Action: A Book About Sex (11 page)

The only exception to this rule is if you choose both not to depilate AND forgo a daily shower—scent clings to hair. (Even so: There are some people out there who are fetishistically into olfactory rankness. I love the smell of neglected armpits a ton, so I can relate to a lesser extent.)

Don’t Be a Douche

If you own douche, aka a type of vaginal hygiene product, trash it immediately. That snake oil does the opposite of what it advertises, plus is required by law to be packaged in the most offensively corny ways possible. My anatomy is not a season or weather event, and I’m not sure what’s
breezy
about giving yourself an increased risk of infection with the aid of pale slime that smells like rotted puberty. The powdery, chemical, and fundamentally shame-based odor of vaginal douche is almost as loathsome as its purported use. Not to sound like a zenergetic dipstick with morality-based dietary restrictions (even though I am), but
vaginas are naturally self-cleaning, sister
, and using special “washes” on your trim bungles that hygienic process. If you mess with the system, the system malfunctions, and although it sounds like I’m talking about a hard drive or something, this means, here, that you stop your body from working the only way it knows how to and leave it more vulnerable to bacterial contamination, which can lead to discomfort and infections. So springy and fresh!!!

YOUR WEIGHT DOESN’T MATTER

Commenting on a person’s weight or gender (e.g., in the latter case, making any remark that ends, “… for a boy/girl”), regardless of your intentions, is not a compliment. The rule of talking about other people’s bodies: Unless you’re saying something that, under an X-ray, breaks down to the elemental structure of “You look amazing,” you shouldn’t be saying anything. Last year, I lost a bunch of weight due to emotional stress. Initially, I was worried that my gauntness was going to lead people to classify me as “unhinged” or “unhealthy”—which are two bifurcations of the same root idea, that someone has a medical condition, but are not necessarily one identical fact. (This nervousness probably stemmed from the fact that both were totally true for me at the time.) I did find that others couldn’t seem to stop being twerps about my shaved-down form, but it was because they lauded it, which was far worse for me. One night, three different jackhole acquaintances at a single “fashion party” effused over my weight, saying, “You’re so skinny now! You used to be so
big
! You look gorgeous!” I’ve had pretty severe body issues throughout my life and have had to learn to shred through and past them, so I knew that this was cruddy and intrusive. I told each of them that I didn’t think what they were saying was in any way flattering, but it still made me feel tangled-up about my value as a person in relation to my weight. Like,
I just came here to do tequila shots and maybe instigate a dance contest with a male model, and now I’m wondering how many calories I just nipped off of a toothpick when I downed that teensy passed appetizer, aka the one thing I ate today.
Maybe calm down with that.

(A bonus and so stunningly unexpected moral of this story: People who employ children as coatracks for the clothing of adult bodies are by and large vapid jackals, and part of how you can tell
is because they scrutinize the bodies of others, and if that weren’t harsh enough, they do it out loud.)

Later that night, I brought home a persistent club promoter (baaaaad mistake number one, but whatever). I had known him a few years back when I was a “professional” nightlife hostess, aka when I was skint and was paid to say “Hi there!! I’m Amy Rose and this is my party! Are you having fun?!” then go about my usual way of licking salt and limes and cheating my way to the top of the dance-off bracket. (Just get on the floor and twist your legs around dramatically and you win. You’re welcome.)

After that dude and I boned, he made a belabored point of telling me how “crazy” it was that I was “so thin” now. “Your boobs used to be so big that it looked uncomfortable for you. You look
much
better” = A REAL THING THAT CAME OUT OF HIS MOUTH! About extreme weight loss that was based in poor health!

I was incensed. I had had my fill of being gawped at, heft-or-lack-thereof-wise. I read him the riot act, telling him it was totally impolite of him to talk to me like that, and could he please just keep any unwelcome commentary in that vein to himself? “All I meant was that you look really pretty… and skinny!” OH. All I mean is, there’s the door, wad.

Be similarly unwavering with anyone who tries to tell you something contrary to your good looks.

WELCOME HOME

Including even Graceland, the myriad Taco Bell outposts across the nation, and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, my bedroom is my favorite place on earth. I have lived here for five years, and it is the only place I’ve ever felt was my secure, for-sure home. Upon moving in, I spangled it thickly with tons of the beloved trash I’d collected prior (mementos like sea glass, old playing cards, faded paper wristbands, etc.). Now, I can see everything I consider
important, meaningful, beautiful, and/or cool tacked up right on the walls—or, let’s be realistic, pinned and mounted with Band-Aids or some political button reading, like, “SOCIALISM IS FOR EVERYONE” from my IDEALISTIC UNDERGRAD DAZE (hee—like I don’t still feel that way, what with that implied
maturity
and
distance
). These adhesive methods are indicative of my general attitude toward home decor: My apartment isn’t remarkable because it’s tastefully organized, kitted out with even tangentially matching furniture, or otherwise aesthetically astounding. I have no idea how interior design works. Or maybe, thanks to my Band-Aids, I’m an iconoclastic master of the medium? Still deciding, but either way, I love my home because posting up on my bed feels like hanging out inside the antechamber of my brain.

