? Wax before Thanksgiving dinner! And on and on.

Brazilian waxing for anxiety management. I should totally be on Dr. Phil.

Anyway, I have my appointment all set up for 2pm tomorrow, because at 4pm? I have a phone interview for a job that I OH MY GOD WANT SO BADLY.

Like… CAPS LOCK CAPS LOCK CAPS LOCK.

And I’m nervous for the damn interview. Which is superb for people who, at their calmest, talk at least sixteen times the speed of everybody else. But I’m thinking a solid “lift your legs and hold your skin tight!” will chill me the hell out. Plus, it’s a phone interview. Which means I don’t have to wear pants. It means, actually, that I don’t even have to wear panties, and that I can basically go full frontal landing strip on this woman while still maintaining my wonderfully charming and professional demeanor on the phone.

God. It’s like the brilliant ideas just don’t stop.

So the job. I’m not going into detail about it because I’m pretty sure that would be bad juju and yes, I’m totally a juju person and you secretly are too so just stop right there with all the judging. What I will say is that the job is in the San Francisco area. And that the plan is to move up there sometime before the end of the year.

I KNOW RIGHT?! Decisions, they happen quickly in these parts.

When I told a friend about it yesterday she was all, “Why San Francisco?” and I was like, “Um, why NOT?” and then she was totally silent, which means I won. Or it means that my fucking iPhone dropped yet another call. But either way? I’m moving to San Francisco (and I got an A in that Microbiology class) so I’m pretty sure that I do, in fact, TOTALLY WIN.

{ 68 comments }

jay-z, the dishwasher, and oh my god my mother

by nicoleantoinette on November 15, 2009

“AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS HOUSE WHO KNOWS THE RECIPE FOR ICE?!”

I look up. My mother is standing in the kitchen, waving empty ice trays above her head and growling about how my father and I don’t deserve cold drinks because we are “lazy and insensitive in regard to our ice usage.”

She stomps around a little more before filling up the ice trays herself. Then, she picks up a dirty plate, scrubs it in the sink, gets it completely clean, slowly starts to open the dishwasher door, peers in, opens it all the way up, puts the plate inside, slams it shut, and jumps backward.

“Um, what? You just put a completely clean plate into the dishwasher. And what’s with the peering and the slamming and the jumping around?”

“The critters!!” she yells. “Enormous black bugs! Fast ones! THE BIGGEST ONES YOU’VE EVER SEEN. Sometimes I find them in the dishwasher. Everything has to be spotless!”

She turns around and pours vinegar down the sink drain and quickly plugs it closed.

I stare at her.

“The critters come through the sink too!”

I keep staring. The entire house now smells like we’re dying Easter eggs.

“Come on,” she says, waving her hand toward the door, “we’re going to Barnes and Noble.”

I ask her if she’s going to put real pants on. She tells me sweatpants are real pants. I point out that the sweatpants she’s currently wearing are bright turquoise and that with the magenta sweatshirt she has on, it’s not necessarily the most flattering combination to wear out in public. She’s asks when I became such a snobby fashionista and then yells at me for letting my shoes touch the carpet while I’m putting them on by the door.

“Your shoes track in particles!”

I don’t even want to ask. I raise an eyebrow.

“Particles of things the critters eat! Now I’m going to have to vacuum that spot! Go wait for me in the car. You’re driving. I’ve had wine.”

“I’ve had wine too.”

“I’M THE MOTHER!”

I sigh, walk to the car, and wait. She climbs in. I ask her if she knows where we’re going. She rolls her eyes at me, potentially to indicate that, um, duh, she’s not a total idiot. I start driving.

After about 15 minutes, I get this feeling. You know what I’m talking about. When you can sense that you’re going in the wrong direction but you’re not the one who lives in this damn city so you don’t say anything and she just sits there, eyes darting about furiously, and then at the last second she’s screaming her face off about how you “HAVE TO BE IN THE RIGHT LANE,” except you’re all the way over in the left lane like she goddamn told you to be and now you’re making all kinds of illegal moves while she repeatedly slams her foot into the floor, pumping her imaginary break pedal and asking where the hell you got your license.

Eleventy thousand turns later, we’re headed in the correct direction. I turn my iPod on and it’s the new Jay-Z song, the one about New York that I’m irrationally obsessed with, and it takes my mother all of six seconds to start shrieking about how much she hates rap music and how I’m inconsiderate. I tell her to just listen to the lyrics because she’ll like them, being from NYC and all. She’s quiet for a minute and then asks who Jay-Z is. I try to think of an answer that will hold any relevance at all for her.

“He’s married to Beyonce?”

“Oh, yes,” she responds thoughtfully. “He’s no where near as yummy as that Diddy person.”

