A Walk To Forget

Having a high tolerance for humiliation, I am generally unfazed by feelings of embarrassment during walks of shame. Some walkers prefer to take extreme backroads or even sprint their way home in fear of ridicule and judgement, but not me. Regardless of how scanty my dress may be, I take my sweet time slowly strolling up even the busiest of streets; frat row is essentially my runway.

But the other morning halfway through a walk back from my favorite fraternity, I had a weird encounter that was more bizarre than the drunken night before had been. I'd been set up for a date party at a frat where I was surprised I'd never met my date since, to put it lightly, I'd already "met" a lot of guys in that house. Since I didn't know my date prior, but I knew a lot of other girls' dates, I pulled out all the stops by wearing a dress that left very little to the imagination, and heels so chunky that I'd used them in lieu of a hammer to push thumbtacks into my wall on move-in day. My outfit worked like a charm, and my date and I really hit it off. In fact, the dress worked so well that I found myself walking home in it a mere 10 hours later, only this time the outfit wasn't exactly what I would've chosen for a "morning" look. But still, I walked proudly with my heels in hand during the arduous trek up fraternity row, past people I didn't know and people I did know but didn't care enough to stop and explain my indecency to. I was only a block away from my place when all of the sudden my concentrated strut was broken by someone calling to me.
"Hey, excuse me!" I looked up to see a young guy pulled into a driveway in front of me with his car window rolled down.
Ugh, great, I thought to myself, just what I need right now, someone heckling me.
But once he saw that he'd gotten my attention he continued, "Can you tell me where the music building is?" His heavily accented voice sounded panicked and desperate, so I shrugged my scantily clad shoulders and replied sure. I took a couple of barefoot steps over towards his car and began my explanation.
"The music building is right past the humanities quad, kind of near the astronomy building. Do you know where I'm talking about?"
He looked at me with wide, terrified eyes, "No, no, I do not know where that is, I am not from here," his accent sounded european, and though it didn't make him attractive he didn't look like he could've been more than two or three years older than me. "You see, I have to be at the music hall before 10 for a rehearsal. The concert is my own so it is very important that I be there on time!"
I looked at me phone, it was 9:50. This kid was fucked, and not in the good way.
"Okay, okay," now we were in a time crunch, and for some reason (perhaps the fact that I was still considerably drunk from the night before) I had adopted this foreigner's problem as my own. "So you're going to continue straight down this street and make a left at the next right. Then, you're going to go straight through the light after that, then turn left again at the next light into a roundabout. There, you'll see a bunch of buses and cars and whatnot, drive past those and go into the parking structure. Then once you get out of your car, you're going to walk up a hill past the student store straight up to the music hall. But be careful not to walk in the other direction out of the parking structure or else you'll end up in the dorms!"
"Oh, thank you, thank you!"I felt rewarded, like I'd just done a good deed to rid me of my morning shame. He instantly appeared more relieved, which became evident in his next statement. "So...." he continued much more calmly, "I am here for a couple of days, are there fun places to go at night?"
Still in tour-guide mode, I replied enthusiastically "Sure! There's a bar down this street we're on now that's a huge night spot for students. Especially on Wednesday, that's Pint Night!"
"Do you ever go there?" He asked.
"No, I'm not 21." Why was I still talking to this guy?
"Where do you go out to?" He inquired further.
I couldn't help but laugh and look down at my dress, "I normally just go to the frats."
"Oh, okay. Do you think I could have your phone number for during my stay here? Maybe you could escort me out some night?"
Just as I was drunkenly about to start rattling off my phone number, it struck me: Oh, my god, this guy thinks I'm a prostitute!
"Oh, I'm sorry,"I was jolted back to sobriety, "my phone is broken, bye!" I hurried away from his car before he'd have the chance to notice that my phone had been in my hand during our entire conversation.
I'd always thought of walks of shame as embarrassing only because your fellow students could see your obvious scarlet letter of sleeping in someone else's bed. But it never occurred to me until that eye opening morning that what college students know to be sleeping out, people outside of the Greek System perceive to be prostitution.

You Snooze, They Lose

Being perpetually single, it only make sense that I celebrate my Valentines Day by doing something quintessential of my love life: having a random hook-up. I went to a pseudo-classy party at one of my favorite frats, where the boys were wearing shirts with buttons and collars, there was no dubstep playing, and everyone in attendance was guzzling as much $5 wine as their plastic cups could hold. Because I wasn’t doing my normal routine of throwing back shots, I unknowingly drank myself into a wine-drunk. My body was buzzing, my cheeks were radiating more than my uncontrollable smile was, and my brain was scanning the room for the nearest face to make out with. That’s when I found the easiest and most accessible solution: the guy in that frat who tried to get me to give him a handjob during a busride to a football game this past fall. He was cute, but in the past I hadn’t been into him because of how available he’d made himself, which in that moment made him the ideal candidate.
I slurred out a little flirting, and after about a minute flat I had successfully scored myself a valentine. In the holiday spirit, we started celebrating our genuine love and adoration for one another by making out in a most reprehensible manner. In about another minute flat, we retreated to the “privacy” of the curtain enclosing the bottom bunk of his shared bedroom. Unable to withstand the raging emotions of our feelings for one another, and equally unable to cope with the hormones brought on from our binge drinking, he took off his button down and slacks, as well as my festive pink dress.
Even though I was in this boy’s bedroom, my true valentine that night was definitely wine. I was in love with the wine, and the sleepy adoration it had me feeling. I wasn’t energetic and ready to rage the way I was normally rendered from drinking hard alcohol, but instead I was very giggly and extremely tranquil. I was evidently feeling love drunk off the wine, or else I wouldn’t have ended up in this particular valentine’s bed when I had a midterm the next morning. But there was something about the magic of the wine that had me magnetically drawn to his bed.
Equally love drunk, my valentine was a more frisky type of playful. “Babe,” he said whilst kissing my neck, “I would love it if you’d go down on me.”
I playfully repeated what he said, like some kind of drunken parrot, “I’d love it if you went down on me!” I grinned a huge smile that was framed by my cabernet-stained lips.
He returned the playful banter, “I’ll go down on you if you go down on me?”
“Okay! You first!” I flipped over onto my back and let my valentine be magnetized downward the same way I’d been magnetically drawn into his bed. I didn’t care that I was single on this holiday; it was the happiest Valentine’s Day I could’ve wished for. The combination of what literally was going down mixed with the tranquility I’d achieved off several glasses of vino had landed me in hook-up heaven.
A little while later, my valentine came back up to my hemisphere of the bed, but I remained still in my state of bliss. Eager to get his half of the favor, he moved his body to the upmost part of his bed so that I could stay on my back while still holding up my end of the bargain.
I wasn’t trying to avoid my promise, I was just fighting a losing battle against the sleepy euphoria that was washing over me so heavily I was in danger of drowning. But as I began giving him his valentines gift, I continued sinking deeper and deeper into my slumberous abyss, until the next thing I knew my alarm was sounding for my morning midterm!
“Oh, shit!” I woke up in an adrenaline rush, desperate to make it back to my room despite my time crunch so that I wouldn’t have to take my midterm in my flagrant Valentines Day outfit.
“Huh? What’s the matter?” he groggily mumbled, being roused from his sleep.
“I have to go take a midterm!” I said as I pulled my clothes on, “Later!” I flashed him a smile and ran out of his room.
In contrast with all the good students strolling past me on their way to class, I sprinted to my room to change into a decent outfit, then made my way to class. As I hurried to class, I ran over the previous nights events in my head. It wasn’t a blackout, but it was certainly blurry. My mind was racing as fast as my body was; the closer I got to my lecture hall, the more of the night I remembered. I remember making out in the main room, then we went back to his room obviously, seeing as that’s where I woke up… Then as I arrived at the classroom door, it hit me. Oh my God! I fell asleep while I was giving him head!  In total shock as well as astonishment, I opened the door just before my professor began handing out the exam. Well, I contemplated, at least I slept through giving him head, and not my morning midterm.

What's My Age Again?

