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How to have sex the West-Coast way: while looking in a mirror.

How to have sex the Midwest way: in the bed of a pickup truck.

How to have sex the Southern way: outside Church after Sunday School.

How to have sex the East-Coast way: while drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, and cheating on your girlfriend. Or running from one place to the next.

Ok, so those were all stereotypes. I’m sorry if I offended anyone. But there are some stereotypes that exist for a reason…

The geography I know best: Southern and Midwest. Replace church with country club or football game and got yourselves an after-school special.

A few pieces of advice if any of you ever choose to travel…bring padding, shelter, and condoms. Pickup trucks, fair grounds, and tents tend to be covered in manure, Carnies, and rocks. Respectively. And Carnies don’t carry condoms. Or so I hear.

I can’t say I’ve approached sex from the East-Coast perspective. Well, if you can follow this, I had sex with a West-Coaster in the Midwest the East-Coast way, but I don’t think that counts. The closest I ever got was, “Let’s just cuddle.” I’d rather not, thanks. I’d rather fuck. Bicoastal. Tri-coastal. Regionally. All over the United States.

And as for West-Coast, I don’t do mirrors. Yet.

Small Town, Colorado. 2004. My boyfriend at the time – we’ll call him Luke because, well, that’s his name – was going to be my first. I’d decided. Because I was mature and knew what I was doing. (I was horny.)

So I told him in a very awkward way. As is my style. One night we were standing in my driveway saying goodnight and I blurted out, “I’m ready for sex.”

Then I went and threw up from embarrassment. Minus the throw up. I just stood there and stared at him. He stared back. It was all very comfortable…

Then he said, “You want to go get ice cream?” And raised both eyebrows. I didn’t get it. I said no and ran back into the house, mortified. Ice cream? Yes, I’d like a double scoop of “Just Shoot Me,” please.

Every day for the rest of that summer he asked me if I wanted to go get ice cream and raised both eyebrows. I kept saying no because, not going to lie, there was something fishy about the way he said it. Finally, the day before he left for college, I asked him what the hell “ice cream” stood for. It was, and I quote, “to get me into the back of his car.”

I mean, I’m pretty easy. I had no objections. That would’ve gotten me just fine. But he didn’t have condoms.

Which lately hasn’t been one of my requirements – which my friends really appreciate – but at the time I had standards. So I actually said no. More than what I do now, I can tell you.

The point being – I have no idea.

Southerners like God, football, and sex. In that order. Midwesterners think sex and ice cream are synonymous, both can be had in the car, and everything should be eaten outdoors.

Speaking of outdoors…A friend, and I emphasize the friend part because this is the one absurd thing I have not done, was camping with her dad, step mom, and stepbrother. Her dad had just gotten married and this was their first family trip. And, by the bye, this was to be my friend’s first…everything. That’s right, folks. We’re not so far from the South in little Ole Colorado. My friend and her stepbrother explored the Deep South and found it to be quite, uh, familial.

So, I guess, another suggestion for the tour books: leave your family at home.

If you plan on a cross-country road trip, trim the hedges before you leave, scout the churches along the way, clear out the backseat, and hit the open road.

You never know what you’re gonna get.