Remembering Jay

I'm taking a break today from my usual stuff to write about something a little more personal. Fret not, I'll be back to talking about the dirty stuff next week.

Ten years ago today childhood ended. A bit of a strange way to describe an event that happened in my mid-twenties, but true nonetheless. Ten years ago today my good friend Jay Edmonds, along with three other friends of mine, was killed in a car crash.

I've had a bit of a charmed life, so it's hard for me to imagine anything else that would knock me into the disillusionment of adulthood as abruptly as this. It was a big party weekend for us in London, and all our talk was about parties and bullshit, as it should be when you're 24 and looking forward to spending a weekend with friends. But an early-morning phone call turned our fun weekend into a week-long vigil as we gathered together not to drink and get high but to cry and console one another.

Jay's death set off a disturbing string of deaths of friends which culminated in the death of Snickers two years ago. Jay and Snickers were like brothers, and the two of them and me and my sister were a foursome; spending countless hours at their place or ours, talking shit and listening to Jeru and Gangstarr until all hours of the morning. That our foursome is now two is one of the saddest facts of my life.

Jay was an athlete and an actor. A brother, uncle, son, and boyfriend. He was a joker and a spaz. He was a superstar. And he is missed.

When Jay was alive I never told him I loved him or how amazing I thought he was. With all the arrogance of youth I assumed he just knew. But I learned from Jay's death is that assumptions can quickly turn into ass-kickers. And that if you love someone, you should tell them. So in honour of Jay, tell someone you love them today.

Is the grass ever greener?

The dearth of romance in relationships is something I touched on in yesterday's post; and judging from the feedback I got, it's a hot topic for a lot of people. A lot of women who read the post called me or emailed me to bemoan the fact that once a man gets comfortable in a relationship, he stops doing the romantic things he did in the beginning. Now I don't know if I necessarily subscribe to one commenter's theory that monogamy=monotony; but I have been around long enough to know that most people in relationships lead with the good foot, so to speak. When we meet someone new we're all about the wooing - whether it's buying flowers and gifts for your lady or feigning interest in your man's favourite sport. But as we become comfortable, going that extra mile seems to become too much effort.

But how we deal with the death of romance is an interesting thing. From my observations of men, it seems that the less appreciated they feel the less effort they put in. If a man tries to do something nice for his lady and he does it wrong she doesn't show adequate appreciation or criticizes his efforts, he's disinclined to try it again. What he will do instead is find another source of that manly feeling he was looking for. And nine times out of ten that source is another woman's pu$$y. He's not necessarily looking to end the relationship, he just taking a little boost from time to time.

But what does a woman do if she feels unappreciated by her man? Well they do a lot of things; cheating is one of them - as much as the ladies want to believe that men are solely responsible for the world's cheating, we do our dirt too. Some women take the "nag and bitch" approach. But far and away the most common reaction for women in this situation seems to be to become fixated on the fantasy that the next man will be better.

Consider this scenario:  a woman in a relationship with a man who doesn't romance her like he used to gets to talking with another man. This might be someone she just met, or an old standby; a friend who has always been there waiting to pounce for her. She confides in him that her man isn't doing what he used to. He starts to give her the talks; "Baby if I was your man I would _____", he betrays the man code by agreeing with her assessment of her man's behaviour. And he starts laying on the compliments. The woman starts thinking that maybe Mr. Next Man is a better match for her and grows even more disillusioned with the current man. Next thing you know, the current man is out and the next man is in. Fast forward three months - the flowers have dried up, the compliments have stopped, and Mr. Next Man spends just as much time playing NBA 2K10 as the last dude did. The woman looks around and asks herself, what happened?

What happened is this: she played herself. She forgot that men are hunters and they cannot resist ripe prey. Is there anything more appealing to a man than the opportunity to steal a next man's woman? Honestly I think they'd try it even if they weren't feeling the girl, just to say they did it.

What is it about us women that makes us forget that the grass is rarely greener? I have to admit that even I have fallen for this trick, and I still don't know why. I guess it's because being wooed is like kryptonite for women. Just as men are powerless to resist free pum pum, women lose their minds over compliments, empty though they may be.

