Dating : The One Where Selena Tries to Hoe, and Probably Fails Miserably

There are multiple drafts of this where I make use of my English degree and write deep and meaningful prose, those are all trash. Instead, let’s just cut the shit and get right to it, I haven’t had sex in 5 years. I wasn’t having much sex before that, so infrequently that it would only further embarrass me to try and average out how often.

It started as a conscience choice. When I was 19 a boy broke my heart, knocked me up, and I went alone to the Planned Parenthood and got an abortion in-between midterms. I decided then that I didn’t want to date while I was in college, that the first boy caused enough collateral damage that it was stress I didn’t need. Then I hooked up with a couple of guys, graduated, didn’t get a job. Then the logic was “I’ll start dating when I get a job”, then “I’ll start dating when I move out”. Then I moved to the other side of the country and I couldn’t possibly date here, this isn’t permanent, I don’t want to fall in love and get stuck here. Then I moved home and the excuses started from the beginning and before I knew it I had been on one actual date in the last 10 years, slept with 2 guys a handful of times, and was inexplicably hung up on one of them. There I was 29, single, sexless, and with no game or idea how to actually start dating again.

Then a month ago at happy hour, one of my best guy friends interrupted me as I complained about the dating desert I was in, looked me in the eyes and said: “You’re a fucking smoke show. You know it, I know it. Stop bullshitting and actually try, I don’t believe it’s going to be that hard for you.” And friends, that’s the realest shit anyone has ever said to me. I am bullshitting. I dole out more dating and relationship advice than Iyanla, push all my friends on the apps, encourage all hoe behavior, basically a decade long game of Do As I Say, Not As I Do.

So that day I made a promise to myself, I was going to be a hoe. Now, to clarify, this is not a zero to sixty situation. This will not be a Lifetime Movie-esque concerning tale where I enter into coke fueled orgies with strangers and ends with my mother having to save me and put me into rehab while we wear white linen or a porch somewhere. While I would watch that movie and probably buy it on Amazon, this story is more the fun Netflix Original movie. One where the heroine is just running around being fabulous and meeting hot guys a la “Sex and the City”, then comes to a realization after all the fun bits are over that she wants more out of life and settles down with the funny guy from the beginning.

Maybe it’s not the best idea to document this, but I’m a Millennial and we’re the worst right? What with all the oversharing, self-indulgent behavior, and the inability to do anything without having the words “Instagram or it didn’t happen” blaring in the back of our minds. I wanted to share this partially because why not and partially cause I have no idea what I’m doing and welcome all input, especially from strangers cause they give the best advice.

So welcome to Hoe Chapter, in which a 29 year old awkward Black girl attempts to date and grow some semblance of a love life out of thin air, hopefully before she turns 30 at the end of the summer. Let’s all hope this is the first chapter in a fun whimsical book and not act one of an episode of SVU.