The rain hitting the windows softly glowed as he lit each candle and placed it in its sconce. The mustardy gold walls gave off an amber hue in the candlelight and his brown eyes were deep with desire. I sipped prosecco as I leaned against the pillows, seductively arranged in only my bra, garter and thigh highs; waiting as he turned on his iPod to a soft ambient playlist…
Although the setting was near perfect, I was still nervous. It wasn’t like it was my first time, but it was with him and I didn’t want to mess it up. I had known him for a few months and the chemistry was there, the sexual tension was strong and now that it was finally time, I was afraid?? While trying to look effortlessly sexy, I went through my mental checklist: Continue Reading
The woman I love is marrying another man this weekend.
I met Mariska at the start of our final semester in college. I’d made a mistake on my schedule and showed up for the wrong class. I walked through the lecture room door, surprised to see about 20 chairs arranged in a circle.
She sat there. It was just us. Her hiking boots shed melting snow into a slowly growing puddle at her heels. She didn’t care. She was jut there, present, waiting. There were 19 available seats.
I can’t tell you what it was that made me long to know her but I did. I chose the seat directly to her right. I sat and turned toward her.
Hi, my name is Simon.
Wow. You’re very friendly. I’m Mariska.
Not all the time. I just wanted to meet you.
There’s nobody else here to meet.
That’s true. Tell me why none of the buttons on your sweater match and I’ll leave you alone.
A lot of people think HIV is simply a “gay thing.”
Therefore, a quick bit of mind candy: Over half the world’s HIV/AIDS cases are women. A simple math deduction demonstrates that there are a lot more heterosexual people with HIV than not. Because of that, this topic needs a more universal treatment. A great magazine called POZ (found at www.poz.com), does a great job of this, but its usual audience is people who are already HIV positive.
I’m 36 now, gay, and married (or not, depending on the current status of Proposition 8). It wasn’t always that way. Once I was 28, alone, insecure and afraid the day I got the phone call during which I was informed I was HIV positive. I’m still insecure and sometimes afraid; however, I’ve learned I’m never alone.
Because we so rarely talk about HIV in a casual sense, the acronyms become a series of scary letters one associates with disease and death; the discrimination is insidious, and yet clear. Dating advertisements request “drug, disease free” people for dating. Continue Reading
Every month (when I’m not super-lean from running) my body realizes I foiled its attempt at reproduction and gives up in a stream of blood.
I wish you could understand how unsettling it is to have my body constantly changing. Some women are on steady cycles. Their body never surprises them. I’m not like that. Continue Reading
Cheaters aren’t born, they’re made. Are you making one out of your man? He may not be cheating. He might never cheat (some are better at committing than others). But that doesn’t mean he won’t resent you and look for love in other places. Here are 7 reasons you might be pushing your man to reassess his options.
1. You’re boring in bed
You don’t have to be a wild sex tigress with super flexibility who knows thousands of positions to be interesting in bed. You just need to know how to create an atmosphere of intimacy when you want to. Remember when you first met your man and all you had to do to get him hard was breathe on his neck? Not anymore. You go through the motions of sex but you don’t care. Your man might not be able to get a woman with a better body, but he can certainly find one who cares enough to make him feel noticed. She might be chubby but she’ll make him feel goooood. When was the last time you tried to make your man feel gooood?
2. You never give him that smile
You know, flirting? That thing you did when you first met? Flirting is a fun, sexy form of communication that you can do anywhere to remind your man that he’s your choice. Flirting is also an easy way of letting the women around you know that you keep your man interested and that they need not apply. However, judging by your behavior, you don’t really seem to care if they do try for him… do you? Continue Reading
Facebook is a great place to be reminded of people you had happily forgotten. For example, I recently received a message from this girl I’d known years and years ago. (Like, when I was 8 years old) She’d apparently gone on a friend-anybody-I-remember-talking-to rampage and had decided to “reconnect” with me. Fair enough.
She asks me about how I’m doing, what I’d been up to, and what I was reading. It just so happened that I’d visited my parents the previous day and flipped through a copy of Martha Stewart Living my mom had left out. There was an image in the magazine of two kids with plaster masks playing in the woods. I have fantastic memories of tromping through the woods with my sister as kids.
So I mentioned this to my new Facebook friend-finder and was taken aback by her response:
This highly amusing (we thought so, at least) video gives all the advice you need about how to have safe sex.
Most of us learned this information in high school and are regularly bombarded with reminders to “use protection” and practice safe sex. If the information has been spread and we know in our minds how to have safe sex, then why don’t more of us practice it?
Because we make stupid decisions when we really like somebody.
Safe sex isn’t especially fun & kills the notion of spontaneity.
The decision to have sex is often made under the influence of one or more substances.
It would be great to see a video on how to have safe sex without seeming untrusting, boring, and generally unsexy.
I’m off to buy some plastic wrap. I substituted aluminum foil last night and it Continue Reading
My 13 year-old cousin recently asked me what I thought to be the right age for her to start having sex.
by Zeke Hillyard
Dear Men,
