Until age 26. I was in a faltering relationship with a man who loved hiking and camping, and who sincerely believed that I would love these activities too, if he could be my guide.

V was the first Indian-American I’d ever met who actually liked to camp. I’d always associated camping with white people, along with sunbathing and being grounded, but here was V at REI — testing compasses, lusting after tents — with a thrilled, drifting look in his eye. I kept thinking about a term that a friend and hiking enthusiast had once taught me — “poop trowel” — two words that returned to me now with great foreboding.

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I suspect most couples don’t know the exact date of their first encounter. But then most couples probably don’t have a police report.

It took me a few days to decide to contact Nick. I’d been wrestling with that urge for five years now. My inbox was a shame trail of gushy letters typed after midnight, impulsive notes dashed off in the afternoon. All of them had cutesy subject lines, like the titles of Raymond Carver stories, but they should have been labeled the same thing: “Do you love me again? Have you changed your mind yet?”

But one evening in March, I sent Nick an email. My hands were trembling as I typed. It was subject lined “things you may or may not remember,” and this is what it said:

“My friend Charlotte is getting married in New Orleans on May 13, and I will be going. May 13 also happens to be the day I met you, six years ago on Royal Street with a lump on my head the size of a lime. (Life is WEIRD, right?) I'd like to see you. Is that possible?”

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Over the next five years, I got that seat. I spent Hanukkahs, Passovers, even Purims in Judy’s plant- and music-filled home in Amherst, Mass., my picture hanging on her fridge alongside her children and grandchildren. To her, I was a done deal. I was family. To David, not so much.

After thousands of dollars spent on couples therapy, David still couldn’t make up his mind about me. He kept saying he “wanted to want to marry me.”

“What did I do wrong?” Judy asked me one day, in a stolen, private moment, not understanding why David was unable to commit to me.

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Our conversation was boring and needlessly loud. The man had a braying laugh and mentioned his boat repeatedly, calling it “she” each time. I snuck a look at my phone: 8:17 on Saturday. I could be home in my pajamas, watching “Breaking Bad” on Netflix. I imagined standing, turning without a word and walking out.

Instead, I gave my husband a desperate look and he broke in with a question about wind and sails. The man turned, and I relaxed for a second. Next to me, I felt his wife brighten. She’d heard I was a writer and she wanted to talk about books. Specifically “Twilight.” It was her “passion” — the entire series. I nodded and drank steadily as she deconstructed each plot.

After we said goodbye and got into the car, John sighed. “Well, that was a waste of 200 bucks,” he said. Then he reached over and squeezed my hand.

We’d been searching for another couple — people to hang out with and take vacations and trade stories about our three nearly grown children — for more than a year. Ever since our breakup with Sara and Greg.

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Slovenia is a gorgeous country, lying just east of Venice and south of Vienna. Full of cliff-top castles, mysterious caves, waterfalls and alpine fields, it looks like the backdrop for Grimm’s fairy tales. The most culturally and economically advanced of the former Yugoslav Balkan states, it weathered the Balkan Wars unscathed, and thrived within the Habsburg and Napoleonic empires, under which it was known as Illyria. Slovenia’s prosperity earned it the EU presidency in 2008, and its adherence to tradition and government-protected industry makes it, both economically and socially, the sort of unprepossessing country that Western powers may come to envy.

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His friend Andres was also there. Did I mention that? Well, I admit I didn't want Andres to be there, even though I loved him (but not in that way). Still, Andres did kind of love me in that way, so there we were, a trio of thwarted desire lying in our separate beds, and that's when Jon introduced me to Tom Waits.

It might be more accurate to say he presented me with Tom Waits. There was enough buildup for British royalty. Shhh. Stop moving. Listen to this part. Did you hear that line? I wish I could remember the song, but I suspect it was early lounge singer Tom Waits. Funny and broken and three sheets to the wind.

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We sat together at our breakfast counter, she with a mug of Bengal spice tea, me with a glass of OJ. My mother was, and is, a very pretty woman, with bright blue eyes, skyscraper cheekbones, and an easy laugh. She sipped her tea and took a breath.

“Karen and I aren’t just friends, honey.” Her features tightened, but her eyes met mine, clear and steady. “We’re more than friends.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” I said.

“You did?”

“Of course!” I gulped. “Jessica and me aren’t just friends, either, you know.”

“I had a feeling about that.” She nodded with a faint smile.

Mine was the most amiable coming out story I knew. If only the experience of my early sex life were so breezy.

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I went to the University of Pennsylvania during the Reagan years, a time not known for sexual experimentation. I slept with a different guy every month. When a month ended, I got busy, otherwise I’d ruin my record. I would tell Janet the details, which always felt more intimate than the act itself. Janet was waiting for true love. I had been, too, but then decided -- screw it.

