A few weeks ago, my mother caught me in the most cliché of precarious situations: beneath the bleachers, making out with my boyfriend. We weren’t having sex, but we were going at it pretty hot and heavy. Out of nowhere I heard a scream and was lifted up by my favorite Green Lantern shirt.

Janice’s experiences were always impersonal, with bodies unfamiliar and occasionally less than beautiful.  But the faceless men needed to connect physically, to fill a need, like Janice did. Never did she invite her sexual partner to sleep over at her small, austere apartment.  Often she would doze off, and when she woke up she barely recalled the encounter.

He waved his arms to and fro, burnt sandalwood incense and carried it from corner to corner.  He inhaled until his lungs were about to burst and with the slow exhale sent every particle of her out of his body.  “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee,” he chanted. 

Doctor Harvey Worthington had been lying awake for almost fifteen minutes. Since there was nothing better to do, he performed a self exam. He used a simple pinch and roll, a technique he found favorable. The brief joy he received was quickly overshadowed by the discovery of an extraneous bump. It felt like a pea had lodged itself in his scrotum, but he couldn’t remember eating any peas.

Every year, a few days before the Christmas holidays begin, I take my mobile phone and my laptop and I lock them in the cupboard underneath my kitchen sink. I am always fully aware that this proves I have no shred of self control, and that what I am about to do requires a whole heap of it. But this year is going to be different.