I have to send a big wet and delicious thanks out to the peeps at Diesel for sending me the new fragrance to try out. So to you: muuuuwaaaah! It’s so awesome to know that people do hear my pleas.

I am not just ecstatic at having received what is now my new favorite perfume, but also for what it has done for me since I got it a couple of days ago. My life has been instantly sexed up! Coincidence? I think not.

Since starting to wear Fuel For Life, I have:

- Written one of my most erotic stories yet (while wearing nothing but the perfume for inspiration)

- Had 3 compliments on my scent—2 from men and the other from a woman—in the same outing.

- Been told: “you smell so good I could eat you”

- Been eaten

- And reminded later on that my scent drove him wild and that he can’t stop thinking about me because he can smell it on his shirt… and me on his face.

See, Fuel For Life really is the sexiest scent around! It brought out my inner vixen and sexed-up my week big time! God knows I needed it.

I am so in love with this stuff that I may just have to document what else it does for me, my libido and my love/sex life.

Remember those old Impulse body spray ads from the 80’s where a girl would pass wearing the scent and a guy would run after her and give her flowers? This works the same way except instead of a bouquet of flowers, the guy wants to ravage you naughty romance-novel style! The ad wasn’t exaggerating when it said “use with caution”!

Thanks again Diesel! Feel free to send along anything else that may get me some lovin’!

I have potty mouth and when amongst friends, when my comfort level is at its highest; I tend to channel a drunken sailor on shore leave and say some things that are inappropriate to say the least, like: ‘Oh, suck my cock!’ It causes the odd mouth to drop, but most of the time it just makes the room erupt in laughter at the sheer absurdity of it all as I am quite obviously a female — one who makes no secret of being proud of her pretty pussy.

After shouting it out earlier, it got me to wondering what it would be like if I did have a penis. I don’t mean that I thought about it in the serious and tragic way that a hermaphrodite might have to, but more in the same perverted manner that I do everything else.

Boy oh boy! What I would do if I had a dick! Let’s discuss, shall we?

If I had penis:

- I’m not sure I’d ever leave home or get much done!

- My carpal tunnel syndrome would become aggravated to the point of debilitation. Yes, from wanking off.

- I would invest the time and energy into advanced Pilates and yoga classes in order to become so flexible that I could suck it myself—something I am stunned more men don’t do.

- I’d most definitely be one of ‘those’ guys, you know the ones; a little creepy and always a little flushed and sweaty, constantly “adjusting” their crotch. The kind of guy whose hand is always kinda damp when you shake it.

- I would save on birthday and Christmas gifts for my female friends and just fuck em’ all properly instead. The keyword being “properly”. Lord knows that I would know what a woman wants a cock to do.

- I’d surely be arrested for indecent exposure and lewd acts, because lets face it: as a sex writer, I am aroused about 20 hours out of my day. Hiding a warm puddle in your panties is a lot easier than trying to hide a permanent boner—especially the mammoth one that I would have. (I’m guessin’ if my tits are this big, then certainly my dick would be too)

- I’d also probably end up in the ER on more than one occasion having tried to twist and bend it in hopes of finding a way to fuck myself. (This could explain the long waits in ER’s across the country)

I think penises are wasted on the wrong people. I’m not talking about all men of course—I love men waaaay too much to bash em’ all. I’m just talking about the ones who don’t do them any justice. What’s the point in having it if you have no clue how to use it properly?

I’d be a proper-sex philanthropist; traveling the world over and fucking women the way we deserve to be fucked: long, hard and delicious.

Oh! I’d also return calls… maybe.

Two years ago, when musing about various elective course options with a group of college friends, I was made aware of a class called ‘Nutrition and Health,’ which according to my sources made “everyone who took it anorexic.”

Paradoxical, right?

And since I spent too many formative years in the sicko fashion world, where anorexia is considered a necessary evil, like a fortuitous strand of the chicken pox, I was instinctively drawn to this idea. A class that made people loose weight? A class that didn’t involve annoyingly fit motivational teachers, weights, yoga mats or crunches? My friend assured me, “Yes. Once you learn what truly makes up the food we eat, you’ll never want to put anything in your mouth again.” I was simultaneously enamored and horrified by this concept.

