date machine : relationships

Date Machine: How to Pick Up a Nurse at the HIV Clinic

amboabe — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:26:00 GMT

I was arguing with my friend P about competition last night. He believes the need to compete overshadows everything in our romantic lives. This need is especially acute in men, because we have traditionally been yoked with the role of pursuer. I don’t care. I don’t want to compete against the field to wind up with someone who’s attractive and successful just to show everyone else that I can.

Relationships aren’t prizes. They’re hard work and require a lot of sacrifice. Why would anyone want to compete to get into a bind like that? Why would anyone want to enter into a relationship with someone that they had to convince to join them?

A few weeks ago I went to get an STD/HIV test. The clinic was intended to serve the needs of high-risk gay men. There was only one woman working there. She was short, had curly hair, and walked around with an eager smile and beaming eyes. After listening to her talk to some of the other volunteers I figured out that it was her first day on the job.

An hour later she came out into the lobby with a file in her hand and called my name. As I followed her down the short hallway to the testing room I felt a small thread of nervousness unspooling in my midsection. I was already jumpy about the test, I hadn’t expected to be going through it with someone I was attracted to.

She held the door open for me and I sat in a chair against the far wall. She closed the door behind her and sat down with her overflowing smile. For the next ten minutes we talked about my recent sexual history. Coming clean about all the lewd, kinky, and potentially infectious behavior I’d engaged in over the last half a year is not high on my list of things to do with a women I find attractive.

We got to talk about what kinds of fluids have been in my mouth, my preference for anal play, and I retold the story of my first STD from last year. You’re cute, and also I used to have dick snails.

As I was going over all the unflattering proclivities of my sexual self, she seemed unfazed. She nodded during particularly embarrassing details with normalizing statements, “Yeah, that’s totally common. I know a lot of people who are into that.” As I rambled, her fingers were in constant motion along the hem of her shirt running along the edge of the fabric and skin. She tilted her head to the side when I tilted mine, she laughed out loud at all the obvious puns that I nervously tossed out.

It came time to draw blood. She rolled her chair next to mine and straddled my knee with her legs. She took the inner part of my forearm in both hands and gently ran her thumb up and down over the crook of my elbow to find a vein. I’m lanky and have veiny forearms. It was a hot morning and I’d walked a mile and a half to get to the clinic. My veins were presenting.

She said she was having trouble finding a vein. She asked me to hold out my other arm. She took it and ran her fingers along the skin of my inner arm, leaving a warm tingly trail in their wake. Neither of us said anything. Five seconds went by. Ten seconds. Our heads were a foot away from each other, my knee was inches from her lap. I could smell the soap on her skin, the soft hint of detergent from her clothes. I had started sweating a little on the walk over. There was probably some musky remnant of it mixing with my Apricot deodorant.

She leaned in closer, looking at the veins coming down my forearm. Her breast drifted across my hand as she moved. It happened again when she sat back.

After the test was over we kept talking, our words trying to prolong the last few minutes we would have together with whatever meager excuses we could find. We talked about travel. She told me about a trip to India with “my boyf—someone I was traveling with.” A few minutes later she made the same edit, changing an unformed “b” word into “the person I live with.”

I told her I was moving to New York in a week. She mentioned meeting in New York three different times, though she had no plans to come to the city and didn’t mention any friends there.

I’m not sure what my cues of attraction are, but I was swept away with her. I must have been rambling, my sentences coming out like blushing torrents of self-deprecation. I wanted to ask her out. I knew I wouldn’t because I was leaving in a week and, though my attraction to her was strong, it wasn’t unfamiliar. It was sporting and friendly and fun, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It was just a surprise to find someone like that in a place like that.

When you really like someone you don’t need to compete for anything. You don’t need to prove anything, because the simple act of sharing your time and thoughts is entertaining enough. You can convince people to like you with a little thought and social manipulation.

It’s like doing a card trick, you can convince people that they’re seeing something extraordinary when its just sleight of hand. With the right ones you just have to be honest and find a way to stick together for as long as you can. Staying together is always the harder part. Convincing someone to come home with you is easy. It’s a cheap trick and the payoff is a lie.

How you pick up a nurse: go get an STD check.

Previous Posts:

Date Machine: Full Disclosure

Sex Machine: The Bare Minimum

Date Machine: The Seductive Art of Dancing

Sex Machine: Becoming A Virgin Again

Sex Machine: Come On My Face

Sex Machine: Because I Can

Love Machine: Am I Romantic Enough?

Sex Machine: Picking Up Women in Gay Bars

Sex Machine: Diary of a Sperm Donor

Date Machine: Long Distance Lovers

Sex Machine: A Revised History of Whores

Date Machine: Moving to New York in Pictures

Date Machine: Old Love Letters, or Things That Got Thrown Away in the Move

Sex Machine: Talking About Sex With Your Parents

Love Machine: Willing to Relocate

Sex Machine: Checking my Oil, or the HIV Test

Date Machine: How To Pick Up a Bartender

Date Machine: Are You My Girlfriend Now?

Date Machine: Living Like A Bachelor

amboabe — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:52:00 GMT

I recently moved in with two women after living alone for more than a year. Going through the process has made me realize how low my standards are for food and neatness.

When I'm seeing someone it's much easier to set aside time and energy to think about things like what to have for dinner or making sure you have time at the end of the day to relax and not feel stress. I love food and am especially fixated on cooking. I look forward to the nights when I have to grocery shop and have no idea what to buy. Wandering around the aisles thinking about what might be created from everything waiting on the shelves has always been a secret pleasure. Doing it with someone else, or just knowing that improvised planning will be for a fond someone adds to the mischievous allure.

Going out to dinner is its own separate sport. Choosing a kind of food to settle on for the evening is like picking out what kind of clothes to wear in the morning. You can rush through it, or spend an inordinate amount of time trying to conceive the perfect fusion of function and newness. "What do you feel like?" we ask each other.

When I'm on my own, all that thought disappears. Food becomes one of the lowest priorities in my list of daily necessities. The first day in my new place I realized what a dope I looked like sitting down on a Sunday night with a dinner of potato chips and a couple of tomatoes.

When I don't have to think about anyone else, my ability to feed myself is stripped down to pure functionality. When I lived in LA, I went through an extended phase of having canned beans and spaghetti sauce for dinner. Perhaps it’s a sign of gradual sophistication that I've now moved onto canned beans sautéed with onions and dumped onto couscous. This is a slightly more elaborate variation, but it can be prepared mindlessly and repeatedly.

It's ugly though. One of my roommates compared this concoction to pig slop the other night.

My standards for neatness are also remarkably low. I'm more than capable of leaving dishes in the sink for a whole week, and my hamper is usually a Vesuvial overflow of socks and underwear. I've never clocked how long I could go without changing my bed sheets, but I know it's a long time.

My only real defense for this slovenliness is that I work a lot. I work ten hour days, then come home and do more work, writing side projects, pitching stuff, doing research, trying to build a website for my short. I wouldn't be doing any of this, I don't think, if I was seeing somebody. I work so many extra hours because I want to increase my station somehow, to become more than what I am.

That's not an impulse I have as strongly when I'm with someone. I am content. All those pressing needs about career and expansion turn into appreciation for all the small moments in between; an evening spent thinking up something new to do with a mushroom, or sitting together on the couch listening to a record and talking.

These are all joys that could just as easily be enjoyed alone, or with a friend. But I am loath to let myself indulge in them at the end of the day when I am left on my own. I do sometimes, but those times are rare.

When you're young and have no idea what to do, you lean on people for guidance and perspective, a gentle push in the right direction. The older you get the more you realize no one can finally make those choices for you; we all have to become our own essential critics. This the one true mark of a bachelor, a willingness to undergo sloth and filth for the sake of a life lived with a party ball and an interesting CV.

Previous Posts:

Sex Machine: Chest Hair, or the Shaved Eunuch

Date Machine: Macho Voce, or Women Who Sound Like Men

Date Machine: Sex in the Office

Sex Machine: Lying Lovers; or the Padded Bra

Sex Machine: Premature Ejaculation

Love Machine: Can You Be Friends With an Ex?

Sex Machine: How Soon, Sex Toy?

Date Night: Kissing in the Rain

Sex Education Machine: Abstinence, or Waiting is Easier Because...

Sex Machine: The Funny Thing About Handjobs

Love Machine: The Three-Year Itch

Sex Machine: Show Me Your Penis

Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?

Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses

Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile

Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds

Love Machine: Making A Scene

Nerve Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant

Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate

Sex Machine: How Soon, Sex Toy?

amboabe — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:18:00 GMT

I got a cock ring for my birthday a few years ago. I had never considered using a sex toy for my own benefit before. Sex toys are an implicit taboo for straight men. It's become generally accepted that women require vibrators and dildos for their own self-pleasure (how could a woman get off without a phallus?), but a man with a sex toy is a greasy kink monster.

One of the benefits of being in a relationship is that you are given leeway to experiment with new ways to arouse yourself and your partner. Sex toys lose their fetishistic edge and become more functional and exploratory. They aren't lurid artifacts but new intermediaries with which to break new ground. Being single is a different matter. How can you reasonably try and break new ground with someone when you're only vaguely acquainted with their body and person?

I used to tease a woman I was seeing that we could use a truck battery and alligator clips together. "It'll be out thing, just for me and you," I told her. "We're not using alligator clips," she would tell me with a deadpan glare.

I've never used an electrical current during sex, and my offer wasn't serious. But the irony wasn't meant to be totally dismissive either. I know what's felt good to me in the past, but I can't say what will elicit that reaction tomorrow. In the worst of times, we get so familiar with ourselves, and the bodies in bed with us, that we forget to move forward. We tell each other myths about "good" sex and "bad" sex, and then assemble a mountain of books, websites, seminars, and television shows that create a rubric for what that is.

Sex is both mundane and ecstatic. It is fundamentally unknowable. The more familiar it becomes the more it loses its defining quality. All of which is a lot to saddle a lover with, servicing the mundanity and ecstasy or our bodies. Can a person's imagination really be so expansive as to keep the act a continual discovery day after day or year after year?

I also own anal beads, though I have never used them with anyone else. I'm not sure I like using them on myself. I like the attempt, it's an experience I've never had before. I fumble and do things awkwardly; it's not the most intuitive of processes and is even less so without an extra set of hands. But it's an adventure, something I'm happy to have embarked on.

At what point does the introduction of sex accoutrements become acceptable with a new partner? Is there a dictum requiring polite society to avoid anal beads until the third date? Is the use of a cock ring a masochistic affront to a man's hetero-virility?

