Daisy was a true beauty. With her pretty white frame, her bright pink wheels, and her convenient metal basket hanging off the handlebars, she was what little girl bike dreams were made of.
Besides walking, taking the bus, or catching a cab, Daisy was my sole means of transportation. She was also the absolute apple of my eye.
I mean, if you owned a car in the city, most days you were five minutes away from selling your soul to the devil just to find a parking spot. But Daisy—we might hit a couple bumps in the road, but she never let me down.
BØRNS was just starting to serenade my ears with “Holy Ghost” when I finally reached the San Francisco Times’ offices. If I weren’t supposed to attend an important, last-minute meeting, I might’ve just said fuck it, got back on my bike, and pedaled around the city—a less busy part, of course—and enjoyed one of my favorite albums of all time.
But I didn’t have that option today. Joe had woken me up with an eight a.m. phone call to summon me for a powwow.
So, like the good little employee I was—well, I tried really hard to be…most days—I parked my bike inside the bike rack, locked it, and headed through the entrance of my place of employment.
Although I did my very best to avoid these offices, I occasionally had to attend team meetings and monthly in-person chats with my editor, which were mostly nonsense created for the sole purpose of annoying me.
I just preferred to do my work from home, or at my favorite diner, or coffee shop, etc, etc, etc. I had a long list of places I loved to work, but these offices were certainly not one of them. I was not one with them, but they weren’t one with me either.
One month after they had hired me to write Sex Says, I had driven Joe to the point of insanity with my inability to stay seated for more than fifteen minutes. After watching me skip to get coffee, tap dance to the bathroom, and twirl to the break room one too many times, he had decided it would be best for everyone if I worked from home.
In my humble opinion, besides hiring my eccentric ass, it was the best damn decision he had ever made.
It should be noted that I wasn’t always an expert in the world of sex, dating, and relationships. To say I was a bit of an awkward late bloomer—cough, nerd—would’ve been an understatement. A plastic banana ripens faster than I had blossomed into an actual woman.
While my fellow horny teenage classmates were going to dances and boning like bunnies, I coddled in my womb of unconventional nerddom. Anyone who had the opportunity to go into my parents’ garage and find my Pandora’s box of teenage embarrassment would understand what I meant. Gilmore Girls DVDs, Harry Potter—the books and memorabilia, not the actual wizard—Danielle Steele novels, and trophies from my high school bowling team made up about half of the contents. The other half I refuse to talk about.
Yeah. Tame your boners, boys.
Although, I had to say, my glittery pink bowling shoes and matching ball were still something to be proud of.
My first kiss didn’t occur until I was a junior in high school, and my first experience with sex happened when I was nineteen. It was terrible, in the back of my then-boyfriend’s van, and if there would’ve been a lava lamp, it could’ve easily passed as an actual nightmare.
Eventually, after a few long and bumpy roads of self-discovery, I had bloomed and blossomed and gained a better understanding of sexual exploration, healthy relationships, and how to navigate the dating world.
My early twenties had been filled with bizarre dating situations, one-night stands, several failed relationships, and a personal blog on Wattpad where I shared all of my love woes, no matter how embarrassing or absurd.
And by some stroke of luck, my ridiculous yet oftentimes hilarious dating and relationship stories and love anecdotes had gained some attention. By the time my blog had over 300,000 followers, I had received a call from the San Francisco Times, and voila, Sex Says was born.
I’m sure none of this comes as a surprise.
I mean, I ride around San Francisco on a bike named Daisy.
It’s safe to say I’ve still got a little bit of geek in me.
I stepped onto the elevator and rode up four stories. My Converse tapped across the hardwood floor of the hallway until I reached the conference room Joe preferred. For a guy whose office was a throwback into a seventies time machine, he was such a weirdo when it came to the aesthetics of pretty much everything else.
He refused to use the conference room on the third floor because he said the walls were too white. Cue my slow blink—I honestly had no idea that was a thing. I thought white was just that—white.
He also refused to eat lunch at this kitschy, fifties-themed diner on Market Street because he claimed they were trying to blind him with their ambient lighting.