As a little girl, my pimp of a mother would arrange bath time playdates between me and almost every little boy on my block. Time that wasn't spent in the tub was still spent nakedly playing "doctor." In short, my naked history with boys goes far back. But some time between kindergarten and first grade, I ditched my pre-med life and stopped playing naked doctor with boys in exchange for injecting cootie-shots with my girl friends. It wasn't until years later upon reaching sexual maturity that my interest in the male anatomy resurfaced, and so the naked playdates recommenced.
Playtime in college is vastly more enjoyable than the playdates of our youth. We're mature young adults now, meaning we're of a, legal or not, drinking age, and the permissible age to sign an apartment lease independent from parental authority. Week in and week out, I find myself playing doctor with young men regardless of if they're on the road to medical school or not. These boys don't need to call their moms for permission to sleep over, and don't refer to their junk as "private parts" or "pee pees." In contrary, private parts have become exceedingly public. However, I should have expected that when things seem too good to be true, they probably are. This past Saturday night, or more accurately Sunday morning, served as a wake up call that I've been taking sexual maturity for granted. I now find myself wondering if we all innately reach sexual maturity through human biology, or if some of us forever remain kids at heart.
The night started out no different from the standard mature young adult night. My friends and I took advantage of the free-for-all-who-have-a-vagina alcohol at our favorite fraternity and danced the fine line between incoherent and fun. Somewhere amidst the dancing on couches and shotgun competitions, I ran into one of my casual guy friends. Let it be said that, in college, when I say "guy friend" I mean an attractive acquaintance with whom I maintain a friendly relationship for the provisional goal of eventually hooking up with them. This guy friend was no exception, so I was down to fool around.
Less than an hour later and without the permission of our parents, my guy friend and I decided to have a sleepover at his apartment which is exactly how I woke up that Sunday morning to his manly arms cuddling me. Sexual maturity rocks.
"Hey," he said in a sleepy voice, then laid an equally sleepy kiss on my lips.
"Mhmm, good morning," the fact that I didn't wake up spewing out a slur of groggy obscenities the way I typically do when being roused from my sleep is a miracle in itself.
"I had a lot of fun hanging out with you last night," he smiled with his cute smile.
"Yeah, I really did too," I couldn't help but smile back. But after a few seconds of us drowsily smiling at each other, I jolted into panic when I realized that my study group of nerds had inconsiderately decided that we meet on a Sunday morning. "Oh shit, what time is it? I have a study group at 9 and need to shower before."
He reached his sculpted, fratty bicep over and checked his phone.
"It's 8," he gave me yet another smile and pulled me on top of him, "still a little time to fool around."
Though I am absolutely not a morning person, and I had a truly exceptional hangover, I was totally into this. So despite my pounding head, I indulged in the sleepy bliss of kissing in the morning. But my bliss was short lived; after a couple of minutes, my guy friend was trying to push my pounding head down to give him head. He wanted to play doctor by giving me an injection in the mouth, and my hangover and I were not down to go down. I resisted his push, but then he started begging.
"Aww, please baby, please! Just go down!" His smile was cute, but not that cute.
"No, I don't want to right now," it was way too early for this shit.
"Please, Taylor!" His incessant begging was quickly getting on my nerves.
"No, stop it," how could I tell him that the only thing I wanted in my mouth was a hot cup of coffee?
"Ughhhh, come on Tay!" he pleaded as he kept pushing me downward. I'd reached my limit.
"Seriously, stop! You're really annoying me!" I felt silly scolding him, but it was necessary.
Just when I thought I'd put up with his worst, he rolled away from me onto his side of the bed and whined under his breath "Well, you're annoying me..."
My jaw dropped; If I hadn't been rendered speechless, I wouldn't have known whether to laugh or get angry at his childish display. One thing was certain, I'd been snapped out of our playtime. I realized I wasn't lying next to a sexy and mature young man, I was lying next to a big baby with a big dick.
I didn't have time to babysit, so I got out of bed and gathered my stuff, "Okay, see you later."
"Wait, stop,"he said as I moved towards the door, "at least let me walk you downstairs."
I wanted to make a snide remark about how his mother had taught him such good manners, but I didn't want to piss him off since I needed him to walk me downstairs and I also needed to borrow his shirt so I wouldn't have to commit the disgraceful crime of wearing sequins in the morning.
Once I was freed from his apartment, I spent my walk home not sprinting in shame, but instead comprehending what had just gone down in result of not going down. I started to think that sexual maturity isn't something everyone arrives at after puberty, but rather something that a small minority arrives at from proper emotional development. Just because someone can get a boner, it doesn't necessarily mean they're qualified to use it. In the short walk from his apartment to my dorm room I'd once again lost all hope in men. I realized that the little boys I used to have bathtimes with had better manners than the college boy whose apartment I'd just slept over at.

Dude, Where's My Dignity?

As is evident in every Nancy Drew book or thriller-genre movie ever made, mysterious things happen at night. Every weird plot twist is always committed under the dark veil of night, then discovered in the daylight. It often feels like I'm an aspiring detective majoring in forensics with how frequently my college career requires me to solve my own mysteries. More often than I'd like to give a self-abasing number to, I find myself waking up in a mysterious location with enigmatic clues as to what happened the night before in my purse. The detective within me investigates further by finding texts from unknown numbers, and deciphering cryptic texts from my own outbox. Normally I'm able to crack the case by midafternoon, but this past weekend I was met with the most difficult case of my forensic career.
I woke up feeling like I'd been through a war against myself. Head pounding, body aching, tally marks all over my arms, and bruises all over my legs. I knew where I'd started my night, and I could safely theorize that I ended my night in my room since that's where I woke up, but everything in between desperately needed solving. The sheer pain of my hangover lead me to believe that last night had not been a standard beer and vodka night. I looked at the tallies on my arm to see how much I'd drank, but my tallies stopped after the first few drinks then turned into roman numerals and dirty drawings extending up my forearm. But as I tried to make sense of the cryptic scribbles on my arm, I found my first clue. The area of my hand between my thumb and pointer finger was red and chafed.
"Tequila shots!" I gasped. That was why my night was a perplexing blur. But knowing that I'd done tequila shots gave me a vague recollection of the pregame. I remembered going salt, shot, lime with a sexy stranger that I'd seen around campus but hadn't seen at any parties until last night. This clue gave me a sneaking suspicion that I'd done something stupid. My salted hand reached onto the floor for my purse and I checked to see if anything was missing; I had my phone and room key, but my dignity was missing! My phone was out of battery, so I plugged it in to see if I'd taken any pictures or sent any texts that would help me crack this case. My phone revived itself, but there was no evidence which led me to believe that it had died before I could send any drunk texts. While it was dead I'd missed texts from my friend who I'd gone out with.
The first one read"Where are you?" Then five minutes later "I lost you again, where'd you go?", then "?", and finally "Taylor!! Are you dead?!" This was not going to be good. I needed to call her.
"Hmphgn... hello?" I'd woken her up.
"What happened last night?" The first rule of being a good detective is always ask questions.
"Haha I have no idea. I hardly even saw you at the party, you totally disappeared! When I finally found you, you were crying and kept on saying 'I got kicked out, I got kicked out' which clearly wasn't true because you were still at the party. Then you started asking me to draw on you."
"I'm never drinking tequila again," I lied to myself.
"You don't remember?"
"Not a thing!"
"I wish I could tell you more. Ugh, I should start getting ready for class."
"Yeah, same."
"Rough, good luck remembering your night."
I made the arduous trek from my bed to my bathroom sink and started getting ready for class. But once I put in my contacts, I looked in the mirror and found another clue all over my neck. Either I'd been violently strangled or someone had given me hickies. I ruled out the first possibility and came to the conclusion that I'd kissed someone or something the night before. But I didn't have the gift of time to test a DNA sample from my neck and match it to the perpetrator, so I rubbed some concealer on my neck and ran off to class.
The walk across campus was ridden with the anxiety that any passerby could potentially be the perpetrator. It was the most frustrated I'd ever been; it was already midafternoon and I still had no theory as to my dignity's whereabouts! I'd reached a serious block in my case and was starting to think that I'd never break through it. It was then at my lowest that I ran into my friend from freshman year.
"Hey girl, how are you feeling?" She asked me with sympathetic eyes.
"What do you mean?" Was my despair that obvious?
"Do you remember seeing me last night?"
"No!" I exclaimed happily, "you saw me last night??"
"Yeah, you were crying to me," she was clearly confused by my reaction, "are you okay now?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, what was I saying to you?"
"Uhh, well, you told me you had been making out with some guy in the bathroom of the bar, but then the security guard told you guys to get out of the bathroom, then you were just crying and saying 'I got kicked out' over and over."
I finally knew where my lost dignity was. But there was still one critical part of the mystery that needed unraveling. I grabbed my friend by the shoulders, seeking the final piece of information.
"I need you to tell me who the boy from the bathroom was," I had a crazy look in my eyes. My dignity was definitely a thing of the past.
"I don't know his name, but earlier that night before you were crying I'd seen you making out with some tall guy with kind of longish brown hair."
The sexy stranger from the pregame! I sputtered out a "thanks" to my friend and ran off. I had a bizarre peace of mind knowing that the sexy stranger had been the perpetrator of my hickey. On the one hand, I could rest assured that my hickey was not from someone hideously disfigured, but someone I'd wanted to hook up with since the first time I stalker-esquely saw them from afar. On the other hand, I'd inevitably made a Lindsay Lohan out of myself in front of one of the most attractive people I've ever seen in person. Regardless, I finally knew where my dignity had gone, though in no way did I have my dignity back.

