Ugly people are better at sex.

I spend about 80% of my free time drinking, and 10% of it in the bathroom. What do I do with the other 10%? Invent ridiculous theories on why we are the way we are, what's wrong with the youth of today, and why I can't stop eating cheese at every meal.

Welcome to my new feature: Barstool Sociology, where I share my infinite wisdom and my inability to be politically correct.

Today's theory: Ugly people are, by default, better at sex.

This one's a no-brainer. In our society, the prettier you are, the less you actually have to do. You can make a career out of looking good all the time. You can date anybody you feel like, and they'll most likely just be in awe that you're willing to be seen with them in public. You can get into clubs for free, you can charm even the most influential of figures without ever opening your mouth. So most people are who beautiful never try, because they never have to.

But, if you're not jaw-droppingly gorgeous, like most of us, you have to cultivate a personality. You have to inure yourself to the people you're pursuing. If you want to sleep with people who are more attractive than you are, you have to be more than a one-trick pony. You have to have at least a few redeeming qualities - maybe sharp wit, good comedic timing, and the ability to offer a partner mind-blowing oral sex.

When we have really good sex, we are thinking one of two things about the person we are with:

• I am enjoying this because the person I am sleeping with is very attractive.
• I am enjoying this because the person I am sleeping with is very good at it.

Rarely, very, very rarely, will a person be thinking both things at the same time. And if you ever are, I recommend asking the person to marry you, because it ain't gonna happen again.

Here's the thing: ugly people have to be good at sex, or the more attractive partner that they've been with will never sleep with them again. The worst sex I ever had was with someone whom I slept with out of guilt and desperation. Unsurprisingly, he was also the most physically unattractive person I ever slept with. It was like getting punched in one breast, and then the other. I had to add a mutant of a human to my "list," and I didn't even get my rocks off.  He apparently didn't understand that since he was far more unattractive than I am, he is required to try harder. He was required to work at it if he ever expected me to bear with looking at his hideous face and mediocre body ever again. Needless to say, I spent the next three brutally long months of my life screening my phone calls and ducking out of my dorm room at odd hours.

This paradigm, however, thus makes individuals who are average to slightly above average in attractiveness the ideal partners. If you date someone outrageously gorgeous, you'll be subjecting yourself to dead fish syndrome or a two-pump chump. If you date someone hideous, you'll be subjecting yourself to takeout and Netflix every night because you're too humiliated to be seen in public with them. According to my theory, most individuals need to date someone who is attractive enough that looking at them is enjoyable, but just ugly enough that they are concerned about your eye wandering and will overcompensate in stairwells and friends' bathrooms. Consider all your mating problems solved.

what women spend half their lives panicking about.

Being a woman is tough. Not only are we underpaid, overworked, objectified, stifled and otherwise made to feel like pieces of shit on a daily basis, we also are responsible for propagating the species. As such, our minds and bodies are never totally in sync. Even if the thought of reproducing makes us want to wretch, sometimes our uteri have other plans. There's a reason they're called "pregnancy scares." Women live in constant fear of being knocked up.

Even if you've been very careful, warning bells start to go off every time something in your body is out of wack. Tender breasts? You're up the duff. Fatigue? Absolutely preggo. Heartburn? Even if you ate Taco Bell that day, you can convince yourself that it's the result of a burrowing embryo. You assume the condom broke and you never noticed, or there was a pinprick you somehow overlooked. You rehash the day you took your birth control two hours late. You gasp in horror as you remember the moment you accidentally put on semen-stained underwear. You annoy the crap out of yourself with your obsessive thinking. The only time you're ever free of your neuroses is menopause (I've got about 25 years to go), or a month you don't have sex - which, if you're me, is non-existent. I think I've only gone intercourse-free for two menstrual cycles in eight years.

I remember having my first fertilization fright at the tender age of 16. I had unprotected sex with a much older man (brilliant, I know), and I remember my paranoia intensifying as my period remained in absentia for over a week. How was I going to explain this to my parents? Hadn't I learned my lesson from taking home that fake baby that cries in the middle of the night? The only thing I was able to glean from that experiment was that I could probably lie down next to a foghorn and sleep soundly. I'm immune to obnoxious baby cries! I don't know how to change a diaper! I'd be a terrible mother! I have to get an abortion! I don't have any money! My dad will cry because I'm a failure!