{ 33 comments }

journal entries, lessons learned, and a snapshot of life on the road

by nicoleantoinette on November 12, 2009

Lately, particularly while traveling, I’ve been forcing myself to keep a pen-to-paper journal. Here’s a peek.

Friday 9/18: Phoenix, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago

5:00am Hug my mother goodbye outside the Phoenix airport. Apologize for yelling at her about getting lost and almost making me miss my flight. Walk inside, check in, and take off on my unplanned adventure.

10:13am Meet up with Matt in the Denver airport. Think about how insanely cool he is for driving out to spend my 4 hour layover with me. Drink iced tea as he drinks beer. Discuss love and what it means to be in an adult relationship. Fly to Minneapolis. Change planes. Fly to Chicago. Pat myself on the back for hitting 4 states in 12 hours.

7:00pm Crash at Derek’s place. Eat, drink, and talk about the process of growing up. “It’s the hormones,” he says. “You’re just an entirely different person at 29 than at 24. It’s less about what you’re going to do and more about who you’re going to be. Things calm down.” I tell him that I’m relieved to hear that, because right now? It seems as though things might never calm down; in my life, in my head.

***
Sunday 9/27: New York City

4:00pm Wake up from a nap and realize I only have 2.5 hours left until the train taking me from Chicago to NYC pulls into Penn Station. Stare out the window. Drink hot chocolate. Listen to a lot of Sara Bareilles on repeat.

6:25pm Hug Becca in the middle of the train station, after a few rounds of, “Wait, where are you?” “Huh? I’m in front of the pretzel place, where are you?” Take the subway back to Park Slope. Watch her give a coughing woman a throat lozenge. Think about small, everyday kindness and how it’s much more rare than it should be. Feel appreciative to have her in my life.

***
Tuesday 10/13: New York City

7:35pm Rush to meet my godmother for dinner in Tribeca. Order mac & cheese. Catch up on our lives, her divorce, my what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-ness. Drink what feels like all of the wine in the restaurant.

***
Saturday 11/7: Washington, DC

7:01am Wake up to the sound of nine other women moving around our bedroom in the hostel on 11th street. Look at the time. Curse out loud once I realize that I only fell asleep two hours earlier. Think about insomnia. Wonder what it’s like to be a normal person who sleeps. Contemplate stabbing the girl in the bottom bunk who has the audacity to blow dry her hair at this ridiculous hour. Try to fall back asleep. Fail miserably. Go back to the original stabbing plan.

9:31am Walk downstairs to the common room for free breakfast. Pile my tray with blueberry muffins, orange juice, and a small bowl of cereal. Eat quietly, surrounded by groups of people who are chatting, but not in English. Wonder if any of them are talking about how many muffins I took. Have a bite of the first muffin and realize it’s delicious and that they can talk all the shit they want because I’m getting fat off of these muffins unless someone tackles me to the ground and pulls them away from me first.

10:45am Settle into a big leather chair in the hostel lobby. Pull out my laptop, hook into the free wifi, and email out a freelance writing assignment I finished the night before. Play online. Contemplate whether anyone has ever watched porn in this common room before. Think about giving it a shot. Remember I don’t have headphones with me. Read blogs instead.

12:00pm Receive a text message from an ex that was meant for his new girlfriend. Have an unavoidably dramatic phone conversation about it. Hang up. Take two minutes worth of deep breaths. Laugh. Move on.

{ 27 comments }

george clooney, liquor, and a social media experiment that’s either totally amazing or completely fucking stupid. not sure yet.

by nicoleantoinette on November 10, 2009

So, during my three hour layover last night I thought it would be a good idea to have some pre-second-flight drinks at the airport bar. Or, more accurately, at one of the airport bars, because whoever designed the new jetBlue terminal at JFK is clearly a raging alcoholic and thought it would be killer to put liquor, like, EVERYWHERE.

With so many options, I just picked the closest bar, settled in with my laptop and free wifi, asked Twitter if getting loaded in an airport was a yay or a nay, laughed when a few too many people said “YAY!!” and then thought, “yeah alright,” and went for it.

By the time I was handed drink number 3, I had already started to formulate a plan for what might be the coolest social media experiment ever: spending an entire day letting Twitter make all of my decisions for me. What to eat, what to wear, where to go- and because of the up-in-the-air-ness of my life right now, bigger things too, like which jobs to apply for, which two cities to consider moving to at the end of the year, all of it.

After that third drink, as I was paying my tab and heading to the gate, I decided that my idea was out of this galaxy and that I had to do it, even though my tiny budget could be a potentially large hindrance. I mean, here I was paying $30+ for drinks I probably wouldn’t have had without the Twitter encouragement and it made me all, “What next?!” Because if I’m going to do the damn thing, I’m going to do it full throttle. No backing down.