Ladies have you ever fallen for this trick? Men have you ever stolen a woman just because you could? Enlighten me.

Things Women Shouldn’t Say to Men

I don’t usually write response posts, but Slim Jackson’s Things Men Shouldn’t Say to Women  had me howling…and got me thinking. Slim is right on the money with his list, but ladies we need this list even more than men do.

We need to talk

Maybe you do, but that opener is not working for anyone. It just fills a man with dread and makes him want to get away from you as quickly as possible.

How do I look? and Do I look fat in this?

In both cases, what you’re looking for here ladies is less a truthful answer and more something to gas up your heads. Unfortunately, if you’re lucky enough to have a man who will even glance up from the game to look at you before answering, what you’ll get is either a protracted once-over followed by a “Good” or a “No”. Or you’ll get the truth. And you probably won’t like it. So just skip it.

Which one of my friends would you eff?

Why oh why would you ask this? What could you possibly hope to gain from knowing which of your friends stars in your man’s masturbatory fantasies? Just leave it alone ladies. Trust me when I tell you you don’t want to know the answer to this.

My ex used to….

Insert good or bad behaviour here. Telling your man that your ex used to buy you flowers “just because” or saying that he used to have textual relations with other girls and that's why you can’t stop yourself from going through his phone is probably going to lead to an invitation that you go reunite with said ex, since you’re so fixated on him.

My girls say…

I think men have resigned themselves to the fact that women discuss the most minute details of their relationships with their girlfriends. They probably don’t get it or like it, but they accept it. But that doesn’t mean that they are interested in hearing your girlfriends’ co-sign on your latest grievance against your man. Besides which, if the only supporting argument you can come up with is “even my friends think you’re wrong”, your point is probably weak.

You don’t ____ like you used to

The blank can be filled in with things such as compliment me, kiss me hello/goodbye, go down on me, wanna hang out with me, and other such acts. And I’m not saying it isn’t a legitimate complaint. It’s a sad fact of life that the beginning of a relationship is packed with romance and ego-boosting compliments, which quickly fade once he hits it you become comfortable with each other, but I’ve yet to see this tactic achieve the desired results. You’re more likely to be accused of being insecure. Or a nag. Or both.

You love your friends more than you love me

Ladies, men need their men time. You need to get that. The relationship between your man and his boys is sacred and you need to stay outside of it. If you love your man, don’t ask to come along to boy’s night and please oh please don’t ask him to stay home and hold you when he’s supposed to go watch the fight with the fellas. This is a competition you cannot win. Or maybe you can, but it would probably mean your man’s a punk and you don’t want him anyway.
Also, using the phrase "your stupid-ass friends" in any capacity is probably not going to score you any points. They're non-negotiable so just grin and bear it.

Who’s that girl?

Who’s that girl that wrote on your wall on Facebook? That you just nodded to on the street? That you retweeted? That you spoke to at the club? A woman’s need to know the name, rank, and serial number of every female who crosses her man’s path just screams desperation. And psychosis. So please don’t.

Do you know how many other men want me?

We know men thrive on competition, but this is not the move. This is what a girl says when she’s not getting what she wants from a man, but I doubt it ever achieves the desired effect. Any man worth his stones can only respond to this by inviting her to, in the immortal words of Method Man “go find another sucker, yo”.

Did you eff her?

Just as Slim said, this question rarely yields a truthful answer. And if it does, you may not like it. So just leave it alone!

Ladies do you say these things? Think I’m wrong? Men did I miss anything? Drop your wisdom on me in the comments.

The Sex Match

I hate the beginnings of relationships, but I do like discovering people. Meeting someone who floats your boat and getting to know them can be exciting. The first few conversations - when you start to learn who they are, how they think, what they like - are a revelation. Or a disappointment.

I have a confession to make. I imagine people naked. Not just people whom I'm attracted to or want to sleep with, but all kinds of people. The teller at the bank when I make my deposit, the weird goth kid on the subway. It's like an exercise for my imagination to look at the way someone's body occupies their clothes and try to picture what that body looks like without the clothes. It's rarely an appealing mental picture.

