GEBO {or Excerpts From My Failed Dating Profile}

I'm ridiculous amounts of get-down. I like vintage aprons, photos of people I don't know and laughing so hard I snort. I want a good story more than I want a turkey sandwich and I really want a turkey sandwich. I've lived in 69 houses in Oklahoma City. This most likely contributes to my fear of commitment and tendency to fall in lust with kitchens. 

I have chubby, powerful hands, a soft belly and thick thighs. On the days when I love my body, I pretend I used to be a rogue sea creature with big knobby tentacles and now look! I've suddenly been granted flesh and bone humanness! It's amazing! To have these soft fat elbows! To have hairs, poke out, two by two from my nipples! 

What am I doing with my life? I say poems in dark cafes, college cafeterias, big auditoriums with old white men staring at me talking about my uterus. I walk down hotel hallways and try to remember what room I am in by the pattern in the jazzy carpet. 

I'm really good at reading the first chapter of books, letting my phone die, air hockey, thumb wars, packing a suitcase and burning my mouth on the first bite. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about wolves, the plural of octopus, roads, street signs, gender and sex.

The first thing people notice about me is my hair color has changed and my TMI filter is broken. (I eat margarine when I'm nervous. I get nervous when you like me.) 

Six things I could never do without are : 

1. Road Signs 

2. The face you make when you get an idea 

3. Bad kids jokes : What does naked mean? I-don't-know-boobs. 

4. Kind Strangers 

5. Clouds Fizzy 

6. Water 

7. Breaking Rules 

I don't like the word lesbian because it sounds like straight male porn. Gay is an adjective I use to describe the kind of love that is so radiant, it makes you sick to your stomach. Like when my roommates eat off the same plate and one says, "No Baby, you eat the last piece of bacon, you have to work today."

I am only pansexual if that involves coconut oil. I'm don’t think I am bisexual because that implies there are only two genders and I think there are as many genders as there are locker combinations, as there are nervous humans making sense of their skin. 

Every person has a unique set of desires and offerings. I like to call this gift basket our GEBO. GEBO stands for Gender, Expression, Behavior, Orientation. 

or Give Everyone Bigger Options 
Gay is Everyone Being Open 
Gold Echoes, Bright Oceans 
Grown Emotional Babes Offering
Glorious Ever Blooming Orgasms 
Gorgeous Evenings, Bent Over 

So baby, tell me about your GEBO. 

Tell me about the perfect way you like to express yourself in relationships. How you do power, how you dress, what kind of bodies you like to play with and how you are most likely to get off. You could put your GEBO against my GEBO and we could turn a few notches to the left, full circle to the right, back and forth until we click and spring open. 

My GEBO is tights and striped dresses. Too many purses and scarves that I but never wear because I think good cleavage is better than a good trend. I am granola femme, queer, mama. I prefer she pronouns and I like it when you use your hands. I am hard flirt, leave my skirt on. I want you to objectify me but I want to know that you know that I'm LETTING YOU objectify me.

My preferred GEBO is a vast array of masculine-identified, female-bodied dream boats. Handy woke butches. Trans dandies. Even an occasional cis-gendered male class clown who identies as feminist and see the word ally as a verb and not a badge to wear to the book club. 

Must be good with power tools and/or feelings. You should message me if, If you wanna read out loud in bed. Talk to the waiter in British accents, pretend to be spies at the park. Make up stories for every person at the bus stop. You want to spend a Friday night eating ravioli and getting creamed by two kids in a lip sync battle?

Hi. I'm Lauren.