Which probably means there would need to be some sort of limits placed on my questions. Because, like, what if I’m all, “Where should I go today?” and Twitter’s like, “Bangladesh!” and I’m all, “I cannot fucking afford Bangladesh” and Twitter’s like, “Too bad! Next question please!” and I’m all, “Fine, what should I wear to the grocery store?” and Twitter says, “A kimono” and I’m like, “The fuck?!” and Twitter adds, “Oh, and one of those remote control vibrators,” which of course means I need to ask, “And who’s going to hold the remote control?” and then Twitter tells me that I can choose between George Clooney, a Trader Joe’s employee, and my mom, and I kick and scream about how those are RIDICULOUSLY UNREALISTIC options and Twitter’s all, “Sucks for you, bitch.”

So… yeah. I’m still considering the “Twitter Rules My Entire Life For One Day” plan, but need to work out the details. Thoughts?

{ 47 comments }

daylight savings time, regrets, and the search for the country’s best mac & cheese

by nicoleantoinette on November 5, 2009

So I thought about it, and I realized that seriously, seriously, I’ve eaten macaroni and cheese almost every single day for the past two weeks.

I tell people it’s because I’m on a legitimate journalistic quest to find the country’s best, which is maybe a little bit true, but I’m also pretty sure that that’s just a way to mask the fact that I’m not eating enough fruits or vegetables or anything else that isn’t entirely covered in cheese sauce and fat and yes I know I probably already have scurvy and am on my way to a life of horrible malnutrition but I’m just not sure that I care in the slightest because mac and cheese > every other food so shut the fuck up.

The best I’ve had recently (mac & cheese, that is) was late on Halloween night, reheated from a place called Bussaco and just perfect- a crisp top, loaded with ziti and bacon and cheese underneath.

I ate it at about 2:30am, thinking that if I would have had it only an hour earlier, it wouldn’t have counted. Because 1am-2am doesn’t count on the day you turn the clocks back, or at least that’s how we used to do it in college.

Every year, my friends and I would get together for a Daylight Savings Time party. Or, more accurately, an excuse-to-be-ridiculous-because-whatever-you-do-for-this-one-hour-totally-doesn’t-count-and-won’t-ever-be-talked-about-again-because-time-change-means-we-make-up-our-own-rules-and-we’re-in-college-so-it’s-morally-acceptable-because-we’re-fake-adults-and-the-clock-gets-set-back-and-you-get-a-redo party!

Things never got as crazy as they could have, a stolen kiss here, a dance on the bar for free shots there, but for the most part I think we were just drunk on the fantasy of an immediate second chance. The oh so coveted “hehe, just kidding!” that gave you the freedom to try something you wouldn’t normally do by eliminating the fear of regret.

But what’s so bad about regret, anyway? I’m fond of saying things like “I live a life of no regrets!” But really? That’s not true. I could fill a journal with the things I wish I would have said and done differently, the things I’d like to kick myself in the mouth for not trying when they were close enough to reach out and grab.

So I don’t think it’s about not having regrets, because that’s as impossible as being fearless. I think it’s about not letting the feeling of regret control your life, not letting yourself walk smack into a pole because your head is turned behind you, staring at the things that could have been.

Because we only get one life, and we can only make one choice at a time, live one reality at a time, follow one path at a time, and even if we’re making great choices and are more or less in love with our current reality, our life will always be surrounded by paths not taken. And we better start feeling okay with that, because the bigger our dreams and the better our lives, the shinier the opportunities we’re turning down will be. Which, really, is a pretty stellar thing, don’t you think?

{ 32 comments }

top sheets, learned behaviors, and letting people rub off on you in all the right ways

by nicoleantoinette on November 3, 2009

In college, I dated a guy who didn’t use a top sheet on his bed. He was all fitted sheets and comforters and I remember thinking that that was pretty weird, and that maybe I shouldn’t date him. Turns out, I fell in love with the no-top-sheet thing just as quickly as I fell in love with the guy, and it’s one of the things that stuck with me after the relationship faded into the distance.

I always find it lovely when I realize something about myself and can look back and pinpoint exactly where it came from. So much of who I am springs from the people that surround me; the more I share with someone else, the more time, the more private moments, the more our jagged edges blur together.

A few weeks pass and I catch myself using a phrase that’s straight out of his mouth.

A few months go by and if we’re good, I mean really good for each other, I notice that my opinions have shifted as a result of challenging late night conversations and electric debates had over dinner, one hand on my wine glass, the other gesturing wildly in the air.