But when I'm feeling someone, my imagination goes beyond what they look like naked to what they act like naked. When I'm getting to know a new man, I spend an inordinate amount of time speculating about what he's like in bed and using clues to try to paint his sexual portrait. Like - he listens to a lot of R&B so he's probably Mr. Foreplay. Or he watches a lot of porn so he's probably at least a little bit freaky. I spend hours trying to piece together an image of how this man behaves between the sheets.

Sidebar: you may be wondering why I don't just bring it up during one of these "getting to know you" conversations. Here's your answer - I think it's bad form to discuss sex in detail with someone before you do it. Call me crazy, but I think it sets a bad precedent; and you'd be hard-pressed to find a man who can listen to a woman frankly discuss her sexual preferences and not come to the conclusion that she's a whore-bag. But that's another post for another day.

Where was I? Oh - fantasizing. So as I get to know someone and get more interested in inviting him to my private area, a sense of reluctance sits in. No matter what conclusions I've come to in all my speculation about his bedroom style, I know that it's unlikely that I'm right. There's very little that can be deduced about one's sexual style in the course of regular getting-to-know-you conversation. And I don't want to be disappointed.

See the thing is, I have some pretty definite tastes when it comes to bedroom action. I'm not going to get into details here because you guys already know waaaay too much of my business, but I know exactly what I like. And although I'm a firm believer in the "sex is like pizza" school of thought, I still dream of finding the man that I can tolerate with his clothes on who is also my perfect match when the clothes come off. Unfortunately, the twain rarely meet. I can think of only one instance in my life where I slept with a man who intuitively knew what I wanted and gave it to me. Honestly I think he probably knew more about what I wanted than I did. Problem was he was, let's just say, not a match for me when the clothes were on. I've also been lucky enough to just totally click with someone mentally from the very beginning but between the sheets it was just...okay. Not that he was bad or small or anything like that. Just not the same style as me.

Now I know that someone out there is going to say that it takes time for people to get to know each other, and that with a little time and a little communication you can find some middle ground. And I get that. But I just can't help wanting to find that man who just gets it, right from the beginning.  If you read this blog enough you should know that I'm not big on giving a man direction, especially in the bedroom so it's no surprise that I want someone who just gets it.

But how important is the sexual match, really? Should I spending more time wondering if our philosophies about money, faith, race, and children match? How important is it too you guys out there? What if you love something sexually that your partner just flat out refuses to participate in? Or your dude is pushing you to do something that you think is "just nasty"? Are these dealbreakers, or surmountable obstacles?

Enlighten me in the comments.

The Other Woman

The other woman is a bad girl, isn’t she? This predatory b*tch is the target of many a scorned woman’s ire. She’s evil, she lacks self-esteem, she has no respect for marriage, she can’t find a man of her own. But in the immortal words of Jackie Collins, who’s she when she’s at home? Who is the woman who so brazenly pulls up her chair to a table for two?  And is she really such a bad thing?

I have a difficult time with the idea that every relationship is meant to fit the same pattern – monogamous and consisting of no more than two participants. I’m no Bill Henrickson, but I do believe it’s possible that relationships can take different forms and be successful. This might be a cultural thing – Lord knows Caribbean people take great liberties with the definition of monogamy – but I’ve seen long happy marriages that involved more than just two people. And no, it ain’t always the man with the side ting.

I’ve never really been the other woman, but I confess that the idea is not without appeal. There’s always been something alluring to me about it.  It’s not that I don’t respect marriage or relationships, but it might be because I don’t value monogamy the way most people do. And for someone like me, being involved with a man whom I can never get sick of because he can’t spend every moment with me, who will likely never spend the night, and who will probably never want to get married or have children with me is a perfect fit. I could have my freedom, always have the trump card to end every argument (You’re married!), and I’d be free to spend the holidays with my family.  Plus the relationship would always have the pull and the intensity of the forbidden. What’s not to want?

Let’s face it, no relationship is perfect. No one can be everything to their partner and all relationships have their voids. Some of us fill these voids with internet porn friends or children or hobbies. Is it really such a terrible thing to fill it with another person? Doesn’t anyone remember the episode of Friends where Joey made his father break up with his mistress and then his mother came back and explained to him the ways in which the mistress made the dad a much more bearable person? Is that just fiction or is it a level of honesty with ourselves we should all be striving for?

