A Post From the Resident Cartoonist

 So in light of recent events I am back on OKcupid (for the time being) to do a little harmless flirting and I thought I would share with you a little exchange I had with a 42 year old man (don’t worry, not all posts will continue to be about middle aged men).

I wrote on my profile that someone should contact me if (among other things), they won't kill spiders they find in their house. So I get this message:

The spiders eat the bugs that really creep me out…so I'm fine with them in or out of the house.
-AJ

And after checking this guy's profile and noticing that not only is he 42 years old and listed as "seeing someone," I obviously don't respond. But OKCupid notifies you when somebody checks out your profile (bad for the stalkers out there), so about ten minutes later I get another message from him that says:

Ok then, sorry to bother you. Good luck regardless.
-AJ

So I feel bad that I have looked at his profile and blatantly ignored his seemingly nice comment, and write back:

Sorry, don't take it personally. You seem cool, not to mention attractive. I just feel that our age difference is a little much for me. Good luck you too.                                                              

–Doodle Brain (not my actual screen name)

Then HE responds:

Ah I guess as you get older, you understand that individuals mean more than any one specific thing about them (hair color, age etc) and that limiting yourself to only those that fit into the predetermined box you have made for yourself limits your possibilities. Great things and people might slip right by. Have fun.                                                                                                       

 -AJ

UM, I AINT TRYNA GET LECTURED PAL.

Here are two snarky things I thought of saying back (neither of which I will actually send):

1) You're right, maybe I am letting great people and things slip by, by HAVING AN OPINION. But you know what's worse than that? A slipping ball sack, not to mention libido and metabolism.

2) Okay, thanks. If I'm still single and using this site when I'm 42, I'll reconsider my perspective.

WISHING YOU A STUFFED-ASS THANKSGIVING FROM THE LIBIDINOUS LADIES

 We would like to give thanks to:

1. Dan Savage and his sage advice
2. The power of a sexy piece of clothing
3. Lelo products
4. Nars Orgasm
5. Our boobs have yet to start sagging 
6. Our abundant natural lubrication thanks to our youth
7. Men/women who understand the importance of foreplay
8. Men/women whose goal is get us off
9. Being the little spoon OR  the big spoon
10. The ability to flirt ourselves out of tricky situations
11. Being able to have multiple orgasms
12. Not having to shave the stubble off our faces everyday
13. Not having a hairy back

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?

"The Crush From Afar" In the Words of a Guest Blogger!

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The Screening Process

"So ... Let me get this straight. You're asking me if I'll go home with you before I've contacted any of your references?!"

A Lesson in Common Courtesy (written with a nasty hangover and in a café whose coffee is reviving my faith in human existence)

So here’s the situation. It’s the Saturday night before Halloween and my new friends and I are at our second bar of the night. I’m on my third drink, which, as you may have gathered from some of my previous entries, is too much for me. But I digress. This is not a lesson in how I shouldn’t have drunk that extra gin and tonic, nor is it about throwing up in an embarrassingly public place (never again!). This is about people not being up front about their relationship status (OH HELL NO!)

So I’m feeling pretty damn hot, being Freud in a slip, and doin’ my thing when my oh my I spot my type of guy. Most of you know who that it is; over 6 ft, a little awkward, AND, to top off this lovely sight, he is a wearing a hoodie! In that moment I feel like I haven’t seen a guy wear a hoodie since college (aka last June), and I am loving it. In the midst of every other person who is dressed to the nines, toppling drunkenly over themselves, and just having a raucously good time, this cute, casually dressed, and seemingly unattached guy standing by himself is having none of the drunken chaos; he’s totally absorbed in watching the football game.

I probably stare at him for a good 20 minutes moaning to my friend about how much I want to talk to him but don’t know what to say— (the art of picking someone up at a bar is something that I can easily play along with as a wing-woman, but am very uncomfortable actually initiating) when, lo and behold, he sidles up to my friend and I and positions himself right next to me. My friend makes the quick exit, and I turn to him and say, “So why aren’t you dressed up?”