The Wrestler

Hooking up is kind of like graphing logs. You plot the points of your intersecting bodily movements where the slope depends on how quickly things are escalating and the limit depends on what the mutual expectation for the night is. If you're both DTF, the limit does not exist. But, if you're intending to put a limit on what's going down (or should I say who's going down), then the math becomes tricky. Unlike mathematical equations, the two lines of this function to not always agree on the limit they're going to encroach. One member of the hook up almost always wants the other member's legs to split across the positive and negative side of the X-axis, and if that doesn't happen, they will at the very least want the other member to drop below their X-axis. This is often met by some hesitation from the other member of the hook up. This moment marks the most important point plotted on their sexual function; it's the moment when the hook up stops being mathematical and starts being physical. The numbers and logic disappear as the bed/couch/backseat turns into a wrestling ring. There is no more mathematics, no more words even, just a silent battle of strength and stubbornness. Just like in a wrestling match, everyone is wondering "who will go down first?"
The night starts out with the given exponents: girl, boy, alcohol, and apartment. Imagine you've been at a party when you start talking to an attractive guy. He's charming and funny to begin with, and the more you two drink, the more his attractive qualities exponentialize. You two are totally connecting, so as the party dies down you accept his offer to go back to his place and "hang out." And no, this isn't community college pre-algebra; you're not a fucking idiot so you know that by "hang out" he means "hook up." The next thing you know, you're back at his room on his top bunk and the majority of your clothing has been subtracted from the equation. The slope of your drunken function has been increasing rapidly, but you've mentally solved the equation by deciding that you're not down to fuck, but rather down to foreplay.
"Hold on, let me get a condom," it seems that he got a different answer.
"No, no, not tonight," you say. He's disappointed but accepts your answer, and so you two carry on the nakey-making-out.
You're drawing nearer and nearer to your limit, and are looking forward to the point at which you can blissfully pass the fuck out. He then makes the move from being on top to pulling you on top of him. Now that you're on top of him, he first puts his hands in your hair (aw) then moves his hands onto your shoulders, also known as his key leverage point (ugh). Now you're under pressure as he gently yet firmly pushes down on your shoulders. You've arrived at "The Limit." Numbers and slopes don't matter anymore, you're engaged purely in a test of physical strength and stamina as you resist the downward push from a pair of hands that you met all of three hours ago. Like any good athlete, motivational phrases run through your head to help you find the strength within to keep fighting. Does he even remember my name? Do I even remember his? Will he return the favor after, or just roll over and pass out? This room looks familiar- have I been in this same situation, only on his roommate's bottom bunk? Somehow, your thirty-minutes-on-the-elliptical-only-on-days-you're-hungover conditioned body is withstanding his fratty, swollen biceps. Neither of you have budged and both of your muscles are beginning to twitch. It's pretty awkward now.
Depending on how big of an asshole your opponent is, once he realizes he's not getting head he might pull a line like "Hey, listen, I gotta wake up really early to start tailgating tomorrow, so I'll see you later," or he might roll over without saying a word and pass out with you just lying there. Chances are he won't be happy that you won the wrestling match, which is why it's always best to leave and not sleep over if he doesn't kick you out anyway. Celebrate your victory on the shameful 4 am walk back to your room. The important thing is to not fall asleep at your opponent's place after winning the wrestling match. No one likes a sore loser, especially when they're cranky in the morning and don't even remember your name.

The Not So Red Scare

It all started with excruciating stomach pains this past monday in the middle of the night. In too much discomfort to sleep, and my mind now racing wishing I could call downstairs to my mom to get me ginger ale and saltines, I went online to schedule the earliest appointment available for the next morning at the school doctor. Seven hours of the worst, most fragmented sleep later, I woke up with my stomach still hurting, but help would be on the way soon. Hunched over, I rolled out of bed, pulled on sweatpants, and hobbled down to the student health center. After a fantastic weekend, it only seemed fair that my week should start off terribly. I thought I'd made amends for the fun I'd had Saturday night with my Sunday morning hangover, but apparently the party gods still wanted me to repent for my drinking. However, it was worth it. Even though I felt as if I was going to shit out my stomach, I was still blissfully happy about how much fun I'd had at the party Saturday, not to mention how much fun I'd had after the party with the hottie from my Linguistics discussion.
After a Trail of Tears-esque walk, I was finally at the doctor. I checked in for my appointment and went to sit in the waiting area. The waiting rooms in doctors offices are my absolute favorite place to people watch. There were plenty of people occupying the seats around me that looked as if they were at death's door, but those weren't the people I was interested in. It's the ones who appear to have nothing wrong with them; those are the ones that have the most interesting reason for being there. They have STD written all over them.
I was in the middle of deciding whether the blonde girl across from me looked more like a "herpes" or a "chlamydia" when I was called over by a nurse. She brought me into a room, took my height and weight (ugh), then said the doctor would come see me shortly.
As I waited for the doctor, I took out my phone to text my mom. I'd told her I was having stomach pains last night, and ever since then I could practically feel her having a panic attack, even from 2,000 miles away. I reassured her with a text, "at the doctor's now! your little girl is going to be just fine!" Moments later she replied with "wish I could be there with you! love you baby!"
Just then, the doctor opened the door and gave me what I assume was a smile.
"Alright now, what seems to be the problem?" She took a seat and pulled out a form covered clipboard.
"Well, last night I couldn't sleep because I was having really intense stomach cramps, and now they've carried over to this morning."
She went on to ask all the usual questions: "Are you allergic to any medications?" "Are you currently taking any medications?" "Any history of heart disease/diabetes/high blood pressure in your family?" "When was the date of your last period?"
The last one made me stop and think. I was silent for about five seconds as I flipped back through my mental calendar. Finally, I broke the silence, "End of August."
The doctor paused. Never looking up from her clipboard, she said "Well, that's quite a while."
She was right. It was November. Anyone who's graduated from kindergarten could've told me that it's been over a month since August.
"When was the last time you had sex?" Her eyes still on the clipboard.
Oh, you've got this one, you're fine, I told myself, confident that my last date of intercourse was uncontroversial. "Like, sex-sex?"
"Either vaginal or oral."
Oh. "Saturday."
"And how long have you been with that partner?"
Is that actually on the fucking form? Who wrote these, my mother?? "Uhh," well this was uncomfortable, "not really at all..."
"Do you drink?"
Fucking duh. "Yes."
"Do you smoke?"
Yes. "Not regularly."
"How often do you drink?"
"Umm, like, twice a week," I lied.
"And how many drinks do you drink in a night?"
"Four or five-ish." Another lie.
"Do you ever black out?"
"Not regularly."I pretended to itch my nose but was really checking to see if it was growing from lying so much.
Still focused on the form she said, "The concern doctors have about blacking out is that you'll partake in sexual activity and not be able to remember whether it happened and whether or not you practiced safe sex."
I gulped heavily.
She scribbled down some things on her clipboard and I could tell my medical forms were turning into a burn book. Diagnosis: grotsky little biotch.
At last she looked up from the clipboard. "Do you use protection?"
"Yes," I said with a look in my eyes that cried please don't call my mom.
"Have you taken a pregnancy test since your last missed period?"
"No, but I mean, I'm not. Like, I'm definitely not."I wasn't sure who I was trying to convince, her or myself. As if the nurse hadn't made me feel bad enough when she took my weight, the doctor made me feel like a deplorable whore. Going to the doctor was supposed to fix whatever was bothering you, but this appointment had made me feel even worse.
"Okay, well I'm going to have you take one just to be safe. As for your stomach pains, I've written you a prescription for a low dosage painkiller. If your symptoms persist after a couple of days, come back for a follow-up visit." She handed me a little plastic bag with a small container and a set of directions in it. "As for the test, I'll email you the results within 24 hours."
I grabbed the bag in a lightheaded daze. "Thank you," and thank you for attaching a timebomb to my new pregnancy paranoia.
The week earlier, I'd had midterms that I'd hardly studied for and guessed on practically every multiple choice question, but this test I felt least confident after taking. I gave my test answers to the nurse, and walked back to my dorm in a stressed out, tense trance.
It was impossible to do anything. I couldn't watch TV because every show and commercial coincidentally had a baby or toddler in it, I couldn't do any homework because when I sat at my computer all I could do was refresh my email, and I couldn't sleep because my mind was racing too fast to settle into an REM cycle. So I laid in my bed with the lights off and blinds shut, and just let my mind race. I did this for so many hours that when I finally got up from my bed it was dark outside. I sleepwalked over to my computer and checked my email. I was in a haze until I realized I had a message in my inbox. With that my mind jolted awake and my pulse began pounding. My hand was shaking so badly that it took me several tries to fix the mouse on the message to click it open. Finally, my motor skills allowed me to read the message. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my throat.
My eyes scanned over the screen until I found the word "negative." After that, I reread the message at least ten times before it finally resonated with me you're fine, and furthermore you don't have to call mom with some very bad news.
"YES!!!" I jumped feet into the air when midjump I realized my stomach was still in excruciating pain. Consequently, instead of landing the jump, I fell to the floor, but still kept screaming in joy. Within the span of 10 hours, I'd gone from having nothing more than serious stomach pains, to being possibly pregnant, to being definitely not pregnant with serious stomach pains and possibly a broken ankle. As much as I bitch about my period when I have it, on that day I learned that having it is better than not having it at all.

Just Friends? Just Kidding.