On the last New Year’s Eve before graduation, I went out drinking and dancing with my best friends, the girls I loved most in the world. In the cab to one of our friends' houses, where we were all spending the night, Janet leaned in to me and whispered, “What would you do if I kissed you?”

I thought, "Does she think I’m a lesbo?" But I said nothing. I couldn’t think of what to say.

“I think you’d let me,” she said.

That night, I had sex with my friend's brother.

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“I’m not sure how I feel about you anymore,” he wrote.

How could this be? A week earlier, he professed his love. He wanted to change his Facebook status to “in a relationship.” How did it go so wrong so fast?

More curiously, why was I feeling devastated by my 14-year-old daughter’s first breakup when she seemed unscathed by it? Katie replied to her new ex that these things happen and there were no hard feelings. I couldn’t move on so quickly.

“He’s not sure how he feels about you?!” I shouted. “You are smart, beautiful and kind. For God’s sake, you play piano for old folks at nursing homes and knit hats to support children in Africa! You’re borderline perfect. What’s he not sure of?”

Katie told me to take a deep breath. It would all be fine, she assured me. She explained that John was a nice guy whom she enjoyed getting to know, but ultimately they had very different interests. They lived on different coasts. It could never work.

“But … he was so cute,” I said, pouting.

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"Isn't it strange that his profile doesn't say that he played professional soccer in Germany?" I asked my friend Mary the following day. I was sitting in her kitchen chair, where I often park myself as the two of us try to untangle some romantic mystery.

"He told you he played soccer in Germany?" She stifled a laugh. "And you believed him?"

I believed him. Over the next two weeks, as the bizarre story of Todd unfolded, this was the humbling phrase I would be forced to repeat. Yes, I believed him. I believed that he was a wealthy entrepreneur who had started his first company at the age of 20. I believed that he got a soccer scholarship to a liberal arts college in upstate New York and later traveled all over Europe. I believed that he had a daughter, and that she had sparkling blue eyes, and that she liked cats and pirates. I believed these things because -- well, because he told them to me. (Todd is not his real name, by the way.)

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“Do you have anything like this for women?” I ask the cashier, nodding at the display.

“Those are for women,” she says.

I place the vibrating sex toy, which is packed in a plastic container with the words “Diving Dolphin” written in a wavy blue script, on the counter along with my American Express card. It’s been about one week since Deb and I argued at the Wig and Pen. That’s one week without sex.

“They are?” I say. I pick up a package of the Viagra Substitute, which appears to contain two pills. I scan the label. “No,” I say placing the packet of pills back in their box. “They’re for men.”

The cashier removes the Diving Dolphin from its package. It’s a complicated-looking thing with two vibrating eggs, each fitting into separate rubber compartments. She inserts two double A’s and pushes a button on the little plastic control panel. The Diving Dolphin hums loudly. “I might argue,” she says.

I laugh. “Yeah,” I say, “but what I need is something that makes a woman, you know … want to, you know … in the first place.”

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Still, I squirm every time my girlfriend, Stephanie, and I go out to dinner and she reaches for the check. Sometimes I snag it from under her lingering fingertips and whip out my Visa – for which she pays the bill -- as if that's somehow less demeaning. Say what you will about modern times and gender roles in the 21stcentury, but there are still certain behaviors associated with manhood. Providing. Protecting. Being a stay-at-home boyfriend may look easy. But let’s say I’ve forsaken a certain amount of pride.

Last August I earned my master’s degree from Northwestern University. I have now been unemployed for six months. I realize now that life with a liberal arts degree is self-inflicted. It turns out that few job descriptions list a base understanding of semiotics or rote memorization of the oeuvre of Alfred Lord Tennyson under necessary Skills/Qualifications.

But give me a Break, Break, Break.

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He looks at me. "Huh?"

"It’s this thing I have. It happens all the time. Please get up.”

Nathan stands and I charge through the front door, lumbering through the hallway like Godzilla. I nearly trample my beagle, who squeals like an unsuspecting villager does when the killer lizard comes to town. I consider crawling to my couch, but I am also trying to impress Nathan. If I fall unconscious, I could be out for up to 10 minutes. From my experience, men don’t take it well when you collapse without explanation.

My ears ring loudly. The harder I fight the faint, the more I sweat. I fling myself on the couch, hand thrown over my forehead. I'm not trying to be melodramatic; I'm just trying to keep myself grounded in the moment. The sweat pours off me, drenching my cotton dress. My vision returns enough to see Nathan staring at me in terror.

“Should I call an ambulance?" he asks.

“No, I just have to lie here," I say.

As far as interactions with the opposite sex go, this one is a little awkward. And it's not the first time.

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It wasn't the first time the "m" word had been mentioned in our dirty talk, either. But when it came up on the phone, I could just laugh it off or pretend I hadn't heard him. Not this time. Now, it was real. He wanted me to pretend to be his mommy — his naughty, flirtatious, sexy mommy. Even for a professional sex writer like me, with 19 years of adventures behind her, "age play" was out there.