A few years transition the now to the then and I step back, seeing how our day to day completely overlaps. I’ve stopped using top sheets, he eats goat cheese pizza. I have favorite shows on ESPN, he doesn’t put my purple sweater in the dryer. Things you learn from doing, from breathing each other, from making room in your life to be rubbed off on in all the right places.

So there’s those things, the ones you pick up from each other along the quiet backroads of your life, and then there are the other things, the ones that often go overlooked until someone spins you toward a mirror and shows you who you are.

Like the fact that I bite my bottom lip when I’m about to blush, or how I always have the air conditioning on when I’m driving. How often I roll my eyes, and touch my necklace, and eat tomato soup. The way my New York accent comes out when I’m fired up. The fact that even if I won’t admit it, I want you to take the time to draw my lines with your fingertips while we’re in bed.

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being in love with new york city, destination shopping, and moving on

by nicoleantoinette on October 31, 2009

A big part of what I’m doing by being a nomad is city shopping. As I slowly move across the country, I realize that I’m searching for my perfect fit, my next home, my real geographic love affair.

In 24 years, New York City is the only place that’s ever really gotten under my skin. In no small way, it’s the epicenter of the world. The air is different here, there’s something full about it, something that makes you believe that the very next moment could be the best or worst of your life.

But with that comes the fact that it’s extremes. It’s Monday and it’s deliciously crisp and pure autumn and you’re in Central Park, drinking apple cider, wearing your favorite brown suede boots, high off the energy of millions of other people- but then it’s Tuesday and it’s pouring and the subway never comes and you’re surrounded by strangers who stare through each other with dull eyes, who move with the pulse of the city, crashing into each other without ever touching, and you’re alone in a profound way.

As a person who constantly struggles to find the middle ground, NYC is a rough place for me. I believe the famous line, the idea that “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” and I know that I could. Make it here, I mean. But I’d have to shut down to do so. I’d have to somehow learn to move my emotions deeper, to not let them scream quite so close to the surface, and I’m not willing to do that.

So I’m moving on later this week, heading to DC and Phoenix and San Francisco, and I’m doing so happily. I saw the people I came here to see, ate the things I came here to eat, and learned that ultimately, figuring out what you don’t want is just as important as finding what you do.

{ 43 comments }

couches, airport security, and the dilemma of where to masturbate when you’re a professional nomad

by nicoleantoinette on October 28, 2009

So, at the start of this whole let’s-travel-the-world-and-live-out-of-a-tiny-suitcase thing, I didn’t really give a lot of thought to what would actually go IN the damn suitcase. I figured I’d just throw some shit in there and it would be fine.

As the date of my indefinite nomadism approached, I started to think that maybe I should give it a little more thought. So I did, I thought about it. And as soon as I realized all the things I wouldn’t have room for, I started freaking the fuck out.

Mid-freak out, I called a friend of mine, an awesome chick who has done quite a lot of backpacking herself, and started yelling. And she was all trying to give me real suggestions, because she’s nice and helpful and normal, but I just kept screaming things like “BUT WHICH BRAS SHOULD I BRING?” and “HOW MANY TAMPONS ARE TOO MANY?” and “DO I OR DO I NOT BRING A VIBRATOR?”

My friend (or at least she used to be my friend- more on that in a second) paused thoughtfully and was all, “I’d say no. I mean, what if you wind up in some weirdly embarrassing airport security situation? Wouldn’t you rather just have room for another pair of pants?”

Looking back, this should have been the precise moment at which I stopped taking her seriously, or at least questioned the size of her vagina, because really? if her experience with vibrators is that they’re the SAME SIZE AS A ROLLED UP PAIR OF JEANS, maybe that’s something she should see someone about. But I didn’t question it. I accepted her advice as some sort of travel gospel and I took off on my trip, sans sex toys.

And now, 41 days into my adventure of sleeping on other people’s couches, I’ve come to the conclusion that my friend is a big slutty slut who slutted her way through all past backpacking adventures and therefore had no need for sex toys. Or she’s totally asexual. Or she’s boring and just uses her fingers all the time. Or she has done some very naughty things with other people’s shower heads. Or she has no problem being out at a bar in a new city and being all, “So… do you want to come back to my… couch?”

Either way, I’m pretty sure I can’t be her friend anymore for the sheer reason that she gives horrible advice. So my new plan is to post all important masturbation related questions on Twitter. Because maybe then I’ll get some REAL answers. And Babeland will ask me to write a column about my nomadic vagina and sex on the road. And everything will be right in the world.

PS- If you have agreed to let me sleep on your couch sometime in the next few months, please entirely ignore this post. Or tell me about your hot cousin.
PPS- I’m kidding!
PPPS- Mostly…

{ 41 comments }

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