Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes
If you're curious about what I'm like before I have sex—my parents are reading this like, "I'M GOOD!"—just imagine that local reporter you know and love who's dressed in the uncool attire from New York & Company (aka anything not from the Gabrielle Union capsule collection) and barely keeping it together as drunk and rowdy people repeatedly interrupt her puff piece about that year's Halloween parade. Despite how distracting the ruckus is, her confident gaze into the camera and plastered-on smile serve as evidence that not only can she handle the unexpected, but she invites it in. Her even tone is proof she will get through this story like she has hundreds of times before, leaving viewers dazzled by her ability to both be amiable and handle things like a pro. And for a long time, leading up to sex, I felt as though I was that local reporter, and the drunk and rowdy folk were the thoughts jockeying for position in my overactive brain.
To be clear, it's perfectly natural for hundreds of half-thoughts, random notions, and unrelated tangents to fire off in people's minds due to the anticipation of what's about to go down. The problem for me is that most of these thoughts aren't particularly salient or helpful. In fact, the majority are halfformed, ignorant, reeking of self-doubt, or, worst-case scenario, funny, which can make me accidentally laugh out loud instead of focusing on sex. I swear to you, my brain always starts out fine: I hope this'll be good. Or I hope I don't catch feels. And Why did I wear jeans so skinny that they require this dude to engage his core in order to help me take them off? Ya know, basic stuff. Then it quickly devolves from there:
I really hope this motherfucker doesn't want me to put the condom on him because the only way I know how to do it is like a disgruntled Zara employee who got stuck on window-display duty and has to clothe twelve mannequins by herself before midnight. What if I were to turn on the "Baby Shark" song halfway through just to keep things interesting? Ugh, I'm such a slob. Do you think he notices that my bedroom looks like the FBI came through here with a search warrant? TBH, I'm not the biggest fan of his first name—too damn formal—so maybe I could test-drive some nicknames and see what he responds to? If he fumbles with my bra, I'm not smashing. J/K. He's hot, and just like the proverb "Each one teach one," which originated during slavery because Africans were denied the right to read, so that when an enslaved person did learn to read, it was their duty to teach someone else, I'm going to educate this mofo, so maybe this is my way of giving back? Aaaaaaaand now I'm thinking about slavery. Great. But also, does teaching this dude how to unhook a bra make me a philanthropist? Okay, maybe not a philanthropist, but at least on the path to having a street named after me, or a Tuesday in August declared Phoebe Robinson Day, or being given keys to the city. Like, all I want is to hold a comically large pair of scissors, cut a ribbon, and have people applaud me. What exactly do I have to do in order to make that happen? Have city-approved plans to construct a building? Start a brick-and-mortar business? Okay, bitch, you need to focus on the task at hand. A few beats pass. Should I give Emily in Paris a chance? That's it. You're allowed one last thought and then it's game—I really wish I focused on squats at any point from middle school to my middle thirts, so I could have built up the thigh strength to ride the D for more than 8.6 seconds.
Y'all, I'm aware that last one is a touch specific, so I'll explain. Recently, as I was descending into the squatting position over my boyfriend's penis, about seventeen thousand of my hip bones snapped, crackled, and popped, and I had so many questions: Did someone light some kindling? Is a box of carpenter nails tumbling down the staircase I don't have in my apartment? Like, why do my hips sound like the breaking-glass sound effect at the beginning of WWE's "Stone Cold" Steve Austin intro music? And if you think it's any better in missionary position, it ain't! As I'm lying down, there's a fifty-fifty chance that Bae moving my thighs up to my chest will sound like me when I'm at my parents' house for the holidays and it's three A.M. and I ever-so-delicately touch the plastic lid on the store-bought cake and crinkle noises reverberate for half a minute.
In summary: I AM OLD. And instead of fighting it, I'm leaning into it. So bring on the bags of Werther's Originals, having a strong opinion about how to fold fitted sheets, and writing in cursive. I know, I know. Calligraphy is making a comeback as a relaxing adult activity, but if you're out here writing whole-ass letters to friends in cursive, you are, at the very least, pre-menopausal aka your puss puss needs a Ricola and a cup of Throat Coat tea to stay lubed up. But back to the matter at hand.
Despite all the thoughts that pop into my head pre-sex, there's one that reigns supreme. Prior to British Baekoff, almost every time since I started having sex, I would think, Please don't sit on my bed in your outside clothes, please don't sit on my bed in your outside clothes, please don't sit on my bed in your outside clothes, as if it's an incantation that would magically make my suitor of the moment suddenly be mindful of the germs that his clothing is harboring and put a pin in the passion for a few minutes so he could take off what he's wearing, fold it all neatly, then wash his hands before coming to bed.
