Action: A Book About Sex (12 page)

Hide! That! Garbage

A fake quiz show I just invented to make a cleaning spree seem like less of the frightful punishment we all know it is

Round One: Trashcatcher!
This is like when contestants have to snatch money out of the air as it precipitates inside a little booth, but
so much worse
. Have two colors of garbage bags on hand to separate actual rubbish from the clutter you just need to stash real quick-like. Pack your various litter/belongings in these, respectively, and hurl them into a closet to deal with at some distant point after you’ve had ten zillion orgazmzzz—your main priority, doye. Verify that the following items are properly concealed: visibly cashed dirty underwear; condom wrappers; Post-its with self-affirming messages written on them in manic penmanship (“YOU ARE A WORTHY CHILD OF THE SUN” = not great to explain, in terms of pillow talk, or also ever, at any other time); empty champagne cans; old copies of
Hustler
(again, you are a stranger to me and I don’t know your tastes, ya depraved archduke).

Round Two: Obstacle Recourse!
Light a candle and open a window. Stuff all available dresser drawers with whatever non-scuzzy possessions are taking up the most surface area. DO
NOT PAUSE TO ORGANIZE. YOU DO NOT HAVE TIME. Throw all remaining stray clothes underneath your bed and excavate them later (this goes for any other floor-eating lumps of stuff you aren’t relegating to plastic-bag purgatory, too). Empty the litter box, if applicable. Make your bed and flip over its top layer if you recently ate, painted, or bled on it. Wipe down surfaces.

Round Three: Bone Zone Bonus Bonanza!
Put your books in your bookshelf or stack them in a corner, turning spine-in any volumes that are too cornily 1980s or whatever your version of pulpy Bret Easton Ellis dross is, as well as titles in any way similar to
You Are a Worthy Child of the Sun: A Guide to Manifesting Your Inner Zenergy
, and also, probably, this book. Make sure you have at least two clean drinking glasses at the ready, then rinse the rest of the dirty dishes and stash them in the oven. FEBREZE. Put on anodyne, affable music, like
The Essential Sly and the Family Stone
or any De La Soul megamix, so you don’t have to parse the annals of your music library upon the person’s arrival.

Dag: This well-groomed manse was hiding underneath the novelty state keychain collection you spilled two weeks ago, then forgot about,
this whole time
?

What about YOU, darling thing? How are you looking/smelling? My guess is, “Great—yo, what a babe, get over here,” but if you happen to have spent the day playing Game Boy in a fragrant broth of your own sweat heretofore until now, let’s blitz. In order:

• Take off your clothes and stuff them under the bed or in a closet. As you do this, think about how much fun it’s going to be to disrobe again in the next little while—you know, without all the sessility-based shame.

• Twitch your nose at your charmpits. Do they smell like they’re about to ferment? If you waver on whether or not they might be terrible, wash those cesspools in the sink, and put on deodorant, for cripes’ sake.

•
Apply perfume or cologne if you’re not already wearing it. Rather than hosing yourself down with fragrance at point-blank range, which unsubtly screams, “I KNEW YOU WERE COMING BY TO INHALE MY EXTERNALITIES FROM CLOSE RANGE IN A FUCK-BASED CAPACITY,” spritz
once
into the air in front of you from a fully extended arm’s length and walk through the mist in the buff. This gives you more of a “I happen to smell like a seraph who exudes a natural air of jasmine and verbena” type effect. (Side note: What even is verbena? The world may never know.)

• Strap on some clean underwear that’s free of holes and stains. The newer, the better—every time I denude in front of someone and have to strip off the threadbare Hello Kitty panties that once belonged to my seventh-grade girlfriend and have a bush-revealing hole in the whiskers, I cross my eyes at the heavens, like,
How dare you
. If you wear bras, make sure this one is intact—dryer-withered underwire is an all-around bummer.

• Put on an outfit that’s been recently laundered and is easy to take off. No weirdo zippers or buttons, please! Who’s ever trying to make/hear the “joke” that goes, “Ha-ha, I’m out of practice, I guess,” as a maker-out fumbles with inexplicable chest snaps? Not you, not me, not anyone.

• If your hair is dirty, sprinkle the smallest amount of baby powder in your hands and run them all up throughout that grease trap. If it’s long and a mess, tie it back.

• Brush your chops, put on makeup if you like it, and curl your lip at the bathroom mirror: You look eminently bangable.

SETTING A MOOD

Let’s say you have plenty of time and don’t have to invent a panicked game show to calm yourself down. Let’s say you aren’t even a messy person, and instead have a non-figurative carpet that matches your non-figurative drapes. (And prefab bad, smutty jokes at the ready to go with them.) There are plenty of accents to
help elevate that already-august sense of home decor to one that is tastefully nasty! Okay, let’s do it, here is the list:

• Grapeseed oil

•
Now! That’s What I Call Music 14

• An indoor hammock

• An assortment of personalized Christmas stockings (year-round; none bearing your own name)

• A prominently displayed collection of Happy Meal Beanie Babies

• A miniature gong, or, even better, two

Combine and delight, my profligate sex fiends.