As evident in almost any romantic comedy ever made, it has been said that boys and girls can never be "just friends." There's a variety of cliches following the formula "the only person a girl can trust is her dad/girlfriends/dog," but it is unanimously agreed that a girl cannot trust any non-related, heterosexual boy. Nearly consistently throughout my entire (un)romantic life I've found this to be the case. Whenever I'm happily involved with a guy, the relationship is nothing more than a rapidly ticking time bomb that is in danger of exploding at any given moment, resulting in the annihilation of my chances at a happy ending. Depressing, I know. On a positive note, at home in New Jersey I'm blessed with the best guy friends a girl could ever ask for (I attribute this to the fact that these boys knew me during my awkward phase), so while I never had a high school sweetheart, that male void was filled platonically. However, at college I have only one guy friend. The rest of the guys I consider "friends" are guys that I hooked up with and are on good terms with after the fact. And, you guessed it, the remaining male population at this school are guys that I hooked up with and am on not-so-good terms with.
For my sorority, I was presented with the stressful task of inviting someone to my date party. I didn't have anyone that I was interested in at the moment, so I decided to invite the only guy friend I had that I had never hooked up with and furthermore never wanted to. This situation ended up being absolutely ideal because the night before the date party I ended up being letdown by a guy I'd really liked and had hooked up with on numerous occasions. I woke up unfortunately alone, and in a hungover/depressed state that I'd been so disappointed by someone I'd liked so much. I'd lost my faith in men (yet again), so I was genuinely relieved to be going to my date party with my guy friend.
"Last night was terrible, we need to have the funnest time ever tonight!!" I texted him.
"Love, you're going to have the best night of your life," he answered. In all honestly, I kind of suspected he'd never tried to get with me because he was gay.
Feeling a little better, I slept off the rest of my hangover and woke up much later that afternoon with enough time to grab some dinner and get ready for the party. Then, I went over to my date's place to pregame for the event. Being around a friend had taken my mind off of my shitty experience with guys the night before and I was back to being in a good mood. The pregame was fun, but once we got on the bus to the venue it hit me hard that not everybody was there as friends. In fact, being entrapped by the rows of drunk people making out it seemed that nobody was just friends. Things were better when we got to the venue. There were more people using their mouths to talk rather than make out, the DJ was decent, and my date had scored a drink bracelet and kept buying me drinks like a good date should. Somewhere between all the vodka tonics, three hours had passed and it was time to get on the bus home.  I was tired from the hours of drinking and dancing, but it seemed my date was even more tired by the way he started leaning onto me. In that moment, my drunken haze cleared and I realized he's not trying to sleep on me, he's trying to hook up with me. I tensed up and cheated my back towards him which seemed to do the trick. He straightened up and we snapped back into our normal banter. The bus arrived back at campus, but since it was only 12 the night was still pretty young. I was going to walk back to my dorm, but my date looked disappointed with that.
"Come back to the house and hang, it's so early!" He said. I was drunk enough to disregard what he'd seemingly tried to pull on the bus, but clearminded enough to trust him since he was my friend.
But once we got to his room it was blatant that he didn't consider me a friend the same way I considered him one. He immediately started kissing me, to which I hesitated.
"Come on, stop."
"What, why?" His mouth wasn't on mine anymore, but he was still heavily in my personal space.
"Because we're friends!"
"But Love, we will still be friends even if we hook up a little!" This time when he called me Love, I didn't think he might be gay.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, of course!" I'm not sure why I listened to him, I guess my subconscious still trusted him as "a friend," so I didn't leave the room and even though I was uncomfortable with it I let him kiss me.
I wanted so badly to leave, but I just kept on letting the hook up happen. Every so often I'd snap out of it and ask "Okay, will you walk me home?" to which he'd reply, "Of course, Love! Just in a couple minutes." A couple minutes came and went, until I didn't even know how much time had gone by. I stop letting my subconscious trust reign, and my conscious realized we were both completely naked. It was time to get out of here before anything else happened. Fueled by anxiety, I sat up and pulled on my clothes. When I turned back around to tell "my friend" that it was time to walk me home, he was lying there passed out. I tried to shake him awake.
"Come on, wake up." But he wouldn't move. "Seriously, come on, you need to walk me home." Still nothing.
I wanted to call a cab but I had no money. In that moment I had to turn to the only people I could depend on, and that was my girl friends. I pulled out my phone to call my friend with a car, when I saw it was 3:30 in the morning. Please wake up, please wake up, I prayed as the phone rang.
"Hello?" Her sleepy voice said on the line.
"I am so sorry to wake you up, I just really need your help." I tried to keep my voice as low as I could so not to wake my "friend."
"What's wrong?" Her voice became more alert.
"My date party turned out really badly... Do you think there's any way you could come pick me up?"
"Yeah, of course. Are you okay?"
"Eh, not really..."
"I'm coming now. You're at his place?"
"Yeah, I am. Oh my God, thank you so much," I couldn't believe it. I was so thankful to have such a good friend. With heels in hand, I snuck out of his room as quietly as I could. Sure enough, a couple minutes later my friends car pulled up outside. I didn't know whether to cry of happiness or cry because I was so mad about what had just happened.
Not only was my romantic faith in guys destroyed, now my platonic faith in guys was destroyed too. I'd trusted this guy as a friend and he destroyed everything. He had failed to walk me home as a friend, but coming to my rescue was my girl friend who drove me to sleep over at her apartment. While my guy friend had passed out after promising to walk me home, my girl friend had woken up at 3:30 in the morning and picked me up. Once we got to her apartment, she sat up with me and listened to me talk about what had happened. She told me that while this guy was an asshole, she's always be here for me and then she tucked me into bed. That was the night that I learned I could only and always depend on my girlfriends.

Wake Up In The Morning Feeling Like Pee Diddy

I am not a morning person. My grades for my morning classes are always my worst, my roommates are scared to talk to me before I've had my coffee, and my hangovers have earned me the nickname 'Grumpy.' This is exactly the reason why I hate having sleepovers with the opposite sex. I'm no longer the fun, sexy girl they met the night before, I'm the haggard, disgruntled monster hogging all the covers. Whenever I spend away from the comforts of my own bed, I always try to leave as early as possible while having the briefest sober conversation possible. This is easiest when either the guy wakes up before I do, or I can pull the "ughh I have Friday morning class!" card. Neither of these transitions were available to me this past Sunday morning. I awoke at 8 am in a bed that was not mine next to a man whose name I could not remember. Not only was I uncomfortable with this sober situation, I also felt the pressure of every drink I'd drank the night before in my bladder, and trust me, I'd drank a lot of drinks. I didn't care if it made me a bad person, I was ready to run out of the apartment before What's-His-Name even woke up. I tensed my muscles ready to make a run for the door, but as soon as I started to roll out of the bed What's-His-Name gripped me harder. He was spooning me with a vise-grip, rendering me trapped! However, while the rest of my body was in paralysis, one arm was free. With that one arm I felt around the floor blindly for my purse. I found the chain link strap then shimmied my hand down the strap to the pocket of my purse that my phone was in. I raised my phone high enough to see the screen, but low enough so if What's-His-Name happened to wake up he wouldn't see me on my phone.
My bladder was in critical condition, so I 911-ed a text to my friend I'd gone out with the night before.
"SOS. Call me in 10 min." I had a plan worked out in my head, but I needed the help of a girlfriend to pull it off. I turned my ringtone to "Calls Only." What's-His-Name couldn't be woken just yet.
"Haha, okay. So last night was bad?" She answered in the next minute. At 8 am on a Sunday. That's a good fucking friend.
"No, but the morning is. Pretend we have breakfast plans." I placed my phone back on the floor next to me and cozied into the spoon.
I'm either going to die from my bladder exploding, or I'm going to pee the bed. I wanted to just urinate right there in the bed, but I couldn't remember if What's-His-Name was average cute or fucking sexy so I didn't want to take the chance. Just hold on a little longer, bladder. Help is on the way.
Sure enough, exactly ten minutes later my phone started ringing. I put on a pseudo-disilusioned air and pretended to wake up as I felt What's-His-Name genuinely waking up beside me.
"Mmhmm... Hello?" I muttered sleepily into the phone.
"Hey... I don't really know what to say," my friend's voice was like angels singing a song of salvation straight to my bladder.
"Shit, what time is it?" I said, 'snapping out' of my groggy demeanor.
"Is he still asleep?" She asked.
"I'm so sorry, I almost forgot!" I sat up in bed.
"So, how was his penis?"
"Nooo don't be mad! I'll be there, I promise," I grabbed at the foot of the bed for my dress.
"Did you blue-ball him?" I would've gotten annoyed with her if she hadn't been my savior.
"Ok, I'm coming now, bye." It was truly an Oscar winning performance.
I hung up the phone and turned to the previously unconscious body next to me. "Hey," I said in a sleepy, morning voice that contrasted drastically with the urgent, my-bladder's-going-to-burst voice that was screaming in my head, "so I actually have to get going now."
"That's okay," he smiled sleepily. "Damn, it's so early. Where do you have to be?"
I let out a big sigh to emphasize how much of a burden my morning engagement was and said "It's so dumb, I promised my friend I'd get brunch with her and her boyfriend from home." I took a pause for an exaggerated eye roll, "I know, it's retarded, but it's one of those stupid things that girls get really mad about." Even I was convinced. However, my bladder was not convinced and was threatening to call my bluff right there on his mattress, so I jumped out of the bed and put my clothes back on even faster than I'd ripped them off the night before.
"Well, I had a good time with you last night," he said, burying his face back into his pillow.
"Yeah, so did I," my body was shaking I had to pee so bad. I moved closer to the door, so close to bliss, "Oh, which way's the bathroom?" I had a casual tone or voice, but in reality the question was life-or-death.
"Last door on the left," What's-His-Name replied.
"Thanks!" I said happily, showing genuine emotion for the first time this morning. Then I sprinted out the door towards emancipation and never looked back.

