It started out as two different trips that were to take place side by side. James Bond would fly to his hometown of Denver for 10 days to visit his family and friends, and I would fly to Denver for the last four days of his trip to visit my friends. We’d be in his city, but on our own terms, and we’d be able to fly back to San Francisco together.

That was phase one. But our relationship evolved and all of the sudden we were in phase two, where we’d be in his city and we’d be on our own terms but we’d also allow for overlap – he’d meet my friends, I’d meet his. And then came phase three, where in addition to the meeting of each other’s friends, there would also be the having dinner with his mother.

I reacted calmly. Which is to say that in a dictionary where “reacting calmly” translates to “freaking the fuck out,” I reacted very calmly, thinking rational things like, “What if she shakes my hand and senses that I write about my vagina on the internet?!”

And then there was the picking of the outfit. “It’s going to be too hot for long sleeves!” I yelled to Jamie. She asked why I needed to wear long sleeves. “The wrist tattoos! What if she hates the wrist tattoos!”

Two days before my flight: Reacting. Very. Calmly. Indeed.

But then the phone call came and all of the sudden we were in phase four, the phase where he was getting rushed into emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix and I was spending whatever I had to spend to get to Denver on the next available flight.

In the five hours that passed between that phone call and the one telling me that he was out of surgery and in recovery, I realized two things.

Thing one is that you really don’t know how deeply you’re in the hole of I’m-unlimited-crazy-about-him until you look up and see that ground level is thundering light-years above your head.

Thing two is that the tattoo crisis and the insecurities don’t matter. The wondering what to talk about over dinner doesn’t matter. Showing up at the hospital makeup-free and altitude-sick with tattooed wrist in full display – none of it matters.

What matters is spending more than 80 hours at the hospital and getting the chance to join an overwhelmingly wonderful group of people in taking care of the person you all can’t stop caring about. What matters is that he says yes to my wrist tattoos and yes to me writing about my vagina on the internet and yes to me as I am, even if it’s challenging.

What matters is that I found someone to give that card to, the one I bought in Arizona last August and promised myself I’d save until I meant the words on the front:

“I’m not sure,” she said, “at what point it is advisable to admit to liking you a great deal more than I planned.”

**
Update – James Bond, who’s still in Denver and just got out of the hospital, emailed and asked me to include his insanely lovely response to this post:

Cramped in my bed, graciously accepting another visitor, Nicole and I exchange looks. With a look I feel her unspoken sympathy, and I express thanks adding, I will add details later. At certain points I was done and Nicole filled in. She so sweetly and adeptly took over in ways not easily understood.

One of my best friends asked me, so what is the moral, what is the bigger picture. I actually, being known for a bit of verbosity, responded simply, “…. I could not prepare for what happened. Each day provides for different circumstances. It doesn’t help to worry about yet unknown factors. And it really helps to have a partner [looking to Nicole as my co-conspirator].”

As James Bond, I must maintain a certain amount of independence. Right? Well I would happily trade the golden gun, access to SPECTRE, all the Aston Martins, and other gadgets (even including the jet pack) for Nicole to continue taking me on.
**

::heart explodes::

On days when I’m irrationally stressed out, I take a few minutes to sit quietly and play the “this-would-be-worse-if” game until I calm down. You know, that game that’s supposed to put things into perspective because you realize shit isn’t that bad after being all, “This would be worse if I was in the middle of a tornado” or, “This would be worse if I only had one leg” or, “This would be worse if I were allergic to cheese” or, “This would be worse if a wild horse charged through the door and kicked me in the face while peeing all over the floor.” Usually though, the game ends when I think, “This would be worse if my vagina looked like some of those weird vaginas in sketchy porn movies where the clit is long and stretched out like a baby penis.”

(No, I don’t spend a lot of time looking at baby penis. I mean any time! I don’t spend any time looking at baby penis! Shut up. I DON’T. I’m just saying that I’m grateful for my normal vagina okay that’s all thank you amen.)

Seriously though, I think it’s pretty safe to say that my vagina is my favorite thing in existence. And yes, I know I’m supposed to say “vulva” instead of vagina because that’s anatomically correct but the word vulva makes my insides die a little bit so I’m just going to keep saying vagina regardless of what you and your judgey mcjudgerstein friends think.

