My op-ed on my first pandemic concert and pandemic socializing

For the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote about attending my first pandemic concert and pandemic socializing. Hope you'll check it out. Also, since I wrote it, I've gotten my first pandemic haircut!

New essay on bingo, debt, finances, freelancing and anxiety

I'm very happy that my essay on why spending $2,000 playing bingo was totally worth it is up now at The Goods in their Best Money I Ever Spent series. It covers my pretty much nonstop anxiety, debt, personal finance, freelance and how bingo plays a role in all of those.



Firstly, I love The Goods and read it every day. Their reporting is super smart and interesting. Secondly, this series has been wonderful, whether it's about a US work visa, the TSA or a rose gold trash can or a vibrator. It's a delight because we all spend money, but we do so differently. I also wrote for The Goods earlier this year about bookstore crawls and Independent Bookstore Day.

I'm also honored that my essay got a custom illustration! Click here to see it. I think that's a career first. Yes, I know: Anyone who plays bingo will easily see that the numbers allocated under B-I-N-G-O are not all accurate to the game. But that's okay. If it gets people to read it, I'm all for it (I didn't see the illustration until the article when live this morning).

My Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed on smartphone addiction

My first byline of 2019 is my smartphone addiction op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer. If you're local, it should also be in print today or tomorrow (I have to see if it's available where I live in New Jersey or I'll get a Philly friend to get me a copy).



I'm proud to have a new publication to add to my credits as 2018 was a slow year with a lot of rejections (including one from this same paper, which I didn't hear back from when I submitted one in June on Seth Grossman). However, that one was to a generic address. This one was to a specific editor. I follow Sonia Weiser on Twitter and subscribe to her excellent editor pitch list newsletter, which is well worth the suggested $3/month and how I got this piece published. Sonia collects Tweets from editors about what they're looking for from writers. Happy writing (and less smartphone obsessing) in 2019!

Why I don't post many personal updates on social media these days

You can read all about my transformation from incessant social media oversharer to middle-aged social media observer over at Ravishly. I love writing for them and encourage you to bookmarked them; they're one of my favorite sites to read. This is an essay I've been mulling over and tinkering with for months and Monday I got so sick of my procrastinating I just wrapped it up. It wound up being longer than I'd planned, and feels a little vulnerable to write because it's such a stark contrast to the old me, but it felt incredible to hit send. I've got to do more of that rather than overthinking, which is all too easy for me most days.

My Washington Post essay on why I don't want to get married

My essay "I love my boyfriend, but I never want to get married" is up today at The Washington Post's Solo-ish section. The title pretty much tells you what it's about. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope you'll check it out. Yes, I'm pushing myself to pitch new markets and kick my own ass in light of the end of my weekly column, and so far, it's working.

My Good Housekeeping debut on why I love clutter

Yes, that's my byline on Good Housekeeping's website, for my essay "I'm Happy With My Clutter, Thank You Very Much." I am, and I'm also very happy to be published somewhere I never thought I'd be, given that I'm so far from being a housekeeper. I also wrote about moving three times in three years for Omni, a new imprint at Medium, with my essay "What I Want in a Home vs. What I Need."

Why my dad isn't my financial role model

I wrote my first piece for DailyWorth, an essay titled "I Learned How NOT to Handle Money From My Dad." It's a pretty personal piece, but one I felt was important for me to write as part of my journey in figuring out my money. I'm usually not one to read comments, especially when I'm being vulnerable with my writing, but the comments so far over there have been very interesting and prove my theory that when you share from an intimate, personal place, others will too. Here's the beginning:

For my bat mitzvah, my dad gave me a check for a thousand dollars, a gigantic sum for a suburban teen in the ’80s. It was extravagant, and I was appropriately giddy, plotting exactly what I would use it for. Until it bounced.

That’s one of many examples of the ways my father, while offering me unconditional love, failed me as a financial role model.