Now, years later, I’m finally taking a nutrition class. And not in order to lose weight, but rather to make more informed choices about the food I put in my body on a daily basis. Eating right can save you from a lot of scary, deathly diseases down the line. And I’ve noticed that I truly feel better when adhering to a healthier diet. I posses more energy, I write more; I’m more inclined to workout. I’m also generally nicer to everyone I interact with, as I’m not experiencing the emotional pitfalls of ‘sugar high’ and ‘sugar low’ (a big plus as I’m a pretty emotional personal in general, without adding caffeine.) Besides, if we are what we eat, I definitely want to make sure I’m a sleek banana rather than a squishy Big Mac. And if eating right keeps me from snapping at my roommate or swearing at my alarm clock, all the better!

One of the first topics my professor addressed was the amount of mixed messages we receive about food over the course of our lifetime. Newspapers and magazines generate most of this food propaganda, and these sources usually don’t take into account ‘the big picture.’ One day Atkins and his diet are in, the next he’s out. One week Vitamin B supplements are the secret to clear skin; next week it’s fish oil capsules. Right now carbs are bad for us, in two years, they probably won’t be anymore. The media takes a subjective stance on food the same way it does on fashion. Only what we consume has serious long-term ramifications on our health (while the once-stylish orange halter top we wore can only really damage our egos). With the trends constantly changing, even conscious eaters with the best of intentions are being misled. How does the average Chipotle craving, Glamour reading, health conscious girl know who to trust? I really doubt health and beauty magazines are an authority. They’ve been publishing those failed ‘how to have an orgasm’ articles month after month for years.

Those of you interested in eating right read on. Here’s some of the fascinating stuff I learned. I was blown away on the first day!

1. Start thinking in terms of ‘nutrient density.’ Huh? What does that even mean? It means you’ve gotta start thinking proportionally. Choose foods that give you the most nutrients per calorie. Like skim milk instead of ice cream for calcium. An orange instead of orange juice for fiber. (Apparently, juices aren’t even that good for us. It’s way better just to eat the actual fruit and have a glass of water. Who knew?) A can of tuna instead of beef for protein. The goal is always to get more nutrients for the same amount of calories. For me, this way of thinking was revolutionary.

2. Get salad dressing on the side. I almost fell out of my chair when the professor announced that the number one source of fat in a woman’s diet was salad dressing. All the naïve women dieters think, ‘oh I’ll just have a salad,” without analyzing what actually goes into to that yummy mixture of mesculan greens.

3. Diet soda is baaaad. It can’t be rationalized. Diet soda drinkers had the same amount of diabetes as people who drank regular soda. The fake sweetness in diet soda messes with your palate, and your body reacts to it as if it were real sugar anyway. Diet sodas have also been proven to make you crave more sweets. They also limit you from getting good, healthy sugars. Like how many of us have ever downed a Diet Coke and then craved the nutritious sugary goodness of an apple? Yeah, it’s never happened. Instead, we crave salty chips or fries.

4. Fiber is fabulous, but not without water. I pop fiber pills and invest in whole-wheat products all the time. We all know fiber is invaluable to our digestive system. What I never knew though is that fiber can’t be digested by itself. You need to be super hydrated in order for it to work. So start downing water.

5. Dried fruit is not necessarily our friend. Grapes and raisins have the same amount of calories, but raisins contain no water, and therefore aren’t as filling. So you eat way more raisins than you would grapes, consuming perhaps twice the amount of calories, while grapes would have made you full ten minutes ago. Dried fruits also tend to be artificially sweetened (more bad news).