Because my vagina is special. So special, in fact, that it even has it’s own schedule. I’ll be sitting down to make plans for the week and I’ll have to be all, “Wait, which sex toy am I reviewing on Tuesday?” and “When’s my Brazilian waxing appointment?” and “Do I have time to try the Vajacial?” (an actual 50 minute facial-like spa service for the vagina that’s being offered here in San Francisco).

It’s basically come down to my needing a separate planner just for my vagina. I swear that bitch has a more active schedule than I do. Like, over the past month it was “Must use the sex swing!” and “Must take a road trip to Oregon to cross another state off my Sex in 50 States List!” and “Must charge the $109 cock ring that the gorgeous people at Babeland sent me!” Oh, the ever exhausting horror.

JUST KIDDING. ME SO LUCKY. THIS THE BEST VIBRATING COCK RING EVER.

It’s like, imagine the best sex you’ve ever had. And then imagine that that sex went to the gym for like eleventy hundred hours and got even sexier. And then imagine that that newly pumped up sexy sex also brought you flowers wrapped in brown paper. And then imagine that that newly pumped up sexy sex remembered to get you flowers more creative than roses and also threw in a massage, an iPod shuffle, and sixteen very sincere compliments. That’s sex using the LELO Tor.

No joke, this thing has six different stimulation modes and some are fast and some are slow and some are pulsing and OH MY GOD THE PULSING MODES and it’s so easy to use and the crazy things holds its charge for like two fucking hours and and and seriously I think if I had sex with someone while he was wearing this thing for two entire hours I’d be dead from too! many! explosive! orgasms! Also, after a little research I learned that “Tor” is a name from Norse Mythology, so you might as well be having a threesome with your man and a Scandinavian man. Or your dildo and a Scandinavian man. Or, well, I don’t know the details but there’s definitely room for a Scandinavian man in there somewhere. Yum.

Did I mention that I love this sex toy? And did I also mention that I love Babeland enough to have signed up for their affiliate program (see sidebar) and that if you ever decide to buy sex toys you should do it through this link so that in turn, I can buy more tequila?

ORGASMS FOR YOU + TEQUILA FOR ME = WIN WIN SITUATION

Sidenote: If you live in NYC or Seattle, you should seriously take one of the workshops offered at your local Babeland store. They’re amazing.

Double sidenote: Babeland should open a store in San Francisco.

Triple sidenote: I’d totally get trained to teach said workshops.

Quadruple sidenote: I don’t have anything else to say here, but I really just wanted to see if I could spell the word “quadruple” without needing spell check. For those of you who added a “t” in there somewhere: high five, me too. For those of you who added a “t” in there somewhere and who also continually try to add a “p” to hamster and at least twelve unnecessary letters to the word “privilege,” let’s all remember that even though we’re shit spellers, this would be worse if we had tiny baby penis clits and if I didn’t have the LELO Tor.

See? ALL BETTER NOW.

A few weeks ago, the kickass people at AdultSexToys.com sent me a Clone-A-Pussy kit so that I could make a chocolate replica of my vagina. It’s things like this that make it really weird to date me because I call at noon on a Tuesday and I’m all, “Would you like to come over for dinner and chocolate vagina?” and he’s like, “??” and I’m all, “I’m pretty sure the fine print of the Universal Dating Manual states that whenever the girl would like help creating an exact mold of her vagina, the guy says yes” and he’s like, “I’ll bring Champagne” and I’m all, “I’m adding that to the manual.” And then he really did come over and he really did bring Champagne because he’s the best of the best and I drank it and he drank it and Jamie drank it because of course Jamie was there too and I made them both five cheese stuffed shells for dinner which was my way of saying, “Thank you for constantly putting up with my shenanigans and for loving my vagina so dearly.”

After dinner we opened the kit and read through the instructions and they were all, “The first step is to thoroughly wash your vagina with soap and water” so I went into the bathroom and took off my pants and did as I was told and then I changed into a long hippie skirt that solved the problem of “How do I have access to my vagina during the molding process without running around the apartment naked?” because I’m totally more modest than you’d think and I don’t run around naked that often. And then steps two and three are to mix the molding powder with lukewarm water and pour it into the molding container but you have to do it quickly because it turns to gel after like actually one minute and then step four is to stand there and press the molding container against your vagina and it urges you to “be sure your entire vulva is covered” which is probably my new favorite sentence ever and is also the strangest part of the process because you’re just STANDING THERE for like FOUR WHOLE MINUTES with gel pressed against your vagina and your legs are spread wide open because who the who wants a mold of the *outside* of their vagina?? But then the mold solidifies and you peel it off and put it in the freezer and melt the chocolate and pour it into the mold and put it back in the freezer and then you take it out of the freezer and remove it from the mold and OH MY GOD IT ACTUALLY WORKS. Like, I stood in the middle of the kitchen squealing and then I made everyone eat part of it except I wasn’t looking when Jamie took her bite and she’s all, “YOU AREN’T GOING TO WATCH ME EAT YOUR VAGINA?” which actually replaces “be sure your entire vulva is covered” as my new favorite ever sentence.