I bought a woman I had dated a vibrating dildo once. It sounds like an easy task, but I wandered around the back of the sex store for an hour debating different shapes, sizes, and functions. Would it have been rude to buy a big ten-inch dildo? Would it have been sad to present her with the narrow five inch instead? We weren't seeing each other anymore so I felt doubly at a loss. Whatever my choice, it would be up to her to make the best use of it. My seat on the exploratory committee had been abdicated.

I settled on something pink and soft, with a gentle motor and an approachable length. I played it safe, not wanting to push the line with something crass and vulgar. Later, she told me she had used it for a few months and thrown it away. I should have gotten her something that connected to a truck battery. Or better yet, we should have gone shopping together, before we stopped having sex.

Previous Posts:

Date Night: Kissing in the Rain

Sex Education Machine: Abstinence, or Waiting is Easier Because...

Sex Machine: The Funny Thing About Handjobs

Love Machine: The Three-Year Itch

Sex Machine: Show Me Your Penis

Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?

Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses

Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile

Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds

Love Machine: Making A Scene

Nerve Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant

Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate

Love Machine: My Mother

Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection

Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room

Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph

Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On

Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry

Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner

Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night

Love Machine: The Three-Year Itch

amboabe — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:06:00 GMT

How long can you stay in a relationship? Two years? Three years? Ten, maybe? I'm terrible at long-term relationships. I've never been in one that lasted more than a year, all things considered; and even then that period has been spiked with turbulence and uncertainty.

My friend B told me she starts to feel restless sometime during the third year of a relationship. That seems like a fair amount of time, right when the thrill of discovery wears off. After the rush of falling in love and the secret thrill of shared intimacy, the third year of a relationship leaves you with a simple human being. Nothing more or less. The great universal answer becomes a stupefying anti-climax.. Spending time together can be fun and exhilarating, but it must also start to feel like genuine work. It's the moment the love adrenaline wears off and the weight of the yoke starts to make your neck sore.

Realizing a relationship is going to require work and patience isn't such a terrible thing, but the three-year marker is when many people figure out just how much effort that really entails. It's when you realize the really hard stuff is yet to come. So it's natural to ask yourself if you really want to put yourself through all that for the person you're with. The answer is "no" more often than we like to admit.

Of course this is all conjecture, since I don't have any direct personal experience to reference. I've never gone that long because I've never found someone I knew in advance I wanted to fight for, and who also wanted to fight for me. I get nervous when I'm dating someone and I don't feel my metaphysical babies tingling in the ether. I fall in love easily, and hard. Being with someone and knowing I'm not in love with them makes me deeply uncomfortable. I worry that I'm pulling some sham on them.

But then, what begins as ambivalence and unassuming fun can just as quickly become fond familiarity. In the absence of other options, and not having any particular motivation to seek out new ones, a simple fling can turn into piece of luggage; a burden that's cumbersome but filled with caring nostalgia, if not quite passionate love. I went through this with one of my first girlfriends. We started seeing each other in the summer. We hooked up lots, laughed together, and teased each other. There wasn't any thought of relationship in my head. I didn't really understand what was happening, but I didn't stop to think about it.

Until I stopped to think about it. It had been three months and things were changing. It felt like the teeth in some universal gear had been moving all along, but only now was it becoming apparent. The improvised fun was becoming predictable. The jokes were starting to ring hollow, picking up hard edges that hadn't been there before. I wanted a relationship, but I thought that was something that inevitably happened. I didn't realize it was a choice you have to make; to look someone in the eye and agree to stay with that person to the exclusion of all other romance.

I started to think about whether or not this was the person I wanted to be in a relationship with. Things had been fun and easy but the accumulated weight of those brief few months started to build into a looming expectation. Where is this headed? I started to wonder if I wanted to commit further to a person who I had never had a serious conversation with, whose teasing felt like it was turning into bickering. I didn't want it. She seemed hurt. She said she didn't understand why we couldn't just keep having fun together the way we had been.

We could have. But I kept thinking about all the things I would have to close a door on to do that. I didn't want to do that for her. So I left.

Previous Posts:

Sex Machine: Show Me Your Penis

Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?

Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses

Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile

Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds

Love Machine: Making A Scene

Nerve Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant

Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate

Love Machine: My Mother

Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection

Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room

Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph

Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On

Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry

Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner

Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night

Sex Machine: Getting Laid

amboabe — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:13:00 GMT

I can't easily substantiate this idea, but I feel like it's safe to say there are more euphemisms for sex than for any other word in the English language. Many of them are cheap puns that help to take the edge of the mysterious vulnerability that happens in the throws of animated sex. The more carried away with arousal and affection a person becomes, the more irrationally transcendent everything seems. All while a person is sweating, breathing like a galloping horse, and swiveling their hips to some erratic and primal rhythm. It is definitely not a thing that someone "gets," like finding a twenty-dollar bill in between the sofa cushions.

A woman I was seeing asked me to come over after work one night to help her move some old furniture out of her apartment. As I was trying to negotiate the small puzzle of hallway, doorframes, and an ungainly couch, she said, "I'm pretty sure you're going to get laid tonight for all the trouble." "I'm pretty sure that was going to happen regardless of moving the couch," I told her.

At my worst, I'm prone to improvising sanctimonious sermons about the terms people use around me. A flirting phrase of affection can, through my prism of logic, become grounds for a quasi-legal discourse about the etymologies of sexuality. I had never heard her use that phrase with me before, and I hadn't yet expounded on my deep loathing for the implied passivity and possession contained therein. Like love, sex is not something you get, it's something you already have which you agree to share with someone. I don't get vagina; it's not a status symbol waiting to be unwrapped and embraced like a new iPod waiting under the Christmas tree.

The "laid" part doesn't do much for me either. It makes me think that I'm going to wind up flat on my back with sex miraculously happening to me while I watch in a comfortable recline. It makes sex seem like getting a massage. The implication is that there is a possessor of this mystical "sex" and a person is lucky to find himself or herself in the passive role of the receiver.

There's a larger gender stereotype at work in the phrase, in the way I see it. It reaffirms the overbearing necessity of the man to always be the pursuer, foraging for sex like a bear in a thawing wasteland trying to find berries. Men are taught to celebrate their ability to get sex, to demonstrate their prowess to their peers based on the volume of their encounters. Men don't talk about the qualitative experiences with sex, only the underlying arithmetic that can be used as competitive leverage. Blowjob? Check. Doggy style? Check. Titty fuck? Check. Facial finisher? Check. Got 'em all. I'm that good.

Hauling the couch down the rectangular staircase, trying to keep from knocking all the pictures off the wall, I kept chewing on the phrase. I gnawed at it, wondering if I shouldn't pipe about all the ugly images it connoted for me. I felt slighted almost. That wasn't the kind of sex we had ever had, and if it was going to start being that way, then I didn't want it.

When I was in high school, I remember raising my hand in English class to answer an open-ended question about something we had been reading. I don't remember what we were talking about or what point I wanted to make, but I remember the feeling of smug urgency emanating from inside. When I finished my ramble, my teacher B, looked at me for a quick second. He jutted his chin out and furrowed his brow, then turned away and walked towards the center of the class. "You know, Mike, if you were half as smart as you think you are, that would really be something," he said.

When I got the couch to the curb my jaw loosened, and I let all the flustered thoughts of indignation fall down. Those were mine; they existed in my head, and weren't transported there by the words she had told me. It would have been an argument with myself to protest any further.

It makes me a little sad now, to think that I had the momentary impulse to contort her words for my own subjective reasons just to make a point. It was a small thing, probably not even worth remembering in the larger scope of things, but those small choices are the ones that form behavior patterns in relationships. We choose what's acceptable and not acceptable to ask our partners to put up with. It becomes easier and easier to expect them to shoulder the brunt of our worst tendencies as a relationship ages.

This is part of what I fear most about being in a long-term relationship. I don't want to become someone cruel, but I'm afraid I'll lose the ability to separate my best self from my worst self in the rhetorical fog. In the end, every relationship becomes a fight with yourself.

We walked back upstairs together and looked at the new empty space in her living room. I grabbed my bag and put on my jacket. She put on her jacket and took her purse. We walked back downstairs, found somewhere to eat. Then we went to my apartment and had sex until three in the morning, until it was so late I had to stop because I had work in the morning.

We should have stayed up all night. The sleep wasn't worth it.

Previous Posts:

Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?

Date Machine: Getting Pierced on a Date

Love Machine: Hitting Snooze on the Morning After

Date Machine: Let Me Seduce You With The Cardigans

Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog

Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home

Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party

Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays

Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date

Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson

Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap

Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction

Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex

Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux

Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog

Date Machine: Rate My Politics

High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies

Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends

Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux

Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN

Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For

Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home

amboabe — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:23:00 GMT

My least favorite thing about the holidays is the leaving. I enjoy the family rivalries, the inevitable clashes of different threads of family and friends. I'm indifferent to the added stresses of holiday crowds in airports and on the freeways, but saying goodbye over and over again is hard. We can live farther away from the people we love and stay in touch with the various digital wonderments of fiber-optics and satellites orbiting overhead, but there is no replacement for sharing the same space. That's the inevitable conclusion I arrive at every year during the holidays. Arriving home, dropping the ungainly weight of my bags, opening the windows to freshen the stifled air of my dormant apartment, looking out on the streets below, familiar but filled with strangers flowing past in their indifferent rushes, I feel small and alone.

I take my parents for granted. As they age and I sink further into my own separate self they seem like weathered fragments from my past. I remember a time when they were the alpha and the omega of my life, the twin horizons over which the sun rose and set every day. I remember sitting on my father's lap reading The Little Mermaid aloud in the library at UT Austin, where he spent a summer teaching when I was four. He was a titan, his voice shook through my body as it animated each line of the fairytale. It was a force of nature, like a rainstorm of smiling words and warm imagination.

I remember the indulgent swoon of being in love with my mother. I crawled into bed with her and my dad one Sunday when I was three, hanging from her neck kissing her cheeks and lips. When she would take me shopping with her before I had started school I would venture out into the department store sprawl and bring back tight mini-skirts and red nail polish for her. I wanted her to show herself as the diaphanous monument she was to me.

All those experiences are tricks of perspective. Age and inexperience help to curve the lens in a way that makes the world seem intimate and hyper real, but it changes again and again. That doesn't make those experiences any less real. I hate leaving my parents' home after the holidays every year. I inevitably grow bored and stir crazy there, eating their food, listening to them argue, watching their cable, and making nice with their friends. Leaving always feels terrible. I spend my last hours in their home quietly packing, sulking and feeling leery about wherever it is that I'm off to next. It's like breaking up with the same person over and over again, but each break up is framed by the incremental creep of age.

