-These days, girls in bars shoot down every guy right away – like they’re sitting really close to the screen and playing Duck Hunt.  This has made the already elusive one-night stand even more difficult to pull off.  Some may applaud this, as one-night stands have traditionally been stigmatized as inappropriate sexual behavior.  Of course, this hasn’t discouraged most twentysomethings, who’ll gladly take an inebriated, emotionless encounter any time they can get it.  As a guy who travels a lot, drinks a lot, and is single, I’ve had my fair share of one-night stands.  And I can tell you, that when done right (and with protection), there is nothing for the guy or girl to be ashamed about.  So when last call arrives and you’re looking for a relationship no longer than one night, it’s time to stand and deliver.

-The top three reasons why going home with a random chick can get awkward are: 1) you forget her name (I just try never to say it out loud); 2) you start to sober up (generally not a problem for me); and 3) you’re hooking up in complete silence.  That’s why I always keep an appropriate playlist set at Shuffle and Repeat All.  Jack Johnson and John Legend are the most-played artists in my iTunes – and I’ve never listened to either of them alone, clothed, or sober.

-I’ve found that girls who don’t have a lot of female friends tend to be wilder in bed.  I believe this is because girls tell their friends all the gritty details the day after they get laid – and their friends (admittedly or not) subsequently pass judgment on them.  But girls without female friends are less inhibited about one-night stands because they don’t have to worry about being judged by their peers.  These girls answer to a higher authority.  Sort of like the Hebrew National of hook-ups.

-I never understood why girls are always so self-conscious about getting dressed the morning after a one-night stand.  We’ve been naked hooking up all night and now you’re so adamant about not letting me see your breasts again that you’re desperately trying to wiggle your bra back on without taking your shirt off first?  And it’s such a struggle, too.  I’ve watched chicks almost dislocate their own shoulders like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.

-New York is a city optimized for one-night stands: bars are open until 4am, densely-located, and readily accessible.  Los Angeles is one of the worst cities for one-night stands: bars are open until 2am, are far from one another, and you have a better chance of catching a foul ball at Dodger Stadium than you do of hailing a cab.  In either city, it’s advisable to go to the girl’s place, so you can bounce at the crack of dawn.  But only in LA will you ever wake up next to a girl in your own apartment, as I did a few weeks ago, and have her ask you to drive her home – to Laguna Beach, a fucking two hour drive…each way…or in total, roughly four times as long as we spent actually hooking up.

-Every guy treats his one-night stands differently.  My buddy Moobs (so nicknamed because of his prominent man-boobs) always carries a digital camera and has a picture of almost every girl he’s ever hooked up with.  Looking at his Ofoto page is like flipping through the women’s section of an old J.Crew catalog, except you know all the clothes ended up on the floor.  My buddy Dr. Shermdog, whose prowess is legendary, maintains a cordial relationship with virtually all of his hook-ups, and I believe checks in on each of them on a biannual basis.  That’s what I call bedside manner.  As for me, I’ve spoken to some of my one-night stands again and some I haven’t.  Some I’ve even hooked up with again (though technically that voids their one-night status).  But in each instance, I went in without expectations.  And I left without regrets, often very early in the morning, and always with a smile on my face.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-Pick a bar that you go to a lot, then ask a friend how many people he or she thinks it holds.  They’ll inevitably respond with, “I don’t know.  I’m not good at that kinda stuff.”  I’ve never heard one person ever claim basic competence at being able to gauge how many people can fit in a room.  I bet even the fire marshals who post those annoying capacity signs are just making it up.

-This is the most brilliant thing I heard all week.  My friend: “I eventually just stopped going to the gym.”  Me: “Why?”  My friend: “Well, because I never went.”

-What the hell is up with news and sports anchors having such messy desks?  Every time I turn on the TV these days I see a brightly lit stage and two guys (or girls) all nicely dressed up sitting in front of a slovenly pile of shit.  Coffee mugs and newspapers and laptops and pens and paper everywhere.  I know you’re a 24-hour network, but even 7-Eleven tidies up every now and then.

-I’m a bit of a compulsive hand-washer.  Recently, I got a free bottle of gingerbread cookie-scented hand soap with my drugstore.com order.  Now when I wash up immediately after eating, my hands smell like delicious gingerbread.  Smelling my hands creates a Pavlovian response in which I become hungry all over again.  So then I eat again but am then compelled to wash my hands, which starts the whole vicious cycle over.  This is what I get for ordering toilet paper online.

-When someone meets a really hot girl who happened to go to my high school or college, and then calls me to ask if I know her, I’m always really chagrined if I don’t.  I’ll never admit it, either.  I’ll just make shit up like, “Uh, yeah, she sounds familiar.  I think my friend banged her once.  He still talks to her biannually.”

-Every day for the past two months, I’ve heard a car horn outside my apartment playing “La Cucaracha.”  But when I run to the window, there’s no car in the street.  It’s the weirdest fucking mystery.  I feel like I’m in a really bad episode of Scooby-Doo.  Then I found out that the creator of Scooby-Doo passed away a few weeks ago – which, while sad, really is completely irrelevant to this anecdote.

-And, finally, I think that tales of one-night stands are the universal language of twentysomething males.  Put two random dudes in a room together and eventually they’ll start swapping war stories from the previous weekend’s conquests.  When we grow older, get married, and have kids, we lose that common bond.  And that’s why golf is so popular.  Put my dad in a room with another random old dude, and eventually they’ll start swapping war stories from the previous weekend’s back nine.  Until that time, however, I think I have a few more one-night stands left in me.  After all, I’m still learning.  For instance, while it’s preferable to go to the girl’s place over going to my place, I recently learned you should never go to a third party.  While in Dallas last year, I brought a girl home to the apartment of my doctor friend Christina, who I was crashing with, and accidentally woke up her fiance, also a doctor, who was performing an early morning pediatric spinal surgery.  Thankfully, the kid turned out fine, and though I never got her picture or phone number, the girl left at the crack of dawn.  As for me, I woke up hungover a few hours later and was greeted by the familiar voices of two old friends – Jack Johnson and John Legend.  Fuck me.

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