So, to recap, Jamie is awesome and the guy I’m dating is awesome except let’s call him James Bond from now on because “the guy I’m dating” is annoying to type and there are tons of totally legit parallels between them like how James Bond is mysterious and this guy is sort of mysterious and how James Bond is, well, fuck, that’s all I’ve got because I hope I’m not dating someone who’s secretly British with a closet full of tuxedos and guns and leggy women. Actually, I hope I’m not dating someone who keeps women of any leg length stored in a closet. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, the Clone-A-Pussy kit and how it’s awesome and how I’m totally going to do what the package suggests and make other things with the reusable mold like vagina soap and vagina candles and VAGINA ICE CUBES because it instructs you to “fill with water or your favorite juice and freeze for a refreshing treat on a hot day.” FAVORITE JUICE. APPLE JUICE VULVA.

Who wants to make apple juice vulva with me? And who wants to buy a vagina candle? OH MY GOD I SHOULD SELL VAGINA CANDLES. And who wants to win one of these kits? Yes, they’re letting me do a giveaway for you lucky vaginas and dude vaginas and fuck, if chocolate vaginas make an appearance in the next Bond movie I’m totally going to sue.

Happy Thursday.

PS- If I win that lawsuit I’ll buy EVERYONE a Clone-A-Pussy kit. You’re welcome in advance. Happy Thursday once again.

[UPDATE: James Bond has picked a winner. He picked Jenn. He picked Jenn because he liked that she and KYLECOOPER entered the contest together. He has a condition for Jenn winning though. Jenn & KYLECOOPER, are you listening? His condition is that you guys have to tell me the story about using the mold so that I can tell it to him. Cool? Cool.]

When I first moved here, one of my blog readers immediately forwarded me a list of 60 Super Sexy Things To Do in San Francisco. Because I’m sexy. Or, well, I don’t know why else. So yeah, let’s go with the sexy thing.

When I first got the email, I thought, “You know, my blog readers really are the best of the best.” You bitches and dude bitches are always looking out for me and keeping me up to date by sending me fun links and hilarious links and dirty links. And horrifying links. Man, I’ve gotten a lot of horrifying links.

Like, did you know that there’s a website that sells dildos in the shape of animal penises? You can just click on over to the category of “unnatural dildos & dongs” and buy a full size canine penis, or a whale penis, or an 18.5 inch horse penis (I KNOW RIGHT??), or, wait for it, a WOLF PENIS. Let’s not discuss the amount of time I’ve spent on this website. Let’s also not discuss the people who are actually buying these dildos. Actually no, let’s do discuss them.

One reviewer of the wolf penis dildo exclaims, “Okay, I always wanted to see a wolf’s penis and have sex with one. I’m crazy, so I bought this wolf penis dildo. I just got it a week ago and I held it in my hand saying OMG I’m holding a wolf penis. HeHe I lubed it up and shoved it in my ass and when I got to the knot I had to sit on it to get it in. Soon as it popped in it felt so amazing. I leave it in my ass for an hour and sometimes ram it in and out. OMG, It’s amazing and it’s in my ass as I write this. I love wolves penis.”

Please tell me this sort of makes you want to die. Just a little bit. Just enough so that you never have to think about this ever again ever. Yeah, me too. I’m sorry I shared this with you, I really am. But also I’m not, because at least now I don’t have to suffer through this all by myself anymore. I know, I’m selfish. But maybe the review is a joke? Maybe no one has ever purchased this item and someone is actually just sick enough to write fake reviews for stuff like this all over the internet.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, the 60 sexy things list. Luckily, animal sex isn’t on the list. Wait, hang on, it’s San Francisco, let me double check.

Nope, we’re good.