Read the whole thing

My Brooklyn life as a "crazy garbage lady"

I resurrected this essay, "How I Became a Crazy Garbage Lady," that never got published when I wrote it in 2013 because it's one of my favorites, falling into the "laughing at myself" and "truth is stranger than fiction" categories. Here's the opening:

This morning, I stepped outside my apartment on Williamsburg’s busy Metropolitan Avenue to find my worst nightmare come true: my discarded bra, t-shirt, gym shorts, empty CD cases and other bits of garbage I’d carefully placed in a plastic bag were strewn across the grate in front of my building, apparently not even worthy of being collected by New York City’s sanitation department. I’m not sure what I did to violate the rules, considering that I discarded dozens of CD cases and only a few were lying there, displayed like some bizarre conceptual art piece, but it’s precisely the fear of this scenario that’s turned me into a woman I jokingly call “crazy garbage lady.”

Read the whole thing at Thought Catalog.

My essay collection Sex & Cupcakes is now an audiobook that's only $2.99

When I broached the idea of putting out an audiobook of my essay collection Sex & Cupcakes: A Juicy Collection of Essays to my publisher Thought Catalog Books, there was only one person I had in mind to narrate it: Rose Caraway. Why? Because she has a gorgeous voice and has been the most professional, wonderful and creative person who's narrated my audiobooks. She's turned my audiobooks for Gotta Have It and The Big Book of Orgasms into runaway bestsellers that have literally gotten me through otherwise tough financial times and brought the words of those authors to countless new listeners who wouldn't have found the print or ebook versions.

I've been so incredibly impressed by her work ethic, passion for her job and smartness, and I also knew she could do justice to these words that are so often about me at my most vulnerable. So now you can listen to her read my essays for just $2.99 (and only $2.09 if you're an Audible member!). Thank you for reading, and listening, and I look forward to collaborating with Rose again. Update: it's working. I'm thrilled to have this collection in the world in both ebook and audiobook formats.

Why I Want My Date to Plan our Dates, Not An App

I use plenty of apps to help me improve my life, but I am finding many that seem to just be allowing people not to think about basic things, like where to go on a date, in the case of Funspotter, so I wrote "How To Ruin Your Love Life: Use This App" for Thought Catalog. Snapshot below is from one of my favorite dates with my current guy.

My Washington Post essay on hoarding and love

I have a new essay up at The Washington Post's Post Everything section called "Old magazines, stuffed animals and sex toys: How hoarding shaped my relationship." I wrote the subtitle, they wrote the title, and I also included the photo below of my old Brooklyn apartment. Here's the thing: when you write personal essays, you need to go all in, in my opinion. Not just for your editor's sake, but for yours. I've struggled with writing about some of the worst of my hoarding, because I'd like to think I'm "past it," but as you'll see in the essay, I'm not. Also, this is one of my biggest bylines, so if you like the essay (or feel anything about it, or just want to support my writing career), I'd love it if you'd share it, either publicly or privately with someone who may get something out of it. Yes, I'm a hoarder, but I firmly believe hoarding doesn't only affect "hoarders," but all of us. It's about what we do with our stuff and how we value it, and even compulsively neat people are impacted by fear of becoming hoarders. Also, it's about love, and I am in love, big time.

In which I learn that living in a house doesn't mean you're rich

That's what I always thought growing up in an apartment. Now I live in a house, and here's my snow-covered swing and an essay all about it, including the vicious start to 2014 which led to the silver lining of moving into this cozy place that has skylights and a basement (!! after living in a Brooklyn apartment with no closets for 13 years, a basement deserves endless exclamation points), and the office where I'm now typing. My working title was "House Proud" but the title Thought Catalog went with was "How My First House Changed My Perspective Of Wealth And Contentment," which is also accurate.

Essay on dating a fat man at YouBeauty

Yes, size is something that comes up in a lot of my work, from my erotica, such as in my new story "Big Bottom" in The Big Book of Domination to my book Sex & Cupcakes. It's something that's personal and political and that I think touches so much of society. So my latest essay is "What I’ve Learned About Size and Body Image by Dating a Fat Man" at YouBeauty. It's my first piece for them, so if you like it, I'd love it if you'd share/comment there. Jessica Wakeman is an editor there now (formerly at The Frisky) and is bringing lots of fascinating content around looks, gender, body image and more.

My heart tattoo, almost three years later

I got this tattoo almost three years ago, in November 2011, two months before the fateful first date that brought me to my current boyfriend.