I don't understand break-ups where people walk away from one another and never look back. With one exception, I am still close with every woman I've ever loved. Relationships are hard work, and the idea of lifelong coupling is a statistical hail mary. But saying I love you is a concession of permanence for me. It doesn't mean you agree to have fun together until things get too painful and then you agree to call things off and never talk to one another again. Those onset hardships are inevitable, as is the reframing of one's point of view over time. But how can you stop loving someone?

I've always experienced breaking up as a concession to semantics. You reach a point where it stops making sense to keep your own path hemmed in by your partner's; it stops being what you want. I've never fallen out of love. Letting go of someone because you realize you can't keep climbing the mountain together is a terrible and sad thing, but that's never made me want to let go of that person. My parents were the first two people I ever fell in love with. I don't want to live with them anymore, nor am I interested in having them directly involved in guiding my vessel as I keep pressing forward into new places. But I don't want to let them go. I loved them, and I love them still, even if they don't much resemble the romantic titans of my infancy.

Their faces have changed improbably over the years, without my noticing. Their physical infirmities are full of subtle new wrinkles, unassuming new pill bottles in the medicine cabinets. They make strange noises when they breathe. My childhood toys are all gone. I sleep in the guest room now. The room I grew up in is hundreds of miles away from my parent's new house. So it's sad when I pack my bags and walk to the front door, headed to the airport, knowing that there's no forgotten scrap left behind in the guestroom. The semantic ties have evaporated. Love is like gravity. I know I'll be back next year, and the year after that, but only for a little while, so long as they're there.

Previous Posts:

Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party

Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays

Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date

Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson

Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap

Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction

Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex

Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux

Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog

Date Machine: Rate My Politics

High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies

Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends

Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux

Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN

Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For

Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings

Love Machine: What Work Is

Sex Machine: Sleeping Naked

Love Machine: Breaking Up in a Text Message

Date Night: The F U Date

Sex Machine: Shave My Bush

Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating

Date Machine: The Celebrity You Most Resemble

Sex Machine: I Kissed A Boy

Crying In Public: Some Corner in Brooklyn

Sex Machine: It's Not Cheating If...? A Reader Survey

spjv840 — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:50:00 GMT

Yesterday while trying to make my boss millions, I got interrupted by an msn message from the guy I wrote about before who I had hooked up with via Facebook. The one with the fiance. Apparently, they broke up a while ago. Good for him, she looked like an absolute witch, but that's not the point. He kept going on about how he and I were meant to be together, how he had wanted me since high school and that should count for something, he says. He also went on asking me constantly if I was really happy - he would not take my "Yes" for an answer.

Finally I told him that I had zero intention of ever seeing him again (unless it's strictly as friends, and even then), let alone cheating on my boyfriend with him, or anyone, for that matter. Then he came out with this gem:

"It's not cheating if it's with someone you're supposed to be with"

Oh really? This is news to me! Anyone else feel this way? So according to him, he didn't cheat on his fiance when he boned me back in July 2007, because we were "MEANT TO BE TOGETHER". Ok, I'm meant to be with Jason Statham and Johnny Depp, will I be cheating on anyone if I bone all of them? Apparently not!

Readers, put down the turkey leg and tell me, what are your thoughts? When is cheating "not" cheating and when is it?

Recent posts: Nerve Confessions: Sometimes The Truth Hurts
Date Machine: Hooking up Via Facebook
Nerve Confessions: Celebrity Threesomes
Nerve Confessions: The Man Edition
Sex Machine: Your First Time - A Reader Survey
Love Machine: I'm Not The Marrying Kind...or Am I

Date Machine: Hooking Up Via Facebook and A Reader Survey

spjv840 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:04:00 GMT

I don't know what the attraction is with Facebook. Yeah, it's a great way to meet up with old friends, although mostly it's a lot of "Let's get together sometime!" that never seems to follow through. I've had old high school classmates requesting to be friends - I say classmates because using the term "friend" would be an asbolute lie. Just because I borrowed a pencil from you in geography class in seventh grade doesn't necessarily warrant a dire need to be added to my friend's list.

Back when I first discovered Facebook, one of the first people I added was this guy I used to have a big crush on back in seventh grade. I was never too sure of what his feelings were for me back at the time since basically he treated me like crap and we were, what, 13 years-old? But it was consistent. Why go through the trouble of picking on someone so much if you hate them? Fast forward about ten years. Dude starts sending me messages on Facebook, mentioing wanting to get together for a beer or three and of course, he mentions his fiance. Why married/taken men are always so eager to bed me, I will never know - most likely because their partners are uptight b*tches, but that's not important.

After a couple weeks of flirty messages and confessions of how much he liked me in high school and how he always thought we would get married (what!?), one night during a rough patch with his fiance, who had kicked him out - he taxi'd it over to my place where we split a bottle of wine and a few beers. A few hours later we were doing the nasty in my small single-sized bed. It wasn't the greatest of sex because I'm pretty sure he was feeling guilty about boning his hot high-school crush while still technically another girl's guy. He crashed out at my place for the weekend, before returning to his thin-lipped fiance with his tail between his legs. A few weeks later I got another message from him wanting to see me again, but I had moved on to greener pastures.

The green pastures just happened to be another Facebook hook up, although one that never should have happened. This one also happened to be another high school friend, although not ever a crush or possible bed partner - this was just another party friend from back in the day. We agreed to meet up one night when a bunch of us were getting together to watch a friend's band show and have a few brews for old time's sake (at least that was MY intention). After having consumed one too many beers (me) and one too many rum-in-cokes (him) we ended up making out in the cemetary on the way back to his place.

Of course, it was a huge mistake. The sex was sloppy and he was basically the kind of guy who lays back, arms behind his head and expects the woman to do all the work. After an unsuccessful go at it, we eventually passed out, his arm draped over me. When I woke up the next morning, I was still fuzzy around the edges and feeling the effects of the night before - yet we went on to have slightly improved morning sex. He came - I did not. I was then treated to the proof of my mistake when he proudly got out of bed, buck ass naked and continued to walk around and I realized he was a lot more hairer than I cared for, his ass was saggy and he had devloped quite the gut since the night before.

I can honestly say that I have not been satisfied by my Facebook hook ups.

Fellow Nerve readers/writers -

Have you had successful facebook hook ups?

Were they with strangers or old high school classmates/friends?

Would you do it again or have you learned your lesson?

Recent posts: Nerve Confessions: Celebrity Threesomes
Nerve Confessions: The Man Edition
Sex Machine: Your First Time
Love Machine: I'm Not The Marrying Kind..Or Am I?
Nerve Confessions: The Karma's A Bitch Edition
Sex Machine: Oral Sex Do's and Don'ts

Date Machine: Is there an expiration date on PASSION?.. plus throbbage.

zeitgeisty — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:44:00 GMT

I was having a conversation with my father the other day about women, relationships, and the general vagaries of human existence.

He’s 71 now, retired and lives ‘the life of the mind’ writing, reflecting, and pontificating…Anyway, when it comes to relationships taking advice from my father is a bit like taking advice from Kafka, or maybe Edgar Allen Poe. In other words, he lays out a grim landscape…bleak, dark and generally joyless. Unfortunately in my case the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Lately I’ve been getting complaints from my girlfriend about my intractable nature. My complete unwillingness to engage in any activity she enjoys. I keep telling her I just don’t have it in me to go visit another museum, or drop another 20 bucks at another horrible movie. Her rejoinder is usually something like…

‘I’m not even talking about museums… how about dinner?? Going out for a drink??.. All you ever do when you come home from work is sit in front of the TV and watch MSNBC!!’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, this is an important time in our history… This election is the most significant in our lifetime!!’

Well the election is over… shit. What’s my excuse now?

My father says you need to fall in love and get married young, or else it’ll never work. He postulates that once you get past a certain age you become so disillusioned that true romantic love is no longer possible. This thought haunts me, and to tell the truth I’m scared to death that he may be right. Not that I believe it’s not possible to love someone – I do - it’s just all that whimsical, unfettered, unmitigated, passionate abandon… does it have an expiration date?

I dunno, maybe it doesn’t really matter anyway. I mean, isn’t all of that akin to religion, or any other similar types of man-made fairy tale? Isn’t it better in the end to look at life starkly with an unbending loyalty to the truth? Perhaps, but it sure is a lot less fun…

Of course even in my youth I’ve never experienced that coltish, peppy, bubbly effervescent wave of amore that so many people cling to like deranged rhesus monkeys. My memory banks are simply filled with old anxieties, disappointments, broken dreams and bitterness. The cells ooze battery acid and leak into my current state of mind coloring my thoughts in gloomy hues.

Well, I’m not a kid anymore, and unless I sustain some brain injury which effectively wipes out everything I’ve experienced in my life, I’m stuck in this head.

If only I didn’t feel this damned inertia. I keep telling the girl that I warned her about me, but she doesn’t wanna hear it. I suppose this is what’s known as an impasse.

Ahh… the effort it all takes.. I guess I better start switching off the tube and doing actual shit.

Obama won, I suppose anything’s possible – the audacity of hope and such...

winona...

translations

bloggerdoodles

crazy pants

used to be cool - zeitgeisty on MTV

hurting for a squirting - the female ejaculation file

translations...

blogger doodles 3

the gardener and the rose

We fart therefore we are

TRANSLATIONS

Blogger doodles 2

My most cringeworthy moments with women

Are you a sociopath part 2

Are you a sociopath part 1

translations...

blogger doodles

The worst sex of my life

The sex and the city movie was lame

commitment phobia is a myth

Translations...

TYPES

Do.. do women really suck in bed?

The odd disconnect between profile photos and reality

50 sexual expereiences I've never had

Dating COnfessions translations

I'm a breast man... the JUGS file

John McCain makes my peepee go limp

Video blog - 'The word on the steet' - the nature of attraction.

My dating confessions TRANSLATIONS

My internet dating advice

What we want vs. What we need and the power balance between man and women

All Porn SUCKS!!

The night PAULINA and I discussed sex

How important are someone's politics when choosing a patrner?

Nerve Confessions: It's all about the looks stupid!

Sex with someone I love - The MASTURBATION file

The Greatest Online Dating story - The PERSONALS file

'But baby I HAVE to put a profile up, it's required!!' - The GIRLFRIEND file

BITE ME! - Snark.

My first kiss...a remembrance of thing past

Feel the paste in you face - The FACIAL file

Talk dirty to me!!

I abstain! The fear to fuck

The unvarnished TRUTH about dating on the internet.

BITE ME!!!

