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We Wish You the Best in Sex and Love!

2008-11-14T17:23:00.000-08:00

Three days ago, Maxim Radio announced it will be no more, and Sirius channel 108 will become a brand new station as of Monday. Unfortunately, our show went down with the ship.

So we just want to say thank you to all of you loyal and part-time listeners for an amazing time! The end of Sex Files on Sirius radio marks exactly two years—to the week—that the show began. And it was YOU that made the show so much fun for us, as we aimed every week to give you men the best information and advice we could from our female point of view. Did it work? We hope so!

Here's the good news: Amy and Anna will continue to work on fabulous other projects.

Amy Spencer will continue to dole out relationship and love advice. In fact, Amy is currently writing a dating book for singles due out from Running Press in Spring 2010. So mark your calendars...if they go that far ahead! And she will continue to write about relationships, lifestyle and much more in magazines like Glamour, Page Six Magazine, Health, Redbook and more. Keep up with Amy at www.amy-spencer.com.

Anna David still brilliantly answers sex and love questions every week on G4's Attack of the Show and has two books coming out.

Anna's second novel, Bought from Harper Collins, is coming out in May 2009, and she is editing an anthology on reality shows for Harper Collins, due out in the Fall of 09. Keep up to date on Anna at www.annadavid.com.

So don't be a stranger. Check in with us every once in a while! And as for your own love and sex lives, we say this:

Keep communicating, keep showing affection, keep talking about your feelings (yes, even you tough guys) and as Amy always says, keep telling her she’s beautiful and she'll only become more so.

Thanks again for rolling (in the hay) with us. It truly has been real.

xoxo
Amy & Anna

Myth Dispelling

2008-11-10T08:53:00.000-08:00

There are certain things you guys believe to be true about women. Some of these are accurate -- yes, we do tend to be cleaner and chattier than you -- but some simply aren't. They're myths.

Myth #1: Girls masturbate rarely -- if ever;
Myth #2: Girls don't like porn and only watch it with you because they're being nice;
Myth #3: Girls can go without sex for long periods of time and not care.

In studio to help dispel these myths and more will be Amelia McDonnell-Parry, the Editor-in-Chief of the relatively new site thefrisky.com, a "daily romp on the sexy side" that covers such topics as Sarah Palin erotica and how not to be a bad ex.

Amelia has worked at Maxim and Rolling Stone and though she publicly claims to be "a little prudish," we're not afraid to find out if that's another myth we need to dispel.

Also chiming in will be returning guest Twanna Hines, she of the Funky Brown Chick nom de plume and sex and dating articles for many places, including Nerve -- as well as her own fantabulous blog.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Did somebody say cougar?

2008-11-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Oh, that's right. It was you guys. Those of you who've discovered the satisfying world of sex with an older woman. Well, this week on Sex Files, we're going to dive down into that world from the female point of view—we're going to give you advice on how to get some from the cougars themselves.

Our first guest is Ilona Paris, licensed mental health counselor, who specializes in working with people who are into alternative lifestyles in their sexuality.

Ilona is the author of the brand spanking new book, Hot Cougar Sex: Steamy Encounters with Younger Men, out this week.

And she wants to tell you all about it.

Also joining us in-studio is the fabulous Debbie Nigro, self-described cougar, and founder of First Wives World.

Here, Debbie keeps her own blog, In Case You Care What's On My Mind.

So tune in and ask all the questions you want to know about cougars—how to meet one, how to woo one, how to keep her happy, and more—from the experts who know!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Did Somebody Say Menage?

2008-10-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's on your "To Do" list. Maybe you've already done it. Maybe you know you never will.

Whichever the case, the threesome remains one of the most discussed, fantasized-about scenarios known to sex. But how do you actually go about initiating one? And is it something you may later regret? Or perhaps a situation you'd like to repeat?

To answer these questions -- as well as any others that arise -- we'll have Lainie Spesier, the author of Threesomes: For Couples Who Want to Know More and Lola Gee, who throws Penthouse swingers parties, in the studio this Wednesday.

Please join us for this three-way (us, the experts, and you) conversation.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Listen to Last Week's Show!

2008-10-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed last week's show with dating bloggers Twanna, known as "The Funky Brown Chick" and Judy McGrath, this is your chance to catch up and find out this one important-yet-frightening fact: What are women kissing and telling about you when you're not around?

If you've already heard it, you may just learn more from another listen. Either way, follow this link to Twanna's blog to hear the audio of the show: Sex Files Audio 10/15/08: What Women Are Saying About You When You're Not Around

Thanks for posting this Twanna!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

The Man's Manual

2008-10-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, there is now a guidebook for how to be, well, you. And we must say, some of the tips in it are genius.

The book is called just that, The Man's Manual, and we highly recommend it for a fun read and some clever ideas on how to get everything you want and need.

Tune in this week as the author Gregg Stebben joins us in the studio to give you some funny but straight-talking tips on how to do all sorts of important things when it comes to sex and relationships.

Like:

* How to become a sex object
* How to avoid marriage
* How to choose the perfect gift
* How to lie
* How to breakup with someone (to whom you've probably lied)
* And, as it says on the cover, much, much more...

Also joining us will be another expert on the guy kind of life, Ron Geraci. Ron is a returning guest, the author of very funny memoir about making it work with women, The Bachelor Chronicles.

We're pretty confident Gregg and Ron will improve your life this week, with the insight you can only get when, you know, you're the ones writing the manuals yourself.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Practice Your Vote: Rate Us!

2008-10-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Turns out there's a web site devoted to rating radio shows, so we're curious to hear what you think!

Go to this link on the Radio Ratingz web site, give us a rating from low-1 to high-5 (like there's any question what we're hoping you'll say) and add a quick comment: Rate the Sex Files!

The good news? You don't have to sign into the site or create a username—none of that malarky. Honestly, it takes about 30 seconds in total. Not even a full work-procrastination minute.

The better news? Whether your vote is great or average, we'll be totally, truly grateful to have you speak your mind. And, well, you know how generous we women get when we're grateful...

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

What We Say About You When You're Not There

2008-10-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

Girls talk. This isn't exactly a shocking revelation. But what, exactly, are we saying to our friends about you? Are we spilling every last detail of what happened between the sheets? Or are we remaining mum on the sex stuff and dissecting every aspect of your personality?

Who better to ask than those who've made a career out of writing about their mishaps and joys on the dating scene?

Tune in and listen to Judy McGuire -- who, in addition to penning the "Date Girl" column for the Seattle Weekly for the past eight years, also keeps up her Bad Advice blog and published a book, How Not to Date, which details all sorts of dates and offers advice on how to escape from the most hellish.

Joining Judy will be Twanna, a.k.a. Funky Brown Chick, whose award-winning blog, Funky Brown Chick, chronicles her feelings on men, sex and many other topics. She's also been called "one of those women who oozes sexuality." Does she belong on Sex Files or what?

Chances are, you're not dating a woman who writes about her sex and dating life. Which is why you need Judy and Twanna to tell you what they're really saying when you're not around.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

TONIGHT: Try Some Full Moon Love!

2008-10-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

We just thought we'd remind you all of our last show's "Sex Tip of the Week," because it's our quest to help all couples come together as often as possible on this big blue planet.

According to research, women are 30 percent more sexually active during the full moon. And the next full moon appears... tonight! That's right, tonight, Tuesday, October 14th.

Like all things astrological, experts can’t say exactly why this happens. Some think that the gravitational pull of the moon affects women’s menstrual cycles, making her more likely to ovulate during a full moon, which makes her more randy overall. But really, who cares why she’ll be riled up? The point is to take advantage of it! So guys? Do yourselves a favor, and find a will and a way to get the woman you love in your bed tonight so you can both have a whole night of full moon love. Getting her howling is up to you.

For more great suggestions from Anna and Amy, tune into our regular live show tomorrow to find out what women are kissing-and-telling about you when you're not around.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Girls Talk about Guys Sexiest Moves Ever...

2008-10-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

Our planned guest won't be joining us this week, but we promised you a show on how to spice up your sex life, and you will get it! In fact, because we like you so much, we've decided to step up the show and make it sexier than we thought possible.

Joining us in-studio this week are three, maybe four hot girls for a real-woman discussion of what makes them hot, both in and out of the bedroom.

We suggest you take this opportunity to be a fly on the wall and listen in as a group of girls talks about sex, uncensored, just like they would if they were hanging out over cocktails. Steal whatever tips you want from our sexy female friends — just don't forget who to thank later.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Join the Sex Files Radio Group!

2008-10-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

As Anna said on the show today, the Sex Files gang has joined modern society by starting our own Facebook group. And we'd love to have all of our awesome listeners show your faces along with us.

We'll use the site as a place to collect some fans, find some new friends, post photos of our cute and sexy guests, suggest links we think you should see, and lots, lots more. What better way to feel a little warm love from Amy and Anna on a chilly night? We've already posted some shots of our guests today, so come check it out and add yourself to the "Sex Files Radio Show" group.

Here, we'll make it easy for you, because we like you that much. Just find us here and join in the Facebook fun! Sex Files Radio Show Facebook Group

Can Women Separate Love and Sex?

2008-09-28T14:27:00.001-07:00

Well, who better to ask than the woman who wrote a compelling, amusing and disarmingly honest piece on the topic? We're talking about Jennifer Armstrong, who co-edits the witty and wise ezine Sirensmag with Heather Wood Rudolph -- who will also be joining us out of our L.A. studio. Tune in to find out if she wants to love you or just be your booty call (yes, we hear this is possible).

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Sex and the Single Mom

2008-09-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

We get calls and emails from lots of you guys who are dating or want to date single women who happen to have an extra appendage of sorts: a child. And as your questions indicate, it makes dating and sex pretty dang tricky.

So this week, we're doing you all one huge favor: We're bringing two sexy, sassy single moms into the studio to explain what single moms want, need and will do anything for when it comes to dating and sex. After all, single moms obviously have sex (well, they did at least once!), and seeing how difficult taking care of a child can be, they may just be dying to have some alone time with you.

So this week, we will be joined by Christine Coppa, who writes for Glamour magazine's blog Storked!, and is currently working on Rattled!, a book about surviving as a single mom due out in April.

We also have Rachel Sarah, author of the hilarious how-hard-it-is-to-date book, Single Mom Seeking

They'll tell you how to approach a single mom, what to say, what never to say, and exactly how to work your way into a single mom's heart and, well, her bedroom. Tune in for what should be a surprisingly fun and sexy show!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Talking Dirty

2008-09-15T07:12:00.001-07:00

You've heard people doing it. Maybe you've even indulged in it yourself, or wish you were better at it.

There's definitely an art to talking dirty. And who better to explain it to us than Ellen Sussman, the editor of the oh-so-sexy-yet-erudite collection of essays Dirty Words and one of her contributors, the fierce and fabulous (and returning guest) Abiola Abrams?

Listen in for a vocab lesson far different than any you've ever had before.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

How to Handle a Tough Chick

2008-09-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

There are all types of women out there, and we want to be sure you know how to deal with all of them. This week, we'll be talking with two cool, tough women.

First, we have entertainment journalist Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna. She's a new guest on our show and author of the cool new book Cherry Bomb: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Better Flirt, A Tougher Chick, and a Hotter Girlfriend, and to Living Life Like a Rock Star, featuring stories from sexy celebrity tough chicks Dita Von Teese, Kat Von D, Katy Perry, Lisa Loeb and others.

Also on our show is another tough chick, returning guest and equally awesome sex expert Jayme Waxman.

Tune in and hear about how to approach them, how to date them, how to soften them up just enough to make sure your tough chick doesn't roll right over you.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Get Her to Love the Real You

2008-09-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

Good news today: Schlubby guys can get the girl, and it doesn't require an overhaul to do it.

We learned this from our guest New York Post writer and reporter Max Gross, author of the hilarious new book From Schlub to Stud, in which he learns how to get a girl to love you for who you really are—schlubby clothes and all.

Also on the show this week was Phil, returning guest co-author of the book What Men Don't Want Women to Know.

As Max explained, it's all about developing confidence, asking out lots and lots of girls (rejection gets easier after the umpteenth time), and letting girls see your talents—are you funny like Max? a good pool player? a good cook?

And it wouldn't hurt to hint to a girl that you'd be happy to let her make you over—you know we girls can't resist a before and after. Just be sure to put off showing her your schlubby apartment for as long as possible.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Schlub = Stud?

2008-09-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

With Seth Rogan burning up the multiplexes and Jack Black a bonafide movie star, isn't it time real men -- aka, non Brad Pitt's, who maybe have a pot belly, some unruly hair and a predilection for non-cleanliness -- got some appreciation?

That's what happened to New York Post scribe Max Gross, the author of the appropriately titled From Schlub to Stud: How to Embrace Your Inner Mensch and Conquer the Big City, who found love -- and a book contract! -- while never letting go of his inner (and outer) schlub.

Want to know how to be who you are and still snag the ladies? Tune into this week's show and let Max show (er, tell) you the way...

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Do You Want to Win Her Back?

2008-08-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I asked some of you guys for your stories on winning back the heart of a girl you loved and lost (or, uh, loved and dumped). Thank you to those of you who responded. And here is the final product, which appeared in the September 2008 issue of Glamour magazine.

So for those of you who need some ideas on how to win her back, these guys sure came up with some genius ideas. Just click on the thumbnail of each page to pull up a readable version:

—Amy

Your Questions, Our Answers!

2008-08-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

You learn something new every week...especially this week. We spent the full hour answering all the relationship and sex questions you've always wanted to ask with the help of our returning guest expert Eric Marlowe Garrison, Consulting Sexologist. Reach him at his new web site: www.ericmgarrison.com.

Oh, the things we covered, like...

How to approach a woman in Starbucks. (Asking about her cinnamon latte is a good start.)

How to talk to a woman you notice when you're hanging out with a group of girls. (This is a great time for a wingwoman move.)

How to slow down your climax for an "early ejaculator." Eric's tips? Use a condom during sex to lessen your sensitivity so you can last a little longer. And here's another great one: Make sure that when you're, ahem, pleasuring yourself at home alone with your bad self, you're not just doing a quick bang-up job in the bathroom. Use the time to practice lasting longer. Eventually, over time, the more you practice and lengthen the time you can keep it up alone, the longer your body will be able to do it with your partner.

And, as always, we talked about much, much more.

So thank you to our great callers, because your unique questions are what make shows like this so worthwhile! And if you have more questions for us live next week, call us at 888-99-MAXIM—or, of course, for you Blackberry folks: 888-996-2946. Until next time!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex...

2008-08-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

...But Were Afraid to Ask: The Sex Files special.

We know you have questions. And we have answers. Or, when we don't, we bring in people who do.

In honor of the ever-perplexing nature of sex -- and all those queries people are plagued with that they're too damn embarrassed to admit to -- we're dedicating the entire hour of this week's show to making it all a bit less confusing for you.

Helping us out in our quest to educate will be returning guest Eric M. Garrison, MAEd, MSc (which, roughly translated, means he really knows what he's talking about).

Call in during the show or, if you want to just be able to listen without waiting on hold, drop us a line ahead of time and we'll make sure we get to it live. Remember, there's no such thing as a stupid question.*

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

*Except, maybe, if masturbation will make you blind. That really is pretty dumb.

Girl (on Girl) Talk

2008-08-20T12:54:00.001-07:00

It was a full of hour of girl talk on "Sex Files" this week -- girl-on-girl talk, that is.

Jude Schell, the author of Lesbian Sex: 101 Lovemaking Positions, as well as our own personal woman who loves women, Maven, told us how to use the kind of information that lesbians come by naturally to enhance all of our sex lives.

Among the tips:

-Slow down: check out all the zones of her body using the many tools you have at your disposal (and not just your main one).
-Get uncomfortable while giving oral sex? Grab yourself a pillow and settle in.
-Speaking of oral sex, build slowly the main event: nibble on the insides of her thighs and then think of kissing her down there the same way you might kiss her other lips.

You want more? Well, then listen to the replay. Because we're here to tell you that no one knows women like other women.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Who knows a woman's body better...

2008-08-18T06:32:00.003-07:00

...than another woman?

No one.

And that's why this Wednesday, we're pleased to bring you Jude Schell, the author of Lesbian Sex: 101 Lovemaking Positions, as our guest.

Some excerpts from the book include:

climax

For women, recovery time between climaxes is minimal or nonexistent. She may be swollen and sensitive, but can usually continue to make love if all the attention is not placed directly on the tip of her clitoris.

lips

Lips deserve the extra attention they implore. Try slow and soft nibbles, beginning on her lower lip. She'll tingle with anticipation when you spend some time emulating on her sensitive mouth.

Who says we don't spoil you rotten?

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Well, uh, THAT was awkward...

2008-08-13T16:25:00.001-07:00

What a fun week on Sex Files. Anna was sorely missed, but we hope our gang of gorgeous single girls in the studio helped make up for the loss. Thanks to Sophie, Tal and Alex, we learned a lot today about How to Survive the Most Awkward Moments in Love, Dating and Sex. For instance...

Tip #1: If you have your eye on a woman but don't want to face the possibility of an awkward face-to-face rejection, consider slipping her a note at the end of the night.

That worked for Alex! After one business meeting that turned to questionable flirting, she looked down to her purse at the end of the night and found a note sitting on top of it, from her business date. On the note was a poem expressing how attracted he was to her. If you're not a poet, you don't have to go that far, but all of us agreed that slipping some kind of note might work. Try writing, "Your eyes kill me" or "I like red shirts" (if she's wearing red) or "Your laugh is infectious" or "You couldn't be more beautiful." Make it a flattering compliment. Then, add your name and number on the bottom, and if your bold move works, she'll call you!

Tip #2: If you think there's a possibility of, uh, getting some at the end of the night, make sure you come prepared with protection. And when the awkward moment comes when you want to pull out your drugstore purchase, ask her first, "Should I get something?"

Tip #3: We were torn on how to avoid the awkward "first kiss." Some girls liked the idea of asking, "Can I kiss you?" but that only works if you're gazing into her eyes, and there's already a staggering amount of sexual energy working.
If not, either tell her what you're going to do, "God, I have to kiss you." But for you nice guys out there who get "Stuck in the Friend Zone," don't ask. JUST KISS HER! She doesn't have to kiss you back. But here's hoping you give her such a good smacker, she simply can't help it.