I tell the story behind the tattoo in my Thought Catalog Books ebook Sex & Cupcakes in the essay "Wearing My Tattooed Heart On My Sleeve," the bulk of which I wrote soon afterward. Here's a snippet:

I don't hate my heart for failing me, for leading me down so many dead ends, for being too impulsive when she should be cautious, patient, watchful. Well, that's not entirely true; today, while I'm in a good mood, I don't blame my heart. I can forgive her her fanciful whims, her childlike earnestness, her belief that next time will be better. I've spent so long hating my heart's lack of reason, wanting to slice her up, banish her back to a simple biological role and let my head make the big decisions, but I can't. That's not who I am, not deep down, and now, not on the surface either.

That too was rejected from Modern Love in The New York Times (I can be stubborn and persistent, but I've given up on that hallowed section for now), but was a major turning point for me. I didn't know who I was looking for exactly, when I sat in that chair, I just knew I was going about love the wrong way. I knew it wasn't supposed to be something where you gave 100% and never felt secure. I knew it was supposed to improve my life, not make me feel so off balance and uncertain.

I started 2012 adamantly not looking for love, or at least, that kind of love. I want to fix my stumbling career, I wanted to explore. I booked a trip to Hawaii for a week by myself, on my piddling budget, using frequent flyer miles and a very cheap AirBNB rental, amazed that I, who was struggling on the personal and professional fronts, could do that. But that first date happened just before my trip, so I wound up in a romantic, beautiful setting alone, but not single. There's been so much that's happened since then, paths that my wayward and sometimes impulsive heart has led me, that I didn't know were possible. This weekend we went to a wedding and as we were sitting at the bar talking to a fellow friend of the bride, she said, "How long have you two been married?" I immediately said, "Oh, we're not married," because it just seemed like such a foreign thing to say, and yet it wasn't, not really. That happened once in our first year of dating, checking into a hotel for a staycation, and I laughed about it. Then I wasn't sure exactly where our relationship was heading.

This weekend, hearing it felt like a compliment. My thoughts on marriage have changed and grown as I've learned from those around me, though I still think its benefits are too often wielded like an evil weapon that can boomerang back to hurt people whose only crime is love, but that's another story. I used to tease my cousins that they were an "old married couple" and now I've become part of one. We each have seats on the couch, we have little rituals and nicknames not just for us but for aspects of our house. We say hi to the squirrels and groundhogs and occasional cat that wander into our backyard. I'm sad I won't get to give out Halloween candy to the umpteen little kids in our neighborhood. When I sat down at Sanctuary Tattoo in Portland, Maine, I wanted that physical pain to take away my emotional pain. I wanted to give myself a way of reclaiming my heart and not trying to shut it off. But I wasn't sure at all what that would look like.

The farther I get from that moment, the more I realize how clueless I was. This, the real life everyday silly mixed with serious, opposites attracting kind of love, wasn't something I could plan for. It sometimes still stops me in my tracks. My life is very different from what it was that day I sat down in the chair. My routine is different, my location is different, my work is different and my job is different. I joke sometimes that I write so much about my boyfriend because most days he's the only one I see or talk to. Except when I'm in New York or traveling, I'm not usually meeting up with friends. It's a quieter life, a homey, cozy one. And I love all those little things, that together add up to something far greater than the sum of its parts. My heart isn't immune to getting hurt, to emotional ups and downs, but I also know I can weather them better than I knew in 2011. I'm more sure of myself, more certain that the kind of unconditional love I was looking for actually exists, no matter what flaws or obstacles or issues I have.

I joke when I visit that Portland, Maine is my home away from home, and it feels that way. I feel very me when I'm there. I feel welcomed and peaceful, and who knows? Maybe someday it will be my actual home. I like carrying a little bit of it around with me, where everyone can see it.

Liked this post? Check out my new essay collection ebook Sex & Cupcakes, available now on Kindle for just $4.99.