Going Out With A Bang

Anybody who leaves their dorm room on the weekends (and by weekend I mean starting Thursday) knows what I'm talking about when I say there are two types of nights: good nights and bad nights. A bad night normally consists of either vomit, getting in trouble with Campus PD, seeing the person you like make out with someone else, or all of the above. A good night, however, is much more simple. To have a good night, something happens along the lines of: finally hooking up with the guy you've been texting for a while, making out with a good looking stranger, hooking up with anyone in front of someone you used to hook up with, or getting head without having to give head. When you wake up and your dehydrated brain remembers that one of these things happened, it sends a signal to your kidneys that their slow self-destruction was worth it. But as is illustrated by the examples above, hooking up with someone almost always guarantees a good night. Which arrives at my point: if you don't hook up with anyone, is it a bad night?

I'm going to take a stand and say that the reason we go out is to get some. If we wanted to spend time with our friends we'd be in our yoga pants and glasses watching Sex and the City, not in our platforms and high waisted skirts getting wasted. When we go out at night, we literally go out in hopes of a bang, which is why we feel dissatisfied when we don't end our night with a new tale to tell. Even when the hook up isn't good, the night is still successful when you have an interesting story to tell your friends over brunch the next morning. Even though we can't always remember who we talked to at whatever party we were at, we can always remember who we were making out with when we had to pretend to go "find our friend" so we could escape to the bathroom to vomit in the urinal rather than in their mouth. It is that type of battle story that defines our weekend, not the platonic chat with frat boy Bob about how our cousins went to the same boarding school in New Hampshire. No one wants to hear that shit over brunch, and friendly talking is no reason for enduring a hangover.

Writer's Cockblock

I have recently experienced what I can honestly declare to be the worst writer's block known to my existence. For the past month and a half I've been rendered speechless, even compositionally handicapped, as I haven't been able to form so much as a string of sentences describing the current events of my personal life. This experience that I've taken to calling my 'writer's cockblock' stems from the fact that I haven't been cockblocked at all. In fact, I've recently been getting action on a more regular and functional basis than ever before in my nineteen years of living, and I think the functionality of it all is what's causing my writer's cockblock. I feared I'd lost my voice, my sense of who I am, when morning after morning I'd wake up fresh from a hookup the night before only to find I couldn't write anything about it.
Ever since I was a junior in high school, the entire base of my writing has been kiss-and-tell-all essay after kiss-and-tell-all essay about every single guy I hooked up with, what it was like, and my vividly uncensored thoughts of how I felt about them. But that habit came to an abrupt halt when I started hooking up with one of my guy friends this summer. We hooked up more regularly than I had with the guys I went to college with, so therefore I had more experiences to write upon, but for some reason I couldn't do it! Before I knew it, a month had passed without my writing a single fucking thing! Unable to write new material, I could only read through my archives of old essays from every drunken weekend of the past 3 years.
"You haven't updated your blog recently," my friend noted one day while we were watching TV.
"Yeah, I know, its just weird writing about what's been going on recently. For some reason I have like, nothing to say. Well, not like I have nothing to say, I just can't seem to say anything."
"Huh, why do you think that is?" She muted the Laguna Beach rerun.
"Ugh, I don't know! Like, remember the other night when all us girls were hanging out and you asked me how things had been going with him and I couldn't really give an answer and got weirdly quiet? That's like, bizarre of me, I normally word vomit my guy stories."
"Yeah, I mean, you do normally love talking about that kind of stuff, but maybe you feel weird now because you actually like this guy."
"No, no, that can't be it, I've liked guys before that I've written abo-" She had a point. In that moment I realized that I had never actually liked any of the guys I'd written about. Sure, I'd had crushes on them and had been obsessed with a couple, but that was just because they had the whole 'attractive asshole' thing going for them. Looking through my archives, I'd realized that on some level I'd hated every guy I'd hooked up with in college.  It became apparent in retrospect that I'd kept them around because I'd enjoyed hooking up with them on a shallow level, but on a human and even friend level I couldn't fucking stand them. And that was the complete opposite of what had happened with my guy friend. I had absolutely no ill feelings towards him and liked him as a person, so therefore I had nothing mean to say. And so goes the saying, "if you have nothing mean to say, don't say anything at all."

Jabba The Slut

Recent events have caused me to believe that my life constitutes as both a comedy and a tragedy. It's a comedy for those watching the tragic events that happen to me on a daily basis. Most often, the tragic events are things like the time I was about to hook up with this guy I really liked but then he started throwing up, or the time I was getting my eyebrows waxed and the old asian woman accidentally groped me, or when I brought that guy back to my dorm and he kept trying to finger my butthole (see: "Butthole Intruder"). I've grown accustomed to tragic events happening to me, but never did I think about the ways I make my own life tragic. Some people are born tragic, others have tragedy thrust upon them, but today's tragic event was completely my doing.
I doing my typical "I have nothing to wear" routine this morning while I was trying to get dressed. Dissatisfied with every piece of clothing that I own, I trekked across the hall into my sisters room and sought refuge in her closet.
"Oh my god, yes! I forgot she had this!" I pulled out a classic American Apparel spandex dress that I used to steal from my sister all the time in high school. It had been my go-to dress for countless parties; this dress and I had so many fond memories together that I decided to bring it out of retirement for the day. The dress and I retreated back to my room and with exhilaration I compressed my body into its spandex binding. But my exhilaration turned into desperation the second I saw my reflection in the mirror. The dress looked very different on my current self than it did on my high school self to say the least. Whereas last year the dress used to silhouette my figure in a sexy way, the spandex was grasping my body creating rolls I didn't even know I had. My body was packed into the dress dying to bust out, like a sausage, or those health class bananas that are too big for their condoms. The dress no longer consisted of enough fabric for my apparently obese body, making me look like both a whore and glutton. I was Jabba The Slut.
"How did this happen to me?" I asked my reflection. Up until then I hadn't thought my body had changed in college, but once I began thinking about how my lifestyle had changed it made more and more sense. My diet of drinking three nights a weekend had definitely contributed, and in addition my drunken nights had almost always ended in me knocking on my neighbor's doors asking to borrow a dollar for the vending machine. Who knew fratting was so fattening? Even worse than my deplorably gluttonous diet was the fact that my going-outfits had only gotten smaller and tighter throughout the semester to the extent that I really should have charged whichever frat boy was walking up the stairs behind me. My college lifestyle had gotten the best of me and I'd turned into Jabba The Slut completely unknowingly. I changed my body out of the spandex dress, tied up my running shoes, and hoped the force would be with me during my three miler.

Don't Speak.

Sometimes it's better to drink so much that you have no memory of what happened the night before. That way you are able to endure your hangover in a state of ignorance-is-bliss. Unfortunately, I did not wake up in such a state of bliss; rather, I got drunk enough to spill all the thoughts occupying my mind, but not drunk enough to erase the action from my memory. Instead, I've spent my grueling hangover cringing, able to remember all my slurs verbatim. In all honesty, this is the way I spend most of my hangovers. I can't always be counted on to remember to take my ADD medicine, or to be at work on time, but you can always depend on me to lose my filter once I start drinking. Normally I'm able to get by without facing the repercussions of my words, however, last night I said too much to my circle of friends. The people I hang out with everyday. Even when I'm sober.
It all happened when my parents made the rare move of leaving me home alone this weekend, an opportunity I seized by inviting my friends over to daydrink. As enthusiastic as I was to get drunk and tan, I was equally eager to hook up with somebody. I hated the thought of being left in my unsupervised house full of possibilities only to not make the absolute most of it. I felt pressure to rise to the occasion and have someone to fool around with come night. That's when my eyes went straight to one of my good friends. I'd always had a somewhat secret crush on this friend and since he was single he became an ideal candidate.
With a goal in mind, I naturally began flirting. This is when things started going downhill. I was trying to be funny and flirty simultaneously which explains the following: my excessive sex jokes, my insisting that we make the afternoon "beach themed" in order to a) get everybody drunker than they intended, thanks to my blender, and b) give me a reason for wearing my bikini, and then finally doing my signature drunk-flirting move (actually, I don't even think it's clever enough to constitute as "flirting") of putting my fist in my mouth.
A million frozen drinks later the sun went down, and, still in my bikini and officially wasted, I was completely goal-oriented. According to my drunken logic, since the previous maneuvers hadn't accomplished anything it only made sense that I hadn't been obvious enough. I stupidly decided that I needed to be a more aggressive flirter. But much to my dismay, I'd apparently decided this too late.
"Hey, I think I'm gonna head home, I'm pretty wiped out from today. Thanks for having me, though." He moved towards my front door, and instinctively I tried to intercept.
Time to think fast, "No, you can't leave yet!"
"What, why not?"
"Because I'll be all alone!" This would have made sense if we hadn't just been drinking with all our friends in my kitchen.
"Haha, no you won't, the rest of the crew is still here!" He made moves towards the doorknob, causing me to lose the little composure I had.
"But you still can't leave!"
"I don't get it, why?"
"Because you're cute," Drunken prose was just dribbling out of my mouth. I'd wanted someone to fool around with, but instead I was just a drunken fool.
Before either of us had a chance to digest what I'd just word vomited on our conversation, the rest of our friends came into the entrance hall.
"Aw, dude are you leaving?"
He looked around, "Yeah, I'm gonna head home now."
As soon as it became clear that even after my drunken confession I'd been unable to reach my goal, my confidence deflated like the cheap and faulty gel-padded bras I used to wear in 7th grade that offered no support and could only be relied on to pop and seep gel through my shirt, making my awkwardly pubescent appearance even worse when I thought I'd already hit rock bottom with my lanky-yet-chubby frame, glasses, braces, and untameable eyebrow(s). Whereas earlier that day I was trying to be funny by putting my fist in my mouth, I'd now successfully gotten my big feet into my even bigger mouth.
"But I'll see you tomorrow?" he offered as he hugged me goodbye.
Yeah, you're right, I thought to myself. I will see you tomorrow. And the day after, and all the days following that until the end of summer when we go back off to college. And then I'll see you at Thanksgiving break.
Per usual, there was a silver-lining to my drunken misstep that provided a lesson learned: while a parent-less house seems like a goldmine of opportunity, it is key to remember that silence is golden.