Actually, there was just too much dang wisdom today to sum it all up here. So let's make a deal: Either catch the replay, or just be sure to tune in next week and every week thereafter so you never get stuck missing our lovely voices again!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Have You EVER Felt Awkward With a Woman?

2008-08-13T09:37:00.001-07:00

We may be able to help. Because, let's be honest, dating and sex are fraught with moments that can turn awkward in an instant.

Asking her out. The first kiss. The contest to see who'll ask that awkward, "Uh, do you have anything?" question in bed.

Well, this week, three gorgeous girls are going to talk about all the this-is-so-embarrassing moments they've had in dating and sex. They'll also give you their advice on how to avoid landing on the red-faced planet yourself. And, as always, we'll be taking your calls LIVE. So if you want to know how to skip the speedbumps and pull off some smooth moves, call us at 888-99-MAXIM. The girls will be waiting...

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Mind-blowing and then some...

2008-08-06T13:09:00.001-07:00

So as promised, we told you all about how to titillate the woman in your life until she couldn't be titillated any more.

Some highlights:

-Get the girl practicing on herself

-Get her going on some Kegels

-Get her the books by our all-knowing guests Susan Crain Bakos and Julie Jeffries.

You can thank us later.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Give Her a Mind-Blowing Oh-Oh-Oh

2008-08-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

Grab a pen and paper and get ready to take some serious notes... because this week, we're going to tell you all you need to know to give your woman a mind-blowing, earth-shattering, life-altering, relationship-changing, incredible, awesome orgasm.

We'll do that with the help of our guest Susan Crain Bakos, sex educator, research sexologist, and author of the new book The Sex Bible for Women.

Remember, guys: If you know what's going on within her body, you'll know juuuust how to touch her to get her all sorts of riled up. (And to our female listeners/readers, it never hurts to learn a little more!)

Keep up with all of Susan's sex insights and tips on Susan's "Sexy Prime" Blog. (The woman in your life will especially enjoy it!) and check out her other books on sex technique:

Also helping us with some orgasm insights: returning guest Julie Jeffries, co-author of Red Hot Touch. She gave us some super-insightful tips last time, and has lots more tips to give, all of which can be found in her book:

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Question-opaly

2008-07-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

So we'll admit it. Our Faye Flam and Ron Geraci show sent you listeners into overdrive and we -- meaning our ever so knowledgeable guests -- were answering questions about every sex problem you can name (and even some you can't). Among the interesting tidbits that were unearthed during the hour:

-One study that was mentioned revealed that 60-80% of men want sex on a regular basis, while only 20% of women do.

-There may be an evolutionary reason why men like porn: scientists have learned from watching animals that a creature who's watching two others have sex may have a chance for his own go after the first guy finishes, thereby increasing his chances of being able to reproduce. So men may well enjoy getting their Jemma Jameson on simply because they're biologically programmed to like watching. How's that for an excuse?

-Foot fetishes may be linked to the fact that when little boys are growing up, there are so many places on women that they're not allowed to look that feet get more than their share of focus; thus an attachment and association between women and feet develops.

-There are devices that can be attached to people while they're watching porn to measure how excited they get.

And this is only a small taste of what was covered. What else was in between and how on earth do all those disparate facts connect? Well, find out for yourself...

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Your Guy "Get-Out-of-the-Doghouse" Card

2008-07-28T18:04:00.000-07:00

Ever find yourself apologizing for all the "ugh, you're such a guy" things you do?

You know, watching too much porn, trying to impress us too much with how much money you have, and still intent on mastering those pick-up tricks to score with women?

Well this week, you'll learn some scientific excuses to use the next time a woman calls you out on your brutish behavior. Yep, it's all because of pure, basic biology.

You'll be thanking this week's guest Faye Flam, who writes about science in her column for The Philadelphia Inquirer "Carnal Knowledge" (which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2006), and author of the brand new book The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the Modern Man.

We'll also be joined by writer and expert of the male mind Ron Geraci, author of The Bachelor Chronicles.

Oh, and we'll also give you a few tips on what science—and experience—has found women love most. You know, just helping you guys get some. All in a happy week's work on Sex Files. Talk to you this Wednesday!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

How to Keep Her Happy

2008-07-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

This week on Sex Files, we handed out some seriously practical advice about how to keep your girlfriend or wife in a happy, pleasured place—both in the bedroom and out. We got lots of great tips from our guests Dana B. Myers and Charlie Myers, of BootyParlor.com

* Listen to her (yes, really actually listen) and ask her questions. As if, you know, you actually care.

* Compliment her throughout the day (Try a simple sentence like: "You look so _________" and fill it in with an adjective like "lovely," "hot," "gorgeous," "beautiful," "cute as hell," or "sexy") to build up to how beautiful she looks in bed.

* Introduce her to new things in the bedroom that will drive her wild and make her want to please you in return.

But as always on the show, we found ourselves talking about a littany of oh-so-much-more than we intended. Like:

* When a 26-year-old male virgin listener should reveal his sexual status to his dates (we voted that an announcement like this can wait until the relationship reaches the bedroom on it's own)

* How a listener's wife who still isn't able to open herself up to sex (literally) even after 3 years of marriage needs to take their issue to a sex counselor. As always, if you have a situation that could benefit from professional intervention, we recommend you visit the American Association of Sexualtiy Educators, Counselors and Therapists at www.aasect.org.

* If it's possible to wean a woman off of a vibrator (yep, it is) and how.

* Why a woman sometimes loves to be thrown down on the bed and taken—which is best accompanied by an explanation like, "You're so hot, I can't take it, I need to have you right now!" Anna said she thinks that 9 out of 10 times, your woman will be into it, and the rest of the females on the panel agreed.

We debated a few topics: Should sex props & toys be introduced through pampering her in a slow, sensual way, or should you just break them out and get hot right away? Should ask if she likes what you're doing in bed or just plain do it?

And if you missed any of it, you'll just have to listen to the replay. And vow never to miss a great show again.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

If She's Happy...You're Happy

2008-07-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

It's a cliché...because it's true. Which is why this week, we thought we'd give you a few tips on how to make sure your woman is happy both outside and inside the bedroom.

To talk about the topic with us, we have an expert His/Her team in the studio with us: Dana B. Myers and Charlie Myers, founders of BootyParlor.com, which is an extraordinary, cool joint full of sexy toys and props that can add a little (or, if you're game, a lot of) adventure to your sex life.

Dana and Charlie will be helping us deliver to you The Ultimate "If She's Happy, You're Happy" Sex and Relationship Guide.

So tune in and find out how to make your woman ooh, ahh and otherwise glow. I mean, come on, who doesn't want a happy woman ready to show you how grateful she is at the end of the day?

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Fantasy Island

2008-07-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

So how did fantasy sharing go?

Well, with two well-known sex experts in the house (one of whom recently directed her first adult movie), we covered some of the most common female fantasies -- and then got you to chime in about yours. Cross-dressing, public sex, and rape fantasies were merely a few of the many typically taboo topics we got on the table. And just to keep things on the up and up and make sure the temperature didn't reach a boiling point, we also had a sexologist chiming in about what our fantasies say about us.

Then we had Abiola leading us out with a sex tip about dirty talk -- which included actual language you can use for sex texts. Did you jot it down? Did you - gasp - miss it? Well, replays were made for people like you.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

What's Your Sex Fantasy?

2008-07-14T18:08:00.000-07:00

Look, we all have 'em. And whether yours are depraved, decadent or downright disturbing, you'd best tune into this Wednesday's show to hear what our fantasies are -- and what we have to say about yours.

Filling in for Amy (hey, we all need a break every now and then) will be Penthouse editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. Rachel is the mind and muscle behind the ever-popular In The Flesh reading series (which Anna will be participating in this coming Thursday) as well as the editor of a plethora of anthologies.

Joining us will be Abiola Abrams, BET personality and author of Dare and Eric Marlowe Garrison, MAEd, MSc, DLSHTM, CSC (no, we're not kidding) as well as you, the listeners.

We dare you to participate.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

A Day in the Life of a Job Watching Porn

2008-07-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wondered who's job it is to watch all those porn videos so they can review them for you, then mystery solved!

Yesterday on Sex Files, we were joined by the gorgeous and intelligent Carly Milne, author of Sexography (basically, a biography of her sex life from her birth until now), and a former editor for AVN (Adult Video News) magazine.

Carly is also the editor of Naked Ambition, stories by pornographers about working in the industry, as well as a contributor to Hooking Up: You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again, a behind the scenes look at sex in Hollywood.

For one full hour, Carly talked about working behind the scenes of the magazine, watching 30 porn films a month (yes, they had their own private cubicles with doors in case any editors, ahem, were really enjoying the films), and visiting live filming on set.

If you missed the show, be sure to catch a replay (times listed below). Or, just rent a copy of Carly's favorite film she reviewed in AVN: Where the Boys Aren't 14. (And yes, we asked too: What the heck happened in 1-13?) Ah, who cares. She says this video by Vivid films is hot stuff.

So is our show, so be sure to tune in again live next week!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Porn Apart

2008-07-07T15:52:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to know the inside skinny on porn -- what the porn stars are really like, how to have porn star sex and maybe even the ways to score a porn star for yourself?

You're in luck. Tune into our show this Wednesday, July 9th, for all that and more from Carly Milne -- the author of Sexography and former porn editor and publicist.

Now who takes better care of you than us? That's what we thought...

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Strip show

2008-07-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

So what did we learn from our chat about stripping? Well, for one, some of those girls working that pole are quite a bit smarter than you may have realized. Secondly, according to Cambridge grad Ruth Fowler/Mimi:

-The managers of the clubs hold all the power. Want to get into a private room? Befriend that guy.

-If you're sitting near the stage, by all means tip! A buck is plenty -- though $5 may get you a bit more attention. But whatever you do, don't just sit there, arms folded, bills tucked away.

-Do not -- we repeat do not -- ask the girl to come home with you. That's creepy! Instead, ask her to meet you for a drink after she gets off. Or, better yet, see if you can take her to breakfast after her shift. That may well lead you to exactly where you want to be.

-Check out stripperweb.com for any and all things stripper.

-Oh, and buy Ruth's book.

Class dismissed!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Strippers in Da House...Sort Of

2008-07-01T00:50:00.000-07:00

This week, we're giving you the inside scoop from females who have taken it off—all off. Partly for your sake, partly because we're curious as hell ourselves: What are those strippers thinking of the guys they're dancing for? What does it take to catch one's eye? And can you ever—without offering money—intrigue a stripper enough to take you home?

We'll all find out together this week thanks to our two expert guests:

Joining us in the studio is Ruth Fowler, author of the new book No Man's Land as well as author and editor and proud former stripper herself, Lily Burana. It should all make for quite a show.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Have You Ever Felt Humiliated?

2008-06-25T12:58:00.000-07:00

Or, should we say, have you ever actually wanted to feel that way? It's a new side of S&M you may not know about, but thanks to this week's show on Sex Files, consider yourself informed!

Our three fantastic guests this week—Rachel Kramer Bussel as well as Rob and Vittoria from www.humiliationpov.com—gave us a crash course in one of the unique ways to get your rocks off: through humiliation.

Vittoria gave us a sexy sampling of how she likes to feed a man's fetish of being put men down—and man, it was like nothing we've heard before, to say the least! She explained how she and the other dominating women on her site do it:
-by telling men they have small packages
-by telling men they're pathetic, lame, and losers
-by blackmailing men and threatening to tell a man's secrets to his wife or girlfriend, and more.

Vittoria and Rachel and the gang also explained how you can try a little S&M like this at home: Introduce the "tease and denial" element into your sex life. In other words, tease your partner by telling them what you want to do to them, but then pull back, deny them the pleasure, and then make them work for it.

A final special treat this week online:

Our Sex Tip of the Week: The Big Blow
Turn blowing into a fun job for the night—and we mean actually blow. Your breath, in a concentrated stream of air, is actually quite a unique tool similar to a light, sensitive touch, but able to create feelings your finger or tongue simply can't.
Try it now on yourself to see: Lightly blow on your shoulder or forearm (wherever you're showing some skin). You can blow circles or straight lines; softer and more intense. Put that blow to use tonight when you're with the woman you love (or the woman you love for now). Blow along her most sensitive areas: behind her ears, under her chin, along her neck, down the spine of her back, then across the front to her belly. We'll let you take it from there, but just know that your light breath will send shivers down her body in all sorts of ways.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

S&M Curious?

2008-06-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

Maybe you've been a little curious about spanking, blindfolds, whips and chains.

Maybe not.

Either way, you best tune in this Wednesday when our guests Rob and Vittoria, founders of the website humiliationpov.com, tell us all about what goes on when you throw a little S&M into the mix.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Had Us a Blast...

2008-06-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

We promised you some tips for summer lovin -- and we delivered.

-Tips on getting yourself a new scent because women have three times the olfactory sensations as men? Check.

-Tips on keeping your romance alive by introducing something new -- whether it's a restaurant, food, or set of sheets? Check.

-Tips on the music, jokes, and movies that will keep her entertained (in more ways than one)? Triple check.

If you missed it, then don't blame us if you don't get any this summer. Oh and you can also tune back in, as Sex Files repeats at 11 pm EST, throughout the weekend and again at 2 and 11 pm on Monday.

Want Some Summer Lovin'?

2008-06-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year when girls' clothes start to come off—because of the season, of course. But why not take advantage of it and heat up your sex life along with the weather?

This week, our guest will be expert Whitney Casey, relationship columnist, TV personality and author of, The MAN Plan (Penguin, Feb. '09). She'll tell us some tricks to bring hot love back into any relationship—even the loooooong-term ones—and explain the science behind why these tricks work.

Also joining us, comedian Lesley Wolff, who can help us shed some light on the, well, lighter side of summer love.

If you want to heat up your sex life (uh, who doesn't), tune in and find out how!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

We Allllll Make 'Em...

2008-06-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

...mistakes in dating, that is. Trust us, we know we women make them, too, but since it's our job to help you guys do everything right to get and keep the girl, we went over a few that some of you could use help with.

Who were our gorgeous, smart guests for the day?
Andrea Syrtash www.AndreaSyrtash.com and
Laura Leu www.LauraLeu.com

They helped us go over some of the most basic mistakes and what we wish you would do instead:

1. Women wish you would initiate asking a girl out and making the date plans—the more detailed the better!

2. Women wish you would be chivalrous. That means opening the door of the restaurant for her, offering to hang her coat. And one suggestion wwe talked about for a while: Please pay for the first date. If you have to make it a cheap date, so be it. But a woman really likes for you to take control there.)

3. Women wish you wouldn't lavish too much praise on her.

4. Women say, "Don't try to impress her too much." If you have a great job or cool car or a skill you think will impress her, let it come up naturally in conversation; otherwise, she'll feel like you're

Of course we talked about many, many other great tips to help you seal the deal. Lucky for you, if you missed the live show, you can catch the show again Monday.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again at 2 and 11 p.m. EST (11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific) on the following Monday.

Making Mistakes

2008-06-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

We all make mistakes. We'd hardly be human if we didn't, right?

But sometimes we make mistakes in dating and those blunders have a way of making us feel somehow less than human.

Want to avoid the crucial ones? Well, you'd best tune into Wednesday's show, where two guests -- life coach and relationship expert Andrea Syrtash and sex writer and hot mama-about-town Laura Leu -- will clue us in on what men can and will do that sends them directly to jail without passing go.

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again on the following Monday.

Handy advice

2008-06-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

You have to hand it to us, we really know to give you practical tips. This week, they came from the co-author of Red Hot Touch, who told us all about the well known womanly "hot spots" -- including the clitoris and g-spot -- but also the a-spot and the u-spot (which can, um, get a mini-erection). We learned about "jilling off," how to essentially give a girl's vulva a yoga class, and moves like "The Wave" and the "Clitoris Sandwich."

If you missed it, what in God's name were you thinking?! Lucikly, the show re-plays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again on Monday, so there still may be time to repent for past sins.

It's Time to Get Hands-On!

2008-06-02T18:43:00.001-07:00

On our next show, we’re going to give you sex secrets using the most UNDERVALUED sexual tool on your body...

Yep, that's right. Your hands.

Our guest this week? Julie Jeffries, the sexy co-author of the brand new book Red Hot Touch , who will give us her secret sex tricks on new and unforgettable ways to touch your woman.

You can read more about the book and purchase it online here: Red Hot Touch on Amazon.com

It will be, hands down, one of the most practical shows we've done in a while to help better your bedroom technique...forever. Don't miss it!

Tune into Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again on the following Monday.

The Secret Things You're Doing in Bed

2008-05-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

We woke up on the wackier side of the bed here at Sex Files today. Our topic? The bizarre fetishes and strange sex habits that some couples are giving a try.

Our guest Ashlea Halpern from Time Out New York (you can find information on Ashlea in our previous post, below) shared her list of out-theres with us. We spent the hour talking about...

* Stomping (a subset of foot fetishists in which men like to be walked on with stilettos).

* Sex with inanimate objects (like "bicycle-sex girl" who did it with her own bike).

* We also hit on sploshing (sex with food), wearing women's clothes, and sexy cannibalism (mukiskitchen.com will give you an idea of of what that's all about).

And thanks to our other fantastic guest, sexologist Eric Garrison, we got down to the science and psychology behind those fetishes. Eric—who has joined us on Sex Files before—is a consulting sexologist and health educator on staff at the New School in New York, and a sex therapist in private practice who helps clients in person, by phone and via the internet. You can reach him here: www.ericmgarrison.com

If you missed the live show today, tune in tonight for a replay (11 p.m. EST, 8 p.m. Pacific). Or, catch more replays of the show on Monday (2 p.m. and 11 p.m. EST, 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. PST). And as always, let us know if you have any comments or questions, as we always love to hear what you listeners have to say!

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again on the following Monday.

Just How Weird Is Your Sex Life?