Of course, all this worry was for naught. I got my period. I made it through high school and college and a myriad of sex partners without a single positive pregnancy test. Now, I'm on a precipice. After two weeks of waiting patiently for my tardy menses, I'm preparing to take a test to confirm or deny the existence of a bun in the oven. Despite the fact that I have decent health insurance and a supportive spouse, I am freaking out.

Now that I'm married, everyone says it's not a big deal. I disagree. It's not an occasion to celebrate. It's not a blessing in disguise. It's a pain in the ass. Just because I actually intend on spending the rest of my life with the person who potentially impregnated me doesn't mean I'm thrilled about gestating. My husband is currently unemployed and my car doesn't even have air conditioning. I can't be responsible for another human being. My ovaries should know better.

Can't guess? It's the international symbol for a worst nightmare.

If I am pregnant, I know what I will do. I have the money to deal with it. It still doesn't allay the anxiety. Even women I know who already have children still get nervous whenever that time of the month rolls around. It's one of those things they never tell you about womanhood, like period diarrhea and those stray hairs that you have to pluck out of your chin. Our only consolation is that moment in which we divulge to our female friends our predicament... and they know exactly how we feel. At least we all suffer together.

UPDATE: Well, I got a visit from the crimson typhoon. But it took almost eight weeks - and you better believe I'll be in full-on panic mode in another five. Welcome to womanhood.

the post in which I make fun of abstinence-only sex education and die a little on the inside.

I was your run-of-the-mill suburban WASP type. I grew up in a house where sex was NOT discussed, save for a conversation with my mother at age 19 when she confessed that she found oral sex disgusting. Needless to say, everything I learned before having sex, I learned from inept, conservative, middle-aged sex education teachers. 

I didn't go to school during the era of abstinence-only education, though, and I thank the non-existent higher power for that. I was given enough of an education to know that condoms are effective, all chlamydia requires is some penicillin and the nearest abortion clinic was 35 miles away. I didn't learn about female orgasms (naturally, the discourse of desire fails women), but that what was my trusty $12 novelty vibrator from Spencer's that my boyfriend stole for me was for.

So I'm frustrated to see the outright lies that these government-funded "educational" groups lay thick on kids nowadays. A sampling:

- You can get HIV from sweat and tears

- 40-day old fetuses are "thinking people"

- Condoms are effective less than 70% of the time

- Abortion causes breast cancer and sterility  

Not to mention the fact that they either stigmatize queer youth or leave the LGBT experience out of teachings entirely, and perpetuate ridiculous gender stereotypes that are designed to boost the patriarchy and keep women devalued.

Apparently, as part of the curriculum in many states, they make kids in junior high draw (I use the term liberally) posters depicting the ills of sex and the joys of retaining your hymen. Note, of course, the onus is on girls to stop boys before they go too far - and if they get knocked up, it's their fault. I'm not criticizing the kids that make these posters - how are they to know better? I'm just furious that moralistic assholes who want to spread their bullshit gospel put young people's lives in jeopardy because they refuse to acknowledge reality and give teens the tools to protect themselves.

Let's read the inanity and weep, shall we?

 

I think this is probably the best advertisement for the rhythm method that I've ever heard.

I really like how this one throws in a "but," like, getting STDs is wicked awesome, but, then you might have to blow all your after-school job money on some offspring. Bummer, dude.

WHO GETS PERMS ANYMORE?! I'd much prefer a sticky white substance over an hour of burnt hair smell and months of poodle hair.

This bitch makes it sound like "intimate affection" is a bad thing. I bet her mother makes her douche with Lysol.

Reach for the stars! 

Intercourse: a one way ticket to quadruple-bypassville.

Uh, kiddo? Nobody told you about how propagating the species actually works, did they? Awkward.

Sex kills! So wait until you're married! So you don't die alone! I'm going to go kill myself now.

I'm not a candy. I also do my Kegel's. Nobody knows the difference.

