Diana, 26

What do you do for a living?
I am a mom of three, and I have a part-time job at GeekSquad.

Are you in a relationship now?
Yes.

Do you have any good hookup stories?
I had a one-night stand. I felt really bad because I guess the guy was really into me. I was thinking, "It's fine! And guys are like, 'whatever,' sex is all they care about." And then the next day, my friends called me and said, "Oh, he liked you! He really wants to talk to you!" And I was like, oh no. I just wanted him for sex. I thought that's what he wanted. And I'm like, "I'm sorry."

Do you think a friends-with-benefits relationship is possible?
Yes, it does work. I've done it before. We did it for like, two years. There was nothing awkward between us. We went about our business like it was nothing and we got together with other people.

What's the craziest thing someone's done to get with you?
I've had someone serenade me, from outside a window.

Someone serenaded my uterus before. He ended up being gay.
That's unfortunate.

How old are your kids?
My kids are six, four, and seventeen months.

Are you wearing a wedding ring?
No, it's a promise ring. I started panicking about him asking me to marry him. The answer would've been no. Not to be mean, but I wasn't ready and we were working on our relationship and stuff. So this was his promise to me.

What makes someone ready for marriage?
I honestly think you have to be mentally ready for it. People take the leap when they're in lust and not in love, and you hear two years later that they're divorced. You have to have a committed relationship. There's so much you have to work on. The trust has to be there, the communication — if you lack that, your relationship is going to fail. People think that if they get married, it'll fix everything. And it doesn't. My parents divorced when I was fifteen. They said they stuck together for us kids. My view is that if you're that unhealthy in your relationship, the kids are going to see that. And that's not something I want my kids to see.

How do your kids affect your love life?
Well, it's kind of hard to have sex. Because they're always there. I'll just tell them to go outside and play.

And the seventeen-month-year old?
Oh, we put her down for a nap.

Do you have any crazy exes?
My two boys are from a previous relationship and yeah, he's crazy. He was very emotionally and physically abusive. We're actually battling out in court right now. I look back and realize I should've gotten out sooner, but one thing I don't regret is my kids. Everything happens for a reason. I love my kids to death. I wouldn't change that.

Do you believe in love at first sight?
No, but I do believe in lust at first sight. And hormones. People who tell me, "Oh, I'm so in love," right away... I just want to slap them.

 

Felicia, 23

What do you do?
I'm a student and a freelance writer.

How did you and your boyfriend meet?
At school.

What do you generally look for in a guy?
He's got to be smart. I want to be a professor, so conversation is really important to me. And he has to be funny.

Have you ever had a crush on a professor?
No. I've noticed cute ones that girls talk about, but no.

What did you do to impress your boyfriend when you first met him?
I'm a history major, and somebody mentioned something about history. He seemed really interested, so I went into the whole thing. I don't know if he was actually interested or if he was just checking me out, but it seemed to work.

What's the craziest thing someone's done to get with you?
I've had a couple borderline stalkers. Some guy who would come to my work and call my phone twenty-five times a day. Once, he called my parents' house and he tracked me down to a friend's house. He was actually a guy my mother thought I should date.

So she facilitated the stalking?
Yes.

How did you get rid of him?
I threatened to call the police.

What did you tell your mom?
I told her the truth! And I told her not to do that again. We have completely different tastes in guys, and I think she figured that out. My mom likes bad boys.

If your father a bad boy?
Not so much, but my stepfather thinks he is.

What's the craziest place you've had sex?
In a moving car. He was the driver. We were on the highway going a little under the speed limit. I've never told anyone that before.

 

Aaron, 21

What do you do?
I'm a student. In the summer, I'm going to be an intern at WXRT.

Do you get a lot of dates?
Not from school, but I used to work at an art gallery and I would meet all these cool, artsy chicks.

Do you have any moves?
At the art gallery, I'd go up to a girl looking at art and tell her what I felt about it.

Did you ever lie about your feelings on a certain piece of artwork to impress a girl?
The key word is "interesting." Always say something is "interesting" or that it "totally speaks to you."

What turns you on in a girl?
If a girl is into good comedy. If a girl is into chick flicks, that's an automatic turn-off. There was this girl I was seeing who wanted to see the movie Hop, and she found it ridiculous that I didn't want to see Hop. I'm like, I'm a twenty-one-year-old guy. I'm not going to see Hop! If a girl's knowledgeable about pop culture, that's a big turn-on.

Do you have any funny hookup stories?
This girl and I went to go see Alice in Wonderland and the theater was totally empty. We didn't make out during the movie, but we snuck in rum and champagne, and it was all a terrible mixture. At the end of the movie, we started making out, and the making out took us to the train, and I may or may not have vomited on the train, and then she ditched me at a Blue Line stop.

What's the craziest thing you've done to get laid?
This one girl I wanted to hook up with told me she was having a shindig about an hour away from where I was, and I went all the way there only to find her hooking up with some dude and this other chick. So she was in the bedroom, having a three-way, being a bit on the noisy side. And I was like, "Fuck this, I'm out."

One thing you could change about girls?
I've had a bad streak where all the girls I've been into, the second they're into me and want to hook up, they've had their periods, so that's just like, "Awww, man." I would get rid of that. It would help. It gets in the way of sex. That makes me sound like an asshole.

Interviews and photography by Ruth Tam. Want to talk to strangers in your town? Email