Now, I suspect this whole "threat of outside clothes contaminating household furniture" is, to put it lightly, a cultural thing because "Please don't sit on my bed in your outside clothes" is a directive I've said to almost every white being entering my space. White parents. White friends. White dogs. That said, when it comes to men, race doesn't necessarily matter. It seems that for all men, particularly the straight ones, this fear that I have isn't top of mind for them, although if a Black dude is on the receiving end of this request, he's not surprised. He simply responds with some variation on, "Yep, got it. My grandma used to say this to me all the time when I was growing up." And if you're still not convinced that this is a cultural request because you don't have enough empirical data aka no friends of color, then I will appease you by chalking it up to being a Robinson special.
Now, I gave you a sneak peek into who Ma and Pa Robinson are as people in the previous essay, but that amuse-bouche isn't enough. Oh, how I wish you could spend some time with them, but that isn't in the cards because they have zero interest in meeting anyone new for the rest of their lives. I mean, they treated an all-expenses-paid trip to meet Michelle Obama like it was an offer to shovel cow dung on Old McDonald's farm, so you're foolin' yourself if you think my parents will view hanging out with you as anything other than precious time they could spend driving to and from a Redbox kiosk to rent a DVD. Yes, my brother hooked them up with a Netflix account. Yes, I got them HBO Max. Yes, they pay for Hulu. But apparently, it's not enough and they need to waste gas and pollute the planet so they can get the latest direct-to-video John Cena movie. Honestly, I wanna tell on them to Greta Thunberg so she can give them a stern talking-to about how they're contributing to climate change, so they will stop going to Redbox to rent wack movies. But I digress. The point is my parents are delightful and you will never meet them, so the next best thing is me sharing three key facts that'll give you deep insight into Phillip and Octavia Robinson.
Number one, they love keeping track of how long it's been since they were last sick the way an alcoholic counts the days of their sobriety. No matter how much I remind my mom and dad that this information isn't worth bragging about, that no chip awaits them to mark their achievement, they'll find a way to work it into conversation.
"Mom, I'm having trouble with my taxes. Can you download your accountant wisdom into me real quick?"
"Well, it's funny you mention 1099 independent contractor forms ..." 
"I mean, I didn't—"
"Because it's been 1,099 days since influenza last felled me."
Secondly, the parental units are incredibly giving and selfless people. A present from them is usually the item you mentioned months ago that you since forgot about, but they never did. When the family fell on hard times while I was in high school, my mom walked several miles to and from work every day because they decided that losing their car due to being behind on payments was better than pulling me out of private prep school halfway through junior year. And as many parents were having to deal with the reality of homeschooling their children while working from home during Covid-19, my dad volunteered to homeschool my charmingly precocious niece to help lessen the stress my brother and sister-in-law had due to their demanding jobs. I know that saying "Feelings aren't facts," but I feel like my parents are fucking amazing and there's no convincing me that isn't one of the purest and truest facts.
And, finally, the third piece of information to complete this sketch of my parents is their unwavering belief that there should be a deep divide between the outside world and the holy cleanliness of their home. Growing up, there was never this bipartisan, reaching-across-the-aisle, "both sides of the argument are valid." To them, outside is a hellscape full of unhygienic people and trifling surfaces whose sole reason for existence is to disrupt the harmony they've painstakingly created. Since I can remember, after each week of us coming and going from work, school, extracurricular activities, parties, dates, and study groups, my parents would do a deep clean of THE ENTIRE HOUSE, including dusting, mopping, and washing the baseboards. This is a task that, to this day, they still carry out like clockwork every seven days.
Just to do a quick study in contrasts, after eight months of quarantining in our apartment, Baekoff and I hired cleaners to get our home back on track. Once they were finished, they told him how dusty our apartment was. Admittedly, that's mostly my fault because he's very neat and I'm a slob kebab, but they ain't know that! All they knew was they spent the previous four hours wishing they were wearing eye goggles because the amount of dust kicked up made them feel like they were in that sandstorm scene from Mission: Impossible— Ghost Protocol. While they were annoyed, they weren't stupid, so they basically waited until the wire payment and tip went through like a heist and then, with some bass in their voices, they low-key cussed us out with such pinpoint accuracy that it felt as though these three Russian queens took ESL specifically to tell my boyfriend and me that the air quality in our apartment wasn't suitable for their precious lungs!