This evolves into a very nice conversation about how he went to Stanford, is a med school student in the same city I work in (!), and how he only lives a couple block away. I’m getting all the unmistakable signals that he’s into me:

1. He came over to me first
2. Direct eye contact
3. Physical touching on the shoulder and arm every so often
4. It’s been 15 minutes and he’s still into it

I’m feeling extremely positive about this whole thing and am starting to think I’m going to get some tonight, when all of a sudden he drops a doubly douche-baggy bomb. Not only does he have a girlfriend, but he LIVES with her. I’m shocked, and can’t help but ask, “Well, where is she?” He responds that she’s asleep and not feeling well. All I want to do is shout, “Then why the fuck are you at a bar at 1am on a night where EVERYONE is trying to get laid, and why did you choose to start talking to a hottie (me) in a slip with a “penis envy” sticker on her left boob and a “libido” sticker on her right ass cheek!?”

But of course I don’t say any of that, and instead coolly inquire about what she does for a living (she works for the “Ted” talks program, which I guess is pretty cool). Then it gets awkward and he excuses himself to go home to her.

This incident puts a damper on my night, which soon transitions to me sitting drunkenly on a bar stool in our third and last bar, slurring my way through feelings of confusion and hate towards men to my friend, who has seemingly lost the red wig to her Merlotte’s waitress costume. What else is new, though?

So the moral of this story is pretty self evident: BE UP FRONT about your relationship status within the first 5 minutes (at most) of a conversation, ESPECIALLY if you are talking to a cutie at a bar in a hot slip. Frankly, if I’m trying to get some (as I damn well should be on a drunken Saturday night), I don’t want to have to ask if you have a girlfriend— that’s YOUR responsibility, asshole.

                                                                                                              

I have to say, this brings to mind my recurring wish that we lived in an alternate Sims computer game-like universe, so that there would be a way to immediately discern whatever information we wanted to know about a person we are macking on and really should know.  I’m thinking, bright halogen signs over peoples’ heads that say “seeing someone,” “in a relationship,” “casually fucking someone,” “scared of commitment” “I have a problem getting it up,” or anything else that you really should know about a person before your interest gets piqued.

But of course, we don’t live in a world where people put their faults up front, and that’s just the beauty of dating and getting to know someone, isn’t it?

How NOT to Break Things Off With Someone

1. Do not drink a cosmo by yourself in a self-pitying act (and with secret hopes that the wisdom of Carrie Bradshaw will come to you) just before you are about to break it off.

2. Do not then call that person and say everything but "I don't think we should see each other anymore.”

3. When that person asks, "If I were to go on a date with someone else tomorrow, would that bother you?" Answer truthfully, and say that you wouldn’t care in the slightest. Don’t say, “Yes, that would maybe, probably, um bother me a little” because that is what you think they want to hear.

5. Do not email him 10 minutes after the fruitless conversation to communicate the original reason for the call, which you just couldn’t get around to saying on the phone: “We should be single and see other people again.”

6. DO be direct and straightforward with someone you are breaking up with: because drunkenly babbling on the phone for a half hour will get you nowhere, except to make a difficult situation even worse.

The Post Where I Introduce Myself and Add Some Dirty Talk For Good Measure

These are the words of a 22 year old recent college graduate who is about to give you some advice. No matter what, every relationship comes with some kind of heartache, shitty patch, or unexpected “did he/she really just say that” moment. Every partnership, at some point, will cause you angst, put you down in the dumps, make your heart beat too fast with anxiety, and make you wonder, “why am I acting this way?”  But then there are other times when it feels so good, so right, that you feel you are impossibly lucky; you can’t imagine ever feeling this way about anybody else again.

Once I told a boy, “Love isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel for you; I think I need to tell you more often than not that you are the love of my life.” And at that time, I really did believe it.  But that boy is long gone, and others have come and passed before my eyes, all with their special eccentricities and downfalls. And although for a long while I didn’t seem to know what was good for me, I think I’m starting to get the hang of it nowadays.

