Melissa Petro

You may have heard the old joke that 98% of people masturbate, and the other two percent are lying.

So, I got an email from my brother yesterday telling me that he’s not coming to the wedding. “I want to be there,” he writes, “I really do, but the idea of being consigned to [our mother and her boyfriend’s] care for the duration of the trip is driving me mad. You know, the whole lack of autonomy and being on someone else's time and all that.”

"Certainly, my life as an alcoholic was not what most would imagine. I was a writer, living in the West Village of New York City, enrolled in a prestigious graduate program and working on a book. At least, this was my cover story."

Want to work responsibly on the issue of sex trafficking? Here’s some of what you should know.

Sure, "friends forever" sounds nice. In theory. But sometimes it's better that two people just not be friends.

A week or so ago I started shopping for a wedding dress, and guess what? Shopping for a wedding dress sucks!

Use insect repellent, sleep under a mosquito net, and just don’t get pregnant — is this the best we can do for Latin American women?

I do have one advantage when it comes to meeting people online: I really like dating. I like getting dressed up and going out. I even kind of dig meeting someone new. I know these are aspects of dating other people dread, but I’ve always enjoyed these things. Perhaps this is one explanation for (or else a result of) my sex work past, I dunno. I know that, in the beginning, I thought of dating as an adventure. I didn’t take it too seriously.

For someone like me — someone with difficulty forming and maintaining relationships, who has struggled with commitment, and who’s got intimacy issues galore — surely, you can see the appeal. You don’t need to be Freud to figure out why, at a disturbingly young age, I looked forward to the day a man would commit.

Sometimes the fights I pick with my fiancé are really fights with myself.