12

I made a mistake. I drank too much. I didn't avoid a bad situation. I made a mistake. Now I'm left to pick up the pieces, to pick up my pants.
"I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I don't think this would have happened if we hadn't been drinking."
"Oh, I know," Jane said, "Every time we go out, I keep telling myself, 'I'm not going to this time, I'm not going to this time.' And somehow you always seem to get me all liquored up."
"That's not what I mean."
"I know, I know. You don't mean to do it, we just fall into old habits too easily."
"No, you really don't get it. It's not that I'm not happy in the moment, it's not that you aren't beautiful, or that I'm not happy to be here. I am happy with you, I want to be here, with you. It's that I want to be somewhere else, with someone else more."
"Oh. James, this is really unconventional pillow talk."
At that, I lift my head, I turn, and I apologize. I'm sorry, I really am, because I never meant for things to be like this.

11

It had been a while since I had a girlfriend, and I've got an inordinate amount of female friends with whom I rarely, if ever, have any sex. I'm also pretty fidgety, so I move around a lot, especially when there's music playing. And sometimes my voice cracks. So I understand the line of questioning. I really do. It's not like it doesn't bother me though, so you've got to understand where I was coming from.
This guy, this really broish guy at a party was asking me if I was gay. "I'm not," I wanted to tell him, but I didn't think that'd be enough.
"I don't know, why don't I take your girlfriend into that room over there and play with her tits for a while, and she can tell you whether or not I'm gay." Everyone laughed, I gave her a wink. I was sort of broish myself.
I heard they broke up a week or so later. She couldn't believe the look on his face when she told him how unequivocally not gay I was.

10

As a Sophomore, I earnestly believed that convincing a girl to come back to my place after meeting me just once would be like finding a treasure buried in her jeans. I believed the key to such a trove may lie in a perfectly executed pick-up line, and as such, I had been practicing. 'You come here often,' is the only one I still come back to. So simple in its construction, so effortless in its execution, so typical was the response. Laughter, without variation was the song she would sing. This was the thesis of the pick-up line: That if you were to rely upon them, you would perish. In the vernacular of evolution, pick-up lines were the least fit of all memes.

So when Karen still let me buy her a drink after I said, 'What does a 9,000 pound polar bear do?' and she had chuckled because she already knew the punch-line I didn't know what to do. I just froze in time, startled that all those months of being satisfied with swinging and missing, I hadn't even thought to practice my follow through.

"Vodka tonic," she said, reminding me of my mission. She had to hold my hand through everything that night, and I tried to lead with my elbows. "You're cute," is how it ended. That and a phone number.

9

I had been no stranger to awkward sex in the past, but I never thought it could be that bad. Not in my wildest dreams had more teeth collided, or knees knocked against one and other or ass out hugs been thrown like rude epithets at the person who had agreed with a strait face to have me put my penis inside of her. Not for money, or under the influences of some mind altering chemicals like alcohol, or endorphins, but simply to make a baby, and with the expressed intent of finding true love.
We met at an nondescript coffee shop the first time, and made as little small talk as possible. This wasn't how I was used to meeting women, I know this because I remember what happened which is usually not the case. Often I'm too worried, or drunk, or anxious to really be paying attention--most girls don't realize it, but they never actually get a chance to make a first impression on me. Meeting Marie was different, and I remember every minute detail. The tall drink she ordered was a latte and she added sugar, she wore blue jeans and a white blouse, with a leather belt. She smelled like lavender. The toes sticking out of her black saddles were painted purple, and she had on what may have been the most obnoxious pair of sun glasses I had ever seen.
After 20 minutes, we went to a clinic to get blood tests, and when we both came back negative later that week we went to her place, ate spaghetti, climbed in bed and had some of the slowest, blandest sex I can recall. If the drunken party sex I had come to associate with first times were like short form figure skating routines, this first time with Marie was a compulsory event. About half way through she paused as if something was wrong, but started going again, and soon after that we were done. I got up to leave almost without event which was as new to me as meeting a girl sober. Too used to the dance of getting out of bed trying not to disturb my partner--if you could call them that-- which was always more delicate than the dance I had inevitably employed to get into bed in the first place. This was a welcome surprise. I like this. Before I drove off she pulled out a book, the cover was of a 20s era detective novel. I thought nothing of it.

