This summer, when I met you, I drank enough whiskey to fill a bathtub. I hadn’t showered yet that day, and I was Brazilian tan. Maybe that’s why you decided you liked me. Maybe I emanated recklessness. You handed me a store business card with your number and name scratched on it. It wasn’t long before I casually came to “watch a movie” at your house, and I realized that I knew you in high school when I was a trainer. I told you that was your in, and dangled it right in front of you. You were smart and begged me for a “proper massage” and then, I was on top of you. I strode out with an air of embarrassment, because I realized that I was smiling.

That day, I punished myself by writing words so self-deprecating, in hopes that I could wrap my own guilt around my body like a sheet of protection. This act felt the same as when I frantically rushed to cover up at the moment you flipped on the light. You smiled at me with traces of my own lipstick still staining the corners of your mouth, and the entire moment felt like a sudden contradiction. Only moments before, you had kissed my entire body, and now I was trying to hide everything.

As a writer, I usually feel no shame, unless it’s self-inflicted by the criticism I choose to take. People can’t tell me I’m bad for what I do, just like they can’t tell me I’m beautiful, without me allowing it to mean something, but you did. That’s what journalists do. We control what penetrates our thick skin and when we can’t, we lubricate our minds with a glass of “fuck off” on the rocks. When we have a one-night stand, we feel complacent with its anonymity in our world that constantly demands who-what-when-where facts, but not with you. I felt torn down and uplifted at the same time. Scrawled on my notebook, I now read, “I am stupid. I am pathetic. I am easy. I am picked up by a stupid boy in a pet store with a shirt from Baby Gap. I thought that you liked me.” For once, I really wanted to know you, because I wanted you to know me.

I hoped that those words were the only thing I would ever write about you, and then I threw it in a book under my bed and let it rot. I never expected to be writing a story like this today, but it’s been one week since you found my number and started begging me to give you another chance. It’s been 4.5 hours since I’ve caved.

Forty-five percent of you that are reading this are probably really into fuck-and-run’s, and 45 percent are probably disgusted that I had one. You remaining 10 percent are probably just as confused about this as you are about your strange new love of being tied up. It’s OK; me too.

I write this today because I felt something, and that scared me, and I want you to know why. I was embarrassed, because a one-night stand is supposed to be one night, not still sitting under my bed. A sex columnist isn’t supposed to hope for a slight chance of something more with someone she shouldn’t. I am supposed to be strong. Society has allowed these ways of thinking to permeate our skulls, piercing the fuzzy white noise of an orgasm with a blaring scream of “Oh God, what have I done?”

We need to stop being embarrassed or afraid of one-night stands. Every guy/girl that has confessed their stance on this matter to me seems so upset to spit out that admittance, as if their own words burn.

I love every one of my readers for having the courage to talk about their sexuality. It doesn’t matter where you stand on the matter. ONS’s do not make you a trollop, but not having them doesn’t mean you’re some inexperienced throw pillow that doesn’t know what life is about. It’s your body! One day you can be the person who goes all the way within hours, and one day you can reclaim your innocence and decide you don’t want to ever again. You can choose to only have one-night stands on casual sex Saturdays or abstain from them only on such occasions where you have to be around family. It doesn’t matter.

Who and what enter/doesn’t enter your private love sphere have no dictation on what kind of a person you are. There are people in this world that we are drawn to, whether it’s healthy or not. Sometimes you get a shot, and sometimes you get stuck admiring from afar in the friend zone. We all know what this feels like, sometimes with more than one person. It hurts and it tickles at the very same time just to see them. In the end, whether it’s right or wrong, you don’t know until you take the leap of faith and try. One-night stands and those moments of thoughtless burning desire are so fucking beautiful. Sometimes, you leave with nothing more than a sweaty affirmation of attractiveness, and sometimes you’re smiling, because you finally felt good about feeling something, even if it’s a strictly physical something, for someone other than yourself.

Anneliese Hucal studies public relations and prelaw. She can be reached at sself@unr.edu.