2008-05-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

How much do we really know about each other's sex lives? According to Ashlea Halpern, a Time Out New York editor who's worked on their recent "Horny" issue as well as the quite controversial fall sex issue -- who happens to have a well-documented thing for olives" -- not nearly enough. Tune in as Ashlea tells us all about the bizarre fetishes and even stranger habits she's learned about on the job.

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again on the following Monday.

Beautiful Girls Unite

2008-05-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

It was a stunning display on today's show, where guests (and super beauties) Tori, Kristen, Jen and Danica told our listeners what works and what doesn't work in terms of wooing them into bed (not to mention your hearts). Missed it? First, know that the pictures posted here aren't of random models we found on the Internet but actually two of our guests (the blond blond is Tori, the less blonde is Kristen -- we don't use words like "super beauties" lightly) -- and then, tune in again, as the show will be re-airing on channel 108 throughout the weekend and again on Monday at 2 pm (11 am PST).

Have Your Eye on a Hot Girl?

2008-05-18T20:30:00.000-07:00

Coming this week, live on Wednesday, May 21: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Hot Girls!

We're going to have three super-sexy hot babes in the studio with us to talk about all the things you'd love to do with them. You know, primarily (1) Meeting them (2) Dating them and (3) Having sex with them.

See, they're kind of like regular girls in many ways, but with one major difference: They're hot as hell! Which is why we wanted to get them in the studio to give you insight on how their kind of woman thinks, and to answer your questions.

So...if you want to know what they're thinking when they see you, what they're talking about in the corner, how to approach them, what to say, what not to say, and how to make a move that leads all the way into the bedroom, tune in this week!

And if you have questions you want answered, call us as always, live, at 888-99-MAXIM.

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and again on the following Monday.

Who's Paying for Sex?

2008-05-18T12:03:00.001-07:00

This week on Sex Files, we talked about men who look for their sex the paid way: with prostitutes.

To help us, we had relationship expert and sexologist Logan Levkoff with us in the New York studio. Logan is author of Third Base Ain't What it Used to Be. Also on the phone with us was Kim Airs, a sex expert who has experience of a different kind: While working at Harvard, she used to have sex with men for money and is proud of it! (Their links are below in our previous post).

Both guests helped us navigate the waters of the topic as we talked about who is paying for sex and where. One statistic we dug up: 15% to 16% of men have paid prostitutes for sex. That number got us a few calls: Some from men who thought the number was far too low. And some from guys who thought it was too high!

And when one caller said he lived in the Midwest and didn't have access to prostitutes as easily, as, say, someone in Las Vegas might, Kim attributed the varying opinions on that number to just that: location, location, location.

Logan and Kim then helped us come up with our final feeling on the matter: For those of you guys who have considered paying for sex but don't want to stray from your relationship to do it, here are some ways to make your sex life at home feel just as exciting as sex you pay for:

1. If this is a fantasy of yours, find a way to express this to your partner. Logan suggests using media to help you: If you are watching a movie where this takes place (is Pretty Woman on cable, guys?) ask her what she thinks it would be like to be a woman paid for sex, and go from there...
2. Role play the experience. Meet your partner out, pretend to "proposition" her as you would a prostitute, then bring her home and do all the things you wish you could.
3. Negotiate a "fee" with your partner without leaving the house, and have her decide what you will get for your "money." Playing the role as if she's doing it for money might make your wife of 10 years feel like a sex kitten she never was before.

Finally, if you are ever paying for sex or plan to in the future, we have one thing to say: Unlike the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who was reported to request sex without it: Please, use protection. Of course, that's true of whatever sex you're having outside of a monogamous, pre-tested relationship. Always safe, never sorry!

Hook, Line and Sink Her

2008-05-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

Don't say we don't talk about what's really going on out there -- and in here.

On this week's show, we'll get down to business with this whole issue of prostitution. Now that the Spitzer scandal has died down somewhat, it's time to ask where, exactly, we all stand on the issue of paying for sex. Are the public figures who get busted for shelling out to get down representative of what's going on in our society at large or are the bold-faced more likely to believe the rules don't apply to them?

Chiming in will be author of Third Base Ain't What It Used to Be (who's also a sexologist, relationship expert and advice columnist) Logan Levkoff and Kim Airs, the owner of the female-oriented sexuality boutique Grand Opening -- who, faithful listeners may recall, we discussed when we had Mary Roach on a few weeks back. (Airs teaches classes around the country on topics such as stripping, the g-spot, anal sex, sex tips for guys and sex tips for gals, and S&M, among many other topics.)

And, of course, we hope to hear from the people we do it all for -- that is, you.

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and on the following Monday.

Charm School For Boys

2008-05-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Men know what it's like to pursue. It's what prevents them from being alone. Right?

Not so fast. We had the Art of Charm guys -- Jordan Harbinger, Johnny Dzubak and Joshua Pellicer -- in the house and according to these three, a skilled man can get women to come on to him. And he doesn't have to be the best-looking or smartest one in the room, either.

Like a lot of the seduction teachers out there, these guys believe that projecting confidence is key. But unlike some of those others, The Art of Charm guys aren't trying to mold men into semi-jerks or cartoonish attention-seekers. Subtly projecting confidence by truly coming to believe that they're worthy is the path the A.O.C. guys feel leads to success. And body language plays a huge role. If you missed the show and want to hear the one thing that could potentially change your life, know this: never, whatever you do, lean in toward a woman when you're talking to her because you're projecting neediness. (Who knew?)

While our triumvirate helped out a couple of the callers (one in particular, who wanted to know how to get a girl he'd met the week before to pursue him -- the answer was to name when and where he wanted to see her next, forcing her to come to his part of town), those who want more need only sign up for one of their workshops. And if you do, tell them Maxim sent you. And then, of course, call into the show and regale us with stories of your success.

Speaking of which, we always want you to remember that we're here to help you. Send us your questions (either to Anna through annadavid.com or to Amy at amy-spencer.com) so we can. Each week, we'll pick one question to answer on the air. (And we never have to even know if you were leaning in when you were typing it!)

Make Her Chase YOU!

2008-05-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, when we're giving you guys tips on picking a woman up, we’re telling you how to approach her. Well, this week, we're turning the tables on the typical pick-up to talk about the art of the She-Chase.

Our guests this week will be dating coaches Joshua Pellicer and Jordan Harbinger of The Art of Charm. www.TheArtofCharm.com. They've appeared on our show before, as well as on Covino & Rich, so many of you may already know them. Well, this week, instead of telling you how to approach a woman, Jordan and Joshua will teach you how to use body language and subtle signals to make her want to chase you.

And to see them in action, check out the video show at Current TV's current.com: The Art of Charm on Current TV.

And if you have any questions or comments you're hoping we hit on this show, feel free to comment here and let us know. Then tune in live on Wednesday to hear it all go down!

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific), throughout the weekend, and on the following Monday.

The Wacky World Behind the "Bonk"

2008-05-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

We had an entertaining and eye-opening show this week, thanks to our guest, best-selling author Mary Roach, who walked us through what she learned writing her new book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

Some of the highlights:

As we've discussed before on Sex Files, only a small percentage of women are able to climax during sex. Mary backed this up by saying that according to her sex research, she found only 20% to 30% of women are capable of it. And there may be an interesting reason why: Thanks to research done by Princess Marie Bonaparte (great grand-niece to Napolean), the distance between the clitoris and the vaginal opening for most women is about 1 inch.

Research found that women who measure shorter than 1 inch from the clitoris to the vaginal opening are the ones more likely to climax during orgasm. This is most likely because they are receiving more clitoral stimulation during sex, by virtue of their lucky anatomy. Marie is said to have tried to move hers closer during surgery (yikes) but for the rest of the women out there, we say as always: Stop making that a goal! Enjoy the rest of what you get out of sex, and climax every other way you know how.

Speaking of what's normal and not, Mary explained another sex fact she found: The majority of male penises are actually crooked, not straight. The most common condition? "Like Communists," Mary said, "they lean to the left."

Mary also told some funny stories about participating in a sex study herself (which involved having sex under an ultrasound), and seeking out bizarre sex toys (like the sex toy Anna once got to try, that allows you to view what's going on inside with a microscope). Man, talk about a way to ruin the mood! That probably explains, said Mary, why those toys didn't sell so well...

As always, we enjoyed getting your phone calls and answered as many as we could on the air—most of them involving questions about erectile dysfunction, which Mary's book covers in much more detail than we could. If you liked the show or want to know more, buy yourself a copy of Bonk at any major bookstore, or keep up with Mary Roach on her website: www.maryroach.net

And, if you missed the live show, tune into the replays, and catch us live again next week!

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific) and throughout the weekend, and on Mondays.

Sex, Unmasked

2008-04-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

You guys best get excited. Because this Wednesday, we have none other than Mary Roach as our guest. Roach, hailed as the "funniest science writer in the country" by The New Yorker, is the best-selling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, both bestsellers.

Luckily, Roach next decided to turn her sharp mind and unique wit to Maxim listeners' favorite topic: sex. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex covers such topics as penile transplants and internal orgasms, among many other things. And not only did Roach participate in a sex study (along with her husband) as part of her research but she also manages to approach the birds and the bees from a clinical yet wry perspective.

And who can't benefit from that?

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific) and throughout the weekend.

Sex on the First Date Debate: The Conclusion

2008-04-24T12:05:00.001-07:00

So what did we learn from our "Sex on the First Night Debate"? Well, let's see.

We had two well-known sex and relationship writers, Sascha Rothchild and Elise Nersesian, as our guests and all four of us chimed in on the time-honored ritual of putting out immediately.

Our anecdotes varied (Sascha spoke of a Ninja she bedded who charmed the literal pants off of her before disappearing into the night, Elise of a man who she waited many dates to sleep with who also pulled a cut and run, Amy of the fact that she needs to be really comfortable with a guy to even enjoy sex anyway so she rarely even has the desire to bed down right away and Anna of the guy she slept with on the first night because she felt he was so good-looking that she would rather give him a reason to blow her off immediately than have to deal with really trying to date him). The ultimate conclusion? There is no right answer.

Some callers opined that if they like someone, when she chooses to let him in doesn't make a bit of difference while others admitted that they operate under the old double standard and lose respect for her but keep some for themselves if she gives it up that first night.

But the caller who probably summed everything up the best was the one who simply begged us to stop overanalyzing everything.

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific) and throughout the weekend.

The "Sex on the 1st Date Debate!"

2008-04-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

Now we're pretty sure that when most of you guys go on a date with a girl, you have an ideal plan in mind.

Maybe it starts with some cocktails, maybe a bite to eat, maybe a quick stop to listen to your friend's band play some live music.

Yet for most of you, your ideal date ends in the same place: in bed.

(Not all of you, of course, but most of you.)

But we women? Well, we're torn on that one.

On one side are the girls who say, "Why not? Just do it!"
On the other side are ones who say, "No way, Jose!" (or Bob, or John, or Mark or Nate or Titus or Greg...)

Well, we want to work this out and decide what to do once and for all. And we'll be talking about that this week during our "Sex on the 1st Date Debate!" Find out what side Amy & Anna are on, and call in with your own thoughts at 888-99-MAXIM.

Tune into the Sex Files live on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific). The show replays at 11 p.m. EST (8 p.m. Pacific) and throughout the weekend.

Say It Isn't True, Guys!

2008-04-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

If you missed out on the show this week, try to catch a replay. It was a fun one! Our guests for the week were Phil and David — formerly known as Smith & Doe. They are the authors of the book What Men Don't Want Women to Know.

It was an, ahem, interesting list, to say the least. On the top of it? A statistic the authors got from interviewing 18,000 guys: Phil & David say that 96.4 percent of men have cheated, are cheating or will cheat. Ouch. As you can imagine, we girls didn't buy that high of a number. But the guys persisted with this analogy:

Phil said, basically: Let's say a guy is walking down the street and a hot girl approaches them, saying, "Hi, I'm going out of town tomorrow, and I have a fancy hotel room upstairs, and I'd like to give you great free oral sex for 10 minutes..." They claim no man would turn a deal like that down because there is no chance of being caught, and because the act of cheating sex itself is as benign to guys as eating a hamburger. They say it's true no matter how devoted he is. Hmm, we still don't buy it.

But more important, asked Anna, "Where the heck are all these women who approach men to give free oral sex with fancy hotel rooms rented upstairs?!"

And I want to know: What kind of hamburger?

We got a mad influx of listener calls (at 888-99-MAXIM as always) that ranged from proponents who said, "They're right on!" to a guy who called them way off and real "jokers." One caller then berated them for breaking the guy code and spilling the secret beans.

Now, Anna & I couldn't help but disagree with most of the things Phil and David said (Hey, we're women and proponents of strong relationships built on monogamy and faithfulness and trust...remember those?) But we had to admit, they made a few good points. (But don't worry, Amy was not officially "converted" to the Smith & Doe way!)

One is that the reason most men cheat is that they are searching out what David called "profound newness." Our advice? Create this profound newness at home with your partner. You can do this by trying new positions, doing it new rooms, or taking a special night or weekend to get away from the boring home environment you're used to. It can do wonders for a stale sex life.

Another interesting point they guys made? As David put it, "Fear does wonders for a relationship." While we don't agree you should be on edge about your partners whereabouts at all times, we do think you should treat your relationship like you're going to lose it — in other words, with great care and kindness. (And that goes for men and women.) Be proactive about your relationship. Keep on it. Stay close. And keep those lines of communication open.

Hey, what better way to avoid your partner encountering someone on the street with a fancy hotel room upstairs...

Tune in again next week to the Sex Files on Sirius Maxim channel 108. We're live every Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. Pacific) for more great love and sex insight from the girls who can double your chances at pleasure!

What Men Don't Want Women to Know

2008-04-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, we know it's weird that as women, we're telling you what it is that men don't want us to know. Don't ever say we don't pull off miracles for you guys!

The co-authors of the best-selling What Men Don't Want Women to Know: The Secrets, The Lies, The Unspoken Truth will be our in-studio guests on Wednesday, April 16th. Though their identities still remain a secret -- their lives may well be at risk by disclosing such top-secret information -- we will get them to tell us what it is they say is true for their gender.

You're not going to want to miss this one...if only so you can call in and defend yourself!

The Motion of the Ocean

2008-04-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

Try this one on for size: It doesn't matter.

That's right. Forget what you learned from those snippets of Sex and the City that you caught, forget those nagging thoughts...

What we talked about on the April 8th show was the fact that most women know that it's not what you've got but what you do with it that matters.

Our first guest, Mason Love, discussed male and female sexual partners she's had and gave tips on using other body parts in bed -- namely, the hands (her motto: "Get inside, stay inside.")

Sex and relationship counselor and best-selling author Ian Kerner, Ph.D. joined in halfway through the show and urged listeners to get cliterate -- in other words, to educate themselves about female sexuality, which will in turn give them confidence in the sack. Dr. Kerner pointed out that the nerve endings in the clitoris that are the most responsive are closest to the outside, clarifying once and for all the fact that bigger definitely isn't always better.

One of the listeners who called in wanted to find out how to get his kissing groove back (prescription: getting back on the horse and remembering that every woman is different so he should just do what he likes -- but also remember not to neglect the lips) and another talked about premature ejaculation, a specialty of Kerner's (you can read one of his written-out answers to a question like this here).

Be sure to check out Ian Kerner's many books (his latest is Sex Detox: Recharge Desire, Revitalize Intimacy, Rejuvenate Your Love Life) and, of course, to tune back into Sex Files on Sirius Maxim Channel 108 next Wednesday at 2 pm EST (11 am PT) for the latest information and insights on sex and love...

Coming This Week...

2008-04-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

You know what they say: It's not the size of the ship...it's the motion of the ocean. And it's true!

On our next show, we will tell you WHY it doesn't matter how big, small, skinny, short or tall you—or your favorite body part—are. It's what you do with it all that matters. So tune in for some tips on how to get the motion of her ocean rocking.

Tune into the Sex Files on Sirius Maxim Channel 108, Wednesdays at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. PT) to hear us discuss how you can get it more and get it better.

Turning Her On...And Not Turning Her Off

2008-04-02T17:03:00.000-07:00

April 2, 2008: Our guest on this week's Sex Files was the super sharp (and supergorgeous) Lauren Frances, PH Double D:

Lauren is a love coach and author of Dating, Mating and Manhandling: The Ornithological Guide to Men, a book that, while written to give women insights on how to attract and land a man, is also helpful to you males — because if you know what a woman is learning to snare you, you'll earn insight into what to look for, and how to turn her on.

Lauren provided heaps of great insight. One of the most important is the first thing you should do on a first date. "Guys," she says, "compliment a woman within 2 minutes of meeting her." Why? Well, you may think that holding back will put you in a power position or make you seem coolor, but the fact is, says Lauren, "all women are insecure about their bodies. Even supermodels." So when you see your date walking down the stairs toward you, find something to compliment about her within those first 2 minutes. And by the way, the old standby — "Wow...you look gorgeous" — always works.

But if it's a Playboy model you're trying to compliment, go for an unexpected compliment, like, "Hey, you're really smart." Or take Anna's advice that will make any woman feel clever: When she asks a question, say, "Wow, that's a really good question." Because the better she feels about herself, the more likely you'll both feel better...together.

Check out Lauren's site at www.Laurenfrancesphdd.com

And tune into the Sex Files on Sirius Maxim channel 108 next Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. PT) for more great love and sex insight from the girls who can double your chances at pleasure!

Who Are We?

2008-03-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Amy Spencer is a sex and relationship journalist and radio host. She writes about love and sex for Maxim, Glamour, Real Simple, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Match.com, and msn.com, among other publications. She was a launching editor of Maxim magazine in the U.S. as well as a features editor at Glamour, thus mastering both sides of the dating and relationship jungle. And following in the footsteps of fellow relationship experts Greg Behrendt and Dan Savage, Amy was a recent blogger for Chemistry.com's The Great Mate Debate. She has appeared as an expert on NBC's Access Hollywood, CBS' Entertainment Tonight, E's True Hollywood Story, VH1's Naked Hollywood, VH1's Christina Aguilera, the Fox News channel, and G4's Filter. She has done dozens of radio interviews around the country on FM, XM and Sirius radio. For the past four years, Amy has been the resident relationship expert on the Sirius Maxim channel, with a former weekly appearance on The Covino & Rich Show, and as a relationship expert on Howard Stern's Howard 100 News. Amy currently co-hosts the Sirius Maxim channel's #1 specialty show, Sex Files, a weekly live call-in advice show about love, sex and relationships.