8

I knew at the time that what I wanted was something new, that I wasn't really familiar with. What I didn't know at the time was that thing I was searching for had a name.
When I went to the classifieds, I wasn't expecting a flood of responses from women too poor to buy from a sperm bank, and yet so desperate for the bonds of maternity that would flock to any opportunity for impregnation. I expected that anyone from that set might be just as easy to find in a crowded bar, and that the anonymous sperm donors would likely have no idea that they were partaking in such a noble deed. I hoped beyond hope, in fact, that all those women would fly right past my listing, and move to the casual encounters. I didn't want a fling, and I didn't want a nuclear relationship like my parents had fostered when I was younger.
I want danger, mystery, intrigue, and lust. The thing I wanted had a name. She introduced herself as Marie. She was my girl Friday.

7

Her name was Karen, and while we were each only undergraduates at the time she did go on to do graduate work in the field of Theology. She hoped that one day she could hold some high station in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints which happened to be the most backwards thinking social organization in the history of man in terms of gender roles. As a result of this backward facing philosophy, Karen would never be able to realize her goals.
When she told me about her greater theory of Creation and Prime Numbers, Karen was a Sophomore studying theoretical mathematics. By graduation, we were engaged and set to be married in two years time despite that we would each still be in school. I eventually found my way away from the Ivory tower. I work in hospitality, which is a good outlet for my terrible habit of being polite.
I can't recall a single salient event in the two and a half intervening years between hearing about Karen's greater theory of Creation and Prime Numbers and the graduation ceremony which I quite nearly managed to sleep through, save for this one:
During the Summer separating out Junior and Senior years, Karen and I went to a state park on the Great Salt Lake one night with her parents to eat barbecue. This was before we were engaged, and her mother asked some question about when we would get married and give her some grandchildren. I though this was a normal exchange, I thought Mormans made grandchildren like it was their day job, but Karen was incensed like I had never seen her before.
"Mother, you know I won't be giving you the grandchildren you want. If anything, we'll be adopting. I refuse to believe that there's something special about the love a mother has for her baby just because he sat inside her for 9 months, or because for nine months what I eat is what he eats. The strongest love I've ever known was given to me instantly, when I Jesus into my life. That's the love I want for and grandchildren we give you."
I loved the way the light of the moon bounced off the sea, and met itself again in the same place where the light of the fire was prancing about. It was all reflected at me in Karen's eyes, and for a moment, she was the most beautiful thing in the world, and I loved her.

6 p&p

Like anyone my age I've had my fair share of amateur gropings, and halfhearted love affairs, but I've not yet found something more meaningful. I haven't found anything to write home about. I've looked in bars, in coffee shops, at rock shows, weddings birthday parties and once even at a bar mitzvah.
But now I know what I want, and I have an idea of where to find it. It's not in bars, or dance clubs, or at a speed dating event.
It's not romance I'm after, or a quick score. I want action, adventure, and true mystery. I want to go where no man has gone before, and where no man will likely ever go again.

Ian: You're going to post a classified ad for a girl who just wants to get knocked up?
Steven: No, it's more than that. This is a social experiment. Why do you think your parents got divorced Josh?
Josh: I don't know, maybe because I was a total fuck up?
Ian: No, you didn't fuck up until after they got divorced.
Steven: Your parents got divorced because they weren't in love. You were the reason they tried to make it work for so long. I want to see if absent any prior dynamic relationship of the presence of a child could make love manifest itself. If not, the worst case is that the kid gets a pair of Christmases.
Ian: Yeah, and at least this kid wouldn't have the trauma of seeing it's dad chase another man out of the house with a bat.
Josh: I don't see why you always have to bring that up. It was a very confusing time for me. You know that guy was the shortstop on my dad's company softball team?
Steven: We know, and you thought they were running the strangest drills you'd ever seen. You've told us.
Josh: It was strange! Have you ever seen a shortstop get hit by a pitch while he was in the field?