Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Part 21

Sharks vs. Volcanoes

King Tut vs. King Kong

Streptococcus vs. Candidiasis (Strep Throat vs. Yeast Infection)

The Do-Over

The Switcheroo

Street Smart

Street Stupid (Street Smart sequel)

Fat Astronaut

The Unt.i.tled Liam Neeson "You Took My Female Relative Project"

The Unt.i.tled Jennifer Lopez Sonia Sotomayor Project

Darling (Peter Pan from the point of view of the Darling family's alcoholic dad)

The Bear from Those Toilet Paper Ads Movie 3D

Gross Catastrophe

Hate f.u.c.k

Fat s.l.u.t

s.e.x Dude

Bad Dog Walker (You can see the poster already, can't you? Heather Graham in booty shorts, pulled in eight different directions by dogs on leashes and smiling a naughty grin.)

Grandpa Swap

Stepmom Finis.h.i.+ng School

Human Quilt (horror movie)

I Ain't Yo' Wife!

You Ain't My Dad!

As much as it may seem like I am mocking these movies, if any movie studio exec is reading this and is interested in any of the above, I will gladly take a meeting about them. I have an almost completed outline for Crest Whitestrips.

The Best Distraction in the World: Romance and Guys

Someone Explain One-Night Stands to Me

I HAVE NEVER had a one-night stand. According to every women's magazine and television program ever made, this is super-unforgivably lame, and it behooves me to go reclaim my groove on an all-girls party trip to an unincorporated island territory of the United States. Every romantic comedy I watch depicts our adorable heroine walking sheepishly back from a stranger's place in the morning, with bedhead and her eyeliner all s.e.xy and smudged. She might not yet have found Mr. Right (this is only the beginning of the movie), but she's having fun looking!

I just don't understand any of that at all. Here's why:

In my mind, the s.e.xiest thing in the world is the feeling that you're wanted. The slightly nervous asking of your phone number. The text message asking you to dinner. The simple overture of wanting me can satisfy my ego for a good long time. The s.e.xual situation that could come of it? Well, that's just less appealing to me. I don't mean to say I don't enjoy s.e.x; I'm a properly functioning mammal and everything. I just think, like, who is this guy? Don't you need to know some more about a guy than an evening's worth of conversation at a bar to make s.e.x appealing?

Also: fear is a pretty big turn-off. I'm talking about safety here. I don't even mean s.e.xual health safety, like STDs. I mean good old-fas.h.i.+oned life-and-death safety. Here's what I can't wrap my brain around. I barely talk to strangers (a habit that I started as a child and that has served me well through my adulthood). So the idea of going to a stranger's house at night, or having that stranger over to my house, sounds insanely dangerous. These fears have made it so that when my female friends talk to me about one-night stands, I'm an incredibly irritating listener.

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: So, then it was like 2 a.m. that same night, and he knocked on my apartment door. I was in my robe and nothing else-

ME: No underwear?

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: No. I said "nothing else."

ME (skeptical): I feel like you were wearing underwear. That's how you are in, like, repose?

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: Yes.

ME: You really like not wearing underwear? Am I the only one who finds that totally uncomfortable? (lowered voice) Don't you ever sometimes ... excrete?

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: Gross. Stop it.

ME: Okay. But let's remember to come back to this no-underwear conversation later.

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: So he knocked at the door-

ME: Wait! Sorry. I'm just realizing, your doorman let him up without ever seeing him before? Doesn't that disturb you, that your doorman would just let any old person off the street up to your apartment? I would give my doorman a book of photos of accepted guests that he could reference, like a reference book-

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: I'm doing fine with my doorman.

ME: I would have established a different procedure.

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: Great, Mindy. Anyway, then I showed him around the place-

ME: The doorman? (off ESL Friend's annoyed look) The guy! The guy! Yes.

EXCITED s.e.xUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND: He was into the way I decorated it. Really taking it in.