In addition to answering viewers sex and relationship questions on G4's Attack of the Show, Anna David writes novels (the rights for her first one, Party Girl, which HarperCollins published in the summer of 2007, were snapped up by Sony Television while her second, Kept, is being published by Harper in March of 2009), blogs (about reality shows for foxnews.com and sex and relationships for wetv.com) and has talked about pop culture and sex on The Today Show, Hannity & Colmes, CNN's Showbiz Tonight, VH1, MTV, and E! among others. Anna wrote the sex column for Razor magazine and has written reported stories, celebrity profiles and first-person essays for The New York Times, The LA Times, Playboy, Details, Cosmo, Redbook, Maxim, Stuff, Movieline, Variety, Premiere, People, Us Weekly, TV Guide, LA Confidential, The New York Post, Women's Health, Ocean Drive and Esquire UK, among others. Her website, annalyticalanswers, houses many of her Attack of the Show clips as well as additional questions she answers for viewers. In April, 2008, Anna joined Amy as the co-host of the Sirius Maxim channel's Sex Files.

If We Met in a Former Life, Maybe He Was Straight Then

2008-03-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, March 25, 2007
Modern Love

By ANNA DAVID

"He’s gay, you know,” Bonnie said.

We were sitting on stools at a bar on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, surrounded by Amstel Light bottles and cigarette smoke.

“Really?” I gasped.

“Really. And not just gay. Very gay.”

From across the bar, Brian caught my eye again and we gazed at each other lustfully. Bonnie had introduced us only moments before, and I was struck by the “love at first sight” lightning bolt.

Of course, I had felt such lightning bolts before. At 25, I couldn’t yet fathom relationships built on trust and mutual compromise; I saw only fables and romantic comedies. Love, I was convinced, happened in a lust-filled instant, and there was no mistaking it for anything else.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Bonnie and made my way to Brian’s side.

“Oh, my God, Bonnie just told me,” I blurted to him, knowing I didn’t need to finish the sentence. I felt confident that the lightning bolt hadn’t only struck me; from the moment Bonnie had introduced us, Brian and I hardly had taken our eyes off each other. The news about his sexual orientation felt worse than disappointing; it actually seemed intrusive, like it was infringing on the course nature wanted us to take. “Is it true?”

“It is,” he said. “I mean, I always have been. But maybe I don’t know."

That opening, combined with the sight of his sparkling hazel eyes and perfect cheekbones, was enough for me. “I’m buying us shots,” I announced, certain that my bar order was the only thing we needed to reach the next step.

Though Brian was, in fact, “out,” he fit my profile of what I imagined a sartorially straight man might look like: he was dressed in a button-down shirt, gray slacks and basic black non-designer shoes, with no product in his hair.

And there was the matter of the eye contact we kept having not to mention that he seemed far more interested in cornering me for one-on-one conversations than other gay men I had met, who would start off talking to me alone but then trot me over to their friends as if I were a show-and-tell item, usually urging me to be “fierce” and funny.

By the end of the night, I was pretty sure this was love, and when I reconnected with Bonnie, she gave me all the confirmation I needed. “I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head, “but Brian is into you, too. This is just too bizarre.”

With that, I went up to Brian to say goodbye, and he asked me out for the next night. I nodded, giddy, and we kissed goodbye on the lips, in the bar, with seemingly no worries over who might see. What kind of a gay guy does that?

I figured the conversion process was more than halfway through.

When I was getting ready for Brian to pick me up the next night, I found myself more excited than I had ever been for any other date. There was something fabulously intense about an attraction so deep that it transcended the standard definitions of sexual orientation. The notion of a date with a regular old straight guy, who wouldn’t have to sacrifice or defy anything to go out with me, seemed downright dull in comparison.

Over steak and red wine, Brian and I wasted no time in psychoanalyzing his past. He told me about a traumatic incident in his adolescence involving his then-girlfriend and his brother, and how it led to feelings of betrayal and shame that he didn’t know how to handle. Soon after, he hooked up with his first guy.

“My God,” I said, pouring more wine for him. “You’re not gay. It’s just that a traumatic event made you think you were gay.”

Brian shrugged.

I leaned in so that our faces were inches away from each other.

“Maybe I’m bisexual,” he said.

I was willing to accept that. After all, this transition back to straightness might be slow for my new boyfriend.

I nodded and he kissed me a real, passionate kiss.

After dinner, we went to a bar across the street, and although it wasn’t a gay bar, we immediately ran into two gay guys we both knew. One of them, Matt, was hostile to me, even though he had been quite friendly when I met him a few months earlier and he had been hitting on one of my gay male friends.

When Brian went to the bathroom, Matt turned to me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“What are you talking about? You mean, with Brian?”

“Of course I mean with Brian. What kind of game do you think you’re playing?”

“We’re just hanging out, nothing to get worked up about.”

In truth, I imagined that Brian and I were setting new standards of what love could be, but I knew Matt wouldn’t make an appropriate confidante.

Anyway, shouldn’t I be the one concerned that Brian might be playing games with me? After all, I was doing what I had always done: going out with a man. Brian was the one betraying his group.

WHEN Brian came back from the bathroom and Matt went off to smoke, I told him what had happened. He shook his head. “We used to date,” he said of Matt. I should have known; Matt probably wouldn’t be the last of Brian’s exes to have a problem with our transcendent love.

Brian and I went back to my apartment, where I opened a bottle of wine and we both lighted cigarettes. Soon we started kissing. As we kissed, I started to move Brian toward my bedroom, but when we got to the door, he stopped. “I don’t feel comfortable doing anything more,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, feeling like he was suddenly backing out on the courageous and important journey we were taking together.

“Look. That’s all I want to do.”

“No pressure,” I said, kissing his neck.

Brian calmed down, and as we cuddled I tried to erase from my mind the notion that I was someone who puts pressure on men in bed. After a while, we just lay there trading cigarettes and sad stories about our respective dysfunctional families and the times we had been in love or thought we had been in love, doing the postcoital thing without any coitus.

We fell asleep spooning, and during the night I had a dream that took place in Washington, which ordinarily wouldn’t have meant anything, except that when I told Brian about my dream, he said he was born in Washington.

That sealed it: We were soul mates who had been together in previous lifetimes. Given my weakness for storybook love and my well-established history of spontaneous passion (my third date with one guy was, essentially, a move from San Francisco to Los Angeles to live with him), this seemed the only possible explanation for our unlikely and illogical connection.

When I shared these thoughts with Brian, though, he only smiled warily.

Over breakfast, he took a deep breath and gave me the apologetic look I had been dreading from the beginning. “I think you’re fantastic,” he said. “But I have to tell you: I really think I’m gay.”

“But. ” I sputtered. “What about what you were saying about being bisexual?”

“I know I said that,” he said. “But after last night, I think I realized that it’s not true. I’m just gay.”

“But you’re attracted to me. You said it! A few times!” Horrifyingly, I found myself on the verge of tears.

“I know. And I do think you’re very attractive. But I just can’t do this.”

Unconvinced (or in full denial), I later stopped at a spiritual bookstore in West Hollywood that I had passed many times and barely noticed. I was looking for some comfort, some explanation, some confirmation that what I had experienced with Brian was as real and important as I thought it was.

And there, among the collections of crystals, affirmations for inner children and books about creating your own destiny, I found it, the book I had subconsciously been seeking: “Only Love Is Real: A Story of Soulmates Reunited,” by Brian Weiss, M.D. That fact that the author’s first name was the same as my soul mate’s only confirmed that this was the book for me.

I had never been one for self-help or spiritual books, but I was riveted by every word of “Only Love Is Real,” which explained that not everyone was comfortable with the notion of previous lifetimes, let alone the concept of meeting and falling in love with the same person over and over again. I hadn’t exactly been comfortable with it, but now, with Brian, I had come around.

Brian would come around, too, I thought, as I underlined and dog-eared passages and pages I found significant.

THAT night I carried the book along to dinner with Bonnie, certain she would support my exciting new discoveries.

But she, who was as logical and wise about love as I was dramatic and superficial, just shook her head. “Anna, you’re going on no sleep, ranting about how you’ve fallen in love with a gay guy, clutching this crazy book,” she said. “I’m worried about you.”

I slipped the book back into my purse and willed myself to talk about something besides Brian.

I wish I could say that Brian came around. But as days passed without even hearing from him, and then weeks, I had to confront the inevitable.

In the end, it would be months before we ran into each other again, at a bar in Los Feliz, and this time when our eyes met he glanced at me with embarrassment the kind of look I imagine a straight guy might give a gay guy he accidentally ended up in bed with one night when he was feeling experimental.

“I’m so sorry for getting you all mixed up in my confusion,” he said. “I was going through a rough time then.”

A rough time? Confusion? I had so many questions, but my ego and pride (not to mention my suspicion that he wouldn’t have any answers) kept me from doing anything but smiling kindly. “It’s O.K.,” I said. “I understand.”

And I did. Sort of.

Not long after, I came across “Only Love Is Real” in my bedside reading pile and promptly tossed it into the trash, thereby letting go of both Brians at once.

Our love, of course, hadn’t been real, those previous lifetimes had all been in my head, and the only lightning bolt to strike me was the undeniable reality that, with all due respect to Kinsey’s sliding scale of sexual orientation, sometimes gay really means gay.

There's NoSpace for Your Privacy

2008-03-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Times, July, 2006

By Anna David, Special to the Times

This wasn’t love or “friends with benefits.” It was somewhere in between the two, minus anything remotely resembling love or, for that matter, friendship. We were, to use a term I’ve always found creepy, lovers.

He was a fan of “social networking” websites such as Friendster and MySpace. He had, in fact, originally asked me out through Friendster – though only because an email he sent to my regular email address never arrived (a sure sign that the universe had at least made an attempt to protect me).

The entire time we were dating, he seemed to log onto Friendster nearly every day to add photos or captions or new favorite songs – something I swear I wouldn’t have noticed if Friendster didn’t regularly send out cheerful e-mails announcing such developments. Bulletin: Death Cab for Cutie now makes his favorite music section. His constant attention to his Web profiles put me in the tenuous position of being able to take his emotional temperature in the third person – a weirdly “outside” inside view of the relationship.

This hit home on the day, some time between when we met and started sleeping together, that he altered his answer to “Who I Want to Meet.” He expressed desire for skills and attributes I did not possess -- a pretty singing voice, good taste in wine. Finding out that he longed for a cyber girl with skills one might find on an average resume was quite a blow. And not terribly subtle.

The next guy I went out with mentioned the MySpace Top 8 (if you don’t know what that is, I sincerely congratulate you on having a life) on our first date; by the second, he’d moved me onto his. When, on our third date, he asked me when we should change our respective status to “in a relationship,” I told him it was too soon, but the next time I logged onto MySpace, I saw that he had made the move. Simultaneously flattered and pressured, I upgraded my own box within days.

Unfortunately, our Internet claims turned out to be premature, and I found myself breaking things off with my MySpace relationship partner within weeks of having announced it to the 76,509,622 people in my network. Then I was faced with an undeniably modern dilemma: what was the appropriate amount of time to wait before proclaiming myself as single again?
It seems like you can’t turn on the television without seeing an EHarmony commercial featuring two made-for-each-other looking people clutching one another giddily, or go to a dinner party without hearing about some friend of a friend who met the greatest guy or girl on Friendster or MySpace or Nerve or JDate or fillintheblank.com. But my experiences led me to wonder if this revolutionary social tool is actually making the dating process even crueler than it already is.

Did I really need to know that the guy I was seeing was out advertising for my replacement while continuing to sleep with me? Did the one who’d been so ready to claim me in his inner circle of eight (and then his inner circle of two) really need to see how quickly I could expunge him from my cyber world?

That’s not even taking into consideration all out exes, who are surely sprouting up on those websites by the nanosecond. Must we experience the horror of seeing who’s happily in another relationship -- complete with photo documentation of said happy couple – or even worse, married?

I’m probably not a good person to ask. After all, I waited only 24 hours before declaring myself single again, figuring that while I was making My Space my own again, I might as well demote him from my Top 8.

I can only hope that the next guy I meet is a Luddite.

For Guys: A Guide to Girl Talk

2008-03-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

This article is currently published on Match.com's online dating and relationship advice magazine, Happen.com

Baffled by what women are getting at half the time you talk to them? Then keep this translation manual handy to decode her most misunderstood lines.

by Amy Spencer

If you’ve ever spoken to a woman, it’s fair to say you’ve been confused by one. Yes doesn’t always mean yes, no doesn’t always mean no, and most of us have once in our lives even admitted, “Well, I may have said that, but I didn’t mean it.” What’s with all the mixed messages? “Women communicate by giving subtle suggestions instead of being literal, so we can check for positive reinforcement before we continue. We want to be careful about the impact we have on the other person,” explains Sharyn Wolf, CSW, a psychotherapist in New York City. But while figuring out what women really want can be difficult, it’s not impossible. So follow this guide to girl-speak. These are some of the things you might hear a woman say as you meet, date and woo her—and the code for reading between the lines.

What she says: “You’re really sweet, but I have a boyfriend.”
What she means: “You’re really sweet, but I definitely don’t want to date you."
Why she says it: It’s a classic barstool scene: You see her sitting by herself and figure it’s as good a time as any to make a move. And it’s all going so well—she’s smiling, she’s answering your questions—until she drops the bomb that she has a boyfriend. Now, she may be telling the truth. But more likely this “boyfriend” is merely a ploy to get you to back off fast. “I use that line all the time, it really works without hurting a guy’s feelings too much,” says Claire McKimmie. “It shows immediately that there’s nothing more to say.”

What she says: “Why don’t I take your number and I’ll call you?”
What she means: “There’s no way I’m giving you my number so why don’t I take yours?”
Why she says it: Even in this day and age, most women like to be pursued, so if we really like you, we’ll happily hand over our digits and wait for you to call. Pretty much the only time we’ll ask for your number is — sorry — when we want to keep the ball in our court and, well, never see you again. Other not-so-great responses: “Why don’t you email me instead,” “You can get my number through our mutual friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend Marcy” or “I’m in the phone book.” Trust us, if she likes you, she’ll make it easy for you to call.

What she says: “Oh, sorry, I already have weekend plans.”
What she means: “I don’t necessarily have weekend plans, but you’re calling so last-minute, I’d feel like a loser if I admitted I was free and took you up on your offer.”
Why she says it: As much as we all say that The Rules is an outdated tome that brews trouble between the sexes, there are still some things we can’t let go of. And one of them is that we don’t want to accept plans with you last-minute, because we don’t want you to think we’re that easy to catch. “If a guy waits until Friday to ask me out on Saturday, I’ll probably say no,” says Claire Arnaud. “He has to work for it. And if he doesn’t have the patience to call back next week, too bad, that’s his loss.”

What she says: “This feels good, but we really shouldn’t.”
What she means: “I want you, bad, but don’t want to get burned.”
Why she says it: The night is winding down, and it’s time to decide whether she should hold ’em, fold ’em, or hop in the sack with you. So if your date isn’t telling you a flat-out “No,” “I don’t want to,” or “I don’t like you that way,” chances are she really does like you — and want you — that way. She’d just rather wait a few weeks or months until she knows you’re not a love-’em-and-leave-’em type. “It’s possible she’s been in the position before of sleeping with a man and wanting to hear from him and then not hearing from him—and she doesn’t want to make that mistake again,” says Wolf. So if you’re a guy who really does want the relationship to go further (be honest now), it’s worth telling her so to see if she’ll change her mind.

What she says: “So, what have you been up to?”
What she means:“Why haven’t you called me? Are you seeing someone else?”
Why she says it: If we haven’t talked to you in a few weeks and then you suddenly start calling again, all we want to know is, What the heck took you so long? But because we want you to think we’re laid-back “Hey, whatever” women, all we dare squeeze out is a general inquiry. “I don’t want him to know I care,” says Emilie Giroud Capet. Our biggest fear? That you’ve been calling other women instead of us. Whether that’s the case or not, you’re best off filling in your missing weeks with very un-sexy things. “I’m hoping he’ll tell me he’s been working really hard,” says Emilie, “or better, that he’s been really sick.”

What she says: “If you want to have a guy’s night, go ahead, fine.”
What she means: “I really, really don’t want you to go. And if you do, I’m going to be pissed.”
Why she says it: It seemed innocuous enough: You asked her if she’d mind rescheduling your romantic night in so you could go out with the guys. She’s given you the green light. So what’s the red flag in that statement? The word “fine.” See, when a woman says something is fine, it’s decidedly not. “A woman will say it’s fine for him to go without her because she doesn’t want to get in a fight about it, even though deep down, she doesn’t want him to go without her,” says Wolf. Another phrase women often use to clue you into their displeasure: “If you like.” As in, “Sure, you can go out with the guys tonight, if you like.” That’s a pretty clear sign that while you may like it, she sure won’t. Either way, feel free to play dumb and go out with your buddies—just be ready to accept the consequences when you return.

What she says: “So, tell me about Diane.”
What she means: “Should I be threatened by Diane?”
Why she says it: When a man brings up another female’s name in the midst of a story, a woman’s internal panic button is pressed—she fears that you’re talking about her because you’re secretly attracted to her. So until you make it clear you wouldn’t touch Diane with a ten-foot pole, our insecurities will lead us to assume she’s a wasp-waisted blonde who laughs at your jokes—and you’d love to take her to bed. So if Diane is attractive and bed-able, please don’t say, “She’s really cool.” Instead try, “Diane’s just someone I work with. Boy, she can be annoying sometimes. Some guys at the office have the hots for her but I don’t get it; she’s not all that.”

