The walk of shame – don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about… It’s when you wake up in a strange bed (or a stranger in your bed) and all you can think of doing is getting him or yourself the hell out of dodge.
Hey, it happens! Girl meets boy, boy chats up girl and girl (fuelled by cocktails) finds boy hot and the rest – as they say – is your classic One Night Stand. However, the One Night Stand has evolved since the gloriously skanky and librated group love of the 60’s and 70’s, the crazy hotel lounge hook-up’s of the 80’s and the stark realisation that you might die if you don’t wear a condom in the 90’s. In fact, absolutely nobody was advocating any form of casual sex in the 90’s.
And then the girls from Sex and the City came along, closely followed by the doctors from Nip/Tuck and that Jack Mooney guy from Californication. And suddenly the pick up, random hook up and one night stand became perfectly acceptable provided it included being safe.
I have a friend who is perfectly normal by the standards of sexual voracity (she’s not shagging any more or less than most single girls). But she’s decided that she refuses to be caught off guard. So she cheekily keeps an overnight bag in her car and some condoms in her Missibaba bag. There’s no reason to be caught off guard and not looking faboosh, to not have your own protection or to do the dreaded walk of shame because you literally look and feel like something the cat dragged in.
So here’s the Stylescoop girl’s One Night Stand survival guide…
YOU WAKE UP AND REMEMBER THAT HE HAD A BIT OF AN ERECTION #FAIL
Unless you think he’s Prince Charming and the father of your children, just ignore it completely, smile and pretend nothing happened (Well, technically nothing did happen – so no harm there). If you think he is the father of your unborn babies, you can always just cuddle up(and for the love of all things holy, don’t bring it up unless he does).
YOU’VE COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN HIS NAME
Look for a piece of mail, or some prescription medication, with his name on it. By all means, refer to him as ‘honey’ OR ‘sweetie, and then make sure that if you exchange numbers, he types his name into your phone. Important: do NOT call him shnookums, pookey bear or similar. Nothing says creepy stalker girl like throwing out embarrassing pet names after one night together.
YOU WAKE UP AND DISCOVER THAT YOU DON’T REALLY LIKE HIM AT ALL
Go home. Go directly home. Don’t leave contact details. Don’t stay for a coffee. It’s perfectly fine to suddenly recall that you need to be somewhere immediately. Even if ‘somewhere’ is as random as church on a Thursday morning.
YOU’VE LOST YOUR SHOES
Why have you lost your shoes? You never lose the shoes. No self-respecting Stylista is going to be caught dead without shoes. If you have suffered the misfortune of not holding on to your shoes, you’ll just have to borrow some flip-flops from him (and shame on you!)
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO SAY TO HIS FLATMATES
You barely have a relationship with him; you certainly needn’t have one with his flatmates! Feel free to hide in his room until it’s time for you to leave. If you do encounter them, just smile, smile, smile – and take comfort in the fact that you’ll likely never see them again. And if you do see them again, smile, smile, smile…but smile into the middle distance.
YOU WANT TO TURN A WALK OF SHAME INTO A STRUT OF GAME
It’s no biggie. So you’ve done the nasty with a complete stranger. But we’re all big girls here. So, you need to suck it up soldier…wash your face, put on a fresh coat of lip gloss, hold your head high. Remember, you could just be the kind of woman who’s always stylish enough to be in heels and an LBD on a Sunday morning. For real.
YOU CAN’T FIND YOUR UNDERWEAR
If you can’t locate them wherever they were chucked during the throes of passion, just wing it (literally) and get dressed as if you were never wearing them in the first place. So now your Sunday morning black LBD and heels will definitely not have a visible panty line.
YOU’VE BEEN SINGLE FOR MONTHS, AND IT’S BEEN AGES SINCE YOUR LAST WAX
Don’t roll your eyes and pretend you’re one of those girls that always wax on time. Ask yourself if you care that this random stranger that you have just met and will probably never see again, gives a damn (because sometimes, as much as they protest, guys just want you neatly trimmed and missing one wax session doesn’t qualify you to join the circus).
And finally – you’ve had drinks, flirted like mad and he drops the hint that he’d like to know you in ‘the biblical way’, but that still doesn’t mean you have to play. No matter how far along things seems to have progressed, you can always – always – go home if you decide you’d rather not do the deed after all.
Love love loved this post!