A Woman Who Travels Back In Time And Doesn’t Have Sex With Anyone -The Toast

DAY ONE

Traveled through time today. Not quite sure how it happened, but here I am.

Have decided to remain faithful to my husband, David.

DAY TWELVE

Three of the rough-around-the-edges prospectors here have volunteered to guide my coach back to the Colorado River and perhaps, from there, civilization and the chance to return home. At various points throughout the evening, each one of them pressed a copy of their room key into my hand and intimated that I would be welcome to bed with them for the night.

One of the men, Daniel, has eyes that are strangely like my disappeared husband’s.

Slept alone tonight, as there is no reliable form of birth control in this timeline.

DAY THIRTY-SEVEN

A group of shirtless Highlanders have gathered outside under my window and are in the process of greasing one another up and shouting “PRIMA NOCTE” at me.

I told them that modern scholars agree this idea is historically inaccurate.

DAY NINETY-EIGHT

Today I learned that my mock Handfasting ceremony with reclusive laird Duncan MacDuncan during the Misrule Festival was in fact legally binding, a fact neither of us knew until after the ceremony, when a capering fool revealed the truth in front of the highest lords and ladies of the Greensward. If we do not consummate our marriage in three days on the highest hill on the Summer Isle, he will be bound with stag antlers and dismembered, to ensure the coming harvest.

Laird Duncan MacDuncan has eyes of cornflower blue. He will be missed.

DAY TWO HUNDRED

No sex with anyone today.

DAY TWO HUNDRED AND THREE

A group of men came up to my room and told me they were agents of Prester John, who was responsible for bringing me to this point in time to serve as his Prime Consort and stop the greatest massacre in history from taking place. They showed me signs and signals that no one could possibly have known, unless they came from the same place and time as myself.

I told them I would gladly accompany them to Chronos, but upon meeting Prester John felt no sexual attraction to him. He has waited a thousand years for me, so I was as gracious as possible in turning him down.

It turns out the massacre was scheduled for an alternate universe, so it was all all right in the end.

DAY FOUR HUNDRED AND THREE

A man wearing strange clothes appeared in my bedroom last night. He told me he is the last surviving member of a family whose menfolk have the power to travel through time, and that the two of us have loved one another in seventeen successive generations. He offered to take me to a place “beyond Time” and attempted to remove my blouse.

I declined. Seventeen generations seems like more than enough.

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Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

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rookstone 136p · 520 weeks ago

"Slept alone tonight, as there is no reliable form of birth control in this timeline."

Sums it all up for me, really. Keep your historical sperm away from me, dudes.

A Woman Who Travels Back In Time And Doesn’t Have Sex With Anyone

ByDaniel Mallory Ortberg

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