All posts by Allyson Darling

All men everywhere, I am certain, have wondered at least once what their underwear choice says about them. And let’s not disregard the neurotic women of the Millennial generation that Google-search this exact title moments after Paul, or Greg, or Jeff with the butt-chin has left her sexed sheets on a Sunday morning. Mark Twain insists that one should “write what you know.” After years of observations, demonstrations, and ruminations of friends, landlords, brothers, and a significant others of the straight and semi-straight variety and their chonies I feel confidentRead More

Post-friendsgiving and pre-ginger-ale ordering at a bar because the fear of vomiting after the many mixes and matches of food and drinks was real, a friend inquired about my plans to go home for both holidays. “You’re going home for Thanksgiving and Christmas?” He asked, surprised at the repeated venture, requiring an airline flight or ten hour car ride a matter of weeks away from one another. I gushed to him about how significant the holidays were to me, my brother was extremely sick a couple years ago and the morbid fearRead More

She grabs your shoulders from behind, in a back-hug and shakes you around like a my-sized, standing shake and bake…also how you’re not supposed to shake a newborn baby. “Look at you! You’re amazing!” She says to your reflection that stares from an abandoned and mirrored headboard on the sidewalk that you’re sure has witnessed a night or eighty of raunchy sex. You tell her you may cry because you’re hungry and tears are your undue reaction to low blood sugar. You try not to for the sake of theRead More

1. Your weekend plans in the kitchen with your co-worker whose name you forget, but whose mustache crumbs you always remember. The necessity to construe a wholesome response before 8am because having morning sex and eating ramen twice in bed isn’t an acceptable answer to a person who is supposed to regard you professionally is irritating. And if you decided to make toast instead of cereal on that Friday you must engage further while he makes poor over-coffee talk about how fast weekends go by. And how it’s supposed toRead More

It was eighty-four degrees in San Francisco and I was riding the bus after concurrently confessing my love and breaking up with a boy I had been dating.  On our first date I told him that my brother had brain cancer.  I had just discovered the fact myself and wasn’t sure what the protocol was for these things in regard to first dates. Was it a sit-at-home-and-panic or an attend-with-pocketed-Xanax sort of situation? The idea of distraction and a lovely, little pill that allowed me to abandon anxiety for fourRead More

Dear Uterus, We’ve had a tumultuous thirteen-year reign. I didn’t know you existed until I was marred by the woes of your lining shedding that made me wish I had a penis post-sixth grade graduation. We both know it’s unoriginal for a woman to rant about her period blood and this stigma is especially evident in the same world I whine about upper management at my company being men. So dear Uterus, I hope you appreciate the hypocrisy I am engaging in to pursue this letter to you. Thank you forRead More

There’s a certain amount of  tact present when conversing with acquaintances. These aren’t your people that arrive with vodka and a burrito when something horrid has happened to you. They are the co-workers of your friends that have a homely, three-limbed dog, or perhaps your friend’s Craigslist roommate that masturbates loudly. Sometimes you get stuck in the backseat of their cars after a group-camping expedition and you spill ketchup on their seatbelt buckle and don’t tell them. Whoever they are, you have certainly never connected with them on a personalRead More

I’ve had three Bloody Mary’s and seventeen olives and I’m in that crater of a conversation that revolves around significant others and their brunch orders. I wish I cared what your boring boyfriend chose to eat for breakfast to accommodate his Paleo diet and stomach sensitivity to dairy, but I don’t. I would rather gag myself with the bright green straw in charge of my Bloody Mary consumption and re-eat the marbled pieces of olive after I’ve thrown them up than continue the conversation.  After this instance I realized thatRead More

Most of you are scared to go there. Your guy friends laugh nervously when you broach the topic at lunch, and your good, but not best friends mentally move you from their classy-has-it-together category of friends to the perverted-don’t-bring-around-grandma one when you bring it up. But if not now, when? Perhaps you’ve started dating a new person, you’re smitten, you’re spooning, you’re sleeping, you accidentally had more cheese than your digestive system can quietly process (ie any), your ear plus are nestled in your ears because you’re a light sleeper andRead More

I couldn’t fully grasp this concept until recently. And by recently I mean when I found out Heath Ledger died and I tried to watch 10 Things I Hate About You. I thought it was a fluke, that one of my favorite films from my youth would solicit such a sadness.  I told myself it was only sad because he was so young himself as a serenading sparkplug, and I tried again with Brokeback Mountain, but I still could not see his face on screen without being subject to unsolicited emotions.  I can never enjoyRead More

Sex is one of those things.   One of those things that can be really good, really bad, unmistakably messy, emotionally entangling, seemingly life changing, and what you have before breakfast some days and after dinner others, like a cupcake.  And in your mid-twenties and outside of a relationship it is usually a combination of power, alcohol and nearly expired condoms that you’ve found in the kitchen drawer and that belonged to three roommates ago. Some of us were raised Catholic with the notion that the only option for our genitals was chastityRead More

It was one of those nights that the busy burrito place down the street makes you alter your seating arrangement three times. From a table that could seat eight, to the end of another wobbly legged one, to finally suggesting a back-corner table by the bathroom door. We made clumsy eye contact with those who entered the bathroom and shut the door facing outwards. Rejecting previous offers for an additional plate for this shared burrito meant that the manner in which I splayed burrito guts out of tortillas couldn’t beRead More

Recent events have inspired me to web wander into the atrocious abyss that is OkCupid and create a profile. Recent events include but are not limited to: being the third wheel to friends and their brunch dates, realizing my sexual activity rate (0%), and watching my relatives celebrate the legalization of gay marriage in this state because they think I am a lesbian. Browsing, messaging and, essentially, applying on OkCupid is a combined concoction of a depletion of one’s soul and visionless hope. It is like applying for your dream jobRead More

  After two years as a resident of San Francisco, one serious relationship, and a dozen-ish fernet-fueled make-outs in dive bars throughout this 7 by 7 span of expensive earth, I have been there and I have done that.  And after circumstantially created dates as cause of Tinder, OkCupid, Grouper and Hinge, I have done even that. The complicated species that is San Francisco man falls into five distinct archetypes.  (Although it is rude to overgeneralize, my observations and scientifically calculated data boasts extensive evidence that props these patterns).   1. Read More

I don’t know what time it is.  I refuse to look because it makes being awake worse. I’m caught in this buzzed state, wanting to be quiet, mind and body, wanting to be accepting and still and lie next to you, strewn diagonal amongst the chaos of covers and unsteadily tucked sheets.  I know it has been hours.  I’m too sensitive of time and my perception of it surreptitiously slips in as I wake before alarms. I’m angry.  I’m angry you revealed moments before sleep that you’re looking for jobsRead More