So, item number eight on the list is to dine in the dark at Opaque, a restaurant where you eat a multi-course meal in straight up pitch black darkness. I’ve always wanted to do this, and by “always” I mean “ever since I read about how Chelsea Handler did it and if you know me you know I’m obsessed with Chelsea Handler in a probably not okay way and so dining in the dark at Opaque is number 125 on my Life List because maybe if I do everything that Chelsea does she’ll be my friend.”

(I get creepier every day, huh?)

Despite the fact that my only draw to this dinner was a head full of Chelsea Handler fantasies, it was actually incredible. Definitely a 39 on an awesome scale from 3-17. It was also a learning experience of sorts. For example, I learned that I’ve never been in pitch black eyes-don’t-ever-adjust dark before. And I learned that buttering bread in this kind of dark makes you feel like an idiot. And I learned that being blind would suck. And that food tastes different when you can’t see it. And that you absolutely can’t go to an in the pitch black eyes-don’t-ever-adjust dark event with someone you aren’t comfortable touching. Not touching touching. Well, maybe. It’s certainly dark enough. Not that I did that. This isn’t that kind of story.

See Mom?! THIS FINALLY ISN’T THAT KIND OF STORY.

Unless Chelsea wants it to be.

HI CHELSEA

So I came to this realization recently, and it’s less about grammar and more about arousal, but perhaps the most awkwardly horrible time to make a typo is while dirty texting. Because I mean, it’s all hot and sexy until somebody wants you to do something to their hard coke.  Or you’re so turned on that it’s making you wat.

Because you make the typo, right, but then what? Do you ignore it? Do you keep texting? Do you quickly type the hottest thing you can think of so as not to change the mood? Or do you acknowledge it and immediately text back with *wet! I mean wet! YOU’RE MAKING ME SO WET!

God technology complicates sex. Actually no, you know what really complicates sex? The fucking iPhone. The fucking iPhone and its fucking auto correcting of words for no good reason. Like, stop changing “fuck” to “duck.” Have I ever typed duck? No seriously, when’s the last time I ever, ever texted ANYONE about ducks? Never, that’s when. I’ve never texted anyone about ducks. But do you know which word I do use in almost every single text? Fuck. Do you hear that, iPhone? Fuck is my favorite word and you clearly need to just get your shit together already and start recognizing that I like fucking more than I like water birds. And, actually, while we’re having it out, I’d like to also request that you stop anticipating my needs and prematurely inserting the word “Bette” when all I’m trying to do is type “better.” I mean, who the fuck is Bette? There isn’t anyone in my contacts named Bette. In fact, I’m pretty sure there hasn’t even been a single person in the world named Bette since like 1957.

Which makes me think that the guy who programmed the iPhone has an enormous crush on some old chick named Bette. Or maybe his mom’s name is Bette. Or maybe he’s really old and back in college he used to get head from this super hot chick named Bette until she left him for a football player with a really nice car and he’s pissed as hell because he hasn’t had it that good since then and now he’s married and bitter because he spends his days programming iPhones and doesn’t even have a good blowjob to come home to and the crazy thing is that his wife totally *would* blow him, but he never bothers to go down on her first and has absolutely no idea that her clit is shaped like a wishbone or that all clits are shaped like wishbones which leaves him working for Apple and her wildly unsatisfied in the pants and me with an iPhone that thinks I want to duck Bette.

Wait, so, that wishbone thing. Did you know that? Because I totally didn’t and yet I’ve been wearing a small gold wishbone necklace for the past six months and talking about wishbones and luck and how I believe we make our own luck and then I find out last week that what I’ve really been doing this entire time is wearing a GOLDEN CLITORIS around my neck and maybe THAT’S why I’ve been having such incredible orgasms lately.

THE POWER OF THE NECKLACE.

Well, the power of the necklace backed up by the power of my newest favorite sex book, Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex that’s full of incredible tips and incredible photography and the incredible ability to turn me on from just flipping through the pages. Yes, it’s that awesome. Do you want one? I have four to give away. Four! Free! Books! About! Wishbone! Clits!