6. Occasionally indulge in the unhealthy things you like rather than eating the ‘low fat’ equivalent. I wanted to kiss my nutritionist professor on the mouth when she announced that if you’re obsessed with Ben and Jerry’s, it’s A-okay to enjoy a small portion every once in awhile. A large, low fat tub of frozen yogurt won’t be as satisfying, usually resulting in eating a lot more of it. And eating more of something that’s theoretically ‘low fat’ isn’t necessarily the best route. She pointed out many eaters view a ‘low fat’ label as an excuse to over-indulge. Most of these ‘low fat’ items aren’t that good for us either!

So I’m no health expert, but my professor is. And I think I’ll be a lot more informed by the time this course comes to a close. I now also understand how ‘Health and Nutrition’ got its anorexic reputation. It’s because as homework we’ll be calorie counting our own diet and writing a report on where we’re lacking nutrients. That means I’ll be literally dissecting all my favorite foods, nutrient-by-nutrient, calorie-by-calorie, and probably tissue-by-tissue as I imagine there will be a lot of farewell Snickers and Pepperidge Farm Cookies tears shed along the way. I’m quaking in my sneakers to dissect my guilty, hangover pleasure food, the Fajita Burrito with guacamole and extra sour cream at Chipotle. Rumor has it that those flour tortillas have more calories than a cup of chocolate mousse. So wish me luck, and happy eating!

I should have known that there was a reason for my latest fascination with Diesel’s fragrance Fuel For Life—other than the delicious models in their ads. Turn’s out that I had smelled it before. Much the way you associate the smell of pine trees with Christmas; this fragrance—the cologne specifically—reminds me of hot, slippery sex for a reason; he was wearing it during our last hot, slippery fuck-a-thon!

Who ‘he’ is, is not as important as what ‘he’ did *wink-wink, nudge-nudge, sluuurrrrp* He rocked my world to unexplainable proportions and did things with his tongue that I never dreamed possible! Daaaammmm….

Before I get carried away by the flood of juices that are filling my desk chair and super-cute capris; let me get back to the whole association between Fuel For Life and yummy (oh-so yummy!) sex.

Aside from the memory of his cologne filling the air mixed with his hot sweat-that-can-only-come-from-fucking-you-so-hard smell; the sexy fragrance has also lingered on my sheets the last couple of days. Every time I pull the sheet up over me, or the breeze comes through my bedroom window; it instantly takes me back, making me all wet and tingly and fills my head with visions of him nicely snuggled between my thighs where he belongs.

Up until now I have never been a fan of cologne on men and much preferred the natural…well… man smell, but this one seems to suit him (and sex) just right. It also somehow reminds me of fall. This may well be because as he was rocking my world, my bedroom window was open and I noticed that the breeze blowing through had that certain back-to-school, fall kinda’ smell and the two seemed to blend just right.

Anyway, I guess I am officially converted and now do prefer men in cologne—at least Diesel cologne.

If the man version smells this amazing; is it safe to assume that the ladies fragrance will too? I’m all about leaving a sexy scent trail behind as I walk past a group of drooling men! Think I’ll have to give it a try and see what smelling it on his sheets does for him…

It seems that my posts about casual sex are quite popular and always result in emails from readers who are curious about this aspect of my life. I recently got asked to describe my ideal sex partner or booty call, so here I go…

My idea of the ideal booty call candidate is very specific. I have this down to a bit of a science really and it has taken many years for me to know what I want in terms of a sexual playmate… right down to the hair color.

And contrary to popular belief: dick size has absolutely nothing to do with it!

The man that I envision as my sexual ideal has traits that stem back to different instances in my life. My European background is responsible for my love of men with dark hair and eyes. I would guess it also explains my love of hairy guys. Yes, hairy.

My preference when it comes to a man’s hair (on his head) and what I find sexy is quite specific: shoulder length or longer, coupled with a goatee or five o’clock shadow. This comes from something dating back to 1994 and all I can really say about that is “Vitamina guy”. Yum. (Nat and Boob know what I’m sayin’!!) The longer hair actually serves a practical purpose as well by giving me something to grab onto other than his chin when he’s lapping away between my thighs! It works in the same manner as reins do on horses.

