YOU CAN CHUCK them in your mouth or put them in water, but if anyone vomits,” the cute Chinese event coordinator chirped, pointing to trashcans lined with I HEART NEW YORK bags, “they’re disqualified. Anyone have any questions?” Just one: Why did I enter Chef One’s sixth annual dumpling-eating contest? Answer: A little bit of hubris, a lot of jet lag and, naturally, no common sense. Read more Read it in print

“I won’t shave the beard,” said David. “The beard stays.” When my boyfriend of eight years said this to me, my heart filled with dread. Pimples around my lips and cheeks forever from trying to kiss the Brillo pad of whiskers that now surround David’s face—I didn’t sign up for this. Read more

MY GREATEST ASSET is my gullet. Despite my horse-jockey height, my gullet is long and elastic, permitting me to swallow ponds and streams in one breathless gulp. It’s like discovering a Wizard of Oz munchkin is hung like Dirk Diggler. Read more Read it in print

LET ME BE blunt: I loathe interviewing celebrities as much as I detest raw tomatoes, a vegetable barely fit for chucking at American Idol rejects. Read more Read it in print

GROWING UP, I daydreamed I was Princess Leia, in freakishly braided buns, traveling at light speed in the Millennium Falcon and hanging out with Ewoks. Read more Read it in print

When I was young, with a liver that performed like a Lamborghini and employment as the world’s surliest receptionist, I adored open bars. I’d spend workdays alternating between misdirecting phone calls and scouring Craigslist for freebie offerings—say, unlimited Bud at Lit Lounge or vodka tonics at Blue Owl, a Wednesday standby that endures today. Read more

I’d pee in a dumbwaiter if it had the proper plumbing. I have my reasons. Most importantly, a dumbwaiter would only “seat” one, and I’d never have to worry about being ambushed when all I wanted was to be alone in a room with my pants around my ankles for five minutes before heading back to my cubicle. But considering I work in New York, The City That Never Even Winces, it’s not hard to fathom that people in the office bathroom culture would exist the same way they’d exist anywhere else—unaffected and in numbers. Read more Read it in print

After countless forays to strip clubs, strip-club steakhouses and biker clubs, my girlfriend finally voiced an objection to my adventures in New York’s inebriated underbelly. “You’re not going out with Glenfiddich’s female whisky ambassador,” she commanded. I swear steam issued from her ears, like a real-life cartoon. “I don’t want you hanging out with women wearing bikinis, dumping whisky down your throat.” Read more Read it in print

It’s time to make you a football widow,” tell my girlfriend on a recent Sunday, as the clock ticks close to 1 p.m.—kickoff time for the first slate of NFL games. She sighs.“Off to the lesbian bar?” The last couple years, I’ve caught my bumbling Cincinnati Bengals inside the cave-like confines of Park Slope’s unlikely NFL hangout, girly club Cattyshack. Read more Read it in print

Coming to New York City, I believed it would come to me. In my imagination (no New York newcomer story is complete without some idiotic naiveté, right?), the Manhattanite aura would sweep me from my 100 square-foot room uptown to a ritzy party on the top-floor of a glass-walled skyscraper. We would sip cocktails—Cosmopolitans, probably—and muse how everyone below looked like ants. Read more Read it in print