The problem is though, that the other woman almost never plays her position. I should be egalitarian here and say the other ‘person’ rather than the other woman, but I’m not.  She wants more time, more status. She hates the wife and resents the children. She doesn’t want to hide. She wants him around on her birthday, on Christmas. She wants him to spend the night. She wants marriage and babies. She – just wants more. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But seeking it from your married (or otherwise committed) man is where drama begins. But I guess men don’t choose their side pieces with the intention of preserving their main things, do they? They choose them for other reasons.

Okay people, lay it on me. What do you think? Can a healthy relationship exist with more than two people involved?

Shhh...It's a Secret!

A great man recently said “the key to a great sex life is discretion’. Not being a big proponent of discretion myself, I can’t really comment on that, but it did get me thinking about secrecy in sex and relationships.

In my checkered past, I’ve had one public relationship and a lot of secret dalliances and I’m still not sure which one was the way to go. In the case of the beloved Snickers, we were in the same social circle so everyone knew pretty much everything that happened between us from the moment we began. It seemed as though everyone had some kind of vested interest in our relationship; kind of like our own little cheering section. It was nice in a lot of ways but not so nice at the end when I realized that just as everyone knew what was happening between us, everyone knew what was happening between him and a certain tramp. But that’s another story.

Ten years later I had an equally long dalliance with a man who was also in pretty much the same social circle (why it was a dalliance rather than a relationship is another post for another day). In this case we didn’t do things like arriving at/leaving parties together or being openly affectionate with one another. Nobody ever knew for sure what was happening between us but they made assumptions. And since this is Toronto and people love to chat here, those assumptions inevitably turned into gossip. Ah, gossip. The bane of my existence and yet another post for another day.

Looking back, I would say that my approach in both of those scenarios was a bit off; in the case of Snickers we were way too open, in the other case I’d say we were way too secretive. It seems that being too open and being too secretive just stir the people around you into a frenzy of news-carrying. But is there a middle ground between offering up your relationship as fodder for the rumour mill and clutching it to you like a closely-guarded secret? On the one hand, love and relationships should be something happy and to be celebrated, but on the other hand, they are too delicate and intensely personal to be shared indiscriminately with the masses.

So what is the right approach? And is this something we should even be concerned with? I’m inclined to think that if you’re spending a lot of time trying to determine the appropriate level of discretion or secrecy in your dalliances, there are only two reasons for this – you fear gossip or you’re up to no good. I may be way off base here, but I never really understood why I need to be concerned with what people know about me or my life unless they’re talking about something I’ve done that I’m ashamed of or I shouldn’t be doing.

In my experience, it’s the men who insist on the secrecy and it’s because they’re juggling multiple girls and want to avoid drama. And I’d suspect that when a woman insists on secrecy it’s probably because she’s looking to avoid being called a ho. In both of these cases, it’s really more about the fact that people refuse to own their behaviour and be honest about it than what other people have to say about it, isn’t it? If there’s ever been an altruistic reason for wanting to be secret about a relationship I’ve yet to encounter it.

At the end of the day, I think the answer lies in the wording. Being discreet is okay, being secretive is something else. The benchmark I always use is this – I look over at the man taking his post-coital snooze beside me and ask myself, would anyone know enough to inform me if he died? A little melodramatic, maybe, but it works for me.

The High Maintenance Man

Okay so we talked about the high maintenance woman last time, let's take a peek at the underside of the coin: the high maintenance man. It's not a term we hear often (which supports my theory that the high maintenance woman is a myth and a conspiracy against women)...does such a thing exist? Notwithstanding the paltry results for a search for "high maintenance man" on Google, I think it does.

While I think a lot of women freely admit to being high maintenance, you'd be hard-pressed to find a man to admit to it. And this is probably because of the ideas we have about what being high maintenance means; the vapid, self-involved woman who needs frequent mani-pedis and "designer fabrics, shoes, and accessories" (thanks mos def) to keep her happy. As many jackasses as I've encountered in my life, I've yet to meet a man who is like that, but that doesn't mean that I haven't had to WORK to maintain a man.