Pontifications on the bangin' of ass - The ANAL file

The brass ring

Love Machine: I'm Not The Marrying Kind.....Or Am I?

spjv840 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:12:00 GMT

I'm in this really weird state of mind. I spent the last couple weeks stressing over the fact that I might be pregnant. I've been pregnant before so I know what it feels like. Airheadgenius' post about pregnancy made me want to write a whole post about the subject but then I decided not to get into it. People would surely start spewing their political bullshit and quite frankly I have no interest in hearing it. But the last few weeks I felt that familiar pregnant feeling. My tits hurt just if you looked at them too long, I was eating non-stop and having weird bouts of nausea, weird crying jags followed by intense blow ups. I was getting ready to pee on a stick by the end of the week and have to face my boyfriend again with the bad news. If you know me, you know I'm as fertile as a goddamn flower bed, which is ironic because, for the most part, I don't want to become a mother. I love kids, don't get me wrong. I love when my nephew comes bouncing over and jumps on the couch and jumps on his uncle and begs for candy which I secretly give him and I love watching him torture the cat and playing with his uncles old Ninja Turtles toys from the 80's. But at the end of the day, I am glad when he goes back home and is someone else's responsibility. It has nothing to do with with maturity, selfishness or anything else. I just have zero interest in becoming a mother or having "a family" in the traditional sense of the word.

This morning I woke up in a strange mood. Relieved because my period had started, which also took a huge load off my shoulders. I don't think I could have gone through the pain and sadness that follows having to terminate a pregnancy.There was an other feeling on hand this morning, though. Marriage. Last night, while drinking many celebratory Obama beer and crying about this and that and freaking out at my boyfriend, we managed to have some kind of talk about the future without speaking directly about it. I'm one of those gals who doesn't really talk about feelings and other bullshit like that. I'm not going to try and get a guy to open up about his feelings or ask him what he's thinking every hour on the hour. That shit pisses me off. However, last night a lot of garbage flew out of my mouth. We'll blame the booze..it's always the best excuse.

My boyfriend and I already discussed the fact that we don't want to get married in a traditional way. We don't believe in church and have no wish to be married in one, behind one, or next to one. God will not be overlooking my wedding, should that day ever happen. But I want to marry him. I don't want to wear a white dress, have thousands of dollars spent on food, clothes, flowers, whatever the hell people spend money needlessly on for their wedding. I want to get married wearing a purple tube dress over my frayed jeans and beat up camouflaged Converse. I haven't told him about this. He doesn't know that I want to marry him. I've never wanted to marry before. I'm not even entirely sure I want to marry, honestly, but today, right now, I would love to say to him, "I love you, let's run off to Vegas and get married by Elvis and then have honeymoon sex in a big vibrating round bed"- this feeling might pass, just like heart burn after eating spicy chili (it does kind of feel like a bad case of indigestion), but maybe not. The morning after I had met him, I was completely enamored with him. I kept telling friends, "He's so perfect for me" and "He will be mine, you watch!" and I even blurted out "I'm going to marry him one day" - which was saying a whole lot becauseI don't think those words ever came out of my mouth before that, let alone after spending one night with someone. But I'm getting off track.

What makes someone the marrying kind? Is it a desire to have a family, a suburabn house with a goldren retriever and prescription meds for when your husband "works late" four nights out of five? Is it a desire to be with someone completely and utterly for the rest of your life? Is it a business deal like Lori Gottlieb wrote in The Atlantic back in January? Is it a need to be secure? Someone to look after you?

I don't think I'm the marrying kind.I don't know what kind I am, honestly.I don't particularly have a desire for anything mentioned above, except maybe wanting to be with someone completely and utterly. Maybe I'm just the kind that has finally realized that I can be secure in this relationship, that I don't need to worry about petty bullshit like I tend to do and that our little family with our cat, pit-bull puppy and all our plants is just what I want and need, and I don't need a ring to tell me that. Although, a cake right now with two little action figures on top would be pretty great.

So, are you the marrying kind?

Do the right thing

airheadgenius — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:21:00 GMT

This has got nothing to do with dating and everything to do with relationships.

I live opposite a school. At 6am there was a line around the block and as far down as I could see.

I've paid over half a million dollars in taxes to the US government, but apparently that doesn't cut it, so I can't say that my vote counted.

Today I am living vicariously and hoping for an exceptional day. Hey, maybe residents will get to vote in the future?

Do the right thing beautiful people!

Who else?

Nerve Confessions: The Karma's A B*tch Edition

spjv840 — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Some of the confessions lately are seriously angry confessions, full of bile and hurt. I like it!

"You chose her over me. And now that I've heard it's all crashing down, I can't help but smile to myself...Karma's a bitch, ain't it? :-)"

Sure, it's great to be happy when you hear that the person who broke your heart is now on the otherside of the fence, but what does that say about you? That you and I would probably get along GREAT. No, but really. Is revenge karma really that great??? Ok....damnit, yes it is!

"Are you really choosing the girly girl over me? Crash and burn."

Guys always pick the girly girl until they realize how boring and superficial they are - not to mention the mediocre sex. Don't worry, soon he'll realize the mistake he made and try to get you back, but you'll have moved on by then (I hope).

"I only hope that someone manipulates you as much as you did me. You were right, you never were good enough for me."

Being manipulated is cruel. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, not even the guy who manipulated me for months and I wasn't even aware of it. It's better to let it go and let karma to its thing.

"I hope you're miserable when you realize you've traded happiness for convenience."

They usually are.

"I realized who you were when you let me leave, crying hysterically, to walk 20 blocks alone in Harlem at 1 am."

I'm really hoping it was a woman who wrote this on the "new breed of man" that walks the streets at 1am in fear with his dick between his legs.
I had a similar experience a few years ago and couldn't believe how unconsiderate some guys could be. Of course, now we know the hard way, but hopefully you realized enough about him to ditch the idiot. Not worth it.

Related posts:Sex Machine: Oral Sex Do's and Don'ts
Nerve COnfessions: Why Can't We Be Friends?
Nerve Confessions: I Know You Have A Girlfriend But You Feel So Good In Me
Sex Machine: Oh Yeah, That I Did
Sex Machine: I've Never Done...That
Sex Machine: Why Guys SOmetimes Tend To Suck In Bed

Nerve Confessions: Analyzing "I Love You" and Other Recent Confessions

spjv840 — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:56:00 GMT

DM has been pretty dead lately, so I decided to take a look at some recent confessions that you nerve daters have submitted. There's quite a few good confessions out there lately.

"When I called you just to tell you that I love you, it would have been nice if you had said you loved me too."

This first confession really made me feel for you. I've been on both sides of the 'I love you' non-return and it's a sticky game. If you're the one saying, "I love you" and you don't get a reply, to me, it's like being hit by a trainwreck and dragged for miles. But even worse than the no reply, is the automatic "I love you" in return. You know what I mean, you've been saying it so long to someone that they say it without thinking, because it's a habit, not because they're actually aware of what they're saying. I've been in that position and all it does it is make you feel worse about yourself.

Or there's the "Me too" reply - does that even count? If you can't be bothered to add another word to the sentence, don't bother saying anything at all. Lazy love is not any better than no love.

Of course, I'm not the biggest fan of those three words. I don't toss them around like I see some people do. I was once with a man for six months and never said I love you. If I take nothing else slow, that's one thing I do take slow. Those three words are some of the few that can invole fear in me. I was cautious saying it to my current boyfriend. He said it first. Thankfully, we're both not like those people who have to say it every day twice a day in order to know that we love each other. In a way, I almost think the more you say, the less it means.

"My boyfriend only fucks me once a month, if I'm lucky."

Do you love him? Does he make you happy? If you answered no to any of those quetions, seek new romance prospects ASAP.

"My ex's first hookup was with an "older gentleman".Should I be happier that it was him instead of some dude our own age from a bar.I think I am but, not being the first to score really bothers me because, I like sex way more.It's so much easier for you ladies."

This could almost be about me, but that's not likely. My first hook up after my first big break up was with an "older gentleman". Not 50+ older, but at least a good ten years older than I was. Personally, I don't see why it would make a difference to you if your ex hooked up with an older dude after breaking up with you. I think this is more about the shrinking of your penis and not being able to get laid even though your ex is out there having a good time. Check your ego at the door.

"i watch really nasty porn. it gets me off but i would never want to try any of that stuff myself."

This one kind of cracks me up for reasons unknown. I think it might be because of the number of people who can relate. 16 people (and counting) can relate to watching really nasty ass porn, while only one cannot. I don't know what "nasty porn" constitutes today. I'm assuming it's something that involves poop being smeared over tits while a fist is lodged into places and a woman in the background fits three massive black cocks into her mouth. I wouldn't know. I watch lesbian porn to get off and here I thought that was crazy enough.

Related posts: Nerve Confessions: I Know You Have A Girlfriend But You Feel SO Good In Me
Nerve Confessions: Letting Go and The Top 5 Movie Break Ups
Sex Machine: Oh Yeah, That I Did
Sex Machine: I've Never Done That
Sex Machine; Why Guys Sometimes Tend To SUck In Bed
Sex Machine: Please Slap My Ass
Nerve Confessions: I Fell In Love In A Week
Nerve Confessions: Datin' Daddy
Sex Machine: Are You A Frankfurter or A Mr. Pencil?
Nerve Confessions: Tattoos & Piercings - Plus The Top 5 Hottest Tattooed Men and Women
Nerve Confessions: Shut Up And F*ck Me
Celebrity Confession: Eva Mendes Had Sex in All 50 States
Nerve Confessions: Single and 30
Sex Machine: Toss My Salad
Nerve COnfessions: Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Personals Drama: I'm Not Cupid
Date Machine: You're Not My Type
Sex Machine: The Butt Sex Bandit
Sex Machine: Hot Sex Vs Bad Sex

Something Scary

fishnetsandlight — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:36:00 GMT

Halloween approaches and I still don't know what to be. The boyfriend insists on reprising his "Sexy Leopard" costume. (It's pretty much like the one pictured above, only with full pants. Yes, the cuffs are furry. And yes, it is tight.)

I'm thinking about "Sexy Zoo Keeper" or "Sexy Big Game Hunter." Are couple's costumes cool? Or would it be akin to wearing matching sweaters with snowmen on them?

Nerve Confessions: I Know You Have A Girlfriend But You Feel So Good In Me

spjv840 — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:49:00 GMT

"I know, I know, you have a boyfriend and it was wrong for me to kiss you, but in that moment, there was nothing more that I wanted than your kiss. And I know you wanted it too."