Fear, writing and doing it anyway with my essay "My Boyfriend's Fat"

Writing about other people can be such a tricky endeavor; you might think it's old hat to me, but it never is. In my new essay collection Sex & Cupcakes I included an essay that got rejected from Modern Love in The New York Times called "My Boyfriend's Fat." It's one I'm proud of but also have been worried about putting out into the world, precisely because it's both personal and about the most important person in my life. Having been featured as a "character" in short stories, I know that it's probably not a barrel of laughs to be the focal point of a personal essay by your significant other. And yet. I did it. It was important to me and for me a way to express both love and frustration at the way our culture talks about fatness and bodies and "health."

So far, the four reviews of the book that are up on Amazon and a blog, all mention the essay.

Clitical:

The essay that hit me the most from a personal point of view is entitled, ‘My Boyfriend is Fat.’ As the wife of a portly middle aged man (ok, he’s fat), I felt for Rachel, and understood every word she wrote. The stupid comments that people make, the judgements that people (who should often know better) make. Although our circumstances are different in someways there were so many things she said through the words on the page that simply made me go, yes, that’s it! Why DO people say that? What does give people the right to judge?

Alyssa on Amazon:

I also liked 'My Boyfriend's Fat' because she talked about the judgement and comments that people make in our society aimed at those who don't fit the "skinny" group. This essay itself had so much emotion and it stuck with me as I myself am overweight.

Ilovebooks on Amazon

They are all entertaining, but I found myself really struck by the essay she wrote about her overweight boyfriend. It was about the prejudices he faced as an overweight man and her attraction to him. I had an overweight family member and I just related a lot to what she had to say about this.

Wendy W on Amazon

I was especially drawn to her compassion for her boyfriend's weight "issue." I put issue in quotes because the people who are making an issue out of seem to be those who are NOT either Rachel or her beau.

Is it wrong to link to those reviews as if they alone validate my desire to write about that topic, or rather, is it wrong for me to want and crave that feedback? I hope not, because I do genuinely crave it. When I've been sending the ebook out to reviewers I've said something like, "I hope you like it, but even if you don't I want to know your thoughts." And I do, even though I also brace myself, because I don't think there's a way to separate judgment about the writing from judgment about, well, your choices, if you're writing memoir or essays. That's the risk you take by going there.

I wrote that essay not for my boyfriend as target audience but for everyone else who's expressed "concern" to me about his size, and for people who make judgments about fat people. I didn't write it from some World's Most Enlightened Person perspective about the topic, because how could I? I grew up in this same culture and have plenty of body issues myself. But even when we don't want to be changed, the people in our lives changed us. I love that that's the essay, along with "Monogamishmash," being highlighted by readers. I already got an email from a stranger via the Thought Catalog Books site (where, it should be noted, "Fuck" gets its full four-letter glory but on Amazon has to be F***" commenting on the title. Those are the essays that are all about my vulnerabilities and some of the conflicts of both my relationship, but hopefully, something a little more universal.

I was uncertain about publishing this fat essay, about naysayers and judgment, and more protective than usual because it's not my life on the line, exposed. The dance between public and private is an ongoing issue in my relationship. It's such a delicate line sometimes and clearly I so often fall on the public side. But for the last two years and nine months, I've learned to treasure all the private, often ridiculous, sometimes sappy moments that are just ours. To me those make what I do share all the more important. It sounds so lofty even as I type this, but I don't just write to purge or for catharsis, although I do believe writing is inherently selfish for me. I write to connect and learn and find out what other people think.

So if that intrigues you, all 9 essays are just $4.99 with the click of a button. I'll post more about the tattoo essay soon too. My heart surprises me all the time and even though the essay about it remains what it is, an essay is never the end of the story, but a moment in time, frozen in words on the page (or screen, as it were).

Money, Guilt, Freelancing and Feminism

All of those topics are wrapped into my new DAME essay, "I Feel Guilty for Not Being the Breadwinner." Freelancing is key here, because a) I never know exactly how much I will earn in a given week/month/year ahead of time and b) don't know when I will receive payment for what I've earned. This makes it very challenging to budget and plan. So it's not so much that I don't make enough money to pay my bills (at least, while the erotica book market is in my favor), it's that that money doesn't always arrive in a timely fashion. I've had weird things lately where places that usually pay me one way suddenly paid in another way, or checks sent to old addresses, or delays, and all of it makes me feel guilty and uncertain. Read more at DAME, where I've got another one coming up related to sex.