What she says: “I love the way you smell.”
What she means: “I love you, but I don’t dare tell you I love you before you tell me you love me.”
Why she says it: “I just told the guy I’ve been dating for three weeks that I loved the way he smelled,” says Lili De Monseignat, “but it’s more him that I love than his smell.” Then why hold back? Because women know that telling a guy we love him before he tells us could be too much for him to handle. “It’s too soon to tell him I love him, because he’ll freak out and run away!” says Lili. But if you want to be loved, perk your ears up for the word itself. “I love your dog,” “I love your apartment,” “I love the way you dress,” and “I love that you love Indian food” are all signs that something big is bubbling underneath that little heart of hers. In other words, gentlemen, please be gentle.

Amy Spencer writes for Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Real Simple, among other publications, and currently doles out relationship advice to men every week on SIRIUS Radio's Maxim channel.

You can also link directly to this article on Happen.com, where you will find plenty more of my dating advice:
Happen Magazine: A Guide to Girl Talk

—Amy

Turn Her "No" Into a "Go"

2008-03-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Originally printed in Men's Fitness Magazine
Click on images to read the text...which you should!

—Amy

The Last Seduction

2008-03-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

RAZOR, July/August, 2005
Every Maverick needs a Goose, but should you pay for one?
By Anna David
The concept of men showing other men how to pick up women isn't entirely new. Not only was there Ross Jeffries' 1992 book How to Get the Women You Desire Into Bed (which emphasized conscious manipulation), but you men have been casually coaching your buddies on how to acquire would-be conquests (in exchange for wingman credit) for years. Yet Hitch fever seems to be sweeping the nation of late, with a variety of pickup gurus claiming they can teach men how to make us limp with list -- for a small fee.

It all seems to have shifted up a few gears several years ago when an inordinately tall Canadian named Erik von Merkovik (nom de plume: Mystery) began gaining online attention for developing things like "the neg theory," which essentially says that the best way for a man to get a hot woman interested is to lob her a qualifier that's designed to both compliment and subtly one-up her (e.g., "Nice nails - are they real?"). Since then, companies like Double Your Dating, Real Social Dynamics and Pick Up 101 have popped up everywhere, and while we ladies sat home watching Sex and the City, many of you were learning how to make us want to have sex in your city.

Like most women who'd gotten wind of this, I was distinctly unimpressed. The last thing our society needed, I thought, was more men abandoning actual intimate relationships for casual one-night affairs. Besides, I can basically recall only one time when I was actually seduced - that is, where I succumbed to a guy's advances based almost entirely on his efforts to woo me. See, addicted as I am to my alpha-female role - I tend to decide whom I want and then engage in mutual, verbal and physical flirting - I essentially believed that the mating dance happened naturally, and not by following a set of rules complete with its own glossary (see sidebar).

I was also highly skeptical of the fact that seduction was something that could be taught at all, and quite convinced that men trying to do so were essentially old-fashioned shysters trying to feed on - and exploit - the insecurity (and wallets) of other men.

So when Seth Parker, one of my seduction instructors for the afternoon, explained that he might hit on me in a bookstore by wrapping up a magazine and bopping me on the head with it, I casually explained where I would have wanted to shove that magazine. (Guys, this is not an "approach" I'd recommend, unless you happen to be, say, Colin Farrell.)

Seth is partners with Cameron Theone, Ranko Magami, and Robert Torrey in Fidentia (“confidence” in Latin), an LA-based company that teaches nebbishy, bespectacled or simply curious men to discover their inner sex gods (www.fidentia.org). By the end of one of their three-day, $650, bimonthly workshops, a graduate should be able to walk up to a group of attractive women (known in these circles as a "cold approach"), single out the cutest one and seduce her. All three days of the workshop, in fact, end in bars and nightclubs where students can try out their new skills while their proud tutors look on from their own tables of conquests.

On the surface, none of Fidentia's three partners (Ranko lives in Europe, where he's currently working on an eight-CD seduction series) scream lady-killer. But I guess this makes sense. I mean, how could a group of AFC's (Average Frustrated Chumps) relate to a triumvirate of Brad Pitt doppelgangers? I was surprised to discover, however, that all three of these guys were actually quite articulate, peppering their conversation with enough three-syllable words that I started to believe they weren’t just for the tape recorder’s benefit. And when they swore that most of the men that come to them want girlfriends and not a succession of one-nighters, I actually believed them.

Robert mapped out an eight-part strategy that made sense, including getting comfortable by taking up more physical space (I'm a fan of any guy who's comfortable with his body, because it suggests a certain level of innate sexual confidence), and watching the coveted girl for I.O.I.’s, (Indicators of Interest, like playing with her hair, smiling, teasing you and asking questions about you). Most women could fill notebooks with incidents where men seemed to be utterly devoid of this skill, but I still wasn't remotely willing to imagine that any of this crap could actually work on me.

Until I told Seth as much, and, thoroughly undeterred, he glanced over at me casually and uttered, "Well, I probably wouldn't hit on you, anyway."

Now, I'm not stupid. I understood the game he was playing, and that he was a self-defined expert at it. But I have to admit that it threw me off a bit.

Cameron was even better at defying my expectations. I wasn't thoroughly charmed by his bravado on the notion of cold approaching ("I don't even consider meeting a girl after exchanging eye contact a cold approach anymore - that's just for amateurs") but he began to win me over when he explained what women want in men. "The time of watching Steel Magnolias and The English Patient and crying together is over," he declared. "If you're a guy, be a guy. Don't kiss ass; don't supplicate. Don't be wishy-washy, indecisive, and overly needy. Are you conveying playful, a guy who has a strong reality and purpose and goes out and gets what he wants, or are you the guy that's nervous and needy and seems to be saying, 'If I buy you a drink, will you like me?'"

And Cameron and Co. don't perpetuate things like the neg theory, or believe that women like men who are assholes - just that we respond when someone is both strong and light in their approach (say, asking a girl out playfully, making it clear that you won’t resent her if she says no), which is a harder combination to master than you might think because of a little thing called the male ego.

Still, some of what these guys suggest may still be a bit much. Seth thinks that men should approach women they don't know with the same confidence they would an acquaintance of five years, and believes that even if women are blatantly rude, they shouldn't falter. "If a really nerdy guy walks up to a group of really beautiful girls and he says, 'Hey,' and they say, 'Fuck off,' he's probably going to bend over and walk away," says Seth. "But if a better looking guy who has more money than Donald Trump walks up and they say, 'Fuck off,' he's probably going to say, 'Yeah, right,' and stay there."

But where does this kind of advice leave us, exactly? Is approaching women and pretending not to notice that they're annoyed actually a good idea? I mean, where's the line between confident guy and annoying lech?

"Whenever I go actively seeking seduction as a primary motive, I usually end up going home alone," says Colin, an attractive actor. "My most successful 'seductions' have been moderately random, when I'm relaxed and genuinely interested in something relating to the woman." Still, Colin concedes that teaching shy guys to be more confident and deserving of whatever women they're attracted to "is not a bad thing." As Colin says, "Many of us will not talk to that 'hot chick' based simply on the feeling that we're not good enough."

My friend Peter, meanwhile, is irritated by the very notion of seduction instructors. "I don't believe in tricks or gimmicks or any of the crap these guys recommend," he says, relaying a time he was at a wedding with a hair model and one of these coaches, "a big loser," says Peter, "was all alone and jealous."

There are others who agree with Peter. As my friend Veronica says, "I'm a fan of mystery [note the lower-case m], so I like it if a guy keeps himself a little at arm's length." And my friend C.J. says that if she's not immediately attracted to a guy, he doesn't stand a chance.

So, is this seduction instruction thing a waste of time and money, or the answer to a lifetime of the cold shoulder? I guess it depends on the guy - not to mention the girl he's after. But a class could at least help remind men that sometimes all you need to do is try. In these days of appropriate behavior and mutual respect, we women can go months without even being flirted with. And, apologies to the PC police (not that I imagine many of you read Razor), but, take it from a woman -- being pursued with a light, playful touch feels good.

Take the way Cameron treated me. "Here's my number, in case you decide you want to go on a date," he said as I was leaving, and though I don't imagine that happening (I'm not going to date a dating instructor, even if we could sell the rights to our story and make a mint), he did manage to make me do a complete 180 simply by keeping up his end of our verbal bantering without getting defensive or letting me intimidate him. And if other men who might otherwise walk right by or sit in silence can learn that in a class, I say sign on up.

Then, once you've got the flirting thing down, we can cry together over Beaches all we want.

Just a Gigolo
If you're interested in finding the class that can help bring out your hidden ladies man, check out the following:

Mystery Method – A method overseen by Mystery, and his henchmen Savoy, Lovedrop, Sinn, DJ, Misschievous, Francis, Ludechick and Samurai, the Mystery Method is a system of attraction that’s been developed over the past decade; popular Mystery moves include the “neg theory” and the three-second rule (approaching a girl within three seconds of making eye contact with her). Workshops are all over North America and Europe and cost $850 for three days and $1850 for three days and three nights. (www.mysterymethod.com)

Real Social Dynamics - A company that offers Bootcamp ($1500 for three days of intensive one-on-one education) as well as $900 seminars worldwide that teach men such things as how to create "cocky and funny material on the sly" and how to play hard-to-get. (www.realsocialdynamics.com)

Speed Seduction – Workshops taught by the master himself, Ross Jeffries, can be found all over the world ($995 for three days) with Jeffries’ unconditional guarantee: “If you don’t get laid, I don’t get paid.” (www.seduction.com)

Dating Workshop Glossary:
Target: The woman you’re after
Number close:You ended the conversation with her phone number
Kiss Close:You also swapped a little spit
Excuser: A guy who makes every excuse to not approach a woman or start a conversation with her
PUA: Pick up Artist
LJBF: "Let's just be friends." (Essentially, the last thing on earth a PUA wants his target to say)

Ready to Break Up? Read This

2008-03-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

This article is currently published on Match.com's online dating and relationship advice magazine, Happen.com

If you’re about to declare your independence, here are six ways to deliver the news (at least one of them will suit your situation.)

By Amy Spencer

Just as the old song says, breaking up is hard to do. So hard that some people keep dating months and years longer than they want to, just to avoid having to deliver the news. And that simply shouldn’t be the case. But sometimes it’s hard to know how to make the break.

Here, we take a look at six of the most common breakup techniques—what’s good about each, what’s bad, when to deploy each method and when not to. Take a look at these routes to Splitsville, and see which one suits your situation...and remember, do your best to always be kind and have good breakup karma.

1. The “We need to talk” talk
If you and your significant other have ever referred to one another as “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” sitting down for a face-to-face, level-headed conversation is usually considered the best, most considerate tactic.

Pros: The “We need to talk” phrase is so notoriously linked to doom, so if you can spit that much out, you have a running start toward the end. You also get credit for being mature and fair, which keeps the door open for a friendship in the future, and doesn’t mar your reputation—which is vital if the two of you run in a similar group of friends.

Cons: You may have to endure extreme anxiety in the hours or weeks leading up to having the conversation. And though you may start the talk calmly, you have no control over what happens next. “After I explained to my girlfriend that our relationship was over, I made the mistake of suggesting we go for a walk to keep talking about it,” says Jason McIntyre, 28. “What started out as a silent walk by the water turned into a loud argument and her calling me names in front of a huge group of people.”

Tip: Prepare a bulletproof answer to the “But why?” question that will come up again and again. Your best bet: Reveal an issue you have that they can’t solve. It may be better for both of you if he or she walks away saying, “It’s true, the jerk does have serious mother issues...”

2. The un-love letter
On Sex and the City, Berger dumped Carrie with a Post-it. But there are a lot more sophisticated ways to get the bad news across—everything from a bona fide pen-to-paper “Dear John” letter to e-mail, voicemail, and text-messaging.

Pros: This is the right tactic for people who really can’t handle confrontations. If you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings, it’s a lot less painful for you if you can avoid seeing the look on their face that comes with it... and possibly the tears or words that follow. Also, if it is hard for you to get your feelings out in a conversation, a letter allows you to do so without getting sidetracked.

Cons: You will be called cowardly, cold-hearted and 4,000 other unprintable things by the other party involved. You deny them the opportunity to ask questions, process the situation with you, and have that all-important “closure.” “A guy I was dating for a year and a half stopped calling me back, then let himself into my apartment with his set of keys and left me sunflowers, the keys, and a breakup note that said nothing but to have a good time on a trip I was taking,” recalls one woman. “I was so taken aback. What a coward!”

Tip: The more words you write, the better. If you’re actually contemplating doing this to end a long-term relationship, you can somewhat save face by writing a page for every year you were together. Often, it’s not a letter or email itself that pisses someone off—it’s a short, flip letter.

3. The vanishing act
If you’re living in a place where you can get lost in the crowd, then literally doing so is one way to opt out.

Pros: This break-up tactic has two qualities that make it attractive to some: It requires less than zero effort, and it’s somewhat non-committal. Because there’s never a definitive breakup, some people can get away with contacting their ex weeks or months later to say hi or even restart things. If they run into their former sweetie accidentally, they say, “Hey, whatever happened with us, anyway?”

Cons: This break-up method is usually used when a relationship was just budding and no real connections had been forged. But to pull this stunt further along the love timeline is insanely disrespectful of your former sweetie’s emotions, not to mention time and energy. Here’s why: The person who gets dumped this way will take some time to catch on, and during that time, will be working quite hard to track you down. (It’s not uncommon for the dumpee in this situation to believe that something bad has befallen the dumper.) “I was dating a guy for three months when he disappeared, and I was a wreck because I thought something horrible had happened to him,” explains Jennifer Schwarz, 32. “I figured out he was just fine, thanks, when I went by his apartment and discovered he'd moved out. What a waste of my worrying!”

Tip: If the person you’re dumping knows where you live, where you work, or what Starbucks you go to in the morning, be prepared for an eventual awkward, angry confrontation.

4. The time-out tactic
When you want to cool off a relationship instead of ending it cold, the “let’s take a break” technique can work well.

Pros: If you are leaning towards breaking up but aren’t 100-percent ready to call it quits, this method can clarify where things stand. If you do know you want out, then this is a way to let someone down easy... you are telling them that the situation isn’t working and you’re trying to get some perspective. This can give the dumpee a chance to get used to his or her upcoming shift back to single status.

Cons: This can be emotional torture for both of you. Obviously, the person getting offloaded will be hurt and confused, but dragging it out can also be confusing to your own psyche. “I told a woman I was dating for six years that I wanted a break, but after a few weeks, I missed her and asked to get back together,” explains Sam Syed, 40. “Two weeks after she took me back, she dumped me! It was an emotional rollercoaster I wish we could have avoided.”

Tip: Don’t suggest seeing other people. It will be a lot less messy if you make this about taking time to think on your own, without adding other people—and jealousy—into it.

5. The ex-factor
Sometimes it feels much easier to bow out of a relationship if you say you can’t resist the gravitational pull of an old amour.

Pros: It may sting a little less on the dumpee’s end to hear this excuse versus being told “You’re just not it for me.” “I always say I’m getting back with my ex because I think it’s better for women to hear; it’s like a pre-existing condition,” says Todd Bush, 36. “I’m telling them I didn’t find someone better, but that I’m caught up in the feelings I had for someone before.”

Cons: If you’re not really going back to an ex, then you could get caught, which is embarrassing for both of you.

Tip: Make sure your mutual friends have your story straight—and the fewer details they have, the fewer they have to screw up. You wouldn’t want one saying to the person you just broke up with: “What are you talking about? His ex got married to someone else last year!”

6. The send-a-messenger method
This tactic involves sending someone else to do your dirty work, so you don’t have to deal with it yourself. Hey, subpoena messengers work for our judicial system...

Pros: Turning what could be an emotional moment into a business transaction can keep the dumpee’s reaction rather restrained. In fact, I was recently blown off via a man’s best friend: What started out as a “vanishing act” turned into a “send-a-messenger” method using the “ex-factor” excuse. “By the way,” the friend told me, “Tom wanted me to tell you he’s sorry, but he started seeing this girl he used to go out with.” I must admit, I was so befuddled by who was doing what to whom, it worked brilliantly.

Cons: Frankly, it’s a little fourth-grade. And you certainly had better not be using this on anyone who’s more than a casual date or yours. And, hey, you’re going to owe that friend you’ve sent, big-time.

Tip: Empower your messenger to offer a good eye-rolling and “I don’t know what his/her problem is” to soften the blow.

Amy Spencer is a freelance writer who covers relationships and lifestyle stories for Glamour, Maxim, Real Simple and other publications. While she admits to having used a few of the tactics explained here, it only dawned on her while writing this that, sadly, she’s been on the receiving end of even more.

You can also link directly to this article on Happen.com, where you will find plenty more of my dating advice: Happen.com: Ready to Break Up?

—Amy

Be a Dating Optimist!

2008-03-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

This article is currently published on Match.com's online dating and relationship advice magazine, Happen.com

Need help getting psyched for your search for The One? Try these smart strategies for a more positive mindset.

By Amy Spencer

Recently, I had a string of bad dates. One was with a man who couldn’t stop pointing out my flaws (specifically, “You have really short nails” and “Do you always laugh like that?”). Another was a smart, handsome man who turned out to be intolerably self-aggrandizing. The list goes on—but instead of getting bummed out that I was getting, well, nowhere in love that week, I laughed it off. You see, I am a dating optimist, and I know that some awful dates are par for the course. But why dwell on the bad stuff? The fact is, no one is going to meet the man or woman of their dreams with a negative outlook—which is why I talked to other dating optimists and found some top tips on how to bring out the brightest, best, happiest dater inside us all.

Commit to complimenting your date on three things
Making yourself search out the good (Hmm, maybe I’ll like his laugh!) rather than the bad (Uh-oh, she'll probably hate the loud atmosphere…) is the simplest way to flip the optimist switch. If you focus on finding the good in the person across the table, you will find it.

Remember: The worse the date, the better the story
Dating is like the opposite of the Olympic figure-skating judging: Instead of throwing out the highest scores and the lowest scores, a happy dater relishes both. And let’s be honest, we all have our entertaining horror stories to share. Tracy Allen, 29, recalls one date she had that always garners an appreciative audience at parties: “I was having a great ski weekend with my date, until every few hours he’d call the cat-sitter he hired to ask how his kitty was doing,” she says. “At one point, he even asked the sitter to put kitty’s ear up to the phone so he could say hello!” Personally, I fondly recall my shock of listening to a first date of mine casually mention the porn shop he opened with his uncle…but instead of being frustrated about another lost night, I grinned on the inside thinking about how funny it was going to be to tell the story later. (That was four years ago, and it’s still one of my favorites.)