Summer 2007 was an interesting one for me. I had discovered a new person inside me (usually every other night) and I enjoyed myself. I didn't question anything - if it felt right, I did it, no matter what the consequences might be. I was still using the excuse of getting over a bad break up with Dream Boy, so it was a green light on whatever, and more correctly, whoever I wanted.

One night some friends and I went to see my best friend's boyfriend's band play in a city that I don't go to often. before the show we checked out the local bar scene and had a few brews at a local pub. Taking my usual vodka and cranberry to get warmed up and become social, I settled into my seat and enjoyed the sights of this fun, new city filled with sexy French boys. About twenty minutes before we were about to leave a friend of a friend showed up. This friend of a friend caught my eye quickly. Full lips, big eyes, square shoulders, crazy curly hair. He sat himself down right next to me and started asking me questions. It was a wild Franglais flirt back-and-forth. After a few vodkas, of course, things were getting loud around us and I thought I had heard someone ask this sexy new boy, we'll call him Michau, where his girlfriend was. But, by then I just figured I had heard this question wrong.

Fast forward a couple hours and we're at the bar where the band is playing. Sitting through a bunch of half-assed bands who think they'll strike it big one day, we ordered a couple pitchers and waited for our friends to take the stage. Michau showed up and carefully placed himself directly across from me, so I had no choice but to notice his constant stares. To make a long story short - after a couple games of air hockey, flirting, lots more beer and a great performance from our friends on stage and way too much drunken dancing - Michau and I were making out inthe corner of the club like two teenagers at a school dance. Oh, and he confessed that he had a girlfriend somewhere throughout the night between wet kisses.

The new me didn't give a shit. He was hot, treated me like I was the hottest thing around and I liked the way his hips moved against mine as we shimmeyed our way around.

I had asked him a couple times what would happen if his girlfriend came in and saw this and he reassured me that she wouldn't.

After a while, most of the group wanted to head back home but I, along with two others (Michau included) were feeling good and wanted to explore the city's bars a bit more. So armed with two sexy single men, I headed out for more fun.

Around two o'clock, back at Michau's, the other guy passed out on the sofa, Michau sweetly made up the bed Where I would be sleeping ("We can't sleep in the same bed", he told me) and the sofa in the bedroom where he was going to sleep. Of course, a minute after he lay down on the sofa, he was in the bed with me. Despite being drunk, I knew I couldn't sleep with him. I was in the bed where he, no doubt, slept with his girlfriend of five years and if she were to walk in.....

But then his lips were all over me and his dick was in my hands and his fingers were in me and it was a blur of "You have a girlfriend.." and "We shouldn't do this..." and he told me I was a good girl for saying all this but oh I want you - and so, we didn't have sex, but we both did come and I fell asleep in the bed and he fell asleep on the sofa and in the morning, despite my fears, there was no awkwardness. When the other guy and I were ready to leave after a greasy breakfast and a few Tylenols to relieve us of our hangovers, Michau kissed me gently on the cheek and told me, "It was nice meeting you" and we said goodbye.

I can't help but wonder if his girlfriend ever smelled me on her boyfriend's pillows or if he washed the sheets right after I left. I also wonder if she does the things I did to him that night.

There was an other occurance of sleeping with a man in a relationship, engaged actaully - but the situation was different and besides, he was an old high school crush I had found on Facebook. But that's a story for another day.

So, I ask you Nerve readers - have you ever slept with a married man (so to speak)? How did it end and did anyone shake their finger at you afterwards?

Related posts: Nerve Confessions: Letting Go and The Top 5 Movie Break Ups
Sex Machine: Oh Yeah, That I Did
Sex Machine: I've Never Done That
Sex Machine; Why Guys Sometimes Tend To SUck In Bed
Sex Machine: Please Slap My Ass
Nerve Confessions: I Fell In Love In A Week
Nerve Confessions: Datin' Daddy
Sex Machine: Are You A Frankfurter or A Mr. Pencil?
Nerve Confessions: Tattoos & Piercings - Plus The Top 5 Hottest Tattooed Men and Women
Nerve Confessions: Shut Up And F*ck Me
Celebrity Confession: Eva Mendes Had Sex in All 50 States
Nerve Confessions: Single and 30
Sex Machine: Toss My Salad
Nerve COnfessions: Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Personals Drama: I'm Not Cupid
Date Machine: You're Not My Type
Sex Machine: The Butt Sex Bandit
Sex Machine: Hot Sex Vs Bad Sex

Nerve Confessions: Letting Go and The Top 5 Movie Break Ups

spjv840 — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:10:00 GMT

The confession of the day is: "I asked my therapist why you haven't been in touch. He said I should try doing more than hitting the refresh button on my e-mail."

That seems like a pretty snarky thing for a therapist to say. If my therapist said something like that to me, I'd be looking through the yellow pages for a new therapist. Although, if you're going to take advice from anyone, that's the person to take it from, I suppose - and he/she does have a point.

Hitting the refresh button is the equivalent of waiting by the phone for someone to call. Its sad, lonely and desperate and I've done it more than I'd care to admit. It's the modern day way to drive yourself crazy.

"If you hadn't knocked her up, I would have kept fighting for you."

Ah yes, nothing makes you let go quicker than finding out the man you love knocked some bimbo up. It's pretty much a guaranteed way to say bye without a lot of strings attached. You sure as hell don't want to be caught up in some sort of Montel type threesome with the baby daddy and momma - that just isn't cool, no matter where you live or what you do.

When it comes to letting go, I'm not particularly the best person for the subject. For a long time I had a hard time letting go. Why let go of something/someone I want? Bah, I'd say, I take what is mine and that's that. Of course, I learned the hard way that you can't force people to love you or want you and in the long run it just causes more pain and drama. I've "let go" twice and it hurt like hell. But now, thankfully, I learned my lesson - I don't cling on like I used to. I'm just along for the ride so that if shit happens, as it always does, there won't be anything to let go of.

Some recent confessions:

"i want to be with you again...in every possible way."

"I miss you so much I've been reading our old emails and chats. I need to stop!"

"I knew the only way to get over you was to fall for someone else. It took for-fucking-ever, but I've finally done it. I'm a little sad that I can't tell you."

"I miss talking to you, but other than that, I am relieved it is over."

And my vote for best confession of the week is definitely this one:

"i love the way your husband tweaks my nipples when he comes"

And now the Top 5 Movie Break Ups

5) Closer

4)The Break Up (I'm sorry, it was a good movie)

3) Chasing Amy

2) High Fidelity

1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Related posts: Sex Machine: Oh Yeah, That I Did
Sex Machine: I've Never Done That
Sex Machine: Why Guys Somestimes Tend To Suck In Bed
Sex Machine: Please Slap My Ass and The Top 5 Topless Movie Scenes
Nerve Confessions: I Fell In Love In A Week
Nerve COnfessions: Datin' Daddy
Sex Machine: Are You A Frankfurther or A Mr Pencil?
Nerve Confessions: Tattoos & Piercings - Plus The Top 5 Hottest Tattooed Men and Women
Nerve Confessions: Shut Up And Fuck Me
Nerve COnfessions: Single and 30
Sex Machine: Toss My Salad
Nerve COnfessions: Should I Stay Or SHould I Go
Personals Drama: I'm Not Cupid
Date Machine: You're Not My Type
Sex Machine: The Butt Sex Bandit
Sex Machine: Hot Sex vs Bad Sex

Date Machine: Je t'adore

airheadgenius — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:56:00 GMT

I go through phases of dating and phases where I just can't be bothered with it.
But when I am in one of those "meet 6 people in a short period of time" moods, I tend to come up with more precise realisations about what I can deal with in a relationship. Not superficial characteristics like hair color or cynical ones like a base line salary (although there is always the minimum package size requirement, but we've been there already, hehe) it's more about their attitudes and how that might reflect on me.

And that's how I came up with today's new rule:

I need to be adored!

I've got a reasonably healthy self esteem. I am extremely confident about my intelligence and mental capability, reasonably at one with my personality and, for the most part content with my appearance. As a mother of two, I hanker back to the pre-kid-more-sleep days and wonder what on earth I was worried about back then, but when I look in the mirror, I am fine with my reflection. I am not a beauty, nor will I win pageants, but I am a good looking woman.

But I am not content with my lover, FWB or partner thinking that I am simply reasonably attractive. Nope. My lover has to think that I am the most gorgeous thing he's seen. The proverbial "best thing since sliced bread". Luckily for me, I've dated, bedded and lived with men who genuinely loved my appearance.

Yes, it's self esteem, not my-lover-makes-me-feel-better esteem. But it isn't about someone else validating me entirely, just that in my case, doubt sets in if I am not sure that the man is physically completely into me.

I am in no way shape or form a princess. I've been the breadwinner throughout my pregnancies and whilst raising my kids, I am a landlord and self sufficient financially. I lift heavy stuff. I put up shelves, paint, tile, change light bulbs, remove mice from mousetraps (although thank fuck that those days are over) and was the one that ploughed through the sewer leak in the cellar (what an awful time to discover that ones rubber boots were not waterproof).

I also don't seem to mind if my man thinks I've done something stupid, or made a bad judgement call. That aspect of my self esteem is sturdy and robust. This adoration requirement only seems to manifest in the physical.

So, if we've met and you think I am gorgeous, then please continue to be in touch. If we've met and you think I am just ok, then by all means keep it movin'.
This chick needs adoration.
Thank you.

(It doesn't take Freud to tell you that I wasn't complimented much as a kid. Must go and tell my children they are beautiful...)

The obligatory back catalogue:
Zeitgeisty's Behaviour
Rate my Profile
My kink is better than your kink
The good the bad and the ugly
I am a whore
First Date sex?
Small Juicy Ones
The Perfect Blowjob
What is a boyfriend
Friends with Benefits
Real Women
Another quick pull out
Lesbian Lovers Come Out
Digits
Asymmetrical Knobbage
Cunning Linguist
Cunnilingus
Fabulous at 40
Winehouse Reveals
The Chick Facial File
Mirrors
Confession plus Daily Knob!
Abusive?
Celebrity Confessions: Boy George
Dick Trilogy Part 3
MORE dicks in my inbox
Dicks in your inbox
Read my Sodding Profile!
Nerve Confessions: Herpes
The Queen Confesses
The Arse Man Cometh
The Ass Play Chronicles
The Sandwich Blowjob Porn Connection
Bangin Ass
Deformed Dicks
Did I really dream that?
Why I don't date Celebrities
Fashionably late or just a slacker

I used to have a giant crush on Dave Wakeling from The Beat (errr, they weren't called the English Beat ya know). I prolly would've done Ranking Roger a serious favour too.