For real: You don’t need any material goods to leave an indelible impression. There are, however, certain considerations about what’s worth having on hand, and I promise they have nothing to do with the holiday season or a compilation including the works of Aaron Carter. In addition to the regular safe-sex necessities you do (and you DO) have close at hand, there are a handful of practical objects you should consider, if you’re not too busy trying not to lose miserably at
Hide! That! Garbage!

Chief among these are the provisions based in the kind of foresight that further verifies you as a suave person who knows their every movement twelve steps before it happens. The beauty of providing this kind of toolkit is that it makes you look so put-together because it’s solely about anticipating the needs and comfort of your guest, which is pretty easy, seeing as they’re baseline the same as your own. The basics you should have readily at hand:

• A clean towel, should your person want to rinse or otherwise blot themselves off after consummating

• Water (or, preferably, seltzer), because sex requires exertion, and if you’re incorporating oral, making sure no one gets cotton mouth will make it more enjoyable

• A tissue box or paper towels, for everything

It’s dreamy to have a post-sex uniform at the ready, too. I like leotards, knee-length tube socks, and roller-disco cotton gym shorts, but clean white T-shirts, hoodies, and boxers look good on everyone. Oh my god, imagine if you wore a comely robe? What are you, a deity? Of sex??? Yes, please wear a robe. (As long as it’s not a sexless terrycloth BATHrobe.)

ROOMMATING PATTERNS

If you have roommates, tell them the fuck-situation, and ask them to please make themselves scarce—or, even better, to fuck-situation off for a while. (Big ups to Emily, again, for making this conversation moot. You really hold it down, dude.) It’s not the end of the world if your houseguest has to shake hands with a person unrelated to your entanglement in order to earn the grand prize of stripping you down in your bedroom, but if I had a roommate whom I didn’t like or who was overly inquisitive—to my date or to ME about my date later on—I’d circumvent those conversations as much as possible.

Your roommate is under no mandate to oblige you—it’s their home, too—but it’s helpful if you have an agreement in place where they know you’ll evacuate when they have guests. If you reciprocate departures, your roommate will likely be cool about it, and then you can scream the loudest, weirdest shit you can think of while you’re getting down, if you’re so inclined, without fear of being overheard: “MARS IS A BIG HOAX!” “WINTER IS CANCELED!” “ATTENTION, RESPECTED UNITED NATIONS COLLEAGUES: THIS IS THE FILTHIEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE.”

If those with whom you live are within earshot: Play music loudly enough to muffle any pillow talk/staccato porn-moans, but not so loud that your housemate is inclined to knock and ask you to pipe down in there, already.

Casanova’s Breakfast Buffet

Once upon a time, I was boning this one guy whom I thought was such a sophist—he wore impressive, but not loudly expensive-looking, shoes and put me on to the Federico García Lorca essay “In Search of Duende.” What confirmed his elegance was the breakfast he served me when I woke up at his place for the first time. To the end of helping you leave a similarly gracious impression on your own houseguests, I’ve remorselessly jacked his menu and reproduced it here.

This meal has a tiny element of effort to it, but only so far as that you’re making an egg. It’s very casual, as in, yogurt in a bowl with sliced produce/mixers on the side, like a fit person who leads their life with more intent than I do. The key is the three beverages—they hydrate, brighten up, and revivify you in case you want to have early-bird special sex.

The grocery list, in total, will cost you $20 or less unless you get unnecessarily upscale ingredients (and this cost is lower if you already have some of what it comprises in the house, which you will), is vegetarian, and takes under ten minutes to make, no matter how hungover you are.

What you’ll need:

• Greek yogurt

• Toast

• Jam

• Strawberries

• Macadamia nuts

• Coffee

• Grapefruit juice

• San Pellegrino or other seltzer (but Pelly is best)

• An egg

How to lay it out most appealingly:

On a clean table, place the stuff that comes in jars and plastic packages, aka the jam, nuts, and berries, into three small
bowls, each with spoons, and put it by a bowl of the yogurt. Fold a napkin (or a paper towel, if, like me, you can’t be knackered with more than one kind of disposable cloth in your kitchen) next to that, and set utensils on it. Fry the egg, toast the toast, and plate them. Finish the spread with a glass for each beverage.

The most crucial ingredient to a debonair breakfast: Do not ask if your guest is hungry. Assemble the food, lay it out, and nonverbally convey, “Eat it or not; I’m honestly too busy reading Lorca to care.” It’s kind and sexy. Save for the toast and egg, you can simply put it away if they don’t want it.

WHATTA DISH