I also cream myself over men who are very calm and serious—the opposite of myself. I am extremely aroused by a man who has the balls to speak his mind and put me in my place when needed. And no, I am NOT talking about slapping me around! (So help the man who ever makes that fatal mistake).

A calm voice is a huge turn on, especially for a girl who has been known to climax with the right amount of whispering in her ear. If he gives good talk – he’s more than half way there.

The personality of my sexual ideal is a mix of movie men really. I need someone who is part Daniel Day Lewis in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (see pic) and part Mickey Rourke in 9 ½ weeks (we’ll discuss my view on the impact of that film on society one of these days). That would make him a man who knows how to take charge, is sexually open and has the type of insight that helps him to know exactly what a particular woman needs and what it takes to get her to test her own limits and really push her self-made boundaries.

My ideal would also be someone who would make me feel as if I can say and do anything. He could make me crave him in a way that goes far beyond anything that words could ever express. He would also have the ability to make time feel as if standing still when we’re in bed. Sound cheesy? Maybe. But until you’ve experienced it, you can’t even begin to know the meaning of euphoria.

I think every woman needs to know what it is to feel as if you’re the only two people on Earth when he’s deep inside of you and looking into your eyes. Mmm, to be all consumed by someone and wish that you could find a way to get even closer…

Napkin please!

Did I also mention orally gifted??

(Men with ALL of those qualities may send their resumes to me at: adrie@girlspoke.com)

I admit it: I am a huge fan of anything with an ‘adult content’ warning. If it looks as if it may contain something even remotely sexual; I will open it, touch it, read it and even smell it.

My name is Adrie and I’m all about sexy.

I was up to try and make a deadline at about 4 this morning and during a self imposed coffee break; went to the Diesel site to look for a pair of shoes I had seen while in Europe and ended up on this page dedicated to their new fragrance “Fuel For Life”. Well, spank my ass and call me naughty–didn’t the site have two of my favorite things–a hot guy (shoulder length dark hair is always a plus!) and an adult content warning!

This site was way too fun and way too intriguing–so much so that I stayed on for about an hour and almost missed my deadline.

First; all the models are just fucking hot and scantily clad! Next, there’s a little game you can play where they help you find your perfect match and finally; the models are hot! (Did I already say that??!)

BTW — That’s the hot model up there on the right –a.k.a.: inspiration for my mornin’ o’ self-lovin’! He looks even hotter in motion while topless and drenched in rain. Drip. Drip. Drip.

This game lets you spin a wheel and “enter the experience”. I’ll have you know that looking at the initial model with the shaggy hair and great lips helped me to ‘enter’ my experience… twice!

Anyway, you answer a few flirty questions and it takes you to this park with other names scattered across the grass. You click on the name of your choice and get to indulge in a chat with men and women of many tongues. (I could have said ‘languages’, but I seriously have ‘tongues’ on the mind this morning)

Anyhow, it’s just really cool and certainly did its part to help get me off… on the right foot today.

I haven’t actually smelled this perfume yet, but I’m thinking it smells as delicious as a hot, slippery night of sex… minus the musky, sweat smell of course.

Talk about suggestive advertising! I have been plagued by visions of naked, dewy bodies writhing around, tangled in sheets and smellin’ all sexy and sweet–all just from visiting this site. I must be horny.

Anyway, if anyone has any Diesel hook-ups I would love to sample me some asap! (Note how I use this as a mooch-opp? Feel free to send along gifts anytime.)

Guys seem to be moving in slow motion in regards to what women will and won’t do. I see it everyday with the men I deal with and the ones that I am related to and realize that they really don’t get how far women have come when it comes to sex! Many guys are still livin’ ol’ school and thinking that they need to throw in some sweet words or pretend that they feel something that they don’t just to get laid.

Newsflash: Women like to get fucked without the romantic entanglement just as much as the next guy!

Men keep making the same mistake over and over: they aren’t upfront about the fact that all they want is pussy. I know that I’m going to get a shit load of emails from men saying that the reason for this is that women want more, or that we’re too easily offended or put off by such a brazen request, blah, blah, fucken blah.