Date Night: Do you have First Date Sex?

airheadgenius — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:38:00 GMT

Ah well, my last post fell a bit flat, but I am not one to dwell. And I've just been inspired by a Nerve Confession. Particularly the last sentence...

See, I'm suffering from those high standards too and have never found myself in a situation where i'd fuck someone just for the sake of getting laid. At the very least there has to be a physical attraction. And so, on to my tale about a man who wasn't too thrilled with my who-to-have-sex-with decision making...

I once went on a date with a guy that proved not to be very mature. He asked me for a second date which I politely declined. He was pissed. He blogged about it. But that's not my point.

There was a moment in the evening when his mood changed. He offered to escort me home and I said "no thanks, I am going to jump in a cab".
The penny didn't drop for a while, but then it occurred to me that chumpy thought he was on a promise!
He had found himself out on a date with a woman that blogged about sex and so SURELY sex was on the menu.

Hell no!
I mean, hell not necessarily.

Yes, I like to have sex.
Every day if I can. Although that would only ever happen if I was in a relationship.
Obviously. (Well, it's at least obvious to anyone familiar with the responsibilities of raising children)

But apparently that's not obvious to everyone.

There's that expression used around gay men "backs against the wall" as if a gay man will fuck anything that moves, as long as it's male. It pisses me off to no end. Not least because that statement usually comes out of the mouths of fiercely unattractive straight men who couldn't actually get fucked by a discerning gay man even if it was their wildest (repressed) fantasy.

So, potential daters, if indeed you are here and reading,

Yes, I like to have sex,
but I won't (necessarily) have sex with you!

I am as discerning about whom I sleep with as I have ever been and, trust me, that means discerning.
And maybe I've set myself up for these kind of emails what with Cunning Linguists and Horatio the Fruit Seller (tee hee)
Or maybe I've just given myself yet another means to weed out the men from the boys.

Anyways, indulge me dear readers - what are your first date sexpectations? (The best comment wins a prize)

The obligatory back catalogue:
Small Juicy Ones
The Perfect Blowjob
What is a boyfriend
Friends with Benefits
Real Women
Another quick pull out
Lesbian Lovers Come Out
Digits
Asymmetrical Knobbage
Cunning Linguist
Cunnilingus
Fabulous at 40
Winehouse Reveals
The Chick Facial File
Mirrors
Confession plus Daily Knob!
Abusive?
Celebrity Confessions: Boy George
Dick Trilogy Part 3
MORE dicks in my inbox
Dicks in your inbox
Read my Sodding Profile!
Nerve Confessions: Herpes
The Queen Confesses
The Arse Man Cometh
The Ass Play Chronicles
The Sandwich Blowjob Porn Connection
Bangin Ass
Deformed Dicks
Did I really dream that?
Why I don't date Celebrities
Fashionably late or just a slacker

And since it's a DAILY knob, I am posting another photo of the delicious Nicholas Gonzalez

Nerve Confessions: I Fell In Love In A Week

spjv840 — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Most of the Nerve Confessions have been a bit boring lately, and don't really inspire me to read them, let alone read and dissect them. I noticed these following ones, though, about falling in love in a week and the conversation that ensued.

"I found the perfect person for me, fell in love with her within a week. But, no surprise, I'm not her type. I'm pessimistic about my chances of finding my type who coincidentally finds me to be her type. God is dead and I still can't take advantage of the situation."

"How do you fall in love with someone in a week? That is ridiculous. You fall in lust- love is when they have stuck around for a while and actually bring somethin to the table......"

"12:59--I fell in love with her in a week and I knew it was love because I was so interested in listening to her talk that sex barely crossed my mind. Sex was there, sure, but I've never felt it sink so far into the background while being attracted to someone so enthralling. I understand that you don't understand, because I didn't buy that such a thing was possible either. But... "now I'm a believer" (and not just because I saw her [very pretty] face)."

"04:29PM- sorry- still not love. Fascination, infatuation, whatever- but perhsps I'm old fashioned- I think the word love should be reserved for those who love you back....."

"Re: Love in only a week. If love is only a feeling, then yeah, sure you're in love, that's fine. But if you only know someone a week there's an awful lot you /don't/ know about them, so that feeling is probably more likely to change than with someone you've known a long time."

"True love: someone who adores you for being exactly who you are and vice versa."

I think the second to last confession says it best. I certainly won't disagree with the fact that you can fall in love in a week's time, because I've been victim of saying pretty much the same thing myself. After a great week with someone new, you can't think anything could ever be bad or wrong in this relationship. The sex is great and daily, you have good conversation, you can do absolutely nothing and still have a great time with the person. You talk to your mother and she asks how it's going with so-and-so and you say "great!" and you think, "Wow, I'm definitely in love with him/her!" And I do think it is love, for the most part. And then the person that's so perfect becomes reality. You realize that he doesn't brush his teeth every day, that he beats his cat every time it pisses on the floor - in front of you, he insults all the women in his family but praise the men, and he's got a small problem with methamphetamines. But you overlook these things - you're in love after all! But then the small problem with methamphetamines turns out be a pretty big problem after all - the whole "love is blind" tends to fade after a while, don't you know. Then you realize, the animal abuse, the drug abuse - it really doesn't fit into your life and you the realization hits you that, maybe it wasn't love, maybe just infatuation.

Can love be short-lived? Can you be absolutely 100% head over heels in love with someone for a week or two and then realize, well...he's not really my type, after all? I'm not talking lust or infatuation here, I'm talking real, actual love. Like I said before, I definitely won't disagree with the fact that you can fall in love in a week because I've done that myself - but with one exception - all those kind of just drifted off until there wasn't the slightest spark of interest left - mostly because, as time went on, I got to know the person more and more and that person turned out to be completely opposite of what I thought he was.

Here's a little story for your amusement: Back when I was fifteen and in high school I was in love with a guy we'll name Cooper. We didn't date. We didn't declare love for one another or anything that teenagers today tend to do. We hung out a lot, partied together, hitchhiked to places together. I was madly in love with him. The kind of love where every day I said things like "I'd take a bullet for him" to myself. And I meant it. One day we were talking on the phone and he asked me if I was interested in maybe dating him, see how it goes. It took a while for me to respond, because my fifteen year old self was saying "OH MY GOD YES LET'S GET MARRIED AND RIDE OUR SKATEBOARDS TO THE CHAPEL" but my other self was saying, "I really appreciate this friendship - if we date and things go south, we'll risk losing the friendship and I don't want that". Long story short, I said we should stay friends - he took it to mean that I wasn't interested in him blah blah blah - we only talked a few times after that but I was still madly in love with him while we went on with our lives. Fast forward seven years - I just returned back to Canada after a seven year stay in the desert in a long term relationship. While I was in love while in Arizona, I still always wondered what happened to Cooper. Was he still alive? Did he ever wonder about me? What would have happened if we did go out? Would we still be together? These questions went unanswered for the moment. Anyways, back in Canada, freshly single and looking to party, I got in touch with a lot of old friends which of course led me to be in contact with Cooper again. I couldn't believe it. He was still alive, sexy as hell with perfect square shoulders and beautiful tattoos and he really hadn't changed much. Seeing him that first time after so long made me fall in love with him again in a second. To make a long, boring story short, he was my dream guy in every sense of the word: physically, mentally, emotionally - everything. We dated. The first time we had sex - and I'm hesitant to write "made love" because that's just not my style, but that's what it felt like - it was perfect. It was pouring rain outside and when we had finished we wrapped a blanket around ourselves and stood outside in the rain on the steps holding each other. THIS IS TRUE LOVE, I wanted to scream to everyone who passed by. It had only been about three weeks of actual dating.

If you've seen Lord of War, you know that quote that Nicholas Cage's character says: "The problem with dating dream girls is that they have a tendency to become real." Guess what - the same can be said of dream guys. The truth comes out when you're so deep inside that you want to ignore, but it's hard. Reality quickly set in and six months later things came to a drastic end. No friendship. No last hug. No nothing. Looking back I see now that it was a dream better left untouched. The idea of being in a relationship with Cooper was better than the actual thing. At least after those first three blissful weeks, anyway.

So, all this to say that, yes - you can fall in love in a week. Some people will disagree and say it's puppy love, lust, infatuation or just a simple crush. But I think it's safe to say that most people after a certain age have experienced all five of these feelings and they know the difference. They know when it's an infatuation that will pass after a few days or when it's love, even if it's a love that won't last.

What do you think, Nerve readers? Do you agree you can fall in love in a week? Have you? Does finding out the truth about someone as you date them make you fall out of love? Discuss!

Nerve Confessions: Datin' Daddy

spjv840 — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:17:00 GMT

Taking a gander at the latest confessions, I came across this:

"You don't deserve me. I waste my time with you because you are Unavailable. Not good looking. Not intelligent. Not funny. Not rich. What the fuck did Daddy do that made you so fucking attractive to me??? Oh, that's right. He was GONE. Thanks, Dad. Yet another asshole to add to my dating history."

For a long time I didn't understand the connection of daddy issues and boyfriends. The whole thing about looking for the qualities of your father - subconsciously or not - in the men you date just didn't make sense to me. Why on earth would I want a man like my dad? Sure, he's a hard-working man who struggled most of his life to make ends meet, never abused me, was always there for me when I was a little girl and always knew that if some guy hurt me, my father would break the guy's neck. But now that I'm older I see things differently: he's also a drunk, a cheater, a liar, an asshole, and wouldn't know how to say sorry if his life depended on it.

To be honest, I still don't completely understand the psychology of how or why some women who have either been abandoned, abused or simply had a rocky relationship with their father tend to develop dating patterns that resemble or mimic their relationship with their father. That isn't to say that a woman who was neglected by her father will make continuously bad decisions with men, but is it safe to say that a woman who has a poor relationship with her verbally/emotionally abusive father will seek to replicate that with a verbally or emotionally abusive boyfriend/husband? And why? If one was abused verbally, or worse, as a child, why on earth would we seek the same kind of treatment from a lover as a grown woman? One article I read said one reason for this was to try and fix the broken relationship with the father through the relationship with the partner.

The article also went on to say that "A woman who goes through life without these issues is often one who had a secure and loving father figure in her life". Who agrees and who disagrees? I have a hard time believing that, just because a woman had a loving and secure relationship with her father every day of her life, she gets to move through the dating world relatively issue-free.

I mean, do you honestly think Jenna and what'shername Bush will be bringing home a man like George W? (Actually, I just did a little Google research, and Jenna Bush apparently did bring home daddy, just a taller version.)