I'm pretty quick to refute this one. Talking is dangerous. Talking is where your heart gets broken, not when someone's between your legs. It's pretty hard to tell someone their grandmother died mid-coitus.

It terrifies and saddens me that we're making junior high school students submit anti-abortion propaganda for a school project. The "mother" emphasis also really blows my mind. No wonder she aborted you - that's fucking obnoxious.

This is a great message, but it negates itself. First of all, if I'm using condoms, the implication is that I will not have a baby to feed. (That's what condoms are for, FYI, you adorable little undereducated tweens). And all I gotta do is put some Alpo in a bowl labeled "BABY," plop it down on the floor and we're good to go. Like pets, only you birth them!

There will be someone who will come along in your life. Someone incredibly attractive who you will think about from time and wish that you had bedded. And trust me, until you masturbate to someone you haven't seen in five years, you don't know the meaning of "too late."

v-cards: part two, the higher education edition.

This was sort of what I was like, except I didn't have any friends.

God, I hated college.

College is really weird because essentially you're just throwing horny, inexperienced children into a building where they can sleep together and throw up from drinking too much Bacardi 151. You don't know ANYBODY and you're desperate to make friends, so you hang out with people who have absolutely nothing in common with you and would otherwise make your skin crawl. You'll try anything, you'll talk to anyone, you'll wear whatever. You'll encounter many people that are nothing like you.

So anyway, I met a guy. Actually, I met a lot of guys. A lot of virgin guys.

My whorish self was quite unaccustomed to having someone stop me when I reached for their pants.

"Wait, Chelsea, I have something to tell you... I'm a virgin."

"Are you fucking serious? AGAIN?"

But, I fell for one of the never-been-touched crowd. I have no idea what it was I liked about this guy. Really. I couldn't articulate it if I wanted to. He was unambitious, pretentiously into literature, and ridiculously jealous of my success in school. He was one of those guys that sits in basements and plays World of Warcraft. His mother still did his laundry. He wasn't very good at oral sex. I had to pressure him after three months to actually become my boyfriend. Yes. I had to talk him into it. I'm not going to go into how wrong that is - you should already know.

But you know how these things go. You love people, for reasons that no one, especially not you, understands. You pretend to like metal and get taped for the Killswitch Engage tour DVD. You pretend to enjoy playing MMORPGs and hanging out in his crappy small town in central Massachusetts. You pretend to like his mother. You pretend to understand the big words he drops to make himself feel intelligent. You pretend to like his poetry. You pretend, and pretend, and fake everything because you're so desperate to keep this person near you.

And so I pretended to treat taking his virginity like a BFD (big fucking deal, for those of you not versed in hip acronyms). 

It was an afternoon, just like any other afternoon. The door to my single bedroom was closed. I don't think any of my other roommates were home. The shades were drawn on the windows, which overlooked a 6' by 6' concrete courtyard with dead pigeons in it, and the light was soft. I don't remember the exact logistics - a problem to be blamed on my overzealous alcohol consumption and the fact that I try to block out any and all memories of my mouse-infested shithole of a freshman dorm room. His apprehension was boring, as all perceived apprehension about something is when you're the one who's done it a million times. I believe it was missionary. I don't believe it took very long. I believe he made some statement post-coitus about his feelings, which I'm sure I dismissed with some kind of assuaging statement. And all I remember thinking was: I shaved my pubes for this?

 What a waste. Razors are so expensive.

Every first time, for the most part, sucks. It has to suck. It's a sport - some would say, even a game - and everybody sucks when they start playing. This is why I don't understand why virginity is valued so highly. It just means that when you finally have sex with that person, it's guaranteed to be awful.

I like to think of my v-card takings as an act of valiance, freeing these men from the inevitability of terrible intercourse with hopes to set them on a path toward a more fulfilling sex life. It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it. I've gone into retirement, but I'll never forget the acts I did in the name of mankind.

v-cards: part one of a two part series.

Back in the days when I actually wore lingerie and bathed on a regular basis, I was a burgeoning sex kitten. I had a belly button ring and a list of makeout spots. I was a self-titled "good time girl." I liked being kinda slutty - it was a badge I wore with pride.

