[Chandler Levack is the music writer for Maisonneuve Magazine. She has written for Spin, The Village Voice, EYE Weekly, The Varsity, and others. She is also a friend and good person. Which is why I'm just as taken aback as you will be with her contribution today On Sluts. Sean and I are normally such gentle writers, so it's nice to have someone come in and shock us a bit. So thanks to Chandler, and to you, enjoy.]

Dory Previn - "The Lady with the Braid (Live at Carnegie Hall)"

Sluts are opportunists. Sluts are hard workers. Sluts say "carpe diem!", which in slut is roughly translated to "seize the dick!" A slut says why settle for a goodnight kiss when you can fuck a guy in an alleyway? Why end the first date with a handshake when you can give a handjob?

People underestimate sluts, call them easy, but there's a lot of heavy lifting in convincing a guy to have sex with you against his will. After six or seven beers at a bar near your house, the slut will ask you to take her back to your place. They don't want to be held, they just want action. The slut says, "where's the action?" And after a third bottle of 50 procured from your fridge, talking under your breath as to not to awake one's roommates, the slut will act.

The slut will mention a DVD you have on the Criterion collection. You will pull the slut
into your room, showing off the loft bed you have built from scratch, nailing pieces of
hardwood into an IKEA frame, like Jesus The Carpenter. You will watch the first fifteen minutes of If, thinking, when can I touch her boobs? But the slut already knows. She has planned it, weaved her web of mystery. And you are now trapped, trying to take off her bra before falling off the loft bed.

Thunk! You fall off anyway. A five foot fall and your head might be bleeding. Fuck
the emergency room! The slut presses on. The slut is used to the disturbances of having sex with someone one time and one time only, clad in Haynes Her Way period panties because the slut wasn't expecting this sex. It doesn't matter! It's Haynes Her Way. Keeping the momentum, the slut takes off your pants before you wonder why no one laughs at your jokes anymore. Plaid boxers. All boys have plaid boxers and plaid bed sheets that have the sweet sickly hamster smell of boy. Plaid is the essence of boy - squares of flat shapes that are always rubbing up against each other.

Press on! The slut has a schedule to keep. Face kiss, neck kiss, breast kiss, take off shirt, take off pants, take off underwear, feel around, you go down on me, I go down on you, possible sex, orgasm. You can't help but think, wow it's weird that we are naked. Men's bodies, men's rooms - always ugly and idiosyncratic. Sometimes abs, sometimes a thick fur of hair on their lower back. Sometimes white walls and milk crates, sometimes hardwood and incense lilting in the breeze. Don't think! Press on! You ask, "what do you want to do?" The slut mumbles something. What do they want to do? They're doing it! The aftermath is more important. The congratulatory "I got laid last night" text message. The awkward run in months later. The "sorry I never called..." Don't you know anything? You never call a slut!

Finish what you started. Wake up the next morning after a fitful sleep because your brain is used to sleeping with girlfriends, not sluts. You hand the slut a glass of tap water like a sacrament. Tap water in an Alf mug is the slut's nectar of the gods. Whack your head on the loft bed and swear. Hold in every fart. The slut made an exception by sleeping over. Sleeping over destroys a slut's nervous system, reduces their shit to tap water and their stomach to rubble. Should we get breakfast? The slut says no, but you think some eggs with a stranger might be nice. The slut says no and puffs on a cigarette as she tousles your hair and waves goodbye on her bike. You stand on your porch, basking in the solitude of being unkempt and lonely, but satiated for now. Satiated with one time sex with a slut. Until, you aren't.