Ryan O'Connell

The Twilight saga, with its unsettling right-wing undertones, presents a plot so bizarre that it’s hard to fathom how it became a cultural phenomenon.

All my friends are turning thirty and they’re getting married in backyards and at wineries in Santa Barbara and people are giving toasts and crying and I’m trying to cry too

You woke up on a Saturday and came to the sudden realization that you were all alone, that everything you had surrounded yourself with Monday through Friday, all the happy hours and all the business lunches and all those technological noises you drenched your earbuds in: it all added up to zero.

It’s such a terrible feeling to want to reject who you are. The reality is that I was not built to be an Olsen twin. I was not built to sit around doing coke with people who looked amazing in Balenciaga.

I, for once, would just like to be used and objectified.

You are feeling sad and fat and then someone hits on you and doesn’t make you feel so sad and fat anymore.

See your parents through a very limited lens. Think that they are here to teach you, to answer the phone when you have a question about a suspicious mole on your neck or an ache in your belly.

Being gay means accepting that, one day, you could be left behind by the ones you love. Let me explain. When you’re in your twenties, your straight girlfriends are practically your other half.

“I need to be with someone who isn’t afraid to look stupid,” he finally said. “Otherwise, I just feel stupid.”

They were too busy shooting up a drug I like to call Single Person Heroin. Its street name is Tinder and it comes in the form of a dating app that allows you to peruse the profiles of nearby singles.

I start seeing a trainer once a week. He’s hot, from Ohio, and likes to eat lettuce wraps from PF Chang’s. I like him and I think we have fun productive sessions together, but I still have no idea what the hell is going on. I do weightlifting, I think? I do cardio, I think? I drink four margaritas and eat guacamole and chips after a workout? Yes, that I know.

I remember certain nights for no reason. I recall them with such a fondness you’d think that it was the night I met my one true love or something. Not even close.

This was not the plan. I had imagined LA to be the place where I went on daily hikes, drank cold-pressed juices and told strangers named Moonshadow that I was in a “really healthy place” but instead, I gained ten, fifteen, maybe twenty pounds.

I’ve spent so much of my twenties testing myself, seeing how far I could go before I retreated to what felt safe. That’s why I met the man off Grindr. I wanted to see if I could hook up with a stranger and have it feel okay, even though I already knew the answer.

You’re tired of consuming junk. You want a sex life that’s organic and locally-sourced and grass-fed. You want boring and predictable sex at 9:30pm before bed. A chore that’s like brushing your teeth.

Go to a free event. There is so much free stuff to do in the summer. Winter = we’re annoyed that it’s cold out so we’re going to charge for everything. Summer = OMG, we’re so laidback! Come hang at our cool event for free!

Drinking is fun. It’s comforting. It helps you meet people. Still, sometimes you miss guzzling vodka out of plastic bottles in the same way that you miss the first person who touched you.

Since I wasn’t born with the luxury of resting on my looks (there is NOTHING to rest on, besides maybe a jagged rock), I’ve had to develop good conversation skills. (Remember: Average looking people can’t have average brains!)