So, even though I’m not yet old enough to rent a car (which is bullshit, by the way), and have never truly and deeply been in love (despite what I thought when I was 18), I’ve come to realize that I’m pretty good at giving relationship and sex advice. Maybe it’s because I’ve listened and learned from popular relationship columnist and hilarious podcaster, Dan Savage, with his 150-episode plus backlog, or maybe it’s because I like to analyze other people’s problems and not my own.

Whatever the reason is, a very good friend of mine and wonderful illustrator of this here blog came up with the idea that I begin documenting this tendency of mine to discuss sex and relationships— to have a forum to dole out advice in a place more accessible to the curious, sexually active, and advice seeking general public than the (impossibly long) line to the women’s single stall bathroom or the privacy of my own living room. The most appropriate space for such material seemed to be a public blog, so here I am.

I can’t say exactly what direction the content of this blog will head in, but I fully intend on delivering it with some good and sound diction, and a limited amount of run on sentences. Maybe I’ll regularly provide you with some sexy time tips based on my own discoveries, or a good story or two, or maybe I’ll mostly stick to answering questions. Whatever the case, I just hope that you get something out of this blog, even if it is only to ask yourself, “What the fuck is this girl talking about?”

*          *          *

Before I sign off, I’ll leave you with a quandary that I have been thinking about as of late. The topic is dirty talk. Personally, I have always loved it in all its forms; a wet whisper in your ear of sensual promises to come; a grounded out statement in the throes of passion; a slew of curses when it is time to come. In the not too distant past, I would have easily told you that I just can’t get enough of it. But in light of my status as dating girl in the big grand world of the greater NYC area, it has come to my attention that sometimes, dirty talk can be, well, too much.

What happens when every time you get down and dirty with that sexy someone or touch his or her special spot, they blurt out a dirty phrase? What happens when you moan in desire and their immediate response is something like, “oh yeah, you want my cock?” What I am really trying to get at, ladies and gentleman, is what I call “the curse of the porn mouth,” and why it isn’t always something to moan over. 

I can say for certain that most women (not all), are not heavily turned on by mainstream porn. This is for two reasons:

1. The expectations that it puts on men (to have HUGE cocks) and women (to love taking it for hours on end and have jizz all up in their face) are unreal and not relatable.
2. The scripts are HORRIBLY WRITTEN. Aside from their utter corniness, “degrading” is the most apt term I can think of. Who wants to fuck the plumber? Because you know they are never, ever hot (that is, except for my apartment’s super, but that’s for another post). And for god’s sake, can we get some foreplay up in there? 
   Vaginas are not some bottomless pit that can be slammed into after 30 seconds of fingering! Try thinking of them as, say, a slinky, that needs to be coaxed, stretched out, and played with in order for the best results (orgasm!) to occur. Unless your girl is begging to be screwed ASAP, I recommend that you spend, at minimum, 10-15 minutes pleasuring her, using every trick you have up your sleeve

Now, let me clearly establish here that I am in no way against porn, or the use of it, whether by couples or by solo masturbators. To a certain degree, it teaches us about our bodies and sex, and it also serves as a great erotic tool for sexual release. In general, IT’S A GREAT THING. But what I have a problem with is when one relies solely on the porn script for sexy talk because that is all he or she knows.

A warning to all: Do not use the language that is used in porn, and if you choose to do so, use it sparingly. Stop asking your girl to jump on your cock or take it in her tight pussy.* How about saying something affirming like, “I’m only this hard for you and I need to be inside of you…please let me make you come!” or “I want you on your knees so I can fuck you from behind AND touch your clit at the same time.” That kind of promise sounds good to me!

There are many ways to be dirty and to say illicit things without relying on overused and icky phrases. So, here’s the challenge: I challenge you, the reader, to come up with imaginative, creative, and original ways to get your dirty message across that makes your partner stop in his or her tracks/grinding/shaking and think, “holy shit, that was HOT!” I guarantee that you won’t regret it. While we’re still on the topic, it would please me greatly if you shared any tips, knowledge, or experiences YOU have had on the subject of dirty talk in the comment section. Sharing is caring!

* I will try my hardest to use gender-neutral language throughout my posts, but because I’m a straight girl and can only speak from my own experiences, some of my examples will be hetero-normative. (Can you tell I was a gender studies minor?)