Chelsea Handler - My Horizontal Life - A Collection of One-Night Stands

Seeing I was angry, he hurried to answer. "No, I just pleasured you for a little bit, and then you passed out."

Thank God for alcohol. To think I might have actually had that thing inside my little girl scared mommy.

Then I heard my sisters walk in the door.

My sisters are a very interesting duo. One of them is a converted Mormon. The other is sane.

Sloane, the Mormon, and I have had a very tumultuous relationship most of our lives. She seems to think I stole her thunder by being born. She was five years older and had claimed the throne of the youngest child with no thoughts of any competition. Her side of the story is that upon my arrival, she was thrust into a dark emotional corner, unable to express herself or get the attention she had gotten used to. Still reeling from middle-child syndrome, at the age of twenty my sister decided to distinguish herself from the rest of our family by converting to Mormonism. She believed this would be a way to carve out her own identity. Her plan was successful, although now her identity was the lunatic. We were slowly becoming closer in our twenties, but Sloane was very judgmental and something like bedding a midget could be a huge setback. Sidney, the older one, has always been my second mother. During my entire childhood, it was always Sidney who picked me up from Hebrew school when my parents forgot to, and who asked for friends' phone numbers if I was going to stay at their houses overnight. My mom was way too relaxed as a parent. By the age of ten, if I told her I was going backpacking in the Himalayas for the weekend, she would have told me to have a great time and to definitely call her when I returned.

My whole family knows I have a propensity toward hedonism, but I don't think sleeping with a midget falls into that category. Or the category that falls under sharing the experience with anyone else in the world. Not for a while, anyway. I didn't want to see that look of disappointment on my sisters' faces for the next five days. I had to think fast.

I ran out into the living room and explained that I had a naked midget in my room because the hotel misunderstood me when I ordered room service.

They both looked at me with disgust on their faces.

Eric slipped out while my sisters waited in the other room. I, of course, proceeded to ream Sloane for renting a hotel room at a place that would provide that kind of service. "It's sick is what it is," I told her.

The following five days in Cabo did not go by without a jibe every time someone under five feet passed by, which in Mexico is pretty frequent.

" Chelsea," Sloane would say repeatedly as we sat pool-side, "you've really hit an all-time low."

"Literally," Sidney would then chime in. Then the two would erupt into hysterical laughter, which was followed by snorts of disgust. It became clear to me on that trip that midgets are great for parties, but for me that's where it ends.

HAVE YOU EVER experienced a pain so sharp in your heart that it's all you can do to take a breath? It's a pain you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy; you wouldn't want to pass it on to anyone else for fear he or she might not be able to bear it. It's the pain of being betrayed by the person with whom you've fallen in love. It's not as serious as death, but it feels a whole lot like it, and as I've come to learn, pain is pain any way you slice it.

I walked in on Peter, my boyfriend of two and a half years, with not one but two Asian women. It was similar to what I can only imagine a Hong Kong SWAT team must look like. They all seemed very happy, especially the one swinging from the ceiling fan. I can't say that there were any clues to my ex's propensity toward Asian women, but when you break up with someone and reflect on your time together, all the red flags you chose to ignore gradually become more and more obvious. For example, I used to think he just liked rough sex when he would pull my hair tightly in bed; I realized afterward that he was trying to get my eyes to go sideways.

Peter always had an inclination toward threesomes. He had begged and begged me in his cockney accent to seriously consider one. (His accent became annoying only after I found him in bed with the wok 'n' roll twins. Before then, it was impossibly charming.)

"Just try it, try it, you're really gonna like it. It's really popular in Europe," he would say over and over again. This could have been a compelling argument had the same not been true for David Hasselhoff.

After I discovered him in his threesome, I spent the next two weeks in bed suffering from a severe case of vagina elbow. It's a condition not unlike tennis elbow, but you get it from masturbating. My girlfriend Lydia called, for the twentieth time, trying to convince me to go out.

"I can't," I said. "I threw my back out masturbating."

"That's so disgusting," she said. "How the hell were you doing it?"

"Oh, please, Miss Goody Two-shoes. Like you've never gotten yourself from behind!"

It was clear to both of us I needed a night out and possibly a little nookie. Nothing reels you into tears like your first one-night stand after a breakup, and I just needed to get it out of the way.

Lydia was the kind of friend whom people referred to as a "party favor"-always fun to be around but she doesn't really have any patience for suffering unless it's her own. I have been friends with her for so many years that I overlook her shortcomings in the emotional department and focus on the positive. Any time you go out with her, for example, she is completely committed to having a good time. Besides, it was Lydia who went back to my English ex-boyfriend's after we broke up to pick up my things and key his car.

We went to our local watering hole on Tuesday night. It's called Renee's and it should be shut down by the Health Department. That is, if places could be shut down due to unsanitary customers. I was shamefully dressed. I had put on some old Gap capris and a men's white V-neck undershirt with a pair of Adidas slides. I had no business being out in public. Not only did I look pathetic and unkempt, I had a severe case of camel toe that was starting to give me a headache.

There were only eight guys in the bar, so I found the one who most suited my needs. After three vodka Collinses I approached him.

He was definitely much older than me but could still be considered part of my generation. I want to say late thirties, but realistically it was more like early forties. The other options were unacceptable: two guys who didn't look a day over eighteen, and another guy who had close to a dozen tattoos on one side of his face. I don't like to discriminate, but I prefer my men without any makeup. The only other man who wasn't sitting with a girl was whispering to himself and laughing.

I was either going home with the older guy or going home with myself. I chose him. I could tell he was wrong right from the start. As I approached, he cocked his head back and gave me that silly look men give that says, You like what you're looking at, don't you?

I prefer the strong silent type. A little mystery, perhaps. I talk a lot and prefer it when men don't. This guy kept giggling like a schoolgirl and telling me how sexy I was. There are times when I actually am sexy, but this definitely was not one of them.

Lydia came over and looked at me like I was sitting next to a unicorn.

"What?" I asked her.

"He's disgusting," she said.

She was right. He was pretty disgusting. It wasn't that he was bad-looking, it was his personality-so wild-eyed and eager. It felt as if someone had just let him out of an asylum for the night, and he was getting his first taste of big-city life. He acted like I was Cindy Crawford and he had never had sex.

I didn't think I was going to be able to do this. I ordered a double. He smiled at me in a way I'm assuming he thought was debonair and said, "You know, you don't have to drink to make yourself more fun to be around." I wanted to tell him I was drinking so that be was more fun to be around.