Practice changing your negative buzzwords
If you don’t know what yours are, ask a friend. Maybe they often hear you say you “can’t,” you “hate” or you “won’t.” Or maybe you’re always talking about how people “never” do anything right. Once you know what to listen for, you’ll be more likely to catch and stop yourself. For added incentive, do what cursing-quitters often do: Put $1 in a jar every time you bring up a negative topic among your friends, to help train yourself out of bringing up negative topics on your date. Think about it. You wouldn’t want to hear your date say he or she “can’t understand people who like sushi” or “don’t feel like going to work.” You want to hear that they love surfing and will try anything on the menu. The same goes for you: Nobody likes that SNL character Debbie Downer, so do what you can to be the most positive version of yourself.

Give yourself the YNK speech before your next date
As in, You Never Know! You never know, he might be the date of your dreams. And if he’s not, you never know, he might be the roommate of the man of your dreams. Or, you never know, maybe she’ll tell you about some great new hangout that’s packed with cute singles, or know someone who wants to hire you to join Madonna’s concert tour—or merely tell you a story that prompts you to take off to Thailand for a month. The point is, even if dating doesn’t lead to true love, it leads to different, interesting, and sometimes wonderful experiences you might not have had otherwise. And that’s all good.

Put together a cheering squad
Whether a date bombs or exceeds your expectations, the very fact that you don’t know what’s going to happen is a large part of the fun. So many of my coupled-up friends say they envy how in my average night out, anything could happen. Being reminded of this fact made me appreciate my single status even more—which is why I decided to permanently draw them in with before-and-after reports. I went on a date recently after meeting some married friends of mine for a cocktail. Before I left, we worked out a code that I would text them through the night: “C” for Cute, “NC” for Not Cute, “SC” for Super Cute, SFO for “Still Figuring it Out,” etc. We had such laughs thinking about what I might find, that I walked away from them and toward my date with a giddy anticipation I hadn’t felt in a while. (Oh, and by the way, that date was super-cute and super-nice.)

Tell yourself, “I won’t settle for any old relationship, I want an amazing relationship”
If you’re ever feeling low about your unattached status, ask yourself this: If you really, truly wanted to be dating just anyone, you could be, right? The guy who e-mailed you for a second date. The girl who gave you her number at a party. That ex who still calls to “check in.” You just choose not to date them because they’re not right for you. And that’s a good sign, because it proves you won’t settle for just an average relationship. You want someone who’s really right for you. It makes any amount of waiting worthwhile.

Go on you-can’t-lose dates
Nothing seems like more of a waste than having an average, predictable evening with a boring date you know you’ll never see again. And that’s why you should try this can’t-lose strategy: Find something you’ve really wanted to do…and do that on your date. Take him or her to a driving range or the opera or play bridge together if you’ve been hankering to go. Because you can’t help being optimistic when you know that no matter what happens with the love connection, you still win! This also works if you’re looking for dates, too: “Instead of meeting men in bars, I started doing fun things to meet them,” says Stephanie Prepon, 36. So far she’s taken sailing lessons, golf lessons, and signed up as a member of the Guggenheim Museum—and met some great men in the process.

Remind yourself that it’s a numbers game
You don’t rent the first apartment you see, and you don’t buy the first bathing suit you try on. You sample them all, and the more you try, the closer you know you’re getting to what you want. Well, it’s the same with love. Remind yourself of that fact! Sometimes the restaurant is only average, sometimes the $160 jeans stretch too much in the butt, and sometimes your date will disappoint you. But getting the bad ones out of the way takes you that much closer to the good ones—and more importantly, makes you appreciate the crazy twists and turns on the road to real romance.

Amy Spencer writes for Glamour, Maxim, and Real Simple among other publications.

You can also link directly to this article on Happen.com, where you will find plenty more of my dating advice:
Happen Magazine: Be a Dating Optimist!

—Amy

Sex and Two Cities: Naked New York

2008-03-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

PLAYBOY, April, 2003
NAKED NEW YORK

By Anna David

In Los Angeles I never find the men, only the boys. Perhaps because the town dream is celebrity (an excuse to play all day), the males here seem trapped happily in perpetual adolescence. It's all about games and sex and drinking, a film executive says, pretty much summing up a typical LA boy's dream activities. Even the ones in suits - the ones alleging to be men - seem interested only in chasing after perfect newbies with enhanced bosoms that flood L.A.X. daily (part of California's fresh-meat for fresh-produce deal with the rest of the country). So convinced is the male Angeleno of his endless dating possibilities, L.A. girls have to get used to the fact that one day, out of the blue, he just may not call. The first boy who did this to me told me his reason years later: "You really needed to wax, baby," he said, shrugging. "Down there." Over time I got used to it. But when I grew up and the men around me didn't, I began to suspect that things might be radically different on the other coast. I decided that a trip to New York was just what the waxer ordered.

THE MAGAZINE GUY

"He's good-looking, straight, the editor of a men's magazine and I've never heard of him screwing over anyone I know. Either you've managed in one night to uncover New York's undiscovered gem or there's something really wrong with this picture."

So says a friend of mine--one of those beautiful, cynical publishing girls who has a firm grasp on her city's dating scene--when I tell her about making out with high-powered Magazine Guy in the cab the night before.

At first, I'm horrified and feel defensive on his behalf, but I slowly realize that she has a point. Nongeeky Magazine Guys, an only-in-New-York phenomenon, are intellectual rock gods to us Magazine Girls; if Viggo Mortensen and Dave Eggers could morph into one creature (who also had the power to hire us at a competitive salary or at least give us that world-weary-but-wise girl column we've been aching to write), he'd be the Magazine Guy. We definitely don't have MG's in L.A.

I meet him at the Hudson, Ian Schrager's newest hotel, during an allegedly exclusive party for something no one in attendance seemed to be sure of. It's my first evening in town and I'd slept maybe three hours the night before and not at all on the plane. I arrive feeling self-conscious about my outfit, a hybrid of New York and Los Angeles sensibilities--little black dress over Juicy jeans with a pair of slip-on Jimmy Choos--and I'm fully aware that I have dressed for the girls, not for the guys. (In New York, trendiness is everything; in Los Angeles, as long as it's sexy, it doesn't matter how last year it is.) Two seconds after I walk into the hotel, a girl gives me the up-and-down and promptly spills a drink on me.

Admittedly, I'm not in the best frame of mind to meet a guy. He's introduced to me by Peter, a friend who claims to never go out. In New York that seems going to fewer than nine bars a night, because people are always clapping him on the back and saying things like, "Didn't last night go off?" or "You'll be at Sway tomorrow night, right?" Upon first glance, I'm not particularly impressed with Magazine Guy--or, more accurately, I'm not impressed with how not impressed he seems to be with me. He's dark-haired and tall and appropriately chiseled. However, he is far more interested in chatting with an essentially incoherent Page Six reporter than he is in charming writers from the left coast. I inform Peter that I find Magazine Guy cheesy and too into himself.

The next night after dinner I go to meet Peter, who happens to be having drinks with Mr. Magazine and some other guys. From the get-go, Magazine Guy's attitude has undergone a 180. Before I even sit down in the chair he's suddenly made available by his side, he's tossing out those you-know-you-look-exactly-like compliments. I'm sensing that getting a guy's attention in New York can be difficult but once you have it, it's an easy thing to hold.

Later, after M.G. and I have succeeded in holding each other's attention for a good hour, he starts exploiting his job mercilessly by telling me about an article that he's editing on cunnilingus. He says he would tell me what the article espouses but it's actually something far easier to show than it is to tell. I gulp. Later, when he asks me if I want to share a cab--explaining that his West Village apartment is on my way back to Brooklyn Heights--I say yes.

Now, if we were in L.A., this would mean we'd leave together and then I--being the chick--would decide, depending on a zillion tiny occurrences and whims, whether we're embarking on a random night of sin or just a kiss and number exchange. I figure it's the same thing in New York, only with a chauffeur. Once ensconced in the cab, he starts giving me a back rub--a really good back rub--that evolves into kissing. As the cab pulls up outside his apartment, he starts saying things. They're a jumble of last-minute, nonsensical utterances meant to persuade me to get out here rather than continue on to Brooklyn, something about how he has a king-size bed and a queen-size one and I could sleep in either. I keep kissing him. I'm somewhat self-conscious and aware of the cabbie a few feet away. De Niro's Taxi Driver line about how he always had to wash off the seats at the end of the night twists its way through my mind. Ultimately, I say no. I tell MG that he could literally be Norman Bates in Psycho and I wouldn't know it. He nods and hands me his business card.

When I talk to Peter the next day, I pretend he's a girl and share way too many details about what happened. He tells me Mag Man called him the previous night, complaining that he was alone because I wouldn't come in with him. I'm incredulous--I've been spending the morning contemplating the softness of his lips and all he seems aware of is the fact that I didn't fuck him. I take out that bloody business card. After toying with the idea of e-mailing, I remember that there's no time for clever and cute. I dial determinedly, leaving a message that I have plans for the night but I'd like to meet up with him afterward. It's New York so I decide to be aggressive.

Later that night I swing by his place. I've been to third-floor walk-ups as much as I have penthouses. But when the elevator doors open directly into M.G.'s apartment I'm horrified to admit that I can actually feel my legs spreading at the same rate as the doors. He lounges on a couch near a table that holds a bottle of Dom Perignon with an attached card from Tom Ford positioned for maximum effect. What happens later in the king-size bed (yes, there is a queen size, too) is not sex, but it's highly enjoyable. (I, like many women, subscribe to the Clintonian definition of sex.) Suffice it to say I feel a need to check out what he'd learned from the article he claimed to be editing. While the information is not earth-shattering, I believe most men could benefit from following the advice. When he puts me in a cab and and hands me money, he does it in a way that doesn't make me feel like a prostitute or as if I've sacrificed all my pseudofeminist sensibilities.

The next morning, my cell phone flashes a text message: "Thanks for staying over--Norm Bates." I message back, "Thanks for not being psycho." He messages, "Thanks for tracking me down." Me: "It was worth the trouble.

It's been weeks and I still haven't gotten a response to that. The last I heard, he had turned down a chance to star in The Bachelor and was dating an actress. I guess I'm not the only one with an MG fetish.

THE ACTOR

If you live in Los Angeles, the last kind of guy you're looking to meet in New York is an actor. So it's ridiculous that as I'm fawning over MG; one of New York's most reputed skirt-chasing bold-faced names stops by to say hi to Peter and ends up joining us. Because my focus isn't on the Actor--and because I'm the only woman at the table--he becomes increasingly interested in me.

"What kinds of things do you write?" he asks, glancing down from his cigar.

"Mostly pieces on celebrities," I say with a smile.

"What bullshit," he laughs, tapping ash on the table. "You should write about something interesting."

I can't argue with him on that point. If I inform him of my current project, he's sure to take his cigar and go, so I listen as he tells me that I should read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (I'd mentioned that my great-great grandparents were from Russia) and care about politics more. In L.A., I can't help thinking, an actor guy would probably tell me I should read movie scripts about Russian submarines and care more about what's in the trades. I nod flirtatiously, not bothering to mention that Notes From the Underground happens to be sitting (unopened, but there) on my bedroom table.

Since I have two games going at once, this entire exchange is happening in front of Magazine Guy and Peter. And so begins a fascinating verbal sword fight between Actor and Editor; MG makes a reference to a movie Actor was in and Actor counters that Mr. Magazine spends too much time watching bad movies. At first I think Magazine Guy is unsophisticated, like a fan who happens upon a famous person, but as the dialogue continues I realize he's brought up the movie role both because smart people know the movie sucked and the Actor's part was tiny. Actor seems completely indifferent. Is this a Sophisticated New Yorkers' version of a dick swinging contest? When Magazine Guy wanders off briefly Actor grabs my hand, asking me if MG and I are serious.

"Please," I say, shaking my head. "I just met him."

Actor smiles. "Well, I'm going to get your number from Peter," he says. "We'll go out in L.A."

He reaches to the pendant on my necklace, a picture of a naked woman (not me). "Get her dressed, will you?" he flirts, affixing me with that cocky gaze he's done so many times on his TV series (which is nothing like Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, believe me). I promise. He squeezes my hand. I leave with MG, figuring that's the end of that.

Several days later, as I'm running through the streets of Brooklyn, my cell phone rings.

"Hey, I'm calling from the National Enquirer and I've got a story for you," says someone in a guy-doing-a-flirty-crank-call voice. I hate guys-doing-flirty-crank-call voices.

"Who is this?" I counter, in my I-don't-have-time-for-this voice.

He says his name, first name only, and I draw a blank. Only when he mentions Peter do I make the connection, trying to decide if the National Enquirer joke is funnier or less funny based on who it is. I decide less, then change my mind.

"Are you back in Los Angeles?" he asks, now sounding completely recognizable.

"I will be in a few days."

"Are you free next Monday or Tuesday?" he asks. "Could we go out one of those nights?"

"Probably."

Monday and Tuesday pass without a word. But if LA has taught me anything, it's don't ever take an actor's treatment personally. It's almost a relief, oddly, to find out that the New York version is just as flaky as the LA one.

THE INVESTMENT BANKER

Back when my best male friend from college, Jack, lived in LA, he liked to set me up with incredibly wealthy bores. All he tells me now is that he's found me an Investment Banker who, of course, I'm going to fall in love with.

I meet Banker at a French restaurant on the Upper West Side. When I walk in, I realize I've been given no physical description, so all I'm looking for is someone who appears to be rich. That describes everyone in the restaurant. I mention his name to a waiter and am led immediately to a table where a young-faced, graying man in a button-down shirt and blazer sits.

We haven't looked at the menu and Banker is telling me about his divorce--he had a miserable quickie marriage to a woman he'd known for only a few months. By the time we order I've heard about Banker's chef (on vacation), celebrities he lives near and the 500-plus employees he controls. The shocking part of is that he's not coming off as horrible. Or maybe I'm just surprised he's such a talker--bad dates in LA usually mean awkward pauses. In this case, I'm struggling to even get in a "You're kidding" or "Oh, my." By dessert, Banker begins to reveal a darker side. "Do you have nightmares?" he asks.

I don't.

"I've been having a lot of nightmares lately," he responds. "The same one kind of over and over. Or variations of it."

He frowns the way people do when they're trying to remember their dreams. "It's really violent."

"Violent how?" I imagine he dreams about people tearing up dollar bills.

"Well, my ex-wife has this ax - and she's trying to kill me. No, not me..." Another frown. "She's trying to kill a woman I'm seeing."

He smiles, satisfied, the way people do when they remember their dreams.

Huh. I down a glass of water, wondering if I'm blushing. I have this inconvenient, Zelig-like quality of getting embarrassed for people when they aren't embarrassed for themselves.

"So, do you see a difference between women in LA and New York?" I ask him. Anything to get off of this "paging Dr. Freud" track.

"Absolutely," he smiles. "Women in New York are much more aggressive."

Then he regales me with a story about how a woman once overheard him giving a clerk his address in a video store and slipped a note under his door a few days later. I'm trying to decide if there's something supremely excellent about him that I fail to see or if his address screams "I'm a billionaire" in that indecipherable-to-Angelenos New York speak.

"Who says you have to go back home tomorrow?" he asks suddenly. "I mean, couldn't you just as easily write in Central Park as you could at home?"

I'm not exactly sure what Banker is suggesting so I explain I'm actually ready to go back. He looks hurt. "Because I've had such a wonderful time," I add.

When I make my move to leave, he walks me to get a cab. At the moment when the kiss on the cheek turns into a kiss on the lips, I let it last for about half a second. The truth is, much to my Jewish mother's chagrin, my years in LA have shown that I'm more drawn to the out-of-work actor than to the guy who can give him work. If I were a really good person, I would probably tell Banker to lose the ex-wife-murdering-the-new-girlfriend-dream bit from his rap, but it's much easier to wave enthusiastically as the cab pulls away.

THE SINGLE DAD NOVELIST

When Single Dad Novelist comes to pick me up--by foot, how quaint--I already know he doesn't stand a chance. I'm far too obsessed with MG. During dinner at a local Italian eatery, Novelist actually reveals himself to be more interesting than he seemed over the phone. Before becoming a writer and editor, he lived in Seattle and played in a semi-successful band. Nothing about him screams former band member--but then, nothing about him screams anything. He just seems like a surprisingly unbitter guy who stands back after having been slightly rumpled by the world.

The only topic that seems to get Novelist animated is his daughter. He talks about their trips to Coney Island, their garage sales, their recent cruise (and shows me pictures of that one, to boot)--even the disco party this eight-year-old center of his life wants to have. Maybe it's my biological clock ticking but I can listen to cute kid stories all night. Problem is, this isn't making me fall for Novelist so much as it is making me feel happy that his kid has such a great dad. I don't care what the premise of that Adam Sandler movie was. On a first date, a guy with a kid is not sexy.

After dinner, Novelist and I take a walk around the neighborhood. I ask him all kinds of questions about being a novelist, an occupation that doesn't much exist back home. Of course, there are screenwriters--the whole town, right down to the guy who bags my groceries at Gelson's (true), is one of those. But they talk about the selling, the percentage, the pitch meeting. If they're really creative, maybe they talk about their three-act structure.

We stop in at his apartment, which is filled with art made by friends-turned-successful-artists and stacked to the brim with toys and momentos and books on top of books on top of books. I tell him I want to read his books and he digs through a closet for copies, which he signs while I snoop. He's sitting under a painting he did of Jesus smoking a cigar and we're listening to a record he says he likes to play when he deejays parties (which he seems to do when he's not writing, editing or fathering). I'm almost won over by his Renaissance Man array of skills, his modesty, his calmness, his (in L.A. terminology) good energy when he looks up from signing.