I wasn't unusual. Of the hundreds of people in my graduating class, I knew only a handful of virgins. Everybody did everybody. Sex wasn't so much a rite of passage as an unwritten rule. We were young, we drank Popov vodka, we went skinny-dipping. My group of friends was so sexually voracious (and bored) that many of us ending up hooking up with each other. Most of it happened in my basement (sorry Mom and Dad). And most of it was messy. I'll never forget certain incidents involving a stained t-shirt and a midnight romp down my street clad only in boxer shirts.

I don't regret any of it. My sexual exploration as a teen was completely natural and entirely pivotal to my development. I wouldn't be as awesome as I am now had I not learned a few things along the way. Among my greatest learning experiences were the two virginities I destroyed.

The first one was an accident. I didn't actually find out about it until a good three years later.

At age 17, in the middle of summer, and in the midst of a dry spell, I proposed what I liked to call a "business arrangement" with a friend.

This friend was more than a friend. He stuck his tongue in my mouth when I was 13. We spent our entire eighth grade Washington, D.C. trip with his hand surreptitiously down my pants. We fooled around everywhere, and we had a lot of firsts. We parted after middle school, when he was sent to boarding school and I went to a public high school.

We stayed in touch and went for friendly car rides on some weekends and holidays. I hadn't viewed him as a potential sex partner - I was young and had lost my virginity to my high school sweetheart just a year prior. He was back at his parents' for the summer. He was kind and gentle and nothing like me. He liked lacrosse and wore khakis. I had come out as bisexual and listened to Alkaline Trio. But goddamn I was desperate.

I hadn't intended on making it with a virgin. He had told me previously that he met a girl at school named Kate who had popped his intangible cherry, but that it had gone kaput prior to the end of the school year. Finding myself adrift in a sea of losers, he seemed like the perfect option. I gathered my courage and sent him an instant message. I proposed an agreement - hookups whenever one of us felt like it, with no strings attached. It was perhaps my most brilliantly engineered relationship to date. He eagerly agreed, and I made a date for our first rendezvous.

I showed up at his parents' whitewashed stately colonial house around 1 pm. He had the kind of parents who had money but you really didn't know how; they drove brand-new Volvos and played tennis and were never home. He came to the door and planted a sloppy, wet kiss on me. It didn't get much better from there.

We hurriedly made our way upstairs and started getting down to business. It didn't take long before I started wondering why he was so... bad. No rhythm, no natural sense of movement. I got on top and remember staring at the sports-themed border in his still-pristine childhood bedroom, and all I could think about was... balls. I worked my magic and expected results, so we could wrap it up. I was surprised at his longevity. He suggested we go take a shower.

Now this should have been it. I should have known that any man who would get in the shower wearing a condom and proceed to poke around my behind was definitely green when it comes to intercourse. He was too excited and all too eager to push the boundaries of our interaction. I yelped in pain and he backed off. He left me to finish my shower and was ready and waiting afterward with a new rubber. I admired his persistence and obliged, but I was weary of any future hookups. I held out for a month before getting back in the saddle.

We went on to have a lot of good times together, and I let the inelegance of our first time together slip my mind entirely. Several years after everything romantic or sexual fizzled out, on the heels of a very casual conversation, he dropped the bomb that our fateful afternoon was his first time. Part of me was horrified that he hadn't mentioned it sooner. The bigger part of me was relieved. At least he had an excuse for why it was so uncomfortable. My ass didn't.

I don't know how to love Jesus.

I would make a West Virginia joke here, but I'll refrain, because it's the Christian thing to do.

I tried; I really did. I used to go to church on Sundays with my friend's family when I was eleven. I was excited to learn the Lord's Prayer and I took communion despite the fact I was never baptized. I used to beg my mom to buy me those hurricane candles in the grocery store with pictures of Mary's face glued to the glass. I was fascinated and enamored with the quiet, cold, insular, and ancient world of Catholicism.

And then I got a little older.