Eyes Wide Open

There comes a time in every walk home when the front door is reached and the inevitable goodnight kiss commences. You thank the guy who just walked you home, and from there it's like clockwork. His hand finds its way to the small of your back, you look up (or if you're me, you look directly level) at him and your faces close in on each other. The kiss starts out soft, but then the world begins to whirl around your bodies. If you're sober, this the whirling of your emotions, indicating that you really like this guy. If you're not, this is the churning of your stomach, indicating that you took one to many shots. While the sober girl doesn't invite the man who walked her home inside because she wants to take things slow, the not-sober girl doesn't invite the man who walked her home inside because he's bound to get a mouthful of nastiness before she will.
The other night I went to a party within walking distance from my house and continued to get obliterated in bliss knowing that I didn't have to worry about finding a ride home. Hours later into the early morning people began clearing out and I suddenly grew less confident about walking home alone. I slurred out a plea for company and in response a guy friend of mine offered to walk me home. While I found this to be a nice, wholesome gesture, I didn't take into consideration that when you're wearing a spandex dress, you have no guy friends. We walked the two blocks to my house and once we reached the front door, it was like drunken clockwork. His hand had found my lower back (and by "lower back" I mean my ass), our faces closed in on each others, and we began slobering at each others faces like dogs. The world began to whirl around me as it suddenly hit me, if my eyes are closed any longer, I'm going to throw up in this guys mouth.
I'd been hit hard with the spins, so I opened my eyes, but even that didn't help. I needed to focus my vision on something. As if it'd been a BBM from God, I instantaneously felt the vibrate of my phone, so I stealthily pulled my blackberry out of my pocket and began reading my messages over his shoulder while we made out. He didn't realize for a good minute and a half until I started responding to my texts.
"What are you doing?" he pulled away.
"What? Oh!" I opened my eyes as wide as humanly possible and stared at my phone, as if I, too, was surprised it was in my hand. "I was just, uh, checking the time."
"How about we go inside?" I didn't know how I would keep my vision focused on my phone now that I apparently was up-to-date on what time it was. I also didn't know how to tell him that the only thing that would be getting it in tonight would be my toilet bowl.
"My parents are asleep," as if that's stopped me before.
"Bummer, well goodnight. We'll hang another time." He kissed me goodnight.
"Yeah, definitely," I watched him walk down my driveway, then I held up my hand with my phone still in it and slurred out "text me!"

I Was Like, Why Am I So Obsessed With You?

After any hook up I've ever had, I've found it impossible not to obsess over it the entire next day (or in some cases, the entire next year.) Regardless of whether the hook up was good or bad, I can't help but look at the person's facebook the next day, and even jump whenever my phone vibrates thinking that it could be a text from them. For some reason, any sexual encounter I have gives me a case of obsession. Obsessing is like Herpes; you contract it from sexual activity and while there's no cure for it, you can lead a perfectly healthy life only having to deal with the occasional outbreak.
But what triggers outbreaks can vary from an actual hook up to just a brief encounter with someone you've had feelings for. Just when I thought I'd dealt with every obsession-worthy encounter Saturday night, this Sunday morning brought on an obsessive event all it's own. I was roused from my sleep at 9:30 a.m. by a phone call from a guy I'd hooked up with a few times in the past couple weekends but hadn't seen out the night before. In all of five seconds I went from being engulfed in a deep sleep to painfully awake with my heart pounding in my throat. What could he possibly want? I was dying to know what he was calling me about, but at the same time I couldn't muster up the courage to answer the phone. It's probably a butt-dial, Taylor. Don't overthink it. I silenced the ringer and crawled back into my bed. In attempt to go back to sleep, I shut my eyes, but both my mind and my heart were racing. But why would he call me and not just text me? Maybe he had something important to tell me. And is it even possible to be butt-dialed at 9:30 on a Sunday morning? Because I don't think people are conscious and moving around enough to make Sunday mornings a plausible butt-dialing time. I was having an obsession outbreak, and so it goes that for the next three hours I laid in bed, wide awake, contemplating every possible reason for why this guy would be calling me at 9:30 on a Sunday morning.
But if obsessing is an STD, is it contagious? Is it possible that while I'm still sitting here wondering why he called me six hours after my phone rang this morning, he's sitting around wondering why I didn't answer his call or even why I haven't tried to call him back? Or can some people be immune to obsessing? When you have a sexual encounter with someone, is it possible to never think about it after the fact? A part of me almost wishes my sexually transmitted obsession was a viral problem, and not a mental one. For Herpes, you pick up an antiviral prescription from your local pharmacy. But for obsession, the most you can do to treat it is pick up an issue of Cosmo and pray the answer to your questions lies in one of the articles.

Oops... I Did It Again

The only thing worse than a terrible hook up is the second time you get with that same terrible hook up. The first time you make this mistake, you're freed from blame since there's really no provisional indicator of a bad hook-up. Bad hook-ups are dangerous because their looks and personality are indistinguishable from the good hook-ups, and that's exactly how they trap you in. When you have a terrible hook up, you learn your lesson quickly (sometimes very quickly) and then move on to the next one. But the second time is unforgivable, even irredeemable. You're totally cognizant of what this hook up has in store, yet somehow you find yourself in the same situation all over again. Except this time, things move much more slowly since your thoughts are decelerated on the fact that you're a fucking idiot. By some great, unknown force of nature, you suddenly find yourself eyes closed, lips locked, and while everything you're doing is blurring through you, you produce a single lucid thought that says how did I end up here again? You feel like an absolute idiot for wandering into the same trap twice, and you come to the actualization that you're a lot less smart than you thought you were. When I was a freshman in high school, I drank too much (feigning surprise) and long-story-short woke up in the hospital with my parents at my bedside engulfed in distress and concern. As a novice drinker, I didn't dwell on my stupid mistake and moved on from the incident. But all of seven months later during my sophomore year I drank too much and wound up in the hospital again. This time when I woke my parents' didn't wear looks of worry, but rather of indomitable anger. My mistake wasn't cute anymore, and so it goes I was sentenced to five months of parentally run house arrest to dwell on what a retard I was.
It turns out I didn't get a hell of a lot smarter in college. While the mistake of repeating a bad hook up didn't land an IV in my arm, it still makes me want to vomit blood. I know how I made the mistake the first time- the guy was absolutely gorgeous. But as I discovered, his looks only acted as a disguise for his dire bedroom skills. It was hard coming to terms with the fact that someone so beautiful could make me want to lynch myself from his top bunk using my bra, but my lesson had been learned and there was no way I was going in that bedroom again. In my sober state of mind I arbitrated that I did not under any circumstances want to hook up with him again. I did, however, want to remain friends with him because in addition to being inconveniently gorgeous he was also a pretty nice guy. So the next weekend when I received a text from him inviting me to a party I didn't hesitate to round up my troops and head over. It was fun hanging out and drinking with him and his friends, but then suddenly it became too much fun. He was starting to flirt with me, and much to my sober-dismay I started flirting back. Even though I was getting pretty drunk, it can't be blamed entirely on the alcohol. I was getting sucked in the same way I'd gotten sucked in the last time; he was visually hypnotizing, and working in cohorts with his looks was his personality, which was charming the shit out of me. As we continued our witty banter the distance between our bodies was diminishing and people slowly started clearing out of the room. It wasn't as if either of us was consciously making movements, it was like some gravitational force was pulling us together. And that is how by some power unknown to me I found myself kissing (okay, groping) the same bad kisser (groper) I'd told myself I never wanted to kiss/grope ever again. The last time we started kissing I experienced a mental shift from totally turned on to repulsed. This time, when we started kissing I made the shift from turned on to repulsed with myself. Again being deceived by his looks and charm, my feeling of remorse was the same, but this time it was joined by extreme self-disdain. I didn't know if this even constituted as being deceived since technically I was perfectly aware of what was in store from the second I started flirting back with him. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I'm never drinking again. Until next weekend.