"Hey, we should go to an ATM," he says. "I can get some money so we can go into to the city together."

His eagerness somehow translates to desperation. I shake my head and tell him I'm going to the city on my own.

He's the nicest guy in the world. Too bad I seem to be a sucker for assholes, no matter the city.

AND ALL THE REST

I meet many other men during my week in New York--an adorable hotelier with a lisp and a girlfriend, a music manager who seems to manage only the violinist of a band I didn't know used a violin, a writer who tells me that Sex and the City has ruined the dating scene in New York. "People think because something's been on that show, it's a big deal," he says. That's the last thing New York needs--more things for girls to analyze.

For the hell of it, and because I'm not used to it, I try different ways of walking down the street. At first I try to attract attention with a male companion in tow-hey, I'm happy and I'm on vacation - and I find men that avert their eyes from my hip-swinging, big-smiling gestures. (A hot dog vendor actually looks past me, to the guy, and asks him how he's doing--prompting my male companion to wonder if he was actually just hit on by a man selling hot dogs.) But when I do my best imitation of the New York street gaze--distracted yet tough-looking eyes seemingly fixed on something at neck level--I get the random catcalls from construction workers and the like. Perhaps even more than Angelenos, New Yorkers want what they can't have.

On the way home my plane stops in Vegas, where an overweight, drunk and angry man takes the aisle seat to my window. (No one's in the middle seat, thus my bag occupies its leg area.) Vegas wants to stretch, though.

"Look, you better move that bag," he snorts, by way of greeting. My sweetest side does not emerge and before I know it, Vegas is yelling. A Good Samaritan walks by, insisting I move to his seat and he handles Vegas. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude, the fact that a stranger would come to a girl's rescue like that. I almost feel myself tearing up. But when we land, Hero Man doesn't zip off into the night. He waits for me.

"So, you live in L.A.?" he asks, reaching a hand out to hold the offensive bag. For a second I try to figure out why he looks familiar--and then I realize he's a dead ringer for Anthony Perkins playing Norman Bates. No joke.

My Week of Picking Up Men

2008-03-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

This article is currently published on Msn.com's Dating & Personals site

My Week of Picking Up Men
By Amy Spencer

As if you haven’t already heard this from your married friends, your mom, your self-help magazines, and that nagging voice in your own head: If you want to meet a man, you gotta get out there. Yeah, well… that’s easier said than done because you probably do get out there. The good news (if you can call it that) is that you’re not the only woman hitting the bar scene and batting zilch. Which is why I decided to find and test out some new places to pick up guys—and report back on which were most successful. Here is what I learned in seven days about where to look, what kind of fellas you’ll find there, and how best to get a guy’s attention.

Monday: Hit the gym
Want a guy with fitness on the top of his list? Then dust off your sneakers and get active. Tip #1: Wait to hit the gym until after the 6 p.m. crowd gets packing. The 6 p.m. guys I saw appeared frantically focused on getting done and getting out—probably because they had girlfriends or families at home. You want the man who works a little later and takes his time with the weights because he’s not under pressure to get home on time. Tip #2: Check the class schedules and go to the gym during the most popular time—but don’t take a class. Fifteen minutes after I arrived in the evening, a throng of women filtered out of the gym and into a studio for a yoga class, leaving me and one other woman alone with 20 or so men. Bingo! So start checking the schedules, ladies, because this male/female ratio adjustment helps. Tip #3: Skip the treadmills, where the men I saw were either wearing headphones or breathing too heavily to engage. Head to the free-weight area where men let their eyes wander — into the mirrors, at you — while lifting. I got a few friendly grins there. Tip # 4: As cliché as it sounds, I got the attention of one man with the old “Excuse me, do you know how to use this machine?” No, I couldn’t understand a word he said through his accent, but he sure was cute. Unfortunately, I didn’t meet anyone special on this first trip, but I’ll definitely go back. It can’t hurt to shape up while you search, right?

Tuesday: Sit for a coffee at Starbucks
If you want a laid-back fella with good taste, start drinking your lattes in public. The best time to go is when people have a little bit of time to linger, like during the after-lunch coffee break on a weekday (say, 3 p.m. or 4 p.m.), after work, or on a leisurely Sunday morning. Tip #1: Take a seat close to the drink delivery waiting area, so you can chat up men during the four minutes they’re waiting for their cappuccino milk to froth. Tip #2: Instead of a newspaper, book or laptop, bring a writing pad and pen. Instead of burying your head reading or typing, writing allows you to alternate between keeping busy and looking around. Tip #3: Be prepared to wait a while for Prince Charming. When I got to Starbucks, there wasn’t a man my age in sight for about 45 minutes. (On second thought, schlep a magazine for long, lonely minutes like this!) A few guys popped in and out quickly. Maybe because it was a weekday evening, they had places to rush off to. Next time, I’ll try the Sunday afternoon visit to see who lands on the weekends. Tip #4: Be prepared to approach a man yourself, or you’ll spend your evening staring at men across the room silently. What didn’t work: I asked a man if he knew if there was a Radio Shack nearby and he simply pointed me that way. What did work: I told another, “I have two hours to kill and I’m trying not to spend much money, so I wondered if you knew of any art or photo galleries in the area?” He pulled out his tourist guide book and helped me find one... just hours before he headed back to Colorado. Refill, please!

Wednesday: Go to an art-gallery opening
In a search for a cultured man, I hit an art opening at an edgy gallery downtown for free cocktails and freeform art, while another single friend of mine went to a party at the Guggenheim Museum uptown (a more conservative crowd). Which is how I learned Tip #1: Choose a gallery that feels like home to you, because the men in each gallery tend to reflect the space itself. My friend Stephanie said the men at the Guggenheim were impeccably dressed, but seemed as look-but-don’t-touch as the building itself. As for the men in the concrete-floored warehouse space I’ve visited before, let’s just say one was wearing a matching white cape and mask and red rubber boots. Best to filter out guys like this before you get there! Tip #2: Take advantage of the built-in bonus of the art show: The art is the only conversation piece you need. I stopped at the wine bar for a cocktail, took a quick spin around the room, and landed on a piece of art I found interesting enough to talk about and stood a few feet away while the men rolled through. I asked a few men questions about it, and the lines that seemed most natural were: “I can’t decide if I love this or hate this; what’s your take?” “I can’t really get my head around this one, can you?” and “Hey, any ideas on what this is supposed to mean?” Tip #3: If there’s a multi-sensory work of art there, head for it. My gallery included an installation with photographs combined with recorded music. A crowd gathered, and there was much chatting. I met an architect who told me about his recent trip to Nepal, but I didn’t feel a romantic connection with him. I chalked this night up as art for art’s sake.

Thursday: Cheer along at a sports bar
I like fun-focused, outgoing guys, so I hit a crowded sports bar for two back-to-back basketball games, and it was the second most successful stop of my week (you’ll hear about my most successful outing in a minute). Tip #1: Go after the game has started, when the bar is already packed, and you have a lot of options. By the time I got there, the bar seats were all taken with men, which meant I’d have to squeeze my way through to order a drink and get a good look at which guys were of interest. Tip #2: Pick the two cutest men in the room and dive in. My line was, “Sorry, guys, do you mind if I squeeze in and order something?” Squeezing was an understatement—the crowd was so tight, we were practically hugging, which made conversation required. Tip #3: Don’t miss halftime! Some of the men around me were so into the game, they only made light conversation, they seemed distracted while talking to me, and I got quite a few “Holy crap, hang on, go, go!” moments breaking up the mood. Enter halftime: The room relaxes, men look around, and you’re there to talk to. I spoke to four cute guys during halftime. No phone number exchanges at the time, but my confidence was doing the wave. Tip #4: Change the topic from sports as quickly as possible. I asked one guy about some of the players on the Lakers, and he talked for 20 minutes about them, which was not only boring for me, it didn’t begin to forge a connection. Switch the topic quickly with something like, “I’m rooting for Miami just because I had such a blast there on my last visit. Have you ever been?” At the end of the second game, I took the business card of an investment banker and emailed him the next day, but nothing came of it. Which was fine by me, thanks to...

Friday: Attend a friend’s party
If you feel better about a man vaguely connected to your social circle, accept those e-vites! I went to a friend’s “new job” party filled with about 80 people and learned a few things as I worked the room. Tip #1: Tell your closest un-single friends you want to meet all the single men in the room. I met my first three guys after being tugged at by my married friends whispering, “Hey, I found one, come here!” then being dragged across the party and introduced. Effortless, painless... though by the end of the third introduction, I was still without a date prospect. Luckily, there were other men arriving in throngs, and I tried my own approach. Tip #2: As cliché as it seems, use your party host as fodder: “So, how do you know Andy?” is the perfect open-ended question, and it honestly doesn’t come off as cheesy—I know because when I was standing at the bar waiting for a drink, one guy walked up and asked me that. Which leads to Tip #3: If you don’t see anyone you want to talk to, be sure to make yourself approachable for a guy who spies you first, and standing at the bar with a grin on your face is the perfect place to do so. Tip #4: Sure, you’re bad with names, but it pays to get good at a friend’s party. Even when I found out a guy named John was already taken, I made the effort to remember him and said, “Hey, John!” when I walked by an hour later—which is when he pulled me over to introduce me to his single friend. Score: A phone number! (And one date. So far so good!)

Saturday: Play in the park
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, I headed to a park out of the city to find some outdoorsy men, and here’s what I discovered. Tip #1: This is best done with a partner in crime. Walking through a park alone is great for window shopping, but it’s much easier and safer-feeling to approach men in groups—and as a woman in a group. Tip #2: My friend and I sat in the middle of the park, forcing us to take reconnaissance strolls to see who was entering the fold. Save yourself time and place your blankets near an entry point so you’re always alert. Tip #3: Bring a Frisbee. You’re not going to get much interaction by sitting on a blanket waiting for men to come to you. But tossing a Frisbee lets you get near them and — whoops, sorry! — right onto to their blanket. Tip #4: If you don’t have a toy, ask to borrow someone else’s. I watched a few guys play catch with a football. I was intimidated at the thought of playing with them, so I waited until they put it down, then asked if my friend and I could throw it around a little ourselves, even though we weren’t that good at it. Sure enough, the guys offered to help us perfect our spirals.

Sunday: Head to Home Depot
The hardware store is a handyman’s best friend, and I fielded it alone with pretty good results. Tip #1: Go with a minor construction plan in mind, like putting up shelves, fixing an always-running toilet, hanging pictures (whether or not it’s real or fake project is up to you.) Tip #2: Aim for the aisles full of small items like screws, bolts, pliers, and paintbrushes. When I went on a Sunday around 1 p.m., the aisles with larger items like window screens and sinks were full of couples and men wearing wedding rings. Tip #3: Approach a man with a very unfocused question that allows for gobs of conversation. Here’s what I asked a tall, handsome blonde I encountered while looking at screws: “Can I ask you a quick question? I’m putting up shelves in my wall, and I don’t know if I need a specific kind of hardware. Do you?” I know, it seems very old-fashioned, but men are old-fashioned, and they want to help with your construction questions! The proof: He took the bait and asked if the walls were concrete or sheet rock and what exactly I was hanging, then helped me collect a few pieces. When we finished up, he said, “Well, good luck,” as he turned to walk away. What I should have said: “Thanks. Your girlfriend is a very lucky woman!” What I really said: Uhhhhh, thanks, I, cool, yeah, awesome... thanks. (Hey, we all chicken-out sometimes... ) To be sure you don’t do the same, don’t forget Tip #4: Create a solid plan for parting words. For instance: “Thanks so much! When I need help next time, I wish I could call you!” If he’s single and interested, you can bet he’ll offer.

Monday
So by the end of my seven days, I got a little fitter, found a new photo gallery, learned about a great hike in Nepal, caught up on the basketball season, learned how to throw a better spiral, hung a picture in my apartment, got one guy’s number and one guy’s email address, and got asked out for one fun date. If that’s not enough reason to get out of the house for a week, I don’t know what is!

Amy Spencer also writes for New York, Real Simple, Glamour, Maxim, and other publications.

You can also link directly to this article on Happen.com, where you will find plenty more of my dating advice:

Msn Dating & Personals: My Week of Picking Up Men:

—Amy

Should You Try Dot.com Dating?

2008-03-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

Originally printed in Glamour magazine

It was written for the women out there, but it's still chock full of insight for anyone browsing for love. Click on the pages for a readable version before you dot.com yourself another date!

—Amy

Are You Ready to Find "The One?"

2008-03-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

This article is currently published on Match.com's online dating and relationship advice magazine, Happen.com

Baffled as to why you’re still looking for love? Maybe you need a fresh approach to gauging who’s right for you. Here’s how to get one.

By Amy Spencer

It happens to the best of us: There you are, going on date after date but none of them seem to be panning out. Maybe you’re just having a string of bad luck. But then again, sometimes — just sometimes — there’s more out there for you than you’ve noticed. Just because you’re keeping your eyes peeled for love doesn’t mean your heart is entirely open. If you can’t put your finger on why you’re still looking, check our list of the most common dating ruts. If you’re in one of them now, you have the power to change your outlook. Then, when someone with potential crosses your path, you’ll recognize it immediately and be ready to pounce!

Problem: You aren’t feeling instant sparks
Solution: Forget romance for a sec and use the “friend” filter
When we go on a date, we’re usually looking for some hit-us-over-the-head romantic chemistry, and when we don’t feel it, we think the date is a waste of time. But that’s not true! “If you have a strong negative reaction to someone you meet, that’s one thing, but a neutral or unsure reaction to a person can turn into chemistry down the line—and those who shut the door right away won’t get to find that out,” says Laurie Helgoe, Ph.D., author of the Boomer’s Guide to Dating (Again) and creator of Wakingdesire.com. So how can you be sure you’re open to later-blooming chemistry? Simple: Instead of using the “romance” filter that measures that love-at-first-sight chemistry, use the “friend” filter on your next date. Think about it: When you talk to a new person at a party, you don’t use cocktail conversation to search out what the two of you don’t have in common, you look for the things you do have in common. Try doing that on your next date. Instead of casting off your date too quickly (as in “Oh, he’s not into music,” or “Oh, she’s far too quiet compared to me”), hone in on whether you both love Frasier re-runs, have similar views on immigration, or can’t stand cheese plates. “The pursuit of friendship takes the pressure off by making the goal of the date learning about the person,” says Dr. Helgoe. Which, let’s be honest, is what a first date should be anyway. Because the more common ground you discover, the more likely chemistry can develop later.

Problem: Your dates look great on paper… but that’s it
Solution: Pay attention to how you’re feeling vs. your date’s résumé
So this person has a ton of wonderful qualities. That’s fine, for a start. But amazing chemistry isn’t just about finding someone you admire or think would be a great life partner. It’s about how you feel when you’re with that person. For instance, if the date you had last night was friendly and gregarious, but you felt more meek or quiet than usual in his or her shadow, that doesn’t make for strong chemistry. “You want to really feel like yourself—your happiest, most excited self,” explains Rhonda Findling, author of The Dating Cure. So on your next rendezvous, don’t merely ask “Do I like this person?” Also ask yourself “Do I like myself when I’m around this person?” And with an attitude like that, you just may recognize something brilliant very soon.

Problem: You don’t think this person has long-term potential
Solution: Try the “Carpe date-’em” trick
We single people are so afraid of “settling” that we can’t help looking ahead to the future in the first few minutes on a date. In the movie Something’s Gotta Give, Jack Nicholson asks Diane Keaton if she wants to go for a walk along the beach. She stammers and wavers until finally he says, “It’s just a walk, not a marriage proposal!” Try to think of your dates the same way. It’s not a long-term commitment... it’s a latte. Take it one step at a time. You know that saying carpe diem—in Latin, it means seize the day? Instead of carpe diem, carpe date-’em! Go one a date for what it is, and don’t start obsessing about whether this person wants the same number of kids as you do. Going slow is fine.

Problem: You swear all the good ones are taken already
Solution: Look again… at people you usually pass over
Thanks to all the adorably hopeful romantic comedy movies they keep making, it’s sometimes hard to shake the thought that someone, somewhere, someday, will sweep you off your feet and move with you to an old vineyard in Italy. But what about your neighbor, who hits the same coffee shop in the morning thirty seconds after you do? Like traffic accidents, love accidents often happen close to home. You may be looking for a fairytale, but remember that sometimes, the fairytale is finding someone when you’re taking out the trash. “Think about the happy ending in Bridget Jones’ Diary,” says Dr. Helgoe. “She didn’t end up with her sexy boss… she ended up with the guy she met at the family party wearing a reindeer sweater!” So keep your antenna up 24/7 and the next time you wonder, “Where are all the good single men and women?” remind yourself they may be standing next to you on line at Old Navy or Whole Foods.

Problem: You feel down about yourself and not date-worthy
Solution: Give yourself a pre-date pep rally
After traveling a few miles on the road to nobody special, it’s easy to start blaming yourself. You wind up going out and socializing or turning up on a date with a sad-sack attitude. (Hint: Not a turn-on…) Nobody wants to date a downer, so it’s time to corral the cheerleaders in your life to remind you why you’re such a catch. One hour before your next date, give one of your cheerleaders a call. Maybe it’s an older brother who says, “Dude, you are a fine specimen. Go get ‘em!” When I’m having a down dating spell, I email my gay friend (the Will to my Grace) my latest dating sob story just so he’ll write back, “Are you kidding? You’re the prettiest girl in the world! If I liked girls, I would have wanted to marry you five years ago!” Is it hokey? Yes. Does it work every time? You betcha.

Amy Spencer writes for Glamour, Maxim, Real Simple and other publications.

You can also link directly to this article on Happen.com, where you will find plenty more of my dating advice:
Happen.com Magazine: Are You Ready to Find the One?

—Amy

The Right Way to Rebound

2008-03-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

This article is currently published on Msn.com's Dating & Personals site

The Right Way to Rebound

By Amy Spencer

You know what they say: The way to get over one person is to find another one. What they don’t tell you is that if you make wise choices about whom you date after a breakup, you’ll get over your ex that much more efficiently. To that end, we’ve come up with the ultimate dos and don’ts of rebounding to make sure you have a smooth ride to your next, well, real relationship.