My brain is sometimes a mess, though. When I’m working fifteen-hour days, my room reflects that: My dresser upchucks clothing onto the floor; errant fake eyelashes snar into tumbleweeds; rugs become thatched with hair extensions; my bed develops osteoporosis under the burden of ten thousand volumes of pompous New York School poetry. I’m not assigning too much of a stigma to that state of upheaval—it’s just that, when your sheets are cram-packed with bar matchbooks and matching faux-fur separates, there’s barely room to slot your
own
body, let alone another person’s, in the spaces between all that flotsam.

If I were one of those plush dolls of a children’s television character that warbles out a signature witticism when you pull a cord on its back, a strong contender for my catchphrase would be, “How about we go to yours?” (This is one of the multitudinous reasons why I will not be nominated for a Kids’ Choice Award in this or any lifetime. The existence of this book is another.) It would be disingenuous to say that my reservations about extending visitation rights to hot young things—or hot middle-aged things, on occasion—my perversion knows no upper-age limitation—come solely from a
Cathy
-comic-esque feeling, to the tune of, “ACK! MY MANY, MANY DAIRY-SOILED PAJAMA TOPS ARE STREWN OVER MY SNOOPY HUMIDIFIER!
I’M A SEXLESS BARNACLE!” My apprehension comes instead from being cagey about showing people EXACTLY ALL OF WHO I AM RIGHT AWAY. (I know;
I am the only human being who has ever felt this way
.)

My bedroom, in its striking resemblance to my mind-piece, reveals me pretty handily. While its singularity is why I find it such a superlative place to hang out, it’s also what used to make me bridle re: ushering in any old dreamboat on a whim—although I’ve involved myself with a great many sexual teammates during my stay, for a while, I brought them home only if I was certain I’d never see them again, and often not even then. My thinking went,
I don’t need some gorgeous dolt treading all over the precious garbage-confetti of my life with muddy Vans on
. I’d rather create a mental Dewey decimal system of
their
bookshelves (or, if they’re like me, library-duvet). You know—the kind where a person treats your books as a syllabus for divining what you’re
really like
. I trust that most people exercise diplomacy in this regard—or, I hope they do, since trying to fix a person in place according to their tastes will give you an impression of their character that’s tenuous at best, plus who cares—yet I’m still not always thrilled about a new acquaintance apprising the parameters of
how
comprehensive my library of alternative comics from the 1980s is. Not because I’m ashamed of what I like—the opposite! I’m
ferociously
proprietary when it comes to my brain and home.

I’m learning to unseal my cranial mausoleum. I’m a polite guest who will secretly use your hairbrush only A LITTLE, but even so, why should I impose upon others without ever expecting to be imposed upon myself? (Oh, because I’m giving them head. It’s actually not the BIGGEST etiquette-based crime to swing by your partner’s estate on the regular, but whatever—I’ve got to be less shy, or else recede into hermitry for good.) In order to ameliorate my
Life in Hell
–based anxieties, I’ve developed the following techniques for welcoming houseguests with whom I’m looking to catch some play instead of baldly lying all like, “Let’s keep the lights off—yes, my ‘body’ ‘insecurity’ is through the roof. MAN,
are these calves ever c-crummy,” so they don’t see that I have not one but FOUR Smiths posters up and (correctly) run screaming. I’d much rather gaze upon whatever piece of tail I’ve granted visitation rights than feign meekness because I’m an egregiously private weirdo.

Though I live mostly alone (this book is basically dedicated to my roommate’s girlfriend, the person to whom he should
really
be paying rent—big ups, Emily, for unwittingly aiding and abetting in my sexual fulfillment), and you might take up residence in a shared loft, apartment, or centuries-old Edwardian castle (look, I don’t know you, dude, so why not let me imagine you’re some regal archduke or whatever?), I’m confident that, like socialism, this guide will be beneficial to just about everyone. (New slogan idea: “END THE FED / GET IN MY BED.” Why am I not yet the president?) In terms of creating an “inviting atmosphere” with my home decor, impasto-ing a living space with babes has turned out to surpass using even the most anticapitalist of button propaganda when it comes to decorative fixtures! Since they populate my DEEPEST OF INTERIOR THOUGHTS AND TASTES as much as all the other lovely junk I have pinned/bandaged up, it’s only in keeping with my overarching design strategy.

Draw those blinds, hide that humidifier AND the stylish Peanuts flannel it’s wearing, and take a deep breath, my brothers and sisters in arms: We’re having a house party tonight, and the guest list is “freaks only”—which just beat out my previous Amy Rose Doll slogan by a minute mile… but is still pretty unfit for children’s network programming.

CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO BODLINESS

My home is, on occasion, piled high with refuse. You get it: We exult in our careers (and look great doing it! HAH, I’m wearing two towels as a bikini right now), are busy, and/or are beholden to excessive sloth! All three are true of my situation. But if the
bastion of human sexuality just texted you, “I’d love to see you; how about I come over in 30?” great job on landing a dreamboat who uses a semicolon in casual communication, seriously, and HOLY SHIT, you have a graveyard of tallboys and magazines and broken sunglasses for carpeting. IS THAT A LIVING PIGEON IN THE CORNER, DUDE? Looks like it’s time for another round of… HIDE! THAT! GARBAGE!
[studio audience whips itself into a near-to-deafening frenzy]