Anonymous

Women who are nuns do not have intimacy with the opposite sex. Some people never get any. But for me, that was the deal killer. It is like eating potato chips; you can never have just one. Besides, I don't like to watch the news by myself.

A fresh perspective from a straight, cisgender man on what it's like dating a trans woman...

It never felt like sexual assault, him taking the sex I didn’t offer. It felt more like a silent agreement. I surrendered to sex; he didn’t complain.

I don't recall meeting my first love. It seems he was always with me.

That’s part of the problem, I think. I keep waiting for my sexual partners to figure out how to bring me to orgasm.

I thought I knew everything I needed to know about personal style and fashion until I started teaching elementary school. I had more fashion lessons this year than a makeover-show contestant, courtesy of 6-year-old girls.

When I left the hospital the night that he was admitted, I sat in the parking lot gasping with big ugly sobs and looking for someone to blame — beginning with myself. I'm his mother, and I'm the only consistent parent he's ever had. As I finally made my way home, with tears streaming down my face and my mouth open in a silent scream of pain, all I could ask myself was "what have I done?" How could I have allowed my son to be hurt so deeply, and in so many ways?

If you go, I’ll have to pick up all the dog poop. I will have to take out the trash. I will have to sleep alone.

I lit-up, inhaled, and slowly released the sweet smoke. It was beautiful and relaxing until I was interrupted with these, dreaded, words: “MOM?! Are you smoking?”

In my checkered past, long before I was a member of the PTA, I sometimes worked behind the scenes in X-rated films