DON'T hook up with a friend or an ex. Sure, it’s tempting: You’re lonely. They’re there. But the short-term gain is not worth the long-term gamble. “Hooking up with a friend who like likes you is easy, but it’s cruel to get his or her hopes up,” says Lynn Harris, author of Breakup Girl to the Rescue and msn.com advice columnist. After all, your friend may have been dreaming of this for years and will see your interest as a sign that you finally agree. Another scenario to avoid: Drunk-dialing a previous ex for low-maintenance bonding. You’ll probably just wind up reliving the same unpleasant situations that split you two up originally. And you’ll just endure more pain when you decide the rebound has run its course, because you’ll have to deal with a second breakup.

DO mingle with people beyond your usual circle. “Meeting someone outside of your social circle allows things to naturally develop,” says Yvonne Thomas, Ph.D., a Los Angeles psychologist who specializes in relationships. You are free from connections to your ex—not to mention reminders of him or her. Plus, just putting yourself out there and meeting people in new ways is an ego-boost. Says Danielle of Montclair, NJ: “After my boyfriend of five years broke up with me, I decided I needed some new hobbies and signed up for a hiking club and furniture-refinishing classes. Not only did I really improve my skills on both fronts, I met a bunch of new guys.”

DON’T hook up with people who work in your safe havens. We’re talking about the hot, flirty bartender at your local watering hole. The sexy assistant behind the counter at your gym. The barista at the corner coffee shop you’ve been hitting on (and hitting on) for years. These are the places you want to go to drown your sorrows (which — hello! — you’re going to need to do!) and kissing the staff there will only make you feel weird about going there in the future. “If you hook up with the gym person, talk about ruining your escape the next day,” says Harris. “‘Well, I’m going to head to the gym.’... ‘Me, too!’ The last places you want to feel weird are the places you go to relax.”

DO hook up with the opposite of your ex. “Stop and ask yourself, ‘Why didn’t my last relationship work? What didn’t I like about my ex?’” says Dr. Thomas. “Those are the real things you don’t want to repeat. Don’t go through all that trauma in vain!” Rich Davis of Franklin Square, NY, would agree: “I had a girlfriend who took everything that I did for granted. I opened her doors, paid for everything and she never said thank you for any of it. The rebound after that was a girl who appreciated that I was a good guy.” What’s more, “If the rebound doesn’t remind you of your ex, you miss your ex less in the moment and can enjoy it more,” says Harris. Dating a different type can also remind you that it’s possible for you to break patterns. So if you’re used to dating serious brunettes, try an outgoing blonde. If you normally choose business managers, hang out with musicians instead. Your rebounds should remind you of what you didn’t know you were missing and make you feel happy to be single again!

DON’T cast off a rebound as a “can’t possibly work in the long term” connection. Why? Well, because sometimes a rebound can work. In fact, sometimes the fact that you’ve dismissed it as a rebound is precisely why it does work. “In rebound situations, your guard is down and your expectations are low, so you ease into it,” says Thomas. And since you’re being nothing but yourself, it may actually result in one of the most realistic connections you’ve ever made. So keep all your options open when you’re back in the big pond. “People tend to assume that the next person you date chronologically after a breakup is automatically a rebound,” says Harris. “But sometimes he or she is really just the next person you date, so don’t throw the babe out with the bathwater!”

Amy Spencer writes for Glamour, Maxim, and Real Simple, among other publications.

You can also link directly to this article on Happen.com, where you will find plenty more of my dating advice:

Msn.com: The Right Way to Rebound

—Amy

To Live & Date in L.A.

2008-03-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

MOVIELINE'S HOLLYWOOD LIFE, May/June, 2002

MOST PEOPLE CAN ONLY DREAM ABOUT ACTUALLY ROMANCING THE STARS WHO ROAM THEIR FANTASY LIVES. THEY DON'T KNOW HOW LUCKY THEY ARE. JOURNALIST ANNA DAVID CAME TO L.A. WITH THE ACCESS AND ASSETS NEEDED TO ATTRACT CELEBRITY DATES, BUT SHE QUICKLY LEARNED TO BE MORE CAREFUL WHAT SHE WISHED FOR.

By Anna David

When I was 12, I loved Tom Howell with a passion unbridled. I had seen The Outsiders a good 20 times, regularly fought with friends over who "discovered" him first and found myself many evenings in the grips of adolescent longing, clutching a picture of Tommy where he was lounging on a bed and wearing a Le Tigre shirt. ("Not his fault - the magazine probably made him wear it," I told myself then, embarking on what would eventually become a semi-regular habit of finding any way to justify a man's less appealing aspects).

The only part of the crush that worried my mom was the fact that I was certain that one day Tommy Howell and I would have a relationship. "When I was your age, I had a crush on Johnny Ray, who was deaf and would cry when he sang," my mom would say. "But I didn't really think I was ever going to go on a date with him." I'm sure I looked her with teenage horror, shook my head and went back to seeing whether "Mrs. Anna Howell" looked better in black pen or blue.

Of course, I didn't ever date Tom Howell and the crush did dissipate over time. But the fact is, if you live in Los Angeles and are even tangentially related to the entertainment business, you're going to interact with Famous Men and some of them aren't secretly gay or only interested in dating actresses.

The single male celebrities who are actually straight have, just like any other species, adjusted to their environment - which in their case happens to be one where people try to cater to their every whim before they've even had it. It's like their whole world is TIVO'd and they're the only ones holding the remote, obliterating any notion of standard mating rituals.

Here's an experience I had with a well known TV and film star. We'd been introduced about a year earlier but I'd seen him at probably a half dozen parties since then where he had either ignored me or given me a mildly indifferent nod. This one night, however, he saw me across a crowded patio of a club and came bounding over. "How are you?" he grinned, clasping me in a warm hug. As I hugged back, a friend standing nearby whispered, "I didn't know you knew him." Extricating myself from the hug, I mouthed to my friend, "I didn't, either."

But suddenly, this actor guy who'd ignored my existence for several months was just dying to spend time with me. "Let me get you a drink," he insisted as he pulled out a chair for me at a table for two. Returning seconds later, he turned the charm up to 11 for a good half hour of small talk. Then he got to his point.

"If you said the word, we could be swimming in my pool in 30 minutes," he said, pretty much apropos of nothing, as he dragged on his cigarette.

Knowing the meaning without needing a translation (pool=naked), I smiled and declined. He looked shocked. "I didn't mean anything by that," he smiled in that we-both-know-I'm-lying sort of way. I told him the truth - that I was actually interested in meeting someone I liked and possibly having a relationship (which, we all know, is also the last statement any woman should make to any man she barely knows) - and spontaneous late-night swimming really wasn't on the agenda. I gestured to the various women in the vicinity and added, "I'm sure you could find a taker here." And he responded with just as much honesty as I had shown him by smiling, standing up and going looking for Her.

Just in case you think my experience was the inevitable fate of a woman with a conservative approach to dating, I should confess that I wasn't always such a good girl. The truth is, when I first moved to L.A. a little over six years ago, not only was I the last one to leave a party I probably wasn't invited to in the first place; I was also ridiculously, embarrassingly, horrifyingly impressed by celebrity. I cringe when I look back on an experience I had with a guy more famous for being famous than for anything else.

I had just started working as a freelance reporter for People magazine and had been sent to a movie premiere post-party where a studio publicist was guiding me around the room to help me interview celebrities about the film (which happened to have been widely reviled). And the first person I see is this famous for being famous guy, whom I happened to have an almost Tom Howell-esque crush on after having seen a layout on him in a magazine, and though I couldn't name a single movie this guy had been in, it didn't stop me from grabbing the studio publicist's hand and explaining the absolute necessity of my interviewing him at once.

Studio publicist approached him while I stood a few feet back. As he listened to her, Mr. Famous for Being Famous gave me the old one-up, one-down. "Is she going to be doing the interview?" he asked, jerking his head in my direction. The publicist nodded. He gave me a big, cocky grin. "Bring it on," he said.

I'm sure I stuttered some version of whatever my inane question for the night was and my subject responded with, "Why should we be interviewer and interviewee when we can be lovers?" God knows what I responded but suffice it to say that I had probably written my number down before he'd finished saying the word "lovers." I glided out of the premiere, giddy over my exciting Hollywood life.

It's bad enough that he never called, right? Wrong. Turns out he had a model girlfriend who had been with him that night - I had been too blinded by Love to even notice the perfectly cheek boned woman a few feet to his side - and I later found out that their routine was that he would hit on every woman in the vicinity, then they would fight and make up. (If there's anything worse than realizing you were a pawn in a dysfunctional Hollywood relationship, it's realizing you were a pawn that apparently fell for the absolute worst line in the complete history of both life and movies.) The next time I saw my would-be lover, he acted like he didn't know me.

Now considerably more schooled in the ways of Hollywood, I still come upon amazing evidence that famous men don't really follow the rules that civilians do. Once, a well-known actor invited me over to "hang out" with him and his eight-year old son on a Saturday night. I was really flattered by the fact that he was including me in some intimate family ritual - until I met his son, whose first words to me were, "Are you spending the night?" (Only an eight-year-old or a famous actor could be so direct.)

After a game of soccer on the beach, a cup of tea and a video that put the boy to sleep - does it get any more wholesome than this? - the actor and I talked, laughed and kissed on the couch. He told me how comfortable and safe he felt with me, how excited he was to get to know me better and how special it all was - before asking me his son's introductory question. When I said I wouldn't feel comfortable staying over, he gazed at me with wonder, as if that possibility had never occurred to him. "What an amazing idea," he marveled. "We'll keep seeing each other and then maybe someday you will." I felt as charmed as I'd ever been, and even more so when he insisted on writing my name and number on the dry erase board in his kitchen.

Then, a few nights later, we went out to dinner. It didn't help that there were only about six people in the restaurant and they all felt the need to have conversations with the actor right then; it wasn't great when he, apparently grooving to some beat inside his head, began drumming the table with his fingers in lieu of pursuing any kind of conversation. But the truth was without a child, a soccer ball, a movie and good kisses to distract us, we had absolutely nothing to say to each other. Just like anyone not living under a rock, I already knew more about him than I could possibly want to and so all the standard where-are-you-from, do-you-get-along-with-your-family dating 101 questions seemed irrelevant. And as the meal went on, with only a finger-drum beat gaining momentum, I realized that he didn't seem remotely interested in finding out anything about me. After he took me home, walked me to my door and gave me a kiss, I never heard from the guy again.

The fact that he kept his allegedly important numbers on an erasable surface finally registered.

The moral of it all? Though it certainly isn't fair to have a few isolated experiences and claim that all men in the same profession behave similarly, you're probably safer generalizing about actors than you are about say, doctors or teachers. The fact is there's something supremely unnatural about being elevated to the status of icon for providing entertainment. It's got to make life surreal to the point that pressing the figurative pause, play and fast forward buttons feels not only justified but also natural. You're probably better of leaving the actors on the movie or TV screen, where you're the one holding the control buttons.

The Truth About Women

2008-03-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

RAZOR, April, 2005

Anna reveals what really drives the ladies crazy (and not) in the bedroom

By Anna David

When it comes to communication between the sexes, most of us are at a loss. We women can read all the self-help books we want, name all the various planets we think you’re from, and determine just how “not into us” you are, but in doing so we’re ignoring one essential truth: you men are just as perplexed by us as we are by you. And the bedroom can sometimes be the epicenter of such confusion.

It all boils down to the fact that we’ll talk to our mothers, therapists, manicurists, and Starbucks pushers– in short, anyone -- about what really turns us on and off before we’ll reveal it to you. Sure, I can tell a guy where to go and what to do – to a point. Certain topics make me squeamish, while others veer dangerously close to revealing the fact that I’m not the Major Sex Goddess I’d like you to believe I am. And some things are just too damn embarrassing to discuss between the sheets.

So I’ve taken it upon myself – with some help from my friends CJ, Leslie and Heather – to diminish the gap in communication between the sexes by revealing some of those sexual secrets we’re least likely to discuss with you. Just don’t assume that listening in on our conversation is an invitation to bring such issues up with the ladies in your life; if you haven’t figured it out by now, the only universal truth about all women is that we’re maddeningly, pathologically unpredictable. Isn’t that’s why we captivate and frustrate you so?

This seemingly erratic behavior definitely rings true in the anal department. You know you've tried to convince us to try it in the name of fun or sexual experimentation, and you've probably received mixed reaction, ranging from a raised eyebrow to an "I'll try anything once" smirk. Now, as someone who’s so uncomfortable with certain bodily functions that I’d basically rather have a man think of me as a raging psychopath than as a creature that eliminates waste on a regular basis, I’m not exactly in the anal sex “target audience.” When it comes to sex, I’d essentially like to ignore the fact that we each have body parts capable of emitting scents horrific enough to blind a cat. Most of the men I’ve been with have seemingly been aware enough of my issues – perhaps my horror at the sight of those magazines stacked next to their toilet wasn’t so subtle – to never broach the subject.

That doesn’t mean that my backside is entirely innocent, however. The odd finger or tongue has found its way there over the years – and no one has been more surprised than me to discover all the pleasure to be had. My feelings on the matter are essentially the same as those of Leslie and CJ. “When I dated a guy that used to lick and kiss back there, it felt amazing,” says Leslie. ”But I’ve never had anal sex and I’m deathly afraid of it – I mean, I shiver and shake when I’m having a colonic.” CJ nods in agreement. “I don’t let anyone near my butt” is all she uttered.

“Heather,” who happens to be married, was the sole dissenter in our group. (Not to dash the dreams of those who’ve recently gotten down on one knee, but it should be pointed out that Heather’s anal openness has nothing to do with the fact that she’s married to Tom.) “I haven’t done it in like 15 years because Tom’s really huge and it would be absolutely excruciating with him,” she explains. (Heather’s name has been changed but Tom’s hasn’t -- altering the identity of a largely endowed man just doesn’t seem right.) “I’ve really liked it in the past – especially when the guy would touch me in the front at the same time,” she adds. “Also, guys like it so much and I enjoyed being the girl who was so accommodating.”

The fact is, my extremely unscientific research has led me to believe that in the same way you’re never going to convince a window seat person that an aisle is better, you’re probably not going to be able to convince a girl that doesn’t want to try anal that she should. And the more you push it, the more she’s probably going to wonder about your obsession with her back-door policy.

While anal sex is surely a top fantasy for most of you, we women are far less predictable when it comes to what mental images turn us on the most. We share some of our fantasies with you, but a lot of the stuff we’re envisioning when we’re in bed with you (or a battery-operated friend) just isn’t good coitus gab.

My imagination was pornographic long before I saw my first porn. My favorite fantasy, about being a secretary and getting a little overworked on my boss’ desk, captivated the bulk of my 20-something masturbatory thoughts. (Crucial note to former male employers: These fantasies were not about you; they were about the eroticism of power dynamics and the thrill of the taboo.) My other “go to” sequence revolves around being so overwhelmed with libidinous lust in a public place that my guy and I must escape to a bathroom stall to satiate one another. When I ran these scenes by my girls, however, I didn’t find a lot of common ground.

“I always fantasize that I’m the only female viper pilot on Battlestar Galactica and Apollo’s my boyfriend and we go on missions and have sex on different planets,” reveals CJ. “I also have one about being Michael Knight’s sidekick on Knight Rider, fighting crime with him all over America in KITT the car, and having sex in hotels,” she adds, solidifying my theory that she watches way too much bad TV.

Heather’s fantasies revolve around someone far more famous than David Hasselhoff (outside of Germany, anyway). “I pretty much just think about Johnny Depp,” she confesses. “Or, I think about being in a threesome with Johnny Depp and another girl and having the girl go down on me.” While Heather’s been in threesomes in the past – none, hold the Us Weekly, with Depp – she thinks the reason all this rules her fantasy life now is that it’s not something that’s ever going to happen again.

My advice is go ahead and ask the girl with the clenched eyelids what she’s got on her mind. Who knows? You may be able to help make her fantasies a reality.

One thing I can pretty much guarantee no woman fantasizes about is a guy that can have sex for hours on end. I know that standard thinking dictates that we women want guys who can give it to us all night and are repulsed by the notion of a guy that comes too fast. But standard thinking is wrong. Most women I know have had great sex turn into boringly painful sex when her virile bed buddy makes the mistake of mistaking “longer” for “better.”

Truthfully, there are few sentences I like less than “Tell me when you want me to come.” Because the answer is simple and obvious: I want you to come when you’re so overcome with excitement that you can’t do anything else! CJ concurs. “It’s just not sexy when a guy is trying not to,” she says. “I want them to just enjoy the moment.”

While Leslie isn’t a fan of never-ending sex, she thinks there’s something endearing about the efforts men make to provide it. “It’s cute when they’re up in their head trying not to come,” she says. “It shows that they’re trying to put you first. I always think, ‘I wonder what he’s thinking about – baseball or enchiladas?’’”

Don’t get me wrong – we like that you care about our pleasure. It’s just that plain old sex doesn’t always do it for a woman -- and the hours you spend trying to prove otherwise can turn tomorrow’s attempt to pee into an experience only a handful of Oxycontin can ease. I’m certainly not saying that premature ejaculation is the new black; it’s just that in our Viagra-laden culture, a guy that can “hold out forever” is less appealing than a guy who knows how much it turns us on to see – and feel – them when they lose it completely. And that’s the truth.

WOMEN 101
Going back to school these days can be terribly exciting, if you consider what the following institutions have to offer:

Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts
(www.mamagenas.com) Offers classes for men that reveal everything from how and where women like to be touched to the pickup lines that work. Though the school is in New York, classes can also be completed via telephone correspondence. Typical class selling line: “If you want to add some swash to your buckle, this class is for you.” Most one-day courses cost $250.

Erotic University
(www.eroticuniversity.com) Offers both in-person instruction in downtown L.A. and online classes on their “virtual campus.” Upcoming LA courses include “How to Pick Up Women for Threesomes” and “How to Direct Adult Videos. They have an online library, an auditorium, campus store, health center and a computer sciences department that teaches people how to keep their personal Internet explorations private. Online registration costs $35.