It’s time to get your tail out from between your legs and fess up. Repeat after me: I think you’re hot, but I am NOT AT ALL interested in a relationship. I would however love to lick and pleasure every inch of you on a no-strings basis.

It’s that simple.

It may seem brash and chances are that you’ll encounter a few rejections, but that’s no different than your odds when you ask a girl out on a regular date—whatever that is these days.

Example of why your way doesn’t work:

Boy sets out having no interest in a romantic attachment.

Said boy then meets uber sexy girl who also happens to be sweet and all around amazing.

Boy carries on as though he is smitten—‘hooked’ if you will.

Boy and girl have many conversations about everything under the sun.

Girl starts to have very strong feelings for boy.

Girl also believes that he really cares about her and is as smitten as he claimed to be.

Boy still wants to fuck said girl, but nothing more.

Girl starts to see that boy doesn’t really feel the way he claimed.

Sadly, girl is in so deep that she’s torn between her contempt for having been misled and her strong feelings and desire for him.

Girl and boy have wicked, amazing, mind-blowing, toe-curling, ultra passionate sex.

Girl tries to not care for boy so much and just enjoy the moment, but is confused by boy’s occasional expressions of tenderness and wants to believe that they actually mean something.

Boy and girl start fighting when her resentment floats to the surface.

Girl decides to forget boy exists even though it is really hard.

This goes back and forth for awhile and boy periodically sucks her back in by saying things that he knows she wants to hear.

Eventually girl gets sick of games and wonders why boy had to pretend that he wanted more instead of having been upfront. Her physical attraction was enough that she would have been more than happy to fuck him silly, NSA, if he had been upfront and not allowed (encouraged) her to feel more. Now girl is so exhuasted by the games that she has given up.

Now boy will probably never again enjoy the sweetness of her pussy, her soft, vanilla scented skin or the feel her amazing touch again.

The lesson here: STOP LYING!

Be upfront about what you want. It is not women who complicate things; it is this miscommunication from day one that fucks up your chances of having the most incredible sex of your life without complications of the heart!

The icicle Christmas lights framing the roof on my dad’s house in suburban Atlanta (AKA country back woods) have been hanging up since I was a senior in high school.

That’s 7 seven years. For seven full years, Christmas lights have been up at my childhood home. My dad argues that it’s easier to keep them up then to take them up and back down again. This is also the same man who loves being at home so much that we used to order take out from Waffle House. In fact I didn’t even know that you could eat inside Waffle House until I was a senior in high school. During my adolesence, my mother designated Wednesday as Eat Out Night. Her idea of eating out? We drove up to the main drag by the interstate and got to choose from McDonalds, Taco Bell, Wendy’s or KFC. If we were lucky, she’d let us choose treats from two places. My brother’s idea of a fun time includes sipping from Miller High Life 40s while driving in circles around the parking lot of the mall twenty minutes outside my town.

It’s time for me to accept the truth. I am black but I still come from a family of rednecks. I told my grandmother that I was thinking about taking a trip to Paris. She asked me how far outside of New York, France was. This same grandmother remarked on Thanksgiving after I got back from the store with a gallon of milk that “Only a Muslim would have a store open on Thanksgiving. They got no religion.”

From the ages of birth to around 5 or 6, white people were a mystery to me. From what I’d gleaned from my family and television, whites didn’t go to church, they were constantly disobeying their parents, and most problems that befell any member of my own race could be attributed to some white person some where around. My parents instilled the fear of racism in me early on and I remember several sleepless nights after I learned about the Klux Klux Klan. When we had a mock school election in 1988, I was in second grade and confused on who I should vote for. My dad told me that Republican stands for Racist so I immediately penciled in my vote for Dukakis. I thought that all white girls must be so happy because their hair was just like a Barbie’s and their moms let them wear it down instead of in braids smothered in hair grease that pulled at their scalps with the weight of the multicolored barettes that hung at the ends of them. I used to get really uncomfortable in elementary school whenever history class would lead to any kind of discussion on civil rights. I always felt like all the white faces in the class were on me so I often raised my hand to let everyone know that neither my parents nor my grandparents had never been and were not currently slaves or sharecroppers.

