Sex and Sensibility: 28 True Romances from the Lives of Single Women

Our essay, "Do You Take This Woman?", compares our friendship to a marriage, and alternates between our first-person voices. Here's an excerpt from one of Lo's sections:

After six years, we still work together, we still write about sex, and we still dish to each other about our own sex lives every chance we get. Maybe it's because we're still learning things from and about each other. Em can finish the Times crossword, and I can program my Tivo with some success. She can spell "licentious " (I had to ask her how). Em would rather eat worms than emote in front of people, so I have to pull her onstage with me at karaoke bars for heart-rending and ear-shattering renditions of "Hopelessly Devoted to You." In high school, she was an acne-ridden Jesus freak who ate her lunch in the bathroom and didn't kiss a boy until college. While I wasn't Miss Popularity, I did perform in the school plays, was elected Student Council President, regrettably cheered for the football team, and had a healthy, rigorous sex life during those formative John Hughes years. Em keeps her emotional cards close to her chest; I let it all hang out (though Em's the one whose boobs occasionally pop out of her low-cut shirts). If we were charged particles, I'd be the negative one, Em the positive. She's a Locke girl, I'm more Hobbesian by nature. And yes, she's a little bit country (god help me); I'm a little bit rock and roll. While she'll never say a bad word about anyone, even when she wants to (even when she should), I find the worst in everyone, especially when I shouldn't. Em used to assume automatic unspoken exclusivity with anyone she started seeing; after several years of dating in this city and a few slaps from me, a la Cher in Moonstruck, she's awake and smelling the coffee. And I've learned to send any irate business emails to Em first so she can run it through her diplomacy machine. She maintains a strong stoic silence in the face of tragedies like 9/11, but the teenie-bopper flick What a Girl Wants reduces her to a quivering mass of tears. Meanwhile, I get riled up at all the cleaning product commercials featuring women doing the chores. I've dragged Em kicking and screaming into feminist consciousness and conscientiousness, and she's slowly but surely come to the dark side. Still, Em thinks dinner conversation should not include pointless political discussions on the state of the world, especially if you're not going to get up off your ass and do something about it. Unfortunately, my sofa is really comfortable. At least I'm a vegan; Em eats tortured baby cows...

People often ask us (as they no doubt wonder about married couples who work together), "How do you have anything left to say to each other?" But it's the wrong question. The one we've found ourselves asking is, "When you talk seven times a day, how do you know when it's time to really talk?" It is Lo, always, who initiates, usually on the half-year. I am that cliched (and slightly mythical) male who must be coerced. If I had my way, our friendship would run as smoothly as a fairytale (or Hollywood) romance; we'd never need to indulge in "us talk" because it would all go without saying. I get bad flashbacks to one of my most intense best friends of old — she was ten, I was nine — who cornered me during a game of hide-and-seek to say "I love you." I begrudgingly muttered it back. I meant it, of course, but couldn't understand why we had to be so weird and say it out loud. Thus, Lo wisely waits until we have drained our first glass of wine (or sangria, if it's a summer Talk) before dropping those four little words: "We have to talk." The first few sentences are blind-date stilted, and I make less eye contact than an ADD victim with a lazy eye. But as the words begin to spill forth (in direct proportion to the sangria), no cliche is safe from us: "I feel like we've drifted apart" leads to "But you don't let me in"; "I think you'd be happier if you did this" is countered with "But that would be changing who I am"; "You lied to me" is justified as "I was afraid you'd judge me"; "You slurp your tea," is met with, "Yeah, well, you don't bring me flowers anymore." Hours later, we are teary, exhausted, tipsy, and pretty damn pleased with ourselves...