What's your take on "daddy issues?" Are they real or made-up excuses for bad relationship choices?

Dating Confessions: How important are somebody's POLITICS when seeking a partner?.. Plus the Daily Throb!

zeitgeisty — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:12:00 GMT

I could never seriously date a republican.

I’ve tried a couple of times, but it never worked out. The thing is, all the clichés and stereotypes about those people hold pretty true, and I just can’t abide the abject ignorance. I mean, that’s not to say that I’m this Gung-ho Democrat, in fact I think the party is run by a bunch of morons… Dean, Pelosi, Reid? They couldn’t be worse. Well ok, they could be Cheney, Bush, and Rove…but even still.

I remember this one chick I dated, she was from the mid-west, and had that cornfed healthy looking, pull yourself up by the bootstraps thing going on. Her father was some kind of head so and so in the Republican party. She would always be making disparaging remarks against blacks and Jews, the stuff she’d spew was just this total cartoon expectation of a conservative.

At the same time though, she tried to portray herself as ‘edgy’ with this faux patina of downtown hipster, which was just a totally nauseating combo when coupled with her personal beliefs about religion, and the environment. Still,I think that’s why she was initially attracted to me, I think she thought that I was that typical downtown guy, when in point of fact I’m actually quite the opposite. I’m an independent thinker, I loathe Williamsburg and that whole vibe. Basically, I’m a militant realist and seeker of truth… some might call it ‘official pain in the ass’, but I don’t see it that way.

Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last long…

It’s interesting to think about. How important a factor are someone’s politics, when seeking a partner? Do they need to be on the ‘same side’ so to speak? Some say no… Case in point James Carville and Mary Matalin, two people that couldn’t be further away from each other as far as politics are concerned, and yet they’ve been holding it together for more than fifteen years of marriage. Seriously, I have no idea how they do it. I once broke up with someone because they hated Bob Dylan – of course she was also an elitist twat, but the Bob Dylan thing pushed her over the edge into dumpsville.

My current girlfriend is similar to me in that she has no true fixed allegiance to either party. We also both were Hillary supporters, and have been greatly disappointed by how this whole election year has turned out. Still it is what it is, and the die is pretty much cast… half the country is us, and half is them and nere’ the twain shall meet. That’s the question I think, as far as relationships go, can ‘us’ get along with ‘them’?

In this new world order, ‘the other’ no longer automatically brings with it the sole connotation of race or religion. In this new paradigm, ‘the other’ is all about politics. Where do you stand on religion, choice, medical research, the environment, etc… This supersedes all.

Yeah.. I couldn’t date a republican.

Funny though, in today’s ‘hipster’ circles, I could totally see a trend spring up where it would be totally ‘ironic’ - in a supposedly cool way - to date someone outside of their political affiliation. Kind of like wearing an Air Supply T-shirt.

It’s thoughts like these that make me wanna go and take a dump.

BOOooOOOoooooIIIINNNNnnnnGGGGGG!!!!!!! Serena Willians - tennis superstar

Nerve Confessions: It's all about the looks stupid!

Sex with someone I love - The MASTURBATION file

The Greatest Online Dating story - The PERSONALS file

'But baby I HAVE to put a profile up, it's required!!' - The GIRLFRIEND file

BITE ME! - Snark.

My first kiss...a remembrance of thing past

Feel the paste in you face - The FACIAL file

Talk dirty to me!!

I abstain! The fear to fuck

The unvarnished TRUTH about dating on the internet.

BITE ME!!!

Pontifications on the bangin' of ass - The ANAL file

The brass ring

Nerve Confessions: Single and 30

spjv840 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:42:00 GMT

It's probably because I'm still in my twenties, but I can't understand the women who panic because they are single and in their thirties. Is it really such a bad thing or is it because society keeps telling you it is? It's starting to ease up a bit and more women are completely ok with the fact that they don't have a partner and realizing they don't need one. Good for you! But every once in a while, an article like Lori Gottlieb's, Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough, which came out earlier this year, appears and stirs the pot a bit. I already wrote about what I thought about the article at length elsewhere so I'm not going rehash it all here.

I was just reminded of the article after coming across a recent Nerve confession:

"Why is being in my 30s and single so fucking scary?? I feel myself growing more desperate by the second yet won't give anyone a chance. Am I doomed to be alone forever??" I don't think anyone is doomed to be alone forever, unless you're a horrible person - and even then, those people tend to find a mate.

Personally, I'd be a hell of a lot more worried about being in my thirties and feeling trapped by a bad relationship and not being able to leave, for whatever reason.

For example:

"I hate that you would rather spend your whole wasted day on the computer doing jack shit that is not even as important as talking to me. You want more 'info'...... here's one.... fuck you and marry your monitor."

"I'm sick of making excuses for you, telling myself all the time that deep down you have a good heart, that your bad childhood and bad relationships are to blame for your fucked up behavior. I'm not the kind of person who naturally assumes that someone is an asshole; I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. It's been a year now and this routine is getting old. Millions of people have messy relationships and alienating childhoods, including myself. Maybe what it boils down to is that you are just an asshole who doesn't know how to treat the people who care about you."

"I wish you would cheat so I could have a real reason to break up with you."

And my favorite confession of the day, just for the simple honesty it holds:

"I'm not a teenager anymore. I should know better than to think that giving your blow jobs would make you want to be my boyfriend."

Nerve Confessions: What is Abuse?

airheadgenius — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:49:00 GMT

I've just read a bunch of Nerve Confessions and there's a bit of a theme brewing...

What constitutes abuse?

The original confession was:

Which elicited these:

And this:

My first thought is that the original confessor sounds mildly pissed rather than devastated. "Little fucker" doesn't seem to connote super sad. To me at least.

But, there's no doubt that some people use silence as a weapon. It's passive aggressive bullshit to keep silent rather than engage in a conversation that one partner feels is necessary.

At least s/he could say something like "we've discussed this ad infinitum and I don't see any benefit of talking further on the subject" for example.

Better than sticking yer lip out and glaring fixedly at the telly.

Anyway, the floor is open: How do you feel about the silent treatment? and Is it abusive?

Oh, and just so I don't get my lip on, please be so kind as to read Celebrity Confessions

Celebrity Confessions: Boy George plus Nerve Confession: Boy Miserable

airheadgenius — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:34:00 GMT

It's my "Celebrity Confession" day, (err, well wednesday was and it's now thursday, Oops) but I must first confess that it's not my bag. I have a decade old TV attached to a DVD player for my children, but there's no cable and we don't even get the free channels. Once in a while, I watch online shows, but TV isn't really my thing. (Except when I am in Blighty when I overdose on it.) And I only read gossip magazines once every 6 months when I am getting my hair cut. I saw the Helen Mirren confession last week because it was in The Guardian.

Perez Hilton need not sweat in other words.

But, I do remember a confession from back in the day. When dear Boy George as he was being questioned about his sexuality and it hadn't yet become fashionable to be gay or bi, said "Sex? I'd rather have a cup of tea."

Which neatly (in my mind at least) segways into Nerve's Confession of the Day:

Is it permissible to not be out there having sex? It seems not.

We are all supposed to be dressed up (or dressed down Williamsburg wannabes) lipsticked and high heeled, if applicable, and out on the town. Flirting with boys, kissing with girls, fingers in arses, tongues in salads. Basically having a rare old raunchy time.

Back in the day, growing up in a town of 20,000 people, no one was ridiculed for not having a boyfriend or girlfriend. I guess it was an accepted fact that there were only so many people to meet in any given week and you couldn't shag all of them. An extended dry spell might raise a few guffaws, but in general it was "allowed".

But in this technological age, there's no excuse. There's Internet dating doncha know? Permanent access to new and exciting people across the globe. Even if you live in East Bumblefuck and there's only one other dater in the vicinity, there's no excuse not to be logged on and having phone sex with someone in a different state. And if you're in New York, LA or London where bodies are a plenty, then you must be some kinda desperate sad sack if you're sat home cutting your toenails.

The pressure is most definitely on.

Now I like dating - well, at least beyond the first date when you've met someone you like and the excitement is building. I like relationships. I really like to have sex. But some days I just can't be bothered. As a 40 year old woman though (actually 41, but that's a story for another day) I am comfortable with myself. If someone was to ridicule my sex life, I'd tell them to do one.

Why does this guy have to pretend to be a player? Maybe he would prefer to be having a cup of tea. Make that cawfee.

Maybe we all need to give each other a break and acknowledge that being home alone doesn't mean you are unattractive or unappealing, but rather that you are a discerning individual comfortable enough in your own skin to opt out. And if your friends tease you for your temporary celibacy and they are under 30, fuck 'em - get new friends. If your friends tease you and they're over 30, get them a few therapy sessions, cos they could surely use the help.

Would someone pass me the clippers...

Dick Trilogy Part 3 MORE dicks in my inbox Dicks in your inbox Read my Sodding Profile! Nerve Confessions: Herpes The Queen Confesses The Arse Man Cometh The Ass Play Chronicles The Sandwich Blowjob Porn Connection Bangin Ass Deformed Dicks Did I really dream that? Why I don't date Celebrities Fashionably late or just a slacker

Sex Machine: Toss My Salad, Hold the Syrup and Jelly

spjv840 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:17:00 GMT

The boyfriend and I often joke about tossing each other's salads. We've yet to actually do the deed, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure we ever will. For the most part, if a man is willing and able to stick his tongue up my ass for pleasure, who am I to stop him? All in the name of experience, I say, but then, what happens if the table turns and it's my tongue that has to do the sticking and rimming in the man's poop-shoot? Would I be able to to do it? I mean, a woman's ass is one thing, but a man's?

As the lovely and talented AirHeadGenius wrote in her post, The ass play chronicles, "The arse of a straight man is hairy and smelly, gaseous and not to be messed with".

For the uninitiated, the term "toss my salad" was coined by a prisoner on an HBO prison special. The prisoner was talking about what he would do to a new prisoner as a form of initiation. Basically, getting your salad tossed means someone eats out your ass, syrup or jelly optional. The whole thing was made even more popular by Chris Rock. See below.

A finger or dick in your ass is one thing. A tongue in your ass is one of those things you REALLY gotta prepare yourself for or at least do it with someone you're really friggen comfortable with. The whole realization of "There's a tongue in my ass right now", or even worse, "My tongue is in someone's asshole right now" might be a lot to handle for the average person. It's like Chris Rock says, "When a man's suckin yo dick, he can pretend that's somethin' else, but when he's eatin ass, he knows it's ass". If you're not into sucking your man's dick, but you do it because you know he likes it, it isn't so hard to pretend it's Benicio del Toro or Johnny Depp's dick, or even pretend it's a goddamn banana popsicle, if that makes you feel better about yourself. But if your licking your man's asshole, it doesn't matter if it's Johnny Depp, sweet Jesus himself, or Brad Pitt, it's still an asshole, gorgeous celebrity or not.

