Hello lovers. Carrie Lezshaw here to relay my thirst trap tale of woe.
Picture this: Friday night. You were probably out turning up and living your best life but I was being miserable in my bedroom. Mercury retrograde was wreaking havoc on my emotional stability. The potential loss of net neutrality was threatening our democracy. The CDC had just received a list of forbidden words. All my friends were uploading lit stories to Instagram, having way more fun than me. This girl I decided would be my next girlfriend randomly stopped answering me on Tinder. I was feeling particularly depressed. Particularly anxious. Particularly sexually frustrated. Particularly… bored.
My remedy for the soul-crushing depression and anxiety I oftentimes experience is to put on sexy lingerie, listen to Lana Del Rey, and drink Pinot Noir by myself.
I didn’t have any Pinot Noir, so I drank Yellowtail Chardonnay. I know. My first mistake. After that first sip, I could feel some of my anxiety subside. You know what I’m talking about? When you just feel your demons getting released the second alcohol touches your tongue?
But dramatically sipping wine and listening to Lana Del Rey wasn’t cutting it for me. My heart still hammered and I just felt….low. I know, crazy! But we are headed towards fascism and sometimes cheap alcohol and the sultry sounds of a goddess poetess don’t just solve everything. I was feeling increasingly restless. Which always leads to no good. I took more sips. Well, gulps.
I tore open one of the many packages sitting on my dresser (yes, I have a compulsive shopping problem and it’s my New Year’s resolution to stop). A brand new lingerie set is more satisfying than, well, anything. I slipped it on, careful not to smudge my freshly-applied spray tan. I turned up Sad Girl by Lana.
If you’re like me, an insufferable narcissist/Jenny Schecter fan-girl, you’ll know what I mean when I say I was performing my sadness, honey. Like, the only way you can cope with how deep in despair you feel, is to dress up and cry off your mascara in the mirror and think about how you look *so pretty* when you cry.
Then the lesbian Grinch (me) had a wonderful/awful idea. I decided to post a thirst trap, because the only thing that could pull me out of my depressive state, if only for a moment, was the release of serotonin from sexual attention.
I fixated myself in front of my extra-as-f*ck black princess mirror and began snapping away. Standing up, I decided, made me look fat, so I got on my knees. Even more thirst-trap-y. I tried to suck it in my stomach, scoop my boobs, and angle my face perfectly. But I couldn’t get a good picture. The more I tried, the more frustrated I got. If my face looked pretty, one of my areolae were showing. If my stomach looked flat, my eyes were closed.
I was so desperate to execute my thirst trap plan, and the booze was making me more decisive than normal so I just picked one at random. You know when you are just in the mood to upload something controversial to Instagram, damnit? And you don’t even really care about the picture so much as you care about seeing the likes roll in? I was after something far more satisfying than likes: I was after the notorious “hey how have you been text?”
I could see my future clearly: on Monday, I’d write about how a thirst trap got me laid, gave me confidence, and then shamelessly post my crowded DMs to validate myself. So I uploaded this picture onto the ‘gram:
I vowed to put my phone down for thirty minutes so when I returned, I’d have likes and texts galore. The only way to keep me distracted from my phone is to masturbate, obviously.
Usually, I can get turned on by legit anything. I can click on that first recommended video on Pornhub and off I go. But the particular video I randomly clicked was pissing me off.
Why is she wearing such ugly stockings? Why is there elevator music?
Literally, everything was annoying me. Nothing was going right, just like my attempt at a perfect picture. Retrograde was even robbing me of a cheap orgasm!
Surely by the time I finished, I would have a full inbox, I encouraged myself. I turned my vibrator speed up higher.
Then I spiraled in another direction: if I’m watching amateur porn, how do I know if the woman in the video consented to this being uploaded? Is she okay? I should really just f*cking pay for Crashpad.
Then I got it together and focused. Because nothing will stop me from cumming, honey. After, I excitedly reached for my phone. I scrolled through the likes and felt the dopamine-releasing in my brain but….wait. Why aren’t there any texts? Are you telling me I just got half-naked on Instagram to not get any f*cking texts?
By now, the sugar in the cheap Chardonnay had my heart racing and anxious thoughts swirling. Is it because I’m ugly and gross? Is my tampon string hanging out in the picture? Should I have clipped my hair extensions in? What if I get fired for this picture? What if a family member sees? What if one of my former students sees? (Yes, this lez writer had a brief stint as a college professor).
The thirst trap did nothing more than increase my anxiety and depression. You’d think at 24-years-old I’d learn that life doesn’t always go according to plan — which I have — but I also thought I learned another unalienable truth: thirst traps = exes/past hookups reaching out to you.
Actual footage of me:
As I fell deeper into my Chardonnay rabbit hole, and my spray tan leaked all over my comforter, I thought about what my thirst trap fail taught me. JK I didn’t have a thought other than: f*ck my life. (An ex and a really hot girl that ghosted me did comment but it doesn’t count because they didn’t slide into my texts or DMs). Hell hath no fury like a lesbian whose thirst trap went unnoticed.
I spent the next portion of the night sulking. I ate an entire bag of chips. I listened to some more LDR. I looked back in the mirror.
My self-esteem should’ve been in the gutter. Only it wasn’t. Because when I looked in my extra-as-f*ck princess mirror, I saw a sexy girl (albeit, a relatively insane one.) Why was I relying on social media to make myself feel better, when it really comes from within?
Why was I trying to get the attention of girls that aren’t good for me? Why was I trying to allot human interaction in such an indirect, passive-aggressive way? After all, I currently have 1140 matches on Tinder. Why couldn’t I just ask one of them out?
Because I was too anxious, that’s why. This past week, I let my anxiety and depression kick my ass so bad that I couldn’t bear to interact in a real way. Trying to solicit sexual attention from home felt a lot safer and easier than facing the real world. But it was essentially pointless.
Wanting to look sexy for myself is one thing, but wanting to look sexy for Insta followers to boost my self-esteem is another, far more dangerous thing. Maybe I’ll post another thirst trap in the future, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll delete the one I uploaded last weekend, maybe I won’t. But I do know that when I’m craving attention — real and raw human connection — the only place that happens is off the internet.
And when I’m feeling ugly, I don’t need to turn to the validation of likes, I can just pour myself some wine, turn on some Lana, and look in the mirror, and gaze at my sexy AF reflection.
What Do You Think?