Action: A Book About Sex by Amy Rose Spiegel

convenient if you’re traveling and want to get it on with a stranger, but so, too, are the long-running industry standard for traveling dirtbags, aka—all together on this one, now—bars. If you don’t meet anyone there, you can at least have a vodka and maybe some smallplates (buffalo wings), and Tinder still exists, should you not feel contented making out with buttery hot sauce exclusively.
    No matter the course you set, the beginning of that path is easy to follow: Go outside. Smile at someone who looks like your interpretation of the term “super-babe.” If they smile back, all you have to do is refer to our trusty old prompt: “Hey. How’s your day going?” Then see if you just happen to have the best sex of your life (mishearing your partner’s name: optional).

No, I Still Want to Lick a Face from the Web

    If you remain unconvinced of the superiority of physical encounters and you’re still looking for a technological helping hand: I often ghostwrite my friends’ profiles and messages back and forth with hot .jpg-havers and have been described identifiably on my city’s Missed Connections page enough that you could probably make an identical composite sketch of my face from the combined information within the listings. (I responded once—enormous error on my part. I thought the dude was cute and the moment we shared on the train borderline romantic, but he texted me asking me for my best “cow jokes” [???] for nearly six months.)
    I feel conflicted about abetting the probable shucking-off of kismet/coincidence/mystery by giving you the following information, but look: I will get you laid on the computer , Luddite or not—although the fact that I unwittingly just wrote “on the computer” like your granddad, instead of the infinitely less geriatric “the internet” or “online,” should be proof enough of my technological proficiency and tastes. Whatever. Let’s hit the ol’ digital web for some sensual cyber-chat!!!
    While the internet has its fungal pockets, so, too, does EVERY OTHER COLLECTION OF PEOPLE GROUPED IN ONE PLACE. There are many lovelinesses who are, at this moment, saying, “OK, Cupid—I guess, dude.” That name has always seemed SO ambivalent, when the precipice of sex = more than just an “okay” state in which to spend time, in my estimation. This is a digression, but how the heck am I supposed to be enthusiastic ifthe COMPANY ITSELF is all passively like, “Eh, it’ll kill twenty minutes, this whole multitudinous-possibilities-for-interpersonal-connection thing.”
    How can you tell if someone is decent or just masquerading as a preschool teacher with nice hands that they don’t intend to employ for the purpose of murking you out? Honor your instincts, even if they seem overactively guarded. It’s good that you want to protect yourself. More on this in the part of the book in which I talk about how not following that imperative once led me to an unfortunate encounter in a pool painted to look like outer space—evidence that real-life courtship can be just as fetid as poorly vetted internet dalliances.
    If your cretin-meter isn’t chirping at you and you’re just concerned as to the quality of a potential internet-based lay, check for any overtly ablaze disaster flares, judgment-wise: Does their default photo find them “jokily” reenacting a meme with a disoriented-looking elderly woman (their grandmother?) near a pile of brownish dirty laundry? Are they strangely cryptic, or straightforwardly obfuscating, as to their age? Do they write anything at all about the preferred weight of their match-to-be? Given their lack of consideration in any of those capacities, I would also wager that you wouldn’t extract much enjoyment from any sexual encounter you shared with that person.
    It’s pretty easy to avoid inspiring a similar snap judgment in those perusing your profile photos. As we know, the elements of just about every site or app intended to put another warm