60. Sex on the Beach

LeeAnn decided she and Sammy were going to come down to Texas to visit me for my birthday in September, and she gave me the go-ahead to skip out on the trip to St. Louis for her birthday so I could see Cayden. Besides, I'd have to head up there twice next year: once for her bachelorette part, and again for her wedding, as I'll be a bridesmaid.

No, Sammy hadn't proposed yet, but they'd already picked tentative wedding dates, which made me laugh.

Oh, make that three times, I'll also be heading to St. Louis for a work trip sometime next year. I'll have to pick four bad-ass "adventures" to do while I'm there and write about. If you're reading from STL, start sending me some fun ideas!

(To give you an idea of what I'm looking for, I went paragliding off a mountain and had a near-death experience on a horseback ride through an old ghost town near Denver, and I went stand-up paddle boarding and oystering in NW Florida Beaches... pre BP fuck up.)

These upcoming St. Louis trips got me thinking about next year. Cayden had always said age 27 was going to be a big year. And it had been, so far. Lord knows my 24 had been more amazing than I ever could have expected, but I had a feeling 25 was going to seriously kick ass (well, once I get over the fact that I'll be a quarter of a century old. But you're only as old as you feel, right?) I'll be taking three trips to my old hometown, two more work "adventure" trips to Chicago and Louisville, and Cayden will be coming to visit me in Texas almost every 6 weeks!

But the thing I was most looking forward to: a trip to Dubrovnik with Cayden. He had texted me one night when he was there saying "There are four-poster beds with white canopies ON the beach here."

I was sold.

We planned it one year in advance. So if all goes as planned, we'll be making love on the beach on Dubrovnik for our 2-years-since-we-met-aversary. That's WAY better than a care package. Oh, of course we'll be doing other things as well: exploring Old Town, maybe going out on a boat, drinking wine on a restaurant's patio where we can people watch. But I couldn't stop thinking about those beds on the beach.

Our five nights together in London were a delicious taste of what's to come in the bedroom category. Well, maybe I should say 4 nights, being that the night of the Indian food concluded sans sex. But I can't wait to find out more about what he likes and what I like. What makes him crazy, and what gives me toe cramps.

Yes, it's true. Almost every single time we had sex in London, my orgasms came complete with a debilitating toe cramps. When people say they like a little pain with their pleasure, I don't think they were talking about it in the form of a toe cramp. I did get a Charlie horse once when I was messing around with this guy my sophomore year of college, and I shoved him off of me and gripped my calf, writhing in pain. But these toe cramps were new to me.

The morning after my first orgasm-induced toe cramp, I Googled it on my phone. Turns out, I'm one of many sex-related toe cramp sufferers. If you're one of them, I feel for you. And if you know of a cure, please send it my way! I even wrote about toe cramps once when I worked at that health magazine in NYC, but for the life of me I couldn't remember the advice my expert gave. Time to go through my old clips!

It cracks me up to think about how sex is portrayed in the movies: candle light, sexy music in the background, shadows in all the right places. Luckily, I had enough sexually active and outspoken friends before I lost my V-card to know the truth about sex.

The lighting is usually always wrong, it's so dark you're both guessing where important body part are, and if you end up in the wrong area, things can end very badly.

The music is on shuffle, so after a romantic Barry White song, you find yourself keeping rhythm to Vanessa Carlton's "White Houses", and then Lil John and the Eastside Boyz "Get Low," which you find has a very appealing beat to it.

Oh, and the only light is coming from your desktop screensaver, causing neon streaks of light to play across your faces, causing you to look like aliens, or stoners at a Pink Floyd light show.

I tried to imagine the reality of what sex on the beach in a canopy bed with Cayden would be. Chances are, we'd get caught. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Unless we end up in a Croatian jail. Or one of us could fall off the bed and land on a sharp sea shell, resulting in a 4-inch gaping wound, thus killing the mood. Or maybe someone would steal all our clothes while we were... toe cramping, and we'd have to walk back to our hotel bare-ass naked (after a post-sex skinny dip, of course).

Or maybe I'd choke on a Tic Tac.

I couldn't wait to find out.