So, this is where community comes in, dear readers. Salad tossing: have you tried? Do you like it? Hate it? Recommend it?

Just remember, once we go in, there's no going back.

Nerve Confessions: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

spjv840 — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:10:00 GMT

I've been sitting here for the last hour or so staring at Willie Nelson flipping me the bird on my desktop, eating chocolate truffles and wondering if I should run to the store and buy myself a big beer since I'm not really in the mood to write, then decided to stop eating the chocolate, say no the beer and read through some of the latest confessions. Man, you guys are intense with those confessions.

Some of them are really desperate pleas of "I need to get out of this relationship but I don't want to be alone, so I'd rather stay in this bad reltionship." Here are a few recent examples:

"I don't understand why I was so into you. Yeah, you're hot - but you don't satisfy me in any why other than sex and aesthetics. We don't talk about anything meaningful, I hate your friends, you are not smart, and I can't walk around campus without seeing somebody who's had u too. Basically, you are a slut."

"I don't love you anymore. Hell, I don't even LIKE you. I hate so many things about you. I don't understand why I can't bring myself to break up with you."

"I can't believe I ever used to love you. From the place I'm at right now, love is a distant memory. What did I even see in you that was so special it became the focus of my world? As I look back, I am both excited to meet the man of my dreams sometime in the future, but also I am questioning: is love not just a little overrated?"

I find those really depressing to read. What is so hard about being honest and upfront with the person you're with and saying straight out that you aren't into them anymore, or that you're not happy in the relationship? I know, from being on both ends of the relationship stick, that being told from the person you love that he/she doesn't feel the same about you hurts like hell, but it also hurts to be in a relationship you know is stagnant and has no hope of ever really getting anywhere or improving. Staying in a stagnant relationship is way more dangerous and hurtful than saying, "Screw this! I will be alone and, if it is meant to happen, I will meet someone who will love me and appreciate me for all the right reasons."

Then there's this gem, which makes me feel bad about my own insecurities.

"Stop accusing me of cheating on you. Or implying it. Or even thinking about it. It annoys to me to no end that you give me a look every time my phone rings and then start in with the "Can I ask you something" bs. It just makes me actually want to cheat on you. I haven't but I've gotten offers. Maybe I should take somebody up on that. I hate that you don't trust me and I've never done anything to lose your trust."

I wish I could tell this person who sent in the confession that it isn't that easy. That sometimes the person we're with has been through shit that lingers longer than it should. It sure as hell isn't a fun way to be in a relationship, or life, for that matter. It sucks not being able to trust the person you love or not being trusted by the person you love. I'll definitely take notes if anyone has advice.

Any my personal favorite:

"Oh, you bloody motherfucking asshole"

Related posts: Personals Drama: I'm Not Cupid
Date Machine: You're Not My Type
Sex Machine: The Butt Sex Bandit
Sex Machine: Hot Sex vs Bad Sex
Celebrity Confession: David Duchovny is a Sex Addict
Of Bag, Baggage and Confessions

Sex Machine: The Butt Sex Bandit

spjv840 — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:40:00 GMT

A lot of men seem to think you can just jump into anal sex and that's that. Few men actually know the workings of how the butthole works and how to go about sticking your willy inside one.

For example, there's the inner sphincter and external sphincter. Just because you get passed the first one, doesn't mean you're done. Gaining entry into the last sphincter is the hard part. Only when the inner sphincter is ready and relaxed will it let the foreign intruder in. If this is news to you, you probably aren't ready for the bum action. Forcing anything along can cause some bad damage to your lovers butthole, not to mention, put a little pain in your penis. Trust me, penises do rip and it ain't a pretty sight.

Poo should not be an issue if you (or your partner) wash daily. If you're about to engage in a little behind maneuvering but you're a little suspicious about the cleanliness of your partner's rectal cavity, then suggest showering together to get things clean so you can get dirty.

I remember my first foray into anal sex territory. Boy, was I surprised. Besides the whole feeling like I was being ripped in two by a huge stick in my ass, lube was not used. I cannot stress this enough to anyone who asks me about butt sex. LUBE. Use lube. You can never have enough lube. I could not walk properly (nor do other bodily...functions..properly for a few days).

While I'm a huge advocate of anal sex is good for the soul, as well as for relationships, I also think it's one of those things that you shouldn't do on a first date. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think it's one of those things you should share with someone who you trust, who respects you (and vice versa) and more importantly, won't brag to his little non-butt sex getting friends that “Dude, that chick last night totally let me stick it in her pooper!” Being a girl who has always been “one of the guys”, I've heard more than I care to hear about boys dishing about their sexual conquests with girls, and let me tell you, they do talk about it. Every little detail. So, as Charlotte so charmingly put it on Sex and the City, if you don't want to be the “Up the Butt Girl” don't do it until you're serious with someone.

I think most women have experienced that first date sex nightmare where the guy is just way too eager to jump in your ass. You start making out and getting all pet-heavy and out of nowhere he pops the question, "Can I put it in your ass?" First of all, it's the first date, what exactly do you want to put in my ass? Your finger? Your tongue? I sure as hell hope you aren't talking about your overeager peter, because he isn't getting anywhere near my ass on a first date.

Now that I'm with someone who knows how to have good butt sex, I love it. It's not something we do every day, of course, because I like to keep it for semi-special occasions, or when I need to break bad news, such as “Darling, I kind of spent $400 on your card, but I'm really in the mood for your dick in my ass, so let's go!” He usually forgets about the $400 pretty quickly. Related posts: Personals Drama: I'm Not Cupid
Date Machine: You're Not My Type
Sex Machine: Hot Sec Vs Bad Sex
Celebrity Confession: David Duchovny is a Sex Addict

Sex Machine: did I really dream that?

airheadgenius — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:36:00 GMT

Last night I dreamt about my boyfriend from when I lived in London.

He's my "one that got away" as, with hindsight and perhaps some better management at the time, I could have held onto him.

It would have been worth it. He was, and indeed probably still is, highly intelligent, creative, handsome and funny. And, surely the icing on the cake, minted with an inheritance and a family with Lord and Lady in their title. (Glossary: minted=loaded in English English)

Anyway, last night I dreamt vividly about his dick.

In real life it was a nice 7" specimen and he wielded it pretty well.

In my dream, it was massive. Like 12" massive and fat. Can't guess the circumference, not being a gay male and all, but as fat as a...wracks brain for fat thing...I want to say marrow, but you don't have marrows here. As fat as an egg plant maybe. Two hands fingers to thumbs. Is this clear???

A biggie.

But more than that-- It was mechanical. And green. And disembodied and standing in front of me on the kitchen table. No joke.

My ex boyfriend's giant disembodied mechanical green phallus.

Must eat cheese late at night less or get laid more. Yikes, there's a nasty connection there if you ponder it.

Celebrity Confession: Jessica Simpson thinks she has the perfect guy

spjv840 — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:36:00 GMT

In a recent interview with People Magazine, Jessica Simpsons lets it all hang out (again) about her relationship with Tony Romo. This girl will never learn.

"I just told (Tony) today, 'You're the love of my life.’ I don't really ever say that to anybody."

Firstly, admitting that anyone is the love of your life is a no-no. It's not sweet or charming, it's bordering on psycho material and sounds desperate. It's always girls that are spewing this kind of line around. You never hear a guy tell their partner that they're the love of his life (well, except for Barack last night, but he doesn't count - that was almost...sweet). Guys know better.

Poor ol' Simpleson. She's just a sweet country girl at heart, isn't she? She just wants to do the right thing. Even if the right thing involves wearing horrible country-inspired clothing and even worse career decisions.

She also told People that she changed her phone number and e-mail address so ex-boyfriends and anyone in her life before BimboRomo cannot contact her. Again with the psycho material! She did this, apparently, to prove her devotion to Romo, yet Romo hasn't done the same. This doesn't bother Simpson, however, because she isn't "a jealous girlfriend". She even went so far as to say that Romo was the "perfect guy". Expect a break up in the next four months. Men don't like to hear that they're perfect unless they're saying it about themselves. It's too much pressure.

When asked about her relationship with John Mayer, she confessed: "I had to regain self-esteem and self-value". Hence, the too-small bikini choices.

Of Bag, Baggage and Confessions

spjv840 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:18:00 GMT

I decided to take a look at some of the recent confessions you guys have made. Some of them make me laugh, some of them are just plain boring, while others send me into states of eye-twitching paranoia. Does this ever happen to you when you read some of the confessions? Not because you think it's about you, since the chances of that happening is, what, like 1 in 90,000? For me, it's more because I tend to think that if one person has the thought then what stops my boyfriend from having similar thoughts? And then from there on it's just a disastrous roller coaster ride inside my brain.

"sometimes i just want to get drunk and forget that you're not everything i made you out to be.. and now i'm stuck with you."

That confession, when I read it yesterday, was the cause of much paranoid, leg-twitching throughout the day. Everything from, “Oh shit, when did my boyfriend get so good with the computer that he found Nerve.com and figured out how to post his deepest, darkest secret to the world?” to “What if he IS stuck with me? Does he regret our drunken meeting that happened one year ago next week? Am I that horrible?”

Some (ok, many) will tell you that, at my worst, I can be a bit of a worry-wart, that I make a mountain out of a mole and all those other awful cliches. From stupid dating/relationship worries to the latest Maple Leaf listeria outbreak here in Canada, I realize that sometimes I let my imagination run wild. I think the worst because it's usually the worst that happens, but also, when you expect the worst and something great happens instead, you can be pleasantly surprised. All you positive thinkers out there, you're always being let down by people because you expect good things to happen, you think the best of people. “Oh, he would never do that to me! We care too much about each other.” Guess what? He WOULD do that to you, if he hasn't already. It's like my friend S.R.P. says, “People will not only live up to your negative expectations of them, they will surpass them.”

I admit, it's a pretty cynical outlook towards life, but it's also realistic. I bet most of you could list on one hand how many times you've been let down, either by a lover, co-worker or friend just in the last six months. I try not to dwell on the bad things that have happened in past relationships, since it just means extra baggage for current or future ones, but a little baggage is sometimes needed, you know? I mean, you need to carry your clothes around in something, right? And let's face it, I've passed the age where it's acceptable to use garbage bags to move your clothes.