We’ve all been there, ladies. Early Sunday morning, the taste of last
night’s vodka cranberries still tickling the back of your throat, wondering if
the guy whose apartment you just left will call, and kinda hoping he doesn’t. Saturday night’s stilettos aren’t quite as fierce
when they’re click-clacking over the morning concrete with the Sunday churchgoers
gawking at you as they turn the corner.
You’re no streetwalker, but you are kinda walkin’ the streets, and those
super cute booty shorts from your uptown Saturday last night feel about
5-inches shorter in the light of day. We
tell ourselves, “no big deal. I’m young.
A modern woman.” But still, if we
see someone we know coming our way, we cross the street quicker than Sarah
Silverman crosses the line. In Los
Angeles, not even the Hollywood Walk of Fame gets as much action as the Sunday
morning walk of shame.
You could’ve brought Mr. Saturday Night to your place, but
you’ve kinda gotten sick of the fresh squeezed judgment your roommate is prone
to serve up with the next morning’s orange juice. And, let’s be honest, don’t we think our 1000
thread-count designer sheets are too classy to be corrupted by some club dude
whose biggest claim to fame is mastery of the stanky leg? What if, after the dirty deed, he tried to clean
up with our decorative hand towels? We
may be indiscriminate with our bed buddies, but home décor is sacred. So we risk week-old pizza boxes, and more roommates
that can fit in a clown car, to spend the night at his place. We stash the Tory Burch clutch with condoms
and hope the night will end up with a Hard Rock instead of at the Heartbreak
Hotel, but either way, at morning’s first light we opt for early
check-out. As cosmopolitan as we all may
be, why is it that we sexual weekend warriors so often end our missions in
dishonorable discharge?
Take, for example, my client Slumber Patty…a girl who was
always ready for a sleepover. Patty came
to me six months shy of her 40th birthday, bewitched and bewildered
as to how she was ever going to end up walking down the aisle when she kept
finding herself doing the Sunday morning walk of shame. She had always considered herself a sexually
liberated, modern woman whose weekend adventures were par for the
single-gal-in-the-city course. But Patty
had recently realized she could no longer so easily walk off her sleepover
hangovers. More and more, she was
finding herself emotionally drunk off a guy that wouldn’t have even gotten her
romantically tipsy ten years ago. But
now, her heart grew heavier and heavier every time Mr. Saturday Night turned
out not to be Mr. Right. She hadn’t even
realized it, but some time between lust and breaking dawn, Patty had started
looking for love.
Slumber Patty had enjoyed years of orgasms with a plethora
of partners. A part of me was jealous of
her record wins, and felt kinda like a big loser in comparison. But I quickly realized, though Patty had made
it to the sexual Superbowl plenty of times and I could barely get out of the
regular season on top, she and I had a lot in common. Both of us had intimacy on a ticking
clock. Patty’s alarm went off when the
sun came up, and mine went off after 55-minutes on the couch. I could get to know my clients more intimately
than perhaps anyone in their lives because I knew our time would soon be up and
my client would never get to know me.
And though Patty knew plenty of men in the biblical sense, she really
knew nothing about them, and they knew even less about her, and the truth
was…she liked it that way. I helped
Patty see how her repeated entanglements with emotionally unavailable men were
a neon-flashing-red flag that she herself was emotionally unavailable. We worked on her ability to become
emotionally intimate with herself first, and then with her other
relationships. Patty found that even
seeing me more than once a week made her want to run for the hills, but she
took contrary action and kept coming back.
She worked her way up from staying through breakfast at one of her Mr.
Saturday Nights’ place to actually hosting her first sleepover with a guy she’d
been dating for 12-consecutive Saturday nights.
Though they aren’t yet walking down the aisle, now, when Patty takes her
morning walks, she feels no shame.
Sincerely,
Dr. Lainey Toussaint
(I'm not a doctor, but soon to play one on TV)
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