And I know, I know, between this and the Texts from Last Night book and the blog redesign I’ve been doing a lot of giveaways lately but it’s only because I think you bitches & dude bitches are fantastic and I love you and it’s Valentine’s Day and this is the last giveaway I’m doing for a while but it’s totally worth it because it’s a book that, among other things, taught me the real shape of my clit and if you’re still all, “enough already with the giveaways,” I sort of want to make it up to you by posting a picture in which I’m holding said book and am also maybe a little bit topless but I know that if I did that, somebody would get all snarky and bring up the fact that I’m 24 years old and therefore probably too old to wear pigtail braids but I don’t give a swimming horse vagina because I hate blow drying my hair and I fucking love pigtail braids and you can just shut your lips and and and no topless photo for you.

{Winners! Jessica, Ev’Yan, Jenny, and Alana!}

A weird fact that you might not know about me is that I legitimately want to be friends with every single person who posts to Texts From Last Night. Yes, even the ones who like Jersey Shore and think “your” is the same as “you’re.” Because really? Those bitches are HILARIOUS and even more than being hilarious, they make me feel better about myself because while I’m maybe the most fucked up person you know, I’m definitely not the most fucked up person you could know and that’s pretty much an end of the rainbow pot of self-esteem gold right there.

So these people behind Texts From Last Night – they’re basically my favorite because they’ve single handedly given me repeated opportunities to be like, “SEE?? IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH WORSE,” followed by “AT LEAST I HAVE CONTROL OF THINGS LIKE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND MY BOWELS” and other such statements that make me feel spectacularly put together, even when I’m going through my texts from the night before and it’s basically a flow chart of whiskey and hookers and Twitter and whether or not hookers use Twitter while drinking whiskey and the very best part of it all is how it’s anonymous and based on the numbers of your area code so the few times my texts have been posted to the site the only thing anyone knows is that there’s some crazy chick with a 917 area code whose friend got masturbated on on top of a car.

Speaking of numbers, I’ve recently realized that the secret thing about dating is that it’s totally a numbers game and I’m not so great with numbers and this is probably why I’m single.

Because I don’t give a shit about how many days you’re supposed to wait before calling (two? three?), how many dates you should go on before having sex (five? eleven?), how many people you’ve slept with in the past (fifteen? forty two?), or how many people you’ve slept with at once (threesome? foursome?) because my overly anxious and heavily caffeinated brain is just too frantic to care about those kinds of shenanigans and all I want to know is if you’re funny and good to me and free of herpes but it’s all full circle because how long do you have to date someone before asking about genital warts??

Pressure like this is why I read Texts From Last Night and cry with joy and terror at the thought of this being my life:

(401): This is a mass text. Does anyone know where I am?

Which brings me to my next point: I’m giving away a copy of Texts From Last Night: All the Texts No One Remembers Sending to a random commenter sometime this week. There’s no deadline, I’ll basically just pick someone whenever I feel like it because in addition to being bad with numbers, I’m also bad with rules and timelines and yet I’m also incredibly type A and maybe you’re finally getting the hang of why I’m so stressed out all the mother fucking time.

{And the winner is… the lovely Carissa from carissajaded.com}

It was the first thing on my to do list last Wednesday: pick up birth control refill. So I call the pharmacy and they’re all, “Oh, sorry, looks like you’re out of refills.” And I’m like, “Um, what? I just had my annual check up six months ago” and the pharmacist is all, “Just have your doctor phone in another prescription” and I’m like, “Okay, sure” and hang up, thinking it’ll be some easy 1 2 3 thing.

So I call the doctor’s office, right, and some chick answers and her voice makes me think that maybe she’s 12 and she’s all sweet and high pitched with her, “Dr. Silverman’s office, can you please hold?” and it sounds like she’s asking me a question but I know that shit isn’t really a question because she’s off the line before I can be like, “Actually I can’t hold because this is a birth control emergency,” and then she comes back after what is definitely enough time to grow a gray hair and she’s all, “Thanks for holding” and I’m like, “Thanks for giving me no other option,” and she’s all, “How can I help you?”

