You may choose not to believe it, but there was a time in my life when I wanted to play the part of hostess.

I threw parties.

I was living at Grandma’s house, which meant I had space. Actual square footage. Rooms with doors. A basement that could absorb noise without alerting the entire neighborhood or summoning a Relief Society intervention. After years of emotional austerity, I was trying to rebuild—reinforce—a social circle that wasn’t entirely dictated by church callings or moral panic.

I had also recently discovered a magical social lubricant called alcohol.

So. Why not.

Let me be clear: I did not host house parties for dancers.

Most of my floor space was carpeted, which immediately disqualified it. Also, dancers are… a lot. I love them deeply. But inviting that many free spirits into my living space felt like inviting raccoons into a linen closet. Delightful raccoons. Talented raccoons. But still—chaos raccoons. My nervous system has limits.

Instead, I extended invitations to close friends—and to people I hoped would become close friends. Carefully curated. Lightly vetted. Quietly background-checked for emotional stability.

Of course I invited Mindy. She was already a fixture in my life, and she brought Josh.

Of course I invited Jamie. The three of us—bonded forever by our shared experience of grinding on a stripper pole together—had started getting together regularly. She brought her boyfriend, Tim.

And I handpicked a few people from Post-Mo parties. Specifically, the ones who had not attempted to drag me into a surprise swing-or-orgy situation. Those people had lost party privileges.

These were not beer-keg, loud-music, bodies-pressed-together-in-dim-light parties.

These were intentional.

I hosted a pajama party.

Nudity: not allowed.
Shoes: optional.
Emotional baggage: permitted, but must be unpacked politely.

We drank. We laughed. We kept it low-key.
It felt good. Warm. Loud in the right ways.

When my thirtieth birthday rolled around, I decided to elevate.

I threw myself a cocktail party.

Fancy dress. Men in suits. Women in cocktail dresses. Same people—just upgraded. Like we were pretending we had adult lives and places to be afterward.

We ended up in my basement, sitting under old salon hair dryers, like we were auditioning for a 1960s beauty pageant sponsored by Marlboro. We drank and laughed and told stories. It felt like community. Like I had built something.

A small, spinning, slightly tipsy world where everyone belonged.

It was to this birthday bash that Jamie’s boyfriend Tim brought a guy along. A friend of his. The guy also invited himself to stay the night, which at the time didn’t feel strange.

I was still deep in my phase of believing sex was a casual add-on. A party favor. A birthday perk.

I was open to it. Enthusiastic, even. It was my birthday. I was allowed.

But somewhere between the enthusiasm and the logistics, the night went sideways.

Not dramatically.
Not tragically.
Just… awkwardly.

And then physically inconveniently.

Enough that we both quietly agreed to abandon the plan, like two adults pretending we had both suddenly remembered an early-morning appointment.

A couple of days later, I was hanging out with Tim when he mentioned the guy again. Casually. As an aside.

Something about his girlfriend.

I paused.

His girlfriend?

Oh yeah, Tim said. They lived together. He hadn’t thought I’d care.

And I didn’t explode.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t lecture anyone about ethics or fidelity or basic human decency.

Something just… went cold.

Like when the music stops in a room and you’re the only one who notices. Everyone else keeps talking, but you’re suddenly very aware of how quiet it actually is.

That wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be.

Somewhere along the way, I had stopped being a full-fledged human being and become a sometimes-inconvenient personality installed inside a body men wanted access to. A collection of opinions attached to breasts. A person-shaped obstacle between desire and release.

I wasn’t being known.
I was being used—politely, enthusiastically, often with compliments—but still used.

And worse, I had participated in my own erasure.

So I went home and deleted all my dating apps. Not dramatically. No announcement. No manifesto. Just a quiet tap-tap-delete, like closing a door I’d grown tired of holding open.

I stopped extending invitations. To my house. To my body. To anything that didn’t feel safe.

Not because I hated sex.

But because I wanted my body back.

It wasn’t a vow. Or a punishment. It was more like a shop closing early. The lights went off. The sign flipped to Back Soon, though I had no idea when—or if.

The most popular comment I ever posted on Reddit—this website I go to—was a response to the question: What do you want from a sexual partner?

I said: to be wanted for who I am, not just for the hole they can stick their dick in.

Apparently, a lot of people were feeling that.

At the same time my body was becoming something I wanted control over again, my cat Albert’s was becoming a recurring problem.

Albert had developed a medical condition involving his anal glands.

This meant that, on occasion, he would squirt a vile-smelling substance from his back end. Usually when he was excited. Like when I came home. Or when he jumped into my lap. Or when he experienced joy.

Which—tragically—was often.

The smell was indescribably bad.
And you know how I love coming up with descriptive explanations.

The vet explained my options.

I could bring Albert in regularly and pay a lot of money for a technician to manually express the gland. Doctor Pimple Popper meets Animal Kingdom.

Or.

I could do it myself at home.

This was presented as a perfectly reasonable option. Casually. As if she were suggesting nail trimming. For some reason, I suspected that attempting to stick my finger up my cat’s butt would result in injury to one or both of us.

Or.

There was surgery. Which carried a high risk of fecal incontinence.

I opted for option four.

There comes a point in every pet owner’s life when love alone can no longer bridge the gap between companionship and recurring biohazard cleanup.

Albert wasn’t in pain.
But he wasn’t well.
And neither was I.

Putting him down was quiet. Gentle. Final in a way that felt deeply unfair after everything we’d survived together.

I went home afterward to a house where I didn’t have to immediately clean grayish-green goo for the first time in months.

It was a relief, which felt a little like betrayal.

Bingley felt Albert’s absence most of all. He wandered the house, mewing, searching for his friend. It broke my heart.

So, naturally, I got another cat.

I got a brown tabby. Estela named him Betty. Even though he was a boy. Inspired by one of our favorite stupid movies, Kung Pow.

Life carried on. Quieter. Calmer. A lot more staying home with the cats when I wasn’t at work.

A couple of years later, I went to a party and met a man—a friend of a friend. He was eighteen years older than me.

He asked if he could make me dinner.

Not take me to dinner.
Make it.

I lived more than an hour away. He insisted. He showed up with groceries in hand and cooked me a real, thoughtful, restaurant-quality meal. He was a retired chef, which explained both the confidence and the knife skills.

I was still confused about why he was there.

And then he kissed me.

But he was kind. And interesting. And attentive in a way I wasn’t used to.

When things progressed, they did so slowly. Deliberately. He paid attention—not just to my body, but to me.

It was… good.

Really good.

He wasn’t staying in town long, which was fine. The age gap alone kept it from feeling like a future. But while he was there, he took care of me in a way I hadn’t realized I’d been missing.

And then he left.

And I was alone again.

Still in Orem.
Still working as a Garnishment Specialist.
Still living a life that suddenly felt much smaller than I could tolerate.

The parties were gone.
The noise was gone.
The distractions were gone.

What was left was a very clear understanding that something had to change.

So, I moved to Salt Lake.