The high maintenance man's requirements tend to run more to the intangible and therefore tend to be far more insidious. And the requirements are rarely articulated as such; they're usually couched as beliefs; or rather the lack of belief. There is the man who doesn't believe in dating. Who doesn't believe in relationships. Who doesn't believe in titles. Doesn't believe in pet names, Valentine's Day, flowers, romance, or compliments. Or affection. He doesn't believe in presents. He doesn't believe in phone manners. He doesn't believe in arguing or discussing. He of course doesn't believe in monogomy. Or condoms. Whatever it is he does or doesn't believe in, the woman who gets involved with this man is going to have to put in some serious work to maintain him, and isn't that what being high maintenance is all about?

I think being high maintenance means that the people you are involved with have to "handle" you in some way; to a great or lesser extent, there is an expectation that the other person concede to your requirements whether they come in tangible or intangible forms. The woman who demands a Chloe bag for her birthday is just as much work as the man who will not acknowledge that you are in a relationship, is she not? And at the end of the day, which is more damaging to our selves and our spirits - having to work an extra shift to be able to buy a pair of shoes for your girl, or having to sit at home alone on Valentine's Day because your man refuses to acknowledge it? Or maybe they're equally damaging.

I think at the end of the day it all comes down to how much - and in what ways - we are willing to bend for our partners. Some men want a princess who needs a lot of attention and some women  - such as myself - want a man who needs to be handled delicately. And there is gratification in giving, right? Maybe deep down all this business about high maintenance is really just a way for us to feel like we're the martyrs, the givers, the under-appreciated. But like I always say, that's another post for another day.

The High Maintenance Woman

I was reading one of Christianaa’s rants the other day about high maintenance women. It was interesting and of course set the little wheels in my brain spinning. Then I stopped by The Book of Jackson today and he was talking about something similar. So I thought I'd explore the phenomenon of the high maintenance woman.

Ah the high maintenance woman. No one likes her, but who is she really? I did a little poll on twitter this morning asking what makes a woman high maintenance and this is a sampling of what I got:

@sirron said “if she demands too much of your time”.

@readbeanpie said “that mostly concerns high priced clothing purchases and many self beautification procedures at a high occurence rate”

@camerontilbury said “The same things that make a guy high maintenance” (I begged to differ with that one)

Most of the women who answered my poll said that they considered themselves high maintenance, but that they maintained themselves. That's a pretty common point of view in this city where there is a dearth of men willing to put one iota of effort into maintaining a woman. But that's another post for another day.

I definitely consider myself to be high maintenance, but not in the way you might think. I don't want to be given nice things and I don't require a man to treat me like a princess (though this may be my downfall), but I do have certain...let's say idiosyncrasies that I expect a man to understand and work with. Though I'm extremely easy-going in a relationship, I'm not easy and any man I'm involved with is going to have to work hard to navigate the labyrinth that is me. But is that high maintenance?

I'm not sure whether I'm convinced that being a high maintenance woman is necessarily a bad thing. I've talked in the past about how bad behaviour seems to be rewarded in relationships and I know from my own experience that being too laid back is not a good thing. And we all know that in a relationship we will only be treated as well as we demand, so isn't there something to this whole high maintenance thing? Or maybe the better question is, what is a reasonable amount of maintenance we can expect from a partner without crossing the line into high maintenance?

On the other hand though, I think the whole high maintenance thing may have been invented by some evil genius man to keep women down. Sounds extreme, but hear me out. Like the "angry black woman", isn't the high maintenance woman really nothing more than someone who has clear ideas in her mind about how she wants to be treated and asks for that treatment? Is there anything wrong with that really? This is of course based on the assumption that said woman is returning the treatment that she demands for herself; if she doesn't, isn't she just a bitch?

Men help me understand this. Is there a difference between a high maintenance woman and a selfish b*tch?

go to this: WE SEE YOU HAITI. L’union Fait la Force

I hardly ever write about events on here anymore because I'm trying to stay on topic, but please indulge me in making an exception this one time.

