Winter’s coming, you can tell by the cicadas’ gradual silence, that horny-ass insect whose call of the wild is that long piercing rattle that turns into a solid screech then wanes abruptly before starting up again. Its song is the sound track of lazy summer days. It’s always alarming the first time you hear it in June while you’re having an afternoon siesta with the windows open.  Suddenly drowning out the Magic Wand’s soothing vibrato is that lil inch sized mofo sitting on a branch somewhere blowing out his vocal chords to get an in with some sweet lady bug who seems to be ignoring his ass and yet he keeps it on repeat, getting louder and louder. In-fucking-cessantly. Jesus Christ, Lloyd Dobbler, relax, she hears you, she’s probably just on another branch getting ready, flaying some shit off her wings, making you a cocktail out of tree sap. His relentless shrill becomes white noise as the weeks go on and has a subliminal effect on us all which is why we park our asses on bar patios. We can drink anywhere we want and anywhere inside would be better than outside with all the bugs, not just the cicadas but the other entomological riff raff. And there’s the noise of the traffic and the sun beating down, warming up our drinks and giving us décolleté sunburn that we will regret in the future, but never mind all that. We hoes want to sit outside to see and be seen and smell the pheromones like the animals that we are.

And here I am, the last day of summer, sitting in my room, having just enjoyed a siesta auto-crapuleuse, and I just realized that the cicadas aren’t broadcasting anymore, it’s like they deleted their Tinder accounts! They’ve hooked up, spawned, and moved on because of the intelligence of nature. It’s awe inspiring really.

So yeah. There’s melancholia for the official end of summer and 2016’s special title of the Summer of Perpetual Swamp Ass. I’m not going to miss having to change my underwear 3 times a day and have ditch into a public washroom specifically to swipe a wet nap through my crack but I will miss the cicada’s sexy mojo song. If you follow this blog, and I suggest you scroll back, I’ve been on a fruitful Tinder roll for the past couple of months and what it really means this bad bitch’s Summer of Bone is over but! A new game plan must be implemented. At first I thought I would be happy for a break and to fall into a Netflix coma over the winter with just me and Betty and excessive carbs to replace all the peen but now that I’ve had the pipe administered on a steady basis, I don’t think I can go full-on hermit again. I get antsy if 5 days pass and no gentleman callers grace my doorstep. Be still my quivering quim, I will find you food. for the winter.

People have noticed! My locker buddy at the gym, who has been away at a cottage all summer, saw me last week and said, “My god, you look good! You’re glowing! What are you doing?”

Y’all know me, I’m never on a diet cleanse and I’m drinking to win at some drinking game in my own mind, so I said, “It’s Vitamin D I guess,” and LOL’d in my head.

“Are you taking supplements?” she asked.

“I guess you can say that,” I answered, adjusting my jacked up swollen camel toe in my lycra capris which has been an issue lately. Vitamin D’s downside. Or upside, depending on your point of view.

“How many milligrams?” she asked. Do people actually measure vitamins? This kind of supplement is measured by inches, I wanted to tell her but I didn’t want to make her feel bad because she looked all sunburnt and haggard from her family vacation of oooh look at the sun setting on the lake, how grand, #blessed (read:#boredaf).  I’ll look at it all your lovely photos on Instagram after I absorb my Vitamin D injection and side tossed salad in the comfort of my boudoir. No mosquitos here! Ha, I win for once.

But! I won’t lie. The Tinder game is hard work. Swiping is just the beginning. Boys barely look at profiles and swipe right til they run out of swipes or simply cave in and buy the unlimited swipe option. Girls read all 3 words in the profile, interpret them like a poem, go through all the pictures, and if slightly interested before swiping right, takes the following steps:

Go on Facebook. Take a breath.

Find the common friend and scroll through their friend list and search for the first name, find the dude, click on his profile, nibble on it, then devour it, squeal at how cute he looks with his Movember, save his hottest picture, text it to best friend,  google his ass, see if he has a Linkedin, don’t click on it because he can see who looks at his profile, check out his Instagram, look at pictures with females in them, assess the situation, did he carve that pumpkin with his ex-girlfriened? Peruse who is is following on Instagram, THEN maybe make the emotional judgment based on the data just seen to swipe right.

The real work comes when you make a match (it’s a miracle! It’s totally meant to be!) and he messages you, and then you have to be clever and witty really quickly otherwise the conversation consists of single word back and forths punctuated by emojis. Some people have actually met, gotten married and had babies based on this communication mating ritual. It’s amazing actually but it can be tedious when you’re an old bitch like moi and in your heyday you hooked up in the back of a sugar shack drunk on 2 Molsons and you didn’t even have to say a single word at all, much less have to conjure up the appropriate smiley face. By the way, I always go for the one the tongue hanging out, I think it cuts to the chase, saves them from asking the question : “What are you looking for on here?”