The racial makeup of all of the public schools I attended was 50/50. But somewhere along the line, maybe in 1st or 2nd grade, it became obvious to my teachers that I was maybe on a faster track than the rest of the kids in the class. Seven-year-olds rarely spit out 20 page long stories complete with illustrations. And rarely were other second graders indulging in books of poems by Frost. So I was put on the accelerated track and as is usual the stereotypical case, my classes went from being salt and pepper with a little Asian and Mexican sprinkled here and there to being mostly salt sprinkled with one or two Jews.

My school days, and then my college days and now my work days, I’m the lone dark face. In most cases, if a white person were to show up and be surrounded by black people, he or she would be a little apprehensive. Everyday I show up and I’m the only black person in my office but thoughts of a white mutiny never really cross my mind.

My roots are back in Georgia, with my very black family in my very country town. No matter how citified I try and make myself, the expensive jeans, the iPod, the roll of the eyes at slow moving tourists along 5th Avenue. . . .I’m still Brandy from McDonough. The girl who spent her first five years not knowing that white people bathed. The girl who until college thought that a real meal out was Chili’s or Applebees. The girl who’s dad’s house has Christmas lights hanging from the gutters and the bushes year-round.

Reentering the city of Milan never fails to make me emotionally unstable. I go hot and cold on this city like menopausal women on drugs. New York and I have clean, adult relationship with one another. Open communication. A stable living situation. Work. Independence. Contained craziness. Reasonable expectations. Good things. With Milan on the other hand, I’ve lived a kind of drawn-out, over-dramatized fairytale with fifty-six encores and five rewritten last acts. And all fairytales inevitably end in bitter disillusionment. As my train pulled into Milano Centrale, I was filled with dread upon entering my old stomping grounds, and stomping grounds is really the most effective way to put it, because I stomped through this town to death. I over-trampled it, if that makes any sense. I don’t think there’s one Milanese adventure, experience, or romance I missed out on during my time here. I’m Done with the city. Done with a capital “D.”

Despite that fact that my relationship with Milano has been permanently poisoned with disappointment and is technically over, I continually return looking for a good time. I’m still searching for satisfaction. I want Milano and I to settle the outrageously high bill of emotional instability it charged me. Now, finally, that search is over.

Soon after my arrival, I popped my Italian TIM scheda into my American phone to use my Italian phone number and start calling to see who was around. It’s impressive that this miniscule SIM card, the size of a thumbnail, digitally contains my entire Italian life. Seven years worth of being here in Italy, or back and forth. That’s seven years worth of drunken handouts of my number, seven years worth of friends, work contacts, and social advancement. Well, this time around, when I popped in my SIM and unlocked my phone, instead of instantaneously receiving obscure casting texts message from agencies that still have me on roll or nighttime invites from PRs who still think I party here, I got an error message: “Unregistered Sim.”

I stared at the phone in utter confusion. Unregistered? Me? I’d had this Italian phone number since I was a child! I proceeded like most people do in a state of panic: I rushed to the Internet. I pulled up TIM’s website and quickly called them from my old apartment’s home phone. I then pressed my way through six zillion automated questions.

No, I did not want to hear about TIMs new promotional service “MaxxiTim.”

No, I didn’t want to check my credit balance.

No, I’m not having trouble sending and receiving MMS messages.

No, my cell phone had not been stolen.

After intense number punching and some annoying music that felt like the audio equivalent of glitter, I finally reached an extremely pleasant Italian woman who sounded like she had a perfect manicure and envious thick, black hair. I quickly described my predicament and gave her my phone number. She asked for my name and the last four digits of my social security number and confirmed that I was in fact the owner of my phone number. Thanks, I knew that. Next she delightfully informed me that I had five euros of credit on the phone. Fabulous!