One Woman's Trash... Is Trash Until She Sees It's Another Woman's Treasure

Life would be much more convenient if we were dating inside a vacuum. A vacuum where each woman exists in solitude, accompanied only by her personal pool of eligible bachelors. Within this dating vacuum, we'd be able to figure out exactly what we want without having to second guess ourselves or make the same mistake twice. But unfortunately, we do not live in a vacuum. We share a world with three billion other women, creating competition within our gender. From the beginning of time, all the women of a village would fight over the hunter-and-gatherer with the biggest biceps and the loin cloth made of the finest animal skins that their side of the Bering Strait had to offer. Now, it's women from every social circle fighting over the untamable bad boy who juggles women and refuses to be tied down. For some reason, even more attractive than a guy with six pack abs, a sparkling personality, or even a meaty trust account is a guy who has other women interested in him. You don't even have to start out liking this guy, just as soon as you know that other women want him you then suddenly have to have him ("like, you don't understand, it's an emergency, I think I'm in love with him, like, oh my god.")
As easy as it is for me to roll my eyes at this pitiful attribute of womanhood, I myself am not immune to it. As I have learned over the past two weekends, competition is inevitably the ultimate turn-on. The saturday before last I had what I can honestly declare to be the worst sexual encounter of my entire life. This guy was not a good kisser, a terrible conversationalist, he didn't get my jokes, and to top it all off the only time I'd seen a smaller penis was whilst changing diapers (and at that size I think the scientific categorization changes from "penis" to "peepee.") And the worst part about it was that it was supposed to be a great hook up! He was gorgeous (minus points for being blond, though), tall, and we'd gotten along so well during our anthropology class! But the morning after our abominable hook up, I spent my entire hangover mulling over the perturbing event and came to terms with the fact that I was completely and totally over my crush and his peepee. That is, until the next weekend.
That following thursday, my friend Molly and I went out to a pirate themed party at the PeePee's frat where within five seconds of being there we saw the PeePee making out with a petite blonde girl. In shock, we scurried down the hall and ducked into the bathroom to freak out in the privacy of our own stall.
"Oh my god," Molly squealed, "I think that's his girlfriend from home!" My favorite things about Molly are that she went to high school with the PeePee, and that she, like I, enjoys Facebook stalking on-the-go via Blackberry. "Hold on, I'm looking up her profile," she said, fastidiously typing and scrolling, "yep, it's her. Her status says she's visiting for the weekend." And just like that, a switch had been flipped. I went from being beyond turned off to never wanting him more. I was lusting after the PeePee. I hadn't dressed up for the pirate party, but now I was on a mission to get someone else's treasure.
"Should I text him?" Never a good idea.
"Yeah! Do it!" Fuck you, Molly.
"Okay, okay, I'm doing it! I'll just pretend like I didn't see him and ask what he's doing tonight!" As I began typing my pseudo-aloof text, my phone received a text from the PeePee himself! A simple "Hey" that managed to make everything more complicated.
My pulse was racing. I texted back saying "Hey, I'm at your frat". Within the same minute he texted back saying "Where???" Now I was freaking out.
"Molly, he just said 'Where???' with three question marks!!!"
"Oh my god! Tell him you're upstairs!"
I answered with my location and waited for him to text back, but he didn't. Several minutes passed, rendering me debilitatingly anxious.
"Okay, he still hasn't answered, should I text him again like 'Did you want to hang?'" Even in my drunken state I should have known that if you have to double text someone, you shouldn't be texting them at all.
"Yeah, that's good, send that!" I hate you, Molly.
I sent the second text and still no answer. I felt like trash for allowing myself to become so vulnerable so easily, especially over a guy that I'd gotten over the weekend before!
"Let's get out of the bathroom, we've been in here for like, ten minutes. People are gonna think we had either diarrhea or lesbian sex." Still gripping my phone waiting for a text back, we left the safety of our stall. As we walked into the hallway, I didn't get a response text, but I did get a different message. I saw the PeePee walk into the same room that he'd brought me into the weekend before with his petite blonde girlfriend from home and shut the door. The room that I had never wanted to go back into until I saw the petite blonde girl go in there. The petite blonde girl that had transformed my trash into an unattainable treasure.
Molly put her arm over my shoulder, "Let's go get another drink." And so we did.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Taylor (Just Wanted To Tell You 'Nice Try')

The story starts the same as all the others: it was a Thursday night perfect for frat-hopping, I was looking tall, tan, and sexy in my dress, I found a guy who was looking tall, tan and sexy and wanted to take off my dress, and so it goes that after a hastier period of time than I'd like to self-respectingly admit we wound up back at my room. At that point things weren't just normal anymore, they were better than normal. It was like this guy had been sent to me by an angel. He was 6"5, but his broad shoulders combatted any potential lankiness, his eyebrows were of the perfect girth, and his aesthetic appeal was proportional to his kissing proficiency. But as much to my dismay as it would be to his, because of my "no sex with strangers" policy (I know, how old fashioned of me), I felt compelled to brief him before he removed his boxer briefs.
"I feel like I should tell you that we're not going to have sex tonight," I really should just get a disclaimer tattooed across my forehead.
Just as I was anticipating the normal reaction of disappointment, he appeared surprisingly relieved.
"No, that's good," he kept on kissing me.
"What? Why?" Normally the response to my disclaimer was one of coercion and blue-balledness, so while his non-argumentative response should have been a Godsend it actually made me more confused than appeased.
"I'm not trying to have sex tonight," he explained as he placed pecks around my ear.
Now I was offended. I pulled away, "Um excuse me, why not?" He better have a good fucking answer.
He laughed at my ludicrousness and explained, "I'm trying to be a better Christian and not sleep around so much."
Being the type of Christian who only worships God during Christmas morning when he answers my prayer for a new pair of over-the-knee boots, I would've under ordinary circumstances found this response kind of gay. But something about how his trigonometric jawbone worked with his perfect mouth to utter those words while his boyishly charming brown eyes stared into mine had me to wanting to worship him as my new religion. Listening to him explain his religious scruples made me want to bite his lower lip, and suddenly I wished I had a Bible next to my bed just so I could watch him read it to me.
I accepted his reason for not wanting to have sex with me and we kept making out. But now I was curious. Dangerously curious. I wanted to see what kind of Holy Grail was being protected by his Calvin Klein's. So just like Eve making her way through the apple orchard, I was making-out my way through his clothes. I couldn't control myself, first to go was his shirt (wow), then his shoes, followed by his belt, then his pants, and last but definitely not least were his boxer-briefs. It was in that moment that for the first time in my life, I saw evidence of a higher power. I was born again.
My untamable curiosity had brought us dangerously close to sin. I felt guilty for tempting my hook-up, but at the same time I felt like my own scruples were being tested. A higher power was well aware of my "no sex with strangers" rule and had sent me this absolutely gorgeous hunk of man to simultaneously test his morals as well as mine. I was both the temptress as well as the temptee.
"I can't take it anymore, let's just do it." It was like he was reading my mind.
I wasn't a minion of Satan trying to corrupt this sexy creation of God, I was just a woman overcome with curiosity. I was Eve, desperate for a bite of the apple, or rather, a taste of the banana. But I'd heard the story before and knew the outcome; I wasn't sure I could handle the responsibility of opening the Pandora's Box of cocks.
"No," I said, absolutely loathing my own self-control, "you and I both don't want this."
"Yeah, you're right." He kissed my face, "Damn, you so right, I hate it."
I kissed him back and ran my fingers over his immaculate abs, thinking to myself no, I hate it more.