Even if things heat up to witty banter and the exchange of phone numbers, there’s no guarantee of anything at all. A day will pass and you’ll forget who Adam Tinder is even if you were super hot on him the day before. If aliens came down from space and went through my contact list on my phone they would ask who this prolific Tinder clan is, gather them up all for anal probes as they must be out to populate the universe. Adam Tinder may have been cute but along comes Joe Tinder and his beard is bigger but then he turns out slightly crazy by sending you snap chats with that stupid dog filter (are we twelve?) so Frank Tinder comes along to save the day and he seems sane, and hot as fuck literally, so you spend an evening messaging, getting all antsy pants. But here’s the thing:  EVEN IF YOU MAKE AN ACTUAL SOLID JACKSON DATE WITH SOMEONE, THEY STILL MAY GHOST YOU COMPLETELY. One has to have a thick skin in the dating world. We’re all like a bunch eels slithering around a crowded fish tank, trying bang into something but mostly just trying to get away and be alone.

So anyway, the summer has been pretty good for moi. I’ve had some eel slither in. I’ve lost the body count after all the fingers so it’s somewhere in the toes on the first foot. It’s not slutty, it’s that I’ve been condensing what I should have done over the years into as much as I can because I can. Who knew all these 20something guys want to bang old broads? And yes, as a 53 year old woman I am aware I have a  shelf life of an avocado, but at this point I’d rather be some young dude’s quirk/item on a bucket list than some old dude’s sock-sorting, boring-ass “soul mate.” Please.

But! Having said that and being #blessed with young and diverse bone all summer, I know when winter comes, this game has to go into off season. Yes, you can play Tinder on your phone inside but the follow through is going to be a big drag. You know how it is in the depths of January and February, you have to get dressed with coats and hats and go out in the dark in the cold, nothing seems worth it, except for booze. Summer bone is so free and easy, flutter in like a butterfly and do your squirting due diligence and then take off like a sparked firefly in the middle of the night, where you go home and sleep in your own bed. The next day there will be another flower to land on. I’ve adopted the male mentality of casual hookups with aplomb and I’ve never been happier, empowered, or more liberated. And I’m serious, I’m still processing this revelation which I will blather on about in posts to come unless I choke to death on a dick. Could actually happen. Keep reading.

So far, they’ve all been one timers with the exception of one dude who has made me think I need to have a roster of “friends with benefits.” But I so hate that term. That and “no strings attached.” There is nothing worse than going on some dude’s dating profile and they actually state they are looking for an ‘FWB with NSA.” They are living in Delusionville if they think women are going to find that charming and honest. Every woman who reads that thinks: Oh! A challenge! And tragically believes she is going to be a game changer. He hooks up with said cool chick, or so he thinks at first. Then the dumb ass dude actually believes she is on the same page and he whistles and ploughs along, but then by the beginning of the third full moon that they’ve been “casually” banging, she asks where things are going. WHERE THINGS ARE GOING. Ha ha ha ha ha ha, here’s what happens next to the confused bro. He has been Wasting Her Time, tic tock.  Stuff gets said, things go awry, and then he puts his profile back up: “FWB NSA, no drama or game playing tolerated.”  Fucking swamp-ass-wipe dude does not deserve to ever get laid again. Sorry but! It’s ALL a game, motherfucker, grow up and play it with the finesse of a lying bastard. Drama is part and parcel of the fun and getting trapped is the end game. Get used to it, fella, until you find your unicorn who, by the way, is probably a blow up doll. Tool.

But, guess what, the “drama and game playing” (eye roll)  is not for me anymore, that’s a young woman’s objective (babies!) and I am the FWB slash NSA catch IF you have a Stifler’s mom fetish. Most men my age, if they’re out in the dating world, are punch drunk from some crazy pussy for sure, I don’t want to slam the menfolk completely, but they just don’t learn. I actually saw a 48 year old man’s profile state this: “Looking for a FWB for an exclusive relationship. I don’t sleep with other people and I expect you not to either.” What. This guy is just looking for a garden variety monogamous relationship but he’s probably just too cheap to buy drinks or something. I almost felt really bad for him as I swiped left.

My repeat dude holds promise as a potential FWB he checks in with me every day. He’s very athletic, takes charge, and intuitively knows his way around the land that is my battered body and reads my responses like a pro. Getting blood, sweat, and tears out of me requires both talent and experience and for a young dude, he’s going to go far in this world. At one point he made me faint! He’s a genius. Also he’s cool with Betty, my small dog, who trotted in the room, panting  frantically, got all weird and wiggly and jumped on the bed and sat on his face. He didn’t even flinch or seem to care and that is what possibly charmed me the most. I actually can’t tell if he even likes me or not though, but I think he appreciates that I let him watch his stuff on the lap top while I practise deep throating, oy vey, I have a lot to learn. Which by the way, I refuse to believe is an actual thing that can be done for longer than a nano second and a half. It’s all smoke and mirrors of the porn industry! Please tell me I’m right or I’m going to die trying.

So yeah, the plan for the winter is take it a little easier. If repeat dude comes back, if he’s not a flighty summer insect, I’ll try and feed him some carbs maybe and he can slow down and hoist up in that reverse cowgirl position, easy does it, and we can both watch tv and kind of chill(ish) before practise. Fair trade, methinks. In the meantime I’m swiping right on those hairy extra-weight bear type dudes who claim they can cook and cuddle, that would be a nice winter hibernation, #goals, and #hairsinmyteethdontcare.