So I tell her the situation, that I’m a patient of Dr. Silverman’s and that I had my annual check up in May and that I just tried to get my birth control prescription refilled and that I think there’s been a mistake because I’m out of refills, even though it’s only been six months. And she tells me that actually, it’s not a mistake and then she pauses for a really long and conversationally inappropriate amount of time and I’m like, “So…?” and she’s all “You have to come in for another appointment.” And I’m like, “??” and she’s all, “We need to see our patients every six months” and I’m like, “Please explain to me how it’s an ANNUAL CHECK UP if I have to come every six months” and she sighs and says that if I want a new prescription, I have to come back in for an appointment and I’m all, “Yeah? Funny, I think maybe you already mentioned that” and she’s like, “I have an opening next Thursday at 10am, does that work?” and I’m all, “I’m living in San Francisco now” and she goes, “So 10am doesn’t work?” and I’m like, “Okay really? I’m not coming in. I don’t need you people to poke around in my vagina at 10am on Thursday because I JUST HAD AN APPOINTMENT SIX MONTHS AGO and you gave me a pretty decent poke that time around and all I want is for you to give me a new prescription so that I don’t have any babies” and she’s like, “We can’t renew your prescription if you don’t come in for another appointment,” and I’m all, “True or false, it’s more likely for me to be eaten by a turtle in the next two minutes than for you to start making sense” and she’s all, “I have a 3:30 appointment available as well, if that’s more convenient for you,” which is pretty much when I realized that we weren’t even having the same conversation any more and said, “Right, thanks for your time” which I hoped she knew was code for “Please tell Dr. Silverman that the two of you will be hearing from my baby daddy.”

And then, of course, I called my mom to bitch about the general ridiculousness of the gynecological world and the control they have and she pointed out that maybe I was being a little dramatic and that it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world for me to just not have sex for a bit. I told her that that was pretty funny, considering how I’m literally having zero sex right now and she’s all, “Well, maybe if you were having sex you’d have less time to be overly dramatic about things like this.”

Which is more or less when my head exploded and I started seriously considering how much I’d have to pay someone on Craigslist to bring me a vibrator and a shot of tequila.

Knowledge is weird. Like, one second you don’t know something and then the next second you do. And as soon as you do? You can’t un-know it. Well, except for high school Spanish. I couldn’t conjugate a Spanish verb to save the lives of all the AIDS babies in the galaxy.

So, you know, hopefully it never comes down to that.

But anyway, this new thing I learned? It’s from a book called Sperm Wars, which basically explains why we do what we do in regard to all things sex from the perspective of evolutionary biology. And it’s a total mindfuck.

It’s hot scene after hot scene, followed by detailed explanations of why she turned him down, why he couldn’t impregnate her, why he slept with another woman, why she masturbated, etc.

Oh, and my favorite: why there’s the ‘flowback.’ You know, that collection of material that flows back out of the vagina sometime after intercourse. THE FLOWBACK. IT HAS A NAME. THIS IS THE NEW THING I LEARNED. YOU’RE SO INSANELY WELCOME.

After learning the new thing though, I couldn’t un-learn it. I couldn’t get the gross overly descriptive word out of my head for days. So finally, I resorted to reading through Helen Keller’s Twitter stream and publishing a blog post about the horror of my job search process.

Which helped.

Until later that night. Until I was out to dinner with my parents and I got a text about how I made a typo at the end of the post and I was like, “I must fix this before it hits Google Reader!” and my parents were all giving me the eyes like they had no clue what I was talking about, because no matter how many times I explain blogging to them they’re all, “I read things printed on real paper!” and I’m like, “Cave people!”

But at dinner that night I was all, “this will only take a second” and I whipped out my iPhone and logged into my blog and ran my mouth off about the awesomefest that is modern technology. Except, as it turns out, while I can indeed login through my iPhone, I can’t actually edit a post on it.

WHAT THE FUCK. STOP TEASING ME.

And then I went into stabby catastrophe management mode. I know, I know, tiny little typo, but I’m the person who convinces herself that something irrational has to be done rightthissecond and then absolutely cannot let it go.

(I’M SO MUCH FUN TO BE AROUND!)

So I texted him back and was all, “Here’s my blog info! Can you oh my god please please login and change it?” but as soon as I did I was like, “WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE. WHAT DID I JUST DO?” Because I might or might not be 17% crazy and I might or might not have some misplaced trust issues that make me unable to read a book like Sperm Wars without picturing the absolute worst case scenarios for my sexual life and infidelity and flowback flowback flowback, but that’s just about sex. It’s an entirely different thing to trust someone enough to GIVE THEM ACCESS TO MY BLOG.

Which makes me wonder: WHY IS MY BLOG MORE IMPORTANT THAN MY SEX LIFE?

REVISITING THIS EVENT HAS BEEN VERY STRESSFUL.

I CAN’T STOP YELLING.

PLEASE PASS THE TEQUILA.

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.