A subset of the catch-all term BDSM, age play is defined by the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health as “sexual role-playing where one partner pretends to be older and in control while the other pretends to be much younger.” This could mean fantasizing about being siblings, or teacher and student. According to "The Toybag Guide to Age Play" by Lee Harrington, the most popular form is parent-child. People like it for all sorts of reasons: to be silly, the taboo factor, to give up control, to explore an inner identity, to enjoy "never having to grow up." I'd heard of it, but it definitely didn't sound like my thing.

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I grow fibroids -- blobs of muscle, basically -- which take up valuable space in my uterus and block my fallopian tubes. I’ve had them surgically removed twice, but they grew back. As soon as my husband, John, saw trouble brewing, he wanted to stop trying to make a baby and adopt one instead.

“I’m in my 40s,” he reminded me. “Neither of us are much of a prize, genetically.” He was right, of course -- it had been more than a decade since we met on the Salon Personals, of all places -- though I didn’t appreciate his rubbing it in.

“Besides,” he asked, “have you read the statistics on autistic kids born to older dads?”

Of course I read the statistics, but they didn’t matter. Since puberty, I’d been telling myself a wonderful story. It starts with the ecstasy of discovering that I’m pregnant, then moves on to feeling the baby kick and placing John’s hand on my belly. He feels it, too. We’re madly in love. I give birth in a hospital, aided by a midwife. No medication, no complications. I’m a champ. And the most fulfilling relationship of my life begins at that moment, when I’m handed my firstborn.

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He bought me the first drink after I managed to scratch and knock the 7-ball onto the floor in a single shot. By the second drink, I’d already decided I liked him. There was something about the way he looked at me that made me feel attractive, pretty even.

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I should back up. There is that bench that rings the perimeter of the store’s dressing room and is attached, somehow, to the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that comprise the four walls. I spent half of my childhood on that bench, a receptacle for my mother’s sartorial decisions. Picks piled on my lap. Possibilities dangling on my head, from the hook above.

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Shortly after that, we moved to San Francisco. Shortly after that, I was on a different shore and she was on a boat drifting farther away from me each day. Shortly after that, we stopped having sex. Words were somewhere in the absence growing between us but I couldn’t find them. My only weapon was repetition. I made us dinner. We watched "Glee." We went to yoga. Shortly after that, she told me she wanted to date men, that our relationship was over.

My ex-girlfriend now has a boyfriend and lives in Minnesota. My yoga teacher, who announced to her mom at age 8 that she was a lesbian, now exclusively dates men, and has been in a committed relationship with a man for more than a year. My straightest guy friends have all at least made out with other men, while others are now dabbling in full-on dude sex. Whatever norm you came in with, San Francisco eventually takes it and turns it right on its (uncircumcised, pierced) head. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the City wanted to have its way with me too.  Still, I was the last person who thought I’d be a lesbian who spent the next year and a half of her life sleeping with men.

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I was supposed to lose it with Diane, my first girlfriend, during my senior year in high school. I loved her. Plus, I had no intention of heading off to college with the word "virgin" burned into my loins.

Instead, I lost my virginity during my sophomore year in college, to a chubby, brown-haired, brown-eyed, patchouli-reeking woman named Meadow. To a woman who, only a few months prior to our meeting, had been a member of a disgraced free-love commune. To a woman I did not love.

The Ethan of those days had been testing some nascent principles, some ideals, some highfalutin beliefs. One of them being an equation I was trying to solve: sex = love. Therefore, I had a hard time rectifying the fantasy of the person with whom I had wanted to have sex, with the reality of the person with whom I eventually did.

Why did I finally take the plunge with Meadow? Because Diane drove her Volvo station wagon across my heart.

Slim and blond, Diane had spiky ’80s New Wave hair, wore fuchsia satin tops, and played volleyball and ran track. A year or two before I had met her, her dad had died on the operating table during a routine procedure. My own mother had been destroyed by a brain aneurysm a handful of years before that. Unlike Diane's dad, my mom lived, and her stroke-ridden body and mind hobbled through my adolescence.

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I tried to make eye contact, but no matter how hard I stared, he didn't notice me. Though, to be fair, he also looked high out of his mind.

"Who is that guy?" I asked my friend.

"No idea," he said. "He must be new to the neighborhood."

After I downed my fifth beer, I mustered up the courage to talk to him. But it was no good. By the time I left, he was making out with someone else in the corner.

And so he joined the dozens of men I'd seen in bars during my 20s, about whom I'd obsess for weeks afterward, thinking: If only I'd had the courage to talk to him, or had the biceps to make him notice me. But unlike those guys, Brian (which is not his real name) became a fixture in my life over the next few months -- or, rather, a fixture on my Grindr app.

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