I was at an all-time low when I decided I wanted to try to fix everyone else’s problems. My head was a mess and my heart was broken. It was one of those years where every month brought a new sadness – an annus horribilis, I think they call it. And, in a mean-spirited move from Fate, My Bad Year also coincided with THE Bad Year – 2020. The most horribilis of all the annuses.
During that time, I pitched myself as an agony aunt to my editor at the I had always wanted to be an agony aunt. In my adolescence, I would buy teen magazines and immediately skip to the problem pages. Sex was discussed in my house, I imagine much more than it would have been for boomers (the last victims of Victorian parenting). But there were no specifics. Instead, it was couched in the vagaries of baby-making and ‘tingly feelings’ and ‘when you care about someone very much’. I needed more. Problem pages were my salvation – my perverted eyes would dart over the pages looking for key words. I took these tips and passed them off as my own, becoming the Playground Sexual Yoda.
