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I know, I know. I post to “Eat, Drive, Fuck” faithfully every week, but that didn’t happen last week. But I have a good reason, I promise. The first—and biggest—reason I didn’t publish anything last week was that I wrote an AMAZING post that is the longest I’ve ever written for this blog, FULL of pictures and videos that I'm really, really proud of (and it took a lot of time!)… and then had to delay posting it for very exciting reasons. Stay tuned. [There is a separate, HUGE announcement at the very end of this post!] Next, I drove from Denver to the Grand Canyon (which was just as fabulous as I’d hoped it would be) to Phoenix to LA all in the span of a week. Then I left my car in LA and caught a red-eye to New York. I had to come home for a specific event for my day job and my father’s surprise 60th birthday party and so I tacked on an extra few weeks to see friends, have a meeting with my agent, and talk to some lovely people I met at the sex therapy and education conference in Denver. Essentially, I had 21 days to fit in meetings with 347 people. It’s been so fun, but also exhausting. I also think I have a bit of an emotional hangover because this past Friday, I visited my old neighborhood in Queens—my home before starting this trip. It was more emotional than I thought it would be because I thought of how far I’d come (both figuratively and literally since I had lived in NY my entire life) since I left. As I walked around Astoria, I passed the shitty diner where I’d get bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches after late nights at hookups’ apartments, the laundromat where I was SO EXCITED when I finally started making enough money to drop off my laundry instead of doing it myself (dropping it off cost $30/month, btw), and the super cheap massage place I frequented every few months that still gives off major hand job vibes. To get to my old apartment, I took the train I passed out on multiple times on my morning commute due to stress and exhaustion caused by my job in book publishing I left two years ago (that job also caused me and other coworkers to miss our periods!). My first job out of college (in my industry) paid $27,500 a year. If that sounds like not enough money to live on in the city, you’re right. It isn’t. I spent 4 years living at home, commuting 4 hours every day to Manhattan and saving money. By the time I moved to Queens in 2014, I had paid off 60% of my $100k student loan debt and written 4 books for HarperCollins (under a pseudonym because it's a genre I don't even read) solely for the money. By then, I was making $38,500 a year, which is still not very much considering NYC is the second most expensive city in the world. I very much remember the years of having to walk 22 blocks every morning to save the (at the time) $2.25 subway fare, considering a weekly $5 cup of soup for lunch a “treat,” and stealing rolls of toilet paper from bathroom stalls at work because it meant one less expense. I also remember the shitty people I dated and the shitty sex. Oh how I remember the shitty sex. I’ve dated Russian bankers who claimed that me using toys “threatened their masculinity,” insufferable photographers who had more opinions on obscure music than an actual sense of self, freelance film dudes (For the love of god, save yourself. Never date these men; they are man-children) who were about as exciting in bed as a Wes Anderson movie.  My clitoris while getting fucked by a freelance film dude I fucked office temps, sommeliers, a literal sex addict who worked in international aid, advertising executives, a guy who worked at an Apple store, a producer at a very well-known television show that’s still on the air, a special ed kindergarten teacher (I mean, come on, just bend me over already), Broadway dancers, and a very memorable voice-over actor in Williamsburg who ate my pussy for 4 hours straight on my 28th birthday. Him and the kindergarten teacher were great in bed. Everyone else? [farting noise] And during the three years I spent in Astoria, while I fucked a lot of lackluster men, I was busy building a career. I was editing 900 pages a week at a thankless job that gave me zero weekends off and kept telling me I was not good enough (despite the books I worked on selling really, really well) so they had an excuse not to promote me (the company was hemorrhaging money). I was taking the N/W train every day, which is a job in and of itself. I have no idea how I did it, but I carved out small slivers of time to write for magazines on the side. My then boss made it very clear that she was not supportive of this, but I didn’t want to stop. Between being broke, dating stupid people, and suffering at a job that was working me to death, sex writing was the only thing that made me happy. I used to see a therapist near Central Park South once a week on my lunch break, my only reprieve from my hellish job. During our first session, she asked if I could not eat the salad I had brought because it was distracting. I looked at her, dead-eyed, and said, “I have to fucking eat.” “Well,” she replied, “At least I know you’re assertive.” No joke, that therapist went on to get murdered by someone, which was a shame because she was a really good therapist. Ah, New York City. With a dead therapist and an unsupportive, micromanaging boss who apparently didn’t want me to have a life outside of work (which is very often the case in book publishing, unfortunately), I decided I had to leave. I was scared shitless to make a drastic career change, but I wanted to write and I wanted to get my fucking period again. I found a generic front desk job at a tech startup that paid more than what I was earning as an editor making a name for herself in the industry (outside of my boss, people actually liked me and my work a lot) where I'd write more. At the time, I had purple/green/blue/pink hair and took my mom out to lunch in the East Village to break the news to her. I was ashamed that I was leaving the industry I had specifically gone to NYU for. As someone with an incredibly blue collar, middle-class upbringing (both my parents didn't go to college), I grew up to value stability. I was taking a huge risk by trying out this whole freelancing thing. "I don't want you to be embarrassed that your daughter left a career as an editor to become a receptionist," I told her at some outdoor cafe near Tompkins Square Park. "What will you tell our family when they ask about me?" "I'll tell them what I've always told them when they ask about you: that you're a writer," she said. I saved a photo from that day.  At my new job, I dyed my hair black (I had dyed it blonde for the interviewing process, but, as much as I loved it, bleach made my hair fall out and I didn't want to look like Cynthia from "Rugrats") and wore jeans and combat boots out of necessity. Between buzzing people in, stocking the kitchen, and literally shop vacuuming overflowing toilets, I sat at my desk and wrote. A month later, my first story got picked up by Cosmo. Six months later, I became a contracted contributor to Playboy.  