Watching your mouth on April 20, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am almost 17 years old and my heart is breaking. I started seeing a guy about two months ago. We were friends for quite a while and we talked every night on the phone. One night, to my surprise, he asked me out. Of course I said yes. We decided to go out the upcoming weekend.

We ended up in the backseat making out pretty heavily. That was the first time that I had made out that heavily. I was in love. I remember saying”I love you,” and he said ” Katie, we just started going out.” I didn’t think much of it then. All of a sudden he said we had to go. On the way home he said he just wanted to be friends. It hurt so bad. He stopped calling me altogether and he talked about me to his friends. I am so hurt, it’s like he died or something. It’s been a while, but I still miss him so much. I just can’t understand. We shared everything together. These kind of things seem to happen to me a lot. I am not fat or ugly at all, but I just can’t understand what the hell I keep doing wrong. I need someone who I can talk to about these problems. Thank You!

— Katie

(more…)

“…Rescued My Sex Life.” Here we have an example of a title that will get BG reading. Add the byline Diane Farr — she of superawesome tough-and-sweetness on Rescue Me (also, Numb3rs) — and I’m not looking away.

Farr wrote a nice essay in this month’s Marie Claire (put it onLINE, you guys!) about how utterly harmless, goal-less, going-nowhere-but-still-fizzy flirtation on the set of Californication — including but not limited to getting paid to make out with David Duchovny over and over and over and over … I’m sorry, what was I saying? Oh yeah, so she makes out with DD and exchanges sweet-nothing-at-alls with ScruffyCute Craft Services Kid, and all of a sudden she remembers that there IS sex life after three kids under the age of two.

“The days pressed on, and between makeouts, David and I said the same cute, cuddly lines to one another over and over for various camera angles, further reawakening the girly laughter that had often escaped me pre-babies. I’d go a round with David, then go chat up Work Crush [still wearing Hot Dress from Wardrobe], and after two minutes, I’d feel guilty, call my husband, and flirt with him, too. He didn’t know why I was so full of laughter, nor did he care. ‘You’re funny and sexy, and I really missed that,’ he said. And like that, I was his girl again.”

Nicely played, Ms. Farr. It’s so important — whether you’re taken or single — to live life on the Flirtation Continuum. Not to lead people on; not to go where you shouldn’t. But to allow yourself to connect with (most of) the full spectrum of feelings and connections between people, to remind yourself you still got it, to feel like the world is still full of buzz and sparkle and possibility, for all your relationships.

She should know, though, that Duchovny was, very likely, thinking of me.

From Broadsheet: “Here is what I want to know: If you’re a guy, what do you do when the girl you are tangling tongues with turns out to be wearing Spanx? Is it embarrassing for you, too? Do you even care? Do you try to ignore it, disappear the image, just like the girl you are with is trying to disappear her flaws, so that you can store that moment in your spank bank without the messy realities of the moment, of her body, of this otherwise lovely little tussle?”