“Now, I don’t really know how to tell you this Signora,” she went on tentatively. “But on the 17th of July 2007 your number was bought by someone else.”

My face twisted in horror. “You mean TIM sold my number to someone else,” I corrected.

“The phone hadn’t been used for some time.”

“I used it in November and December of 2006. I’m only in Italy every few months,” I rattled in disbelief. “That doesn’t mean you can re-sell my number. I’ve been a loyal TIM client for seven years.”

“Eh,” she made that insanely annoying apologetic Italian noise. “Mi dispiace, Signora. I don’t know how else to put this. That number is no longer yours.”

Amazing. My entire Milanese existence had been obliterated. Who was the poor shmuck who took over my number? Was he receiving random text messages and calls from people searching for my Italian self? I wondered if those people who always wanted to chop off my locks in those hair shows were still texting me. How was he dealing with that?

“There’s an infinite amount of numbers in the world,” I melodramatically proclaimed to the nice sounding Italian female TIM worker, who I now was convinced was a conniving slut. “Why did you have to sell mine?”

The TIM worker had no explanation for this, “Sadly, signora, it’s like this. The only advice I can give you is to go to a Centro TIM store and confirm the information I’ve given you.”

I told her I was never buying another TIM card again and hung up. Mature, right?

Aside from the existential crisis this news caused, it was also a major inconvenience since I’d now be forced to stay on my American number while in Milan, where Cingular financially rapes me with fees like $1 per international text message.

Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, anyone I’d want to see is not in the city anyway, so contacting them is actually irrelevant because they’re all in Sardinia, Formentera or the mountains. Every club is closed, the majority of stores don’t open, and me and my friend were forced to hike almost a kilometer from our apartment to find an open pizzeria in which to nourish ourselves this afternoon. In short, Milan in August is the visual equivalent of a city after an atomic bomb scare.

The plot thickens, however. In a drunken stupor last night I had the genius idea to call the asshole who had the balls to buy my phone number a mere month before my arrival, and give him a piece of my mind.

“If it’s a guy,” my ex-roommate Star said, “I bet you can convince him to give you back your number.”

So I called my old Italian self from my American phone hoping for a male voice on the other end. Instead, I received an Italian error message to the extent of, “Blah Blah Blah Blah TIM, Blah TIM, This phone number does not exist.” This is actually GOOD news because it means my number has most likely not been resold. Had it been resold and active it would have rung, or I would’ve gotten a different error message informing me the owner had their cell switched off. (I’m really familiar with Italian cell phone error messages, it’s like a second college degree.)

Tomorrow I plan to go to a Centro TIM (assuming I can find one that is open) and get to the bottom of this whole mystery. Is this God telling me to once and for all give up on the paradoxical, difficult, glitzy city that is Milan? Is it really time to throw in the Italian towel?

My heart goes out to the unfortunate TIM August worker who’ll soon have to deal with me.

I am such a girly girl when it comes to just about everything but romance. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a sappy chick flick that ends with a big Hollywood kiss as onlookers clap and cheer. I have watched Only You an endless number of times and still cry like a fool during that last scene where the scrumptious-in-that-drugged-out-and-tattered-sorta-way Robert Downey Jr. kisses Marisa Tomei when she gets on the plane finally having realized that she loves him. Fuck! I’m crying right now! But when it comes to the men in my life? Let’s just say that certain romantic gestures make me wanna hurl in a not so pretty way. This makes things very confusing to the men who want to woo me.

Being the kind girl that I am, I have decided to break it down to make it easier for any man who wishes to continue to woo me from here on. (*Nuno take note**)

What I DON’T like:

Bad icky love poems—rhyming or otherwise

Hearing I love you so often that it’s said out of habit more than feeling

What I DO like:

Well written poetry with a sexy or raw edge (Important: said poetry does not have to be written by you if you are not a wordsmith. Just telling me that you thought of me when you stumbled on it is romantic enough.)

Your time… because I know how precious it is.

Showing me that I am worth your time is the grandest gesture of all.

Damn! I am a great catch!!