Me chugging away at the front desk between office duties At this time, I started dating the person who I thought I was going to marry and he lived very far away. Every Friday night, I commuted 3 hours upstate (one-way) to spend the weekend with him. On Monday mornings, we’d wake up a little after 5 so I could be in Union Square by 9. I did this for a year. Actually, what I should say is: I have no idea how I did this for a year. The constant back and forth was incredibly draining. About 6 months into my new job at the tech company, I got approached by the then VP of marketing. Because I sat at the front desk, I knew all of my coworkers by name and was friendly with almost everyone. One day, this VP came over to ask a question about our company’s commuting benefits or something and he happened to ask where I worked before I came onboard, thinking I had been a front desk person somewhere else. When I informed him that I had ten years of experience as an editor, he asked why the hell I wasn’t working on his team. Soon, I started editing marketing materials. By the time things were getting serious with my partner upstate and I had plans to move, through a series of circumstances, I was given a full-time remote position in marketing. Between the new remote gig and discussions of engagement rings, I got rid of my apartment with the intention of moving upstate. And then the breakup happened. With nowhere to live, the idea for this trip was born. Since I left Astoria last June, I’ve lived in Boston, Asheville, Austin, and Denver, I’ve driven across the country on my own, I went on the best (and most impulsive) vacation ever to Hawaii, I got published by 4 new publications (including my dream one, New York Magazine), I got published in print for the third time, I’ve been interviewed by Buzzfeed and (soon) national television, I’ve fucked some truly gorgeous (inside and out) people, and I've figured out a lot of things for myself. I’ve been hustling, y’all. And I’ll continue to hustle. I went from making minimum wage and editing other people’s work to having financial stability for the first time in my life and traveling across the entire country while writing things I'm passionate about. I recognize I had a ton of privilege while moving up this ladder, but a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into it, too. Between my jam-packed schedule while I’m back in NYC and looking back at all the work I’ve done over the last ten years, I decided I need a tiny break. Next weekend, I move to Chicago for the last “big” leg of the trip (6 weeks!). After Chicago, I fly to LA to pick up my car and drive up the PCH to Portland, where I’ll stay for 3 weeks before driving back to the East Coast. The gift I’ve decided to give to myself right now is self-care. In Chicago, I plan on being on my phone less, reading actual books more, learning how to box, cooking more (and I don’t mean just heating up veggie burgers and eating potato chips, DANA), going to the beach, and writing some chapters of a new book. I also plan to masturbate more. Because here is the big announcement (one of a few more to come over the next couple weeks): I’m partnering with some sex-related product companies. This decision happened after learning that toys—just like so many other products featured in magazines—are given false praise by online publications in exchange for a cut of sales. As someone who believes in only providing 100% truthful information about sex, masturbation, and sexual health, I consider this practice to be Grade A horseshit. So I’m going to start writing some myself, and only talking about products I genuinely love. Not even a day after deciding this, I was asked if I wanted to become a brand ambassador for a company called MedAmour, a startup whose focus is making the act of buying sex toys less scary, ensuring quality control, and helping those with medical conditions that can make sex uncomfortable or downright impossible (including vaginismus, endometriosis, etc). Its stock is carefully curated so that new customers aren’t overwhelmed or intimidated, and products are appropriate for those just beginning to broaden their sexual horizons. You will not find any scary-looking, intimidating, or "advanced" toys on this site. The owner had the idea for this company when she realized sex therapists were recommending certain toys to their patients, but weren’t recommending specific brands or where to go. And that led to three big problems: confused people not knowing what exactly to buy, finding cheap toys on Amazon (Where the quality isn’t controlled! Never buy sex toys from Amazon—many of them aren’t body-safe!), and/or going to large brick-and-mortar stores and being so overwhelmed that toys never got purchased. I’ve been asked to partner with some companies in the past and they were either things I was not particularly interested in (if I get offered a partnership with a tampon company one more goddamn time), didn’t seem beneficial to people who follow me, or the company owners had a less than stellar reputation. I truly believe in MedAmour’s mission and I want to support a woman-owned-and-operated business. If I can write honest toy reviews and then be able to offer discounts to people who want to buy the toys I recommend, then that is a win for everyone. I'm not doing this for the money (and the money is very small, trust me), I will only recommend toys I absolutely love, and I was going to write the reviews anyway, with or without this partnership. I want to destigmatize toys (after all, they are a HUGE part of creating an amazing sex life--check out tip #3!), provide people with accurate information about them, and support a business whose mission I fully believe in. And to prove that I’m not being a shitty “influencer” dipshit who’s peddling crap that sucks, my first giveaway with MedAmour is going to be… A WOMANIZER STARLET (worth $89!). If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I have talked about this toy for years and consider it a must in any vulva-haver's collection because, get this, it’s a CLIT SUCKER. Here’s me raving about it in September of last year, where I say, “It’s almost indistinguishable from real oral sex, you can orgasm in under 3 minutes, and you don’t have to listen to a cis male talk about The Smiths afterwards.” It’s also the toy that consistently makes me squirt when combined with penetrative sex. On this trip, I’ve squirted while using it with two different former-Bible-thumpers-turned-agnostic-nonmonogamous-people! It is truly the Lord’s toy.  Amen. I look forward to bringing you my signature blend of candid, informative, and, at times, humorous real talk about a bunch of sex-related products. I can’t wait to talk about my love of dilator sets (I used one as a teenager!), anal play, and the newest clitoral and penetrative toys on the market. It's gonna be so much fun and I hope you feel empowered to try something new!
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