Dirty talk is an acquired taste. Like oysters, or caviar. Sure, maybe at first bite, dirty talk can seem a little awkward, even unsavory to some. But like a kalamata olive, it grows on you. And soon enough you’re ordering Greek salads like it’s your job and dirty talking like you never owned a copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette. I am not criticizing such behavior. Something about glass houses and stones and throwing them. I dirty talk. I like it. I do it all the time. I want to hear it. There. I said it. As cleanly as I know how. 

My new favorite show is called “Gavin & Stacey.” It’s a British show on the BBC about a cute guy named Gavin and a cute girl named Stacey who work and live in Essex and Wales, respectively. They meet when they’re forced to talk to one another on the phone for work. Finally, after six months of pining, they agree to meet in person. After much nervousness and baited breath and pacing and primping, they discover they’re totally and completely in love and live happily ever after, with only a few hiccups because of their neurotic but hilarious families and friends. Gavin and Stacey heart each other.

I have forever dated older men. Some by a year. Others by four years. Another by ten years. My theory came to be that ten years might be the ideal age difference. I felt five years older than my age, and men were usually about five maturity years younger than their actual age, so if I was 25, my ideal mate would be 35. We would meet at the figurative age of 30. It all made perfect mathematical sense. 

There are few names that a woman should never forget. The name of the person she lost her virginity to. Her mother’s maiden name (for the security of her bank account). Chanel. And of course, the name of her First Crush. 

Now I don’t mean your first crush when you were five in the sandbox. Nor do I mean your first crush in middle school. I mean your first real high school crush. The one that you had when you were a Freshman and he was a Senior. Sure, up until that crush there may have been a hot and heavy make out session in the back of the movie theater following some experimentation with whip-its. But this crush is bigger than that. I’m talking about the first guy who made you realize that you wanted to have sex with someone. That made you think about having sex with him. Even if you’d never done IT. Even if IT scared you. 

For me, it was Dave Waldenberg. 

While everyone on “Gossip Girl” is complaining of the intense heat, mid-blackout, nary a hair out of place, the rest of us know that though humidity is sticking it out, summer has come to an end. (Unless you are very, very wealthy and you can find summer any time of year.)

As Wall Street falters and the Presidential candidates politic their way into November, what is to become of your summer fling? Will you vote for him in the fall? Or will you change parties and send him packing? Sure you spent many a wine-filled eve, smelling of suntan lotion and getting sand in your pants—but is your romance seasonal? Or can it sustain Thanksgiving with your family (and the cold)?

It turns out that J.M. Barrie was ahead of his time. The Scottish novelist and playwright who created the illustrious character, Peter Pan—a boy who refuses to grow up and flies about in a magical land followed by a rag tag group of “lost boys”—has been getting a lot of air time lately. Not because Hollywood is releasing another incarnation of Peter Pan starring Toby Maguire, but because it seems that our generation is filled with Peter Pans. They are armed with Budweisers and the popped collars of Polo shirts instead of the ability to fly and green tights, but their defining characteristics remain the same; they refuse to grow up and they travel in gaggles of Lost Boys.

The sociologist Michael Kimmel recently released a new book called, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, describing this generation of men who are delaying adulthood and the traditional markers of settling down and starting a family and choosing instead to “bro it out” in the Hamptons and “take ‘er easy, and if she’s easy, take ‘er twice.” These men actually see “growing up” in the traditional sense—marriage, family, responsibility—as a loss and as forfeiting the greatness of their youth for the mundane ennui of adulthood.

There are so many things involved in attraction. From clothing to chemistry, a never-ending list of items can be turn-offs.  But sometimes differences are a turn-on, from magnets to men, you know what they say: opposites attract. Still, some things are so repellent, they’re deal breakers.

I truly believe that the number one reason to get a boyfriend is to let yourself go. Not like “let yourself go” in a Britney kind of way – that’s scary – but let yourself go in a “let’s get a little fat together” kind of way. You get to do things in a couple that you don’t get to do when you’re single. Like get popcorn at the movies. Or spend an entire day drinking beer and eating buffalo wings any time between, I don’t know, September and January (football season). Good, wholesome, highly caloric activities that involve a lot of sitting. That’s high quality couple time.

It is with this mentality that I enter most relationships – which is why when I began dating a Manorexic, I quickly recognized the symptoms and got the eff out of there. My Manorexic—let’s call him Craig (as in Jenny)—seemed great. He was smart, handsome, gainfully employed, drank in moderation, and still had both balls – I was sold.

Recently, it seems, I’ve been having the same conversation with my friends. It’s all very Groundhog Day. It begins with my lamenting the fact that I have been more or less single for the entirety of three years. In that time I have dated. Arguably, I’ve dated a lot. I just haven’t dated anyone special. I tell my friends that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. My emotional problems are limited, my looks better than average, my brain sharp as a tack and my vagina waxed.

Everytime I begin this conversation, it inevitably ends the same way—my friends, like a Greek Chorus, chime in, as if on cue, “It’s the city you live in. Los Angeles. You just can’t find a good man in Los Angeles.”

If you say it quickly and repeatedly it almost sounds like a Hare Krishna chant.

I am not afraid to say, that it was Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” that taught me my first lesson in love; if he takes the bed, and she steals the covers, they must be a match made in relationship heaven. According to Paula, a relationship could, and would, flourish if lovers found themselves on opposing sides of the Myers Briggs Indicator.

Living in an industry town, more often than not, I have found myself in the throes of passion with a like-minded comedy-writer Democrat who favors savory snacks over sweet desserts. And most of those relationships have ended in embittered feuds over (I’ll admit) “who is funnier.”

As my mother likes to say, two spoiled brats cannot inhabit the same relationship.

So as I set off on my quest to find my mate of soul, he who encompasses all things different from me, I must first understand how different is too different? What are the differences that will allow a relationship to blossom in the sunshine of love? And what are the ones that will make it rain—creating a thunderstorm of the he-said-she-said-i-hate-you variety?

There is that scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary, where, Bridge (as she’s called) lies on her couch, pajama-clad, bottle of vodka clutched tightly in hand bemoaning the fate of an untimely death for a single person. She worries that if she were to die, alone in her apartment, it is likely that someone may find her decomposing body three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian. 

I too fear the fate of an untimely “single” death. I imagine my distraught mother, overcome with grief, forced to go through my things. Her sadness only magnified as she discovers the true, mind-blowing total of my credit card debt, and then the small stash of “emergency” illicit prescription drugs in my bedside table. I can see her coming to the realization that I’m not the daughter she imagined, but her image of me will truly be shattered when she opens the drawer that I use to store both my vibrators and my financial statements.  I can just see the horror pass over her face, as she realizes that her daughter was not only a bit too sexually adventurous, but also was unfamiliar with exactly what a 401K is.