I wasn't raised with a religion, an issue I would torpedo at my mother during my pre-pubescent temper tantrums. "Why don't I go to Sunday School?" I would wail. My mother, nonchalantly, would reply, "Because those fucking bitch nuns ruined my life." My dad always maintained that he didn't believe in anything really, but if he actually cared, he'd be Buddhist.

Growing up in a very Italian, psuedo-religious town, it was hard not to feel left out. Now, there was no passion in any of it - it was tradition, it was going through the motions until you were confirmed, it was something you did to set yourself up for later in life, but it seemed like everyone did it. The only people who were actually dedicated, who went to church regularly, were the old widows, who'd kneel with their rosaries and pray for the health of their grandchildren and seek solace in the words of old men, much like the husbands that left them behind.

This past weekend I attended a VERY religious wedding, with the all the classic elements - insistence on honoring God in the vows, stressed importance on having Jesus as the focus of the marriage, backhanded comments about homosexuals and civil marriage. I tried not to roll my eyes. I tried to honor the belief system of these people (both of whom I actually like very much), much as I would hope they'd honor my complete apathy to any religious system, nearly all of which have been clear in placing women below men and systematically devaluing half the species. I can't subscribe to a set of beliefs that tells us to believe in the love and power of a God who lets people starve and allows extremists to kill thousands of people in his name. I also can't believe an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being that supposedly created everything in the universe actually has a sex and a gender.

Now, don't get me wrong - Jesus sounds like a good person. It's just all the crap surrounding him that turns me off. I won't speak badly of the guy, but due to the circumstances, I just don't think it's going to work. It's not you, Jesus; it's the assholes who think they know you. It's the self-righteous pastors and priests who condemn all of us who fornicated, lied and cheated - yet those were the people you flocked to. You knew long before Billy Joel that laughing with the sinners was better than crying with the saints.

Just do us all a favor and tell the people who worship you to lighten up.

I'm nobody's strumpet.

I have a dream.

I have a dream that I will find a generous benefactor who will give me insane amounts of money to use at my leisure simply for being the fantastic creature that is Chelsea.

Apparently, my dream is not so unique.

I have been pretty intrigued lately at the fuss about SeekingArrangement.com. If you live under or a rock or don't read any of the Gawker blogs, SeekingArrangement helps people, well, seek arrangement. By arrangement, I mean pathetic gold-digging "sugar babies" latching onto rich, lonely, seemingly-sex-starved self-righteous rich jerks. Men attach a net worth to themselves, and a monthly "budget" of what they will spend on the right whore lady. in their words:

"An Arrangement is short for 'Mutually Beneficial Relationship' between two people. Such a relationship is usually between an older and wealthy individual who gives a young person expensive gifts or financial assistance in return for friendship, or intimacy."

It's tempting. I am an American. I like clothes. I want a car. I have bills to pay. Denying my consumer-driven mentality is about as pretentious and phony as asking somebody rich to finance my lifestyle in exchange for my companionship.

I've always found, though, that being a gold-digger is a question of dignity. Either people will take handouts, or they won't. I come from the stock who is too proud to take money, let alone ask for it. Unfortunately, I am a big selfish brat. However, this, like all things, has limits. I obviously have never cared about money when it comes to dating. Anyone who knows my track record is baffled at how I have only been sexually attracted to poor dudes. I'm even marrying one.

Which is why the SeekingArrangement thing just won't settle right with me. it assumes that the greatest currencies in a relationship are money and beauty. That's a sound model, I guess, if you recognize that it's directly related to every advertising ploy in modern society. but it's bullshit if you actually consider that 95% of the population is 1.) not rich and 2.) not beautiful. Furthermore, it perpetuates the idea that the best way to get what you want is to fuck someone who has it - money, power, even a discount at the dry cleaners. And anyone with half a brain will tell you - a truly classy lady would never screw for money.

What I always wanted was a charming, fascinating older woman with no children of her own (and, obviously, a small fortune) to take me under her wing. I would visit with her twice a week and drink extra-dry vodka martinis while she warbled about how much I reminded her of herself at my age. Then she'd give me $2000 to go buy a nice coat and do something about that god-awful hair, a woman should never let her roots show.

If anybody's got any hookups to lonely old ladies with eccentric accents and no heirs, let me know.