Come out next Thursday January 28th  to help raise money for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti.  All proceeds will go directly to The Red Cross.  

Thursday January 28th 10:00pm

Wet Bar, 106 Peter St

Featuring DJ's - Dr. Jay, Agile, P-Plus, Grouch, Lil Jaz, Dopey, DJ Riccachet & DJ Therap, Paul E. Lopes, Son of Soul and Dj Bunitall
Hosted By: Arcee and dscratch

Minimum $10 donation will be accepted at the door

If you can't make it, the lovely ladies over at coco&lowe have a list of sites where you can make donations. And a riveting blog, I might add. 

Meet the Family

With the holidays just behind us, family is a bit on my mind. I have a kind of love-aggravation relationship with my extended family and usually feel sick with dread when I know I have to spend time with them, but then when I actually see them I have an awesome time and love them so much. But my family is kinda...weird, to say the least. Which should mean that I fit right in but somehow doesn't quite work out that way.

Now in my family we have three kinds of people; stars, black sheep, and nonentities. I’m sure you can guess which I am. And this past year one of the brightest stars our family has ever produced got married. She brought her new husband to Toronto for the holidays (they live in DC) and my greatest Christmas joy was watching him watch us.

Although my family is a save haven for strays – at any gathering I will encounter at least two people I’ve never laid eyes on before - as a rule, we don’t bring significant others to family gatherings unless they are for real. There are a few reasons for this.


First, in my (extremely Christian) family, casual sex relationships is not the done thing. So when we’re having casual fun (which please believe we all are), trolling the evidence around for all the aunties to see is the quickest way to get your ass relegated to black sheep status (and no, that’s not how I did it).


Second, anyone we bring around the family is subject to so much SCRUTINY (it’s so bad it has to be all caps) that it’s just cruel to put someone through it if they’re not in it for the long haul.

Three, my family is a vortex that sucks in unsuspecting significant others quicker than you can say “hip hip hip hooray!”. One minute you’re a guest at Thanksgiving dinner, the next you’re making a presentation at the family meeting. Or in charge of planning the next family trip.  And once in, there is no out. My cousin’s ex-wife retained her star status after their (gasp!) divorce while I – a fully born Greene – am still a black sheep.

There’s one more reason we don’t bring SO’s to family gatherings until we have to and that is this: my family is effing weird. If you’re not Trini, not Christian, and not at least a little bit uppity you are going to a)stick out like a sore thumb and b)spend your day giving out side-eyes galore. No amount of preparation will equip you for the phenomenon of walking into my Auntie’s house on Christmas day expecting to open gifts and realizing 5 hours later that it’s not even close to gift-opening time. No pre-holiday pep talk is going to prepare you for the moment when you’re asked to make a speech, play an instrument, do a dance or distribute hand-outs. And nothing – but nothing – is gonna prepare you for the moment when my 300+ lb cousin comes crashing to her knees during Oh Holy Night.

Way back when I was too young to know better, I brought Snickers to a family gathering. It was a BBQ in a park and he wore a track suit. Makes sense right? He’s an athlete, we’re in a dirty park sitting on dirty picnic tables, what else is he gonna wear? But that outfit elicited such an enormous side-eye from our Chief Auntie that I never ever considered bringing anyone around again.

Now you would think, given all the craziness that goes on, that the idea of marrying and having an alternate family with whom to celebrate the holidays would be enticing. But for some strange reason, it’s not. In 34 years of life I’ve only spent one Christmas away from my aunties and it was no fun. I’ve spent more Chrsitmases away from my mother than from my aunts and cousins. So if I ever become seriously involved with someone, he’s gonna have to either accept the fact that we spend holidays separately, or get on board the crazy train. We welcome strangers, the weirder the better. But please believe I will wait until the ink dries on the marriage certificate and both rings are welded to my finger before I expose him to the crazy; just in case coming from an intensely Christian, amazingly weird, ridiculously formal family is a dealbreaker for him.

Is that wrong?