Because I love writing about my breasts

Updated July 18 (from my new laptop, the Blogger iPhone app is clearly not the best, or I'm not the best at using it.

My laptop is dying a slow death, which I discovered on my flight Monday to Martha's Vineyard, so I until I get to the Apple store or get a Chromebook replacement, I'm doing most things on my iPhone, including this post, my first time using the Blogger iPhone app. I wrote about why my breasts or any woman's shouldn't be a threat to your marriage for a site I adore, Role Reboot.

"My Date Told Me to Wear More Makeup" - my latest essay at The Frisky

I'm back in writing mode and am hoping to keep having more work to share soon. Here's my latest, from The Frisky, one of my favorite websites: "My Date Told me to Wear More Makeup." With a visual, and both are actually self-portraits. I've been using the one on the left on Facebook and my new Moo business cards:



A snippet:

Read the whole thing

My essay "Recovery Envy" up at The Fix

I wrote my first essay for The Fix, called "Recovery Envy," which may sound facetious in a soundbite but if you read the essay, I hope it’s clear that I don’t mean it facetiously at all. I have the utmost respect for those in recovery, and anyone striving to improve their lives, by whatever means. If you like it, I’d really, really appreciate it if you passed it on in some way. And if you’ve never been to The Fix, it’s a website “about alcoholism, addiction, recovery and the drug war.” Thank you.

The beginning:

I'm not an addict, and I'm not an alcoholic. But as offensive as this may sound, I sometimes I wish I were, if only so I could have a language and a community to help me deal with what often seem like out of control urges—a structure surrounding me to help me cope with, well, life. But there are no 12-step meetings for people who simply have trouble getting up every day, who feel hollow and weak and unworthy, but who don't gloss over those feelings with a single, predictable vice. Over the course of my life, I've certainly used alcohol, sex, shopping and food to help quell those feelings, and they've each worked, in limited doses, but eventually their effects wore off.

The thing is, though, my rock bottom moments don't revolve around alcohol, though I've consumed my share, or drugs (I've attempted to smoke pot twice, and basically failed each time); sometimes it's food, sometimes it's sex, sometimes it's shopping, but I fundamentally believe that the core part of me that hates myself in those moments when I'm eating an entire box of cereal, screwing someone I'm not that into, or buying a pair of shoes I don't need and can't afford, is the same impulse that drove, say, my father or grandfather to drink (both are recovering alcoholics).

Keep reading

"I'm a sex writer with a secret shame - hoarding"

I guess it's not a secret anymore, because I wrote about it for Salon! Read my essay "I'm a sex writer with a secret shame - hoarding" and if you like it, please, um, like it on Facebook if you do that sort of thing and/or pass it on to someone who might be interested. And please note that is an over two-year-old photo and my apartment is not "neat" but is in much better shape these days, but there's still a long way to go.



This is the piece I had it in my calendar to follow up on a month after submitting and turns out they were interested. I’m glad…and a little nervous. My editor, Sarah Hepola, helped me see the big connection between sex writing and hoarding, which was something I’d tacked on at the end. I think it hadn’t occurred to me sooner because sex writing is such an everyday, literally every day, part of my life that it doesn’t seem odd or unusual anymore. I’m very honored to be published at a site I’ve been reading for years and years, and inspired to keep writing about the challenging things, with Adair Lara’s words from Naked, Drunk and Writing in my head. Here’s the beginning:

Over the past decade as a writer specializing in sex, I've dished about my erotic escapades, from threesomes to kinky parties to a date gone wrong with a Top Chef. I've posed with a freshly spanked bottom for a sex blogger calendar, masturbated on HBO's "Real Sex" and edited books like "Best Bondage Erotica 2011." Writing about my intimate life has never felt awkward. I didn't grow up with shame around sex and didn't carry any of it into adulthood. Divulging those stories, as well as fictionalizing fantasies about bukkake or webcam exhibitionism, has been a way to understand and come to terms with my desires. Because I've been so open, though, some people think I have no skeletons in my closet. And I do -- or rather, I would if the two-bedroom Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment I've lived in for over 11 years had any closets.

Read the whole thing