Butthole Intruder

This past Thursday night entailed a hook up that was quintessential to my college experience. Per usual, my drunken, ill-thought out actions led to an encounter with the opposite sex that invoked a type of moral or lesson learned. This Thursday's lesson: always go back to the guy's room. This is absolutely vital incase the guy you're hooking up with is an undercover freak. Let me tell you, it's a lot harder to escape from your own room than it is to escape from theirs.
Now, the thing about weird guys is that most of them look exactly like normal guys. It isn't until they're in your bed that it hits you woah, this guy's a freak, and not in the good way. Case in point, I'd known of this noticeably good looking guy for almost the entire school year, and having met him a handful of times through mutual friends I was dying to hook up with him. Tall, athletic, with strong dark features, he was totally my type, which is why I was so excited when we started dancing together at a party this past Thursday night. Dancing led to kissing, which led to groping, which led to me kicking my roommate out of the room for the night in exchange for doing her next load of laundry.
After having a crush on this guy from the second I knew who he was, I was thrilled to have him back at my room. And everything was going well, too. He was a good kisser, looked great without clothes on, and thus far was fun to hook up with. The mood was totally hot; we were lying in my bed exploring each others bodies with our hands, when suddenly I tensed up. Oh my god, panic seized me as I felt him intrusively trying to finger my butthole. It's not that he didn't know where everything was, his hands were full of conviction. I moved his fingers away from my butt and tried to brush it off, but a few moments later he was trying again! The Butthole Intruder was striking back! In turn, I once again moved his hand. Then I felt him trying to push my body down to give him head. Hell no am I putting you in my mouth, I thought to myself, if that's what you like to do with your fingers then who knows where your penis has been?
"No, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do that," I explained as he pushed down on my body.
"Really?" His disappointment was palpable, "Why not?"
Because it scares me to think about where your dick has been, "Uhh, because, uh, I don't know you well enough."
He accepted my answer and we kept on kissing. But as I felt his hands moving back towards my butthole, I knew I had to do something.
"Seriously, though, you should go find another girl who'll go down on you. I really won't be offended if you leave," God, did I regret bringing him back to my dorm.
"No, it's fine, I'm not gonna do that to you." Why are the normal guys never this nice?
"Are you sure? Because I really don't mind. Like really." Get out of my room before I call the cops on you.
"I'm serious," the Butthole Intruder laid a kiss on my face, "I'm staying here."
Fuck.
I spent the rest of the night playing our game of call and response as he would attempt to finger my butthole, then I'd move his hand away, until finally we both fell asleep. At the crack of dawn that Friday morning I was roused from my slumber from the noise of the Butthole Intruder getting dressed in my bathroom. Oh, thank God, I thought to myself as I squeezed my eyelids shut, guardedly clenched my butt cheeks, and pretended to still be in a deep, drunken sleep. I heard him creep silently out the door. Hide your kids, hide your wife, there's a Butthole Intruder on the loose.

I'm A Man About It

I am by no means a feminist, but at the same time there are few things that frustrate me more than gender inequality. On the first day of my Intro to Women's Studies class (shut up, its a GPA booster) the professor had us take an anonymous poll about what we felt was the biggest social issue facing women today to which I passionately answered "the unequal ratio of giving head to receiving head." For every conversation I've had with a friend that runs along the lines of "I can't believe he just played me out like that. This whole time he's been telling me that he wants to date me and shit like that, and now I find out he's been hooking up with not just a girl in Theta, but a Kappa sister too!" is normally preceded by a conversation a few weeks earlier that goes like this "We haven't had sex yet, but I've given him head like a million times. He hasn't gone down on me though, I don't know, I don't really want to ask him for it though." And come to think of it, I've never even heard of a case where a woman has pushed on a man's head and shoulders until he's gone down. Too many Sunday morning brunches have included "Yeah, I gave him head last night. It's not that he made me, he was just really insistent. Not like he returned the favor, though" while not nearly enough have had the situation go the other way around.
After spending several days flipping through flashcards, quizzing myself on feminist authors and famous literary works, I took my Womens Studies midterm on thursday and after completion was ready to blow off some steam. What I wanted was for the first time in 78 hours to not think about gender equality, but as it turns out the material didn't stray as far from my conscious as I intended it to. Everything was seemingly normal as I dressed (tight, short skirt, face full of makeup, pain-inducing shoes, everything Audre Lorde stands against), but when I left my room making my way into the night, I had a fresh purpose. A dominant purpose. With a goal known only to my subconscious, I pregamed with an agenda; an agenda that became very clear once the guy I'd been talking to for a few weeks now texted me to meet up. With my agenda realized, my friends and I went off to the party that texting boy was at, where I stayed for all of ten minutes before we were making out in a manner that if I'd seen other people doing it I'd describe as disgustingly public and execrable but since it was me I'll describe as passionate and totally hot. A decent amount of kissing and teasing later, and we were fleeing the public eye to the privacy of his place down the street. And by his place, I mean his room in his frat house. I wandered into his trap unknowing, it wasn't until I was in his bedroom looking at the vintage Playboy covers that hung in frames along the walls that I realized I was on my way to being objectified. I stood in the center of the room with equal distance between his bed and the door, and as he came up behind me and started kissing my neck I realized I had a decision to make. Well, if you leave now he's gonna think that he intimidated you, and therefore you backing down is you losing. But, if you stay then you run the risk of being used which really isn't much better. Honestly, what you have to do is just stick it out and be a man about it.
"So," he said in between pecks leading from my jawbone down to my shoulders and collarbone, "should we move to the bed?" My eyes were locked on the bed, then after a few seconds I turned around to kiss him hard on the mouth. As he sunk into the kiss, my eyes were now glancing over his shoulder onto the door. Time to choose. Are you gonna man up or back down? I pulled away, now my eyes were staring directly into his. I gave him a challenging look and answered "Sure." I knew exactly how I was going to play this. We laid on his bed. In almost no time and with almost no help from me, he was now fully naked. Things began to escalate in the usual fashion, until some decisive moves were being made. I could tell he wanted to fuck, but lying in the bed of his frat house there wasn't anything I wanted to do less. "No," I said softly in his ear. "No?" he looked at me with hopeful eyes, but unswayed I simply shook my head. Crestfallen yet respectful, we carried on. I could feel him fidgeting, he was like water being heated, I just had to wait until he started boiling. "Even if I have a condom?" Though I admired his efforts, the answer was still no. "Well, can I go down on you?" Now he was at a boil. I gave him a shy yet challenging grin, giving him the greenlight. And just like that, I became the man-in-charge. I had him exactly where I wanted him without having to do anything that I didn't want to do. It felt so good on so many different levels. Once I had gotten what I wanted and his head was up once again next to mine on the pillow, he then just looked into my eyes. He didn't mean to look vulnerable, but given the current state of what had just went down and what was not going down in the immediate future, he looked extremely vulnerable. He looked into my eyes and I looked over his shoulder at the door. The harder he stared at me, the more longingly I looked at the door. He put his arm around me, pulling me closer into his body, which caused me to finally boil.
"Actually, I think I'm just gonna go back to my room now."
"You sure? Because you can totally sleep here," he offered graciously. What a gentleman.
"No, no, it's fine, I have a lot of stuff I need to do tomorrow, I should sleep in my own room." I sat up and briskly put my clothes on. After making sure my purse had the essentials in it (phone, room key, gum), I stood up from the bed. I opened the door then quickly pivoted around, "Thanks, though" and just like that I was out.
I walked down frat row with a skip in my step, but a lag in my heart. My brain was telling me that I'd made one small step for women and one giant leap for womankind; I knew I should feel good about what I'd just done. And in my mind I knew I could dedicate my actions to all my girlfriends who'd given unrequited oral and felt used after. But it turns out I didn't feel as empowered as I thought I would have. I actually felt kind of empty. It turns out I didn't get the kind of pleasure from being a man that I thought I would. I guess I just don't have the balls it requires to play someone out.

Underwhere Art Thou?

I once read in Cosmo that kissing relieves stress (which could explain why both times I took the SATs I wasn't distracted by boredom but rather by sheer, unadulterated horniness), which I assume relieves stress exponentially with how much other business goes down during a hook up session. And it makes sense; when I flip through my mental rolodex of hookups I realized that the better the night, the less that occupied my mind. When you're in that moment of a great hook-up, nothing else can possibly be on your thoughts. It's kind of like being in Jamaica where there are no worries (hakuna matata?).
The other night I had one of the most stress-free hookups of my entire life with what I can only describe as the most beautiful man in the history of mankind. Now, my not-so-inner narcissist will tell you I don't consider myself to be homely and if I was a guy I would totally want to get with me until I was turned off by my hideous personality, but I'll even admit that this guy was way out of my league. But nonetheless, some higher power took into consideration that my last hook-up had the intellect and temperament of a Real World housemate, which is how I ended up in the beautiful man's bed wearing nothing but my socks and one earring (this was not a fashion statement, I lost the other one.) Being in Jamaica doesn't even begin to describe how unstressed I was. It was like being the queen of Jamaica, smoking a fat blunt on the beach, while listening to a Reggae band play "Hakunah Matata."
Late into the night when things began to cool down, the beautiful man asked me a most decisive late-night question. "So, we have two options," he sexily said, "one, which is the option I like, is that you can sleep over and neither of us have to move, or two is that I can drive you back to your dorm." In fear that come morning and sobriety I'd be too stunned by his good looks to form a sentence, I opted for the ride to my dorm. He left the bedroom to get his keys while I dressed. Boots, check. Dress, check. Purse, check. Bra, check. Underwear... underwear?! I couldn't find my fucking underwear! I searched all over the bed and the floor, but my underwear must have been engulfed in the piles of workout clothes that carpeted the floor. Within seconds I was exiled from Jamaica and thrown into a stress-filled Hell. This wouldn't have been such a big deal had I been wearing a sexy pair of underwear, but of course I needed to do laundry so the pair I'd been wearing was from the Gap.
"Hey, you ready to go?" he asked me with his sexy grin.
Officially rendered out-of-breath and weak-at-the-knees, I managed to get out a "Yeah" and follow him obediently to his car. I should have felt free as I sat in his passenger seat totally commando, but I didn't. I felt imprisoned by my own anxiety. After the longest 3 minute car ride of my entire life, we finally arrived back at my dorm. The beautiful man kissed me goodbye, but all I could think was you're going to be cleaning your room and wonder "Why are my moms panties on the floor?" Hakunah fucking matata.