In through the Out Door

When I was young, oral sex was the thing no one admitted to. No self-respecting Black man would admit to ever eating a woman’s fruit – much less beg her to let him do it. And no good girl was going down because, of course, that’s nasty. These days oral is a no-brainer, or it should be anyway. To the point where I’m some women are getting bored of it. It’s too mainstream now. There’s a new player in the sexual liberation game and its name is anal.

It seems the world of women is separated into three groups – the have’s, the haven’ts and the would-nevers. Those who have have earned the right to feel smug and superior to those women who haven’t or won’t – by allowing their exit to become entry they have forever secured their spot in the world of the sexually uninhibited; no matter what else they will or won’t do. The would-nevers are probably smug in their “good girl” status. It’s nasty and they don’t do that so go find some hoe off the street if that’s what you’re looking for. The haven’ts are gnashing their teeth trying to figure out where they fit in…they haven’t, but does that mean they wouldn’t? Is it something to squander on a night of drunken after-club sex when you can blame it on the alcohol? Or something to be saved for that mythical magical one – the husband, the soul mate, the only man who has ever been up the bum?

These are the things I ask myself sometimes.

I have a lot of dirty male friends. And for whatever reason, we talk about anal sex a lot. No matter how many times we discuss it, I can never get over the fact that sometimes a girl will let a guy go up the bum the first time she f*cks him. Really?? Just all willy-nilly like that? But at the same time, I turn up my nose scornfully when I hear stories about women who are like “never! I would never! Just – ew!”. Amateurs.

My mindset lies somewhere in between. I’m not giving up my primo virgin um, territory to just any random that comes along (it’s the last piece of innocence I have left and I’m clinging to it for all it’s worth). But at the same time, I’m certainly not saving it for a husband who may never materialize. There has to be a middle ground and so I’ve compiled a list for you of the Top 5 Characteristics of the Ideal Ass-Taker.

1. The ideal taker of the ass-virginity is somewhere between a random and a soul mate. I don’t want to give up the ass to someone who will later break my heart so that for the rest of my life I have to say “and I gave him my VIRGIN BUM!”. But at the same time, I don’t want to give it to some random who probably collects asses like playing cards. It has to mean something to him.

2. The ideal ass-conqueror has to be persistent, but not pushy. I’m probably not going to say yes the first time around, but I’ll probably give in somewhere between ask #3 and ask #74. So he can’t give up, but he has to know when to ask.

3. The ass-explorer must be gentle. If you go tearing through my shit (pardon the pun) all roughshod I will stab you in the eye. While I’m all for a little rough-and-tumble at other times, this is one time where I want you to go all Brian McKnight on me.

4. The ass-breaker cannot be too well-endowed. My 8-inch plus guys are going to have to step to the back of the line on this one. Sorry guys, you know how much I love you but I can’t use you for this one. Where are my 1 and 2 inch willies? I have a job for you!

5. The ass-winner must be discreet. First of all, word on the street is that there can be some um, mess involved with this job. I need you to handle that on your own without mentioning it to me. I’m no would-never, but that’s nasty and I don’t want to know about it. And secondly, if you go to the sports bar with your friends talking about how you took Max’s ass last night I will, again, have to stab you in the eye. Discretion is the better part of ass-f*cking my friends.

Now you guys have been kinda quiet lately, but I want to hear from you on this one. Ladies – are you a have, haven’t, or a would-never. (If you're a punk shy you can just answer the poll in the right nav) And men – what say you on these requirements? Am I asking too much?

The Way Men Think Part II

Yesterday's post was rattling around in my brain for quite some time before my life calmed down enough to give me time to write it. While I was marinating on it, I came up with the idea for this post which I also wanted to call 'The way men think' and there you have it - a two-part series. Anyway. Here we go.

As a perpetually single hot girl with a...shall we say somewhat "open" point of view when it comes to sex and relationships, I've collected more than my share of two things - guy friends and disrespect. And how these two things play off each other is quite an interesting phenomenon...but I'll get to that in a second.

Disrespect is something I don’t blog about very often…mostly because it’s subjective. What to me would feel like a slap in the face is to other people noting more than a harmless joke. Case in point: a woman I know once casually mentioned to me that she doesn’t wear capri pants because her husband said they make her legs look like tree trunks. I asked her if she punched him in the face when he said that and she just gave me a puzzled look. See? Disrespect is in the eye of the beholder.

