1. Take your special someone out for a dinner to a beautiful French restaurant. It’s important to ensure that it’s French and not French-Canadian. Nothing says, “choose someone else” like gravy stains on your older brothers slacks, and an appearance by the infamous “cheese-curd breath” monster.
2. When selecting what to order keep in mind that when your date asks you if you’d like to have children, in 9 out of 10 cases she is discussing an arena beyond the meal and you should not respond that you’re a vegetarian.
3. If you’re new to dirty talk in the bedroom, stick to responding to whatever ejaculations (hawhaw) your partner makes with a casual moan, followed by “Me too!” As this Red Herring writer found out, it is very important not to panic, and to respond in this fashion blindly. When your partner proclaims to you, mid-cunnilinigus, that she is “tired and needs to be up for class”, using this response will side-step the awkwardness and leave you with, a good night’s rest and at worst, a pair of painfully blue testes in the morning.
Other statements on which to tread carefully when intending to use the fail proof James Beveridge Bedroom Response includes: “I have a headache.” In this instance the JBB Response will not have you and your partner sharing bodily fluids. In fact, best case scenario you’ll both be sucking on one of her expired children’s Tylenol pills that her mom sent her off with before starting the big first year of university. True story.
4. Don’t worry if your body has some flaws. Just show some confidence and don’t overcompensate. The last thing your partner wants to hear is “when God was handing out bodies he left out a couple inches on mine… But he made up for it with diabetes!”
5. As inspired by my recent trashy novel reading: when writing love poetry keep in mind who your audience is exactly.

“Alas you are married, to him that I despise,
Methinks that I shall be the source of his demise
So many nights every inch of me inside you
If ever someone knew, I’d rip out my eyes too

To think that I was fortunate to taste upon thy nipples
In this familial, nay political storm, we’re a sea of two ripples
By genetics we share incredibly long necks
Sorry about the Oedipus complex.”

I love you Mom…. Oh, right, and sorry Dad.

-James Beveridge

First, mono sticks with you for life, like some kind of HIV that you can make jokes about. I prefer to think of it as a symbiote – like the Black Venom suit is to Spiderman – a cute and cuddly organism that invests in you, spends time with you, and loves to stay in bed and snuggle. Second, and this is tricky, chicks dig danger and scars but not blood test results and sleeping a lot. Third, some people are carrier monkeys who do not show signs of the virus. Fourth, despite what you may have learned at camp, dental dams should not used to attempt safe kissing. And last but not least, all you motherfuckers are stuck with this virus until death, thanks to the following 10 little steps I took:

10. I have pre-licked all the envelopes in the SSMU building, downtown banking offices, and post offices. I shall give a new meaning to the term going postal.

9. I have held numerous slumber parties in the last month, often proposing to my guests we practice making out with our hands, then insisting that for the sake of realism we actually practice on each other.

8. I participated in Science and Management carnivals, Monday nights at Lodge, WaterCan socials, and quite a few romantic misunderstandings.

7. I have been spitting in my roommates’ mouths while they’ve been asleep. I did this before, but now it’s got a purpose. Sorry you had to find out like this guys.

6. I don’t go to Provigo on Mondays to get a 10% discount. I’ve been going bright and early Tuesday through Sunday to hack phlegm on the produce.

5. I have been sucking face with water fountains across campus like a chubby 5^th grader who just finished his mandatory P.E. class.

4. I have finally fulfilled a childhood dream to learn the recorder accompaniment to Stairway to Heaven. Thanks for letting me borrow your recorder without permission, Hayden.

3. I pre-sucked all the hard candy my grandmother gives out to nice people during her daily Nice Young Man Awards Ceremony. Keep an eye out for Werther’s Original.

2. I have been challenging girls to chugging competitions with my half-full beers as prizes and letting them win. When they gloat to me, I tell them that “that isn’t all you won.”

1. I farted on all the pillows in Rez. After mono comes pink eye.

~ James Beveridge