There’s no way a woman can be single and getting her swerve on and not run into disrespectful behaviour every now and again. Eff what you heard, most men cannot handle a sexually liberated woman and will do what they can to make her feel like a ho. They key is to remember that he is participating in the very same behaviour for which he is judging you. In other words, if I’m a ho, what does that make you?  Men never realize that while they’re removing a woman from their potential wifey list for being too easy that the woman might be doing the same thing back to them.

Anyway. The thing about most of my male friends is that they are also the perpetrators of the greatest disrespects against me. Without getting into detail in case they’re reading this, let’s just say that collectively they are guilty of the most grievous crimes ever committed against me. Why then, are they still my friends? A good question and another post for another day, but what it basically comes down to is compartmentalization.

Now one of my most favourite things to do in life is to tell my male friends stories about rude things that other men have done to me. Ladies if you’re looking for a knight in shining armour just try this out: think of the worst thing a man has ever done to you. Now go find that man and tell him a story of some other bad thing another dude did. The level of outrage and righteous indignation that you will see come out of him will make you feel like Dakota Fanning in that movie where Denzel Washington was hired to protect her. I tell you – it feels great.  Until you start to think about it.

The way men think is that there’s no issue with getting on their moral high horse when another dude does something f*cked up to his female friend…even if he’s done the same or worse to her a million times. More than that, they way men think is that it’s okay to also judge said female friend for understanding or forgiving the f*cked up behaviour of the next man, all the while conveniently forgetting that that same forgiving nature is the only reason he’s still around. I think of this as the male version of cattiness.

Now I should note here that I’m not in any way condemning men for their way of thinking – some of my most favourite readers are men and I certainly don’t want to piss them off. I’m just saying.

The Way Men Think Part I

Happy New Year Everyone!

I promised I'd be back in January and here I am. Things are finally settling down over in the three-dimensional world and now I can give you the attention you so rightly deserve. Hope you haven't given up on me!

Anyway. Okay so about a month ago my sister and I were headed to Jully's show at Nathan Phillips Square but when we got in her car it wouldn't start. The lights and the radio came on but it was just making some kind of weird noise and that's it. Now I'm no Monalisa Vitto, but I do know enough about cars to have at least a vague idea what's wrong when one dies. So when we called my dad to get an over the phone diagnosis, I was a bit skeptical when he started telling us it was the battery. Okay, I damn near shouted 'LIAR' into the phone. Despite my protestations that the lights, horn, etc. were functioning normally, he insisted that I bang on the battery cables with 'something heavy' and when that didn't work, call my ex-un-boyfriend/roommate/bff to give us a boost. We didn't.
Fast forward to the next morning when Marshie-poo and I call the tow truck. The driver comes and asks us what the problem is and we tell him it won't start but it isn't the battery. And what does he do? Spends about 10 minutes banging on the battery thingies and another 10 trying to boost it. While we stand around waiting in the freezing cold I might add.  As the long dramatic saga of getting the car fixed went on, various men that we dealt with persisted in investigating the health of the battery despite our - okay my - repeated assurances that we did not have a battery problem. 48 hours and a lot of standing around in the cold later, do you want to know what was wrong with the car? It was the starter. Yup.
Now if you read this story and thought that it would turn out that I was wrong all along and the battery was the problem, guess what? You're a man. That's just the way men think.
I have only one rule that I actually stick to in my dealings with men. I don't discuss cars, hip hop, or sports with them unless I agree with them or know nothing about the specific topic. Why, you ask? Because 99% of men do not give a woman's opinion on the aforementioned subjects any credence whatsoever. That's just the way men think. No matter how flimsy their knowledge of the subject may be, no matter how well-thought out and researched your argument is, that man is programmed to think that what you're saying is bullshit and he's either going to argue with you to the ends of the earth or wait until you're gone and spend hours looking for research that supports his flawed point of view. Either way, it's pointless.  Take my advice ladies, and hold your counsel when these topics come up in mixed company. Unless you feel like banging your head against the wall. In which case you should just do that. It'll hurt less.