True love: Periel reveals how she met her now-husband, Guy, when she got drunk at a cousin's wedding and embarked on what she assumed would be nothing more than a dirty weekend
The 'sleep with anyone you want' guide to dating: How a year of one-night-stands led one woman to the man of her dreams
- Periel Aschenbrand, 37, from New York City, charts every embarrassing detail of her sexual escapades in her new memoir, On My Knees
- She believes that dating advice today is outdated and contrived, and that women should 'sleep with anyone you want, when you want'
By ANNETTE WITHERIDGE
PUBLISHED: 17:05 BST, 14 August 2013 | UPDATED: 22:48 BST, 14 August 2013
When a beautiful fashion designer embarked on a crazy year of one-night stands, the last person she expected to meet was the man of her dreams.
Devastated by the end of a ten-year romance, New Yorker Periel Aschenbrand, 37, picked up men in bars, turned into a bunny boiler when an ill-fated fling with her boss went wrong and had sex with a fireman who couldn't string a sentence together outside the bedroom.
Then she got drunk at a cousin's wedding, broke every rule in the dating-for-keeps book and embarked on what she assumed would be nothing more than a dirty weekend.
It turned out she'd met her future husband. And today Periel - who looks like Amy Winehouse minus the tattoos - still can't quite believe she hooked Mr Right by doing everything wrong.
'I'm a total believer in one-night stands,' she says, waving her hilarious memoir On My Knees about as she tells the stories she documented during her year of living dangerously.
'Girls today are given all sorts of ridiculous advice on dating. You aren't supposed to sleep with someone until you've had five dates or whatever. It's outdated and contrived.
'I say sleep with anyone you want, when you want. Now I'm not advocating that you go off with a serial killer - you should always text a friend and take photos on your phone of the guy's address - but you should be able to have fun.'
Not that Periel's one-night stands were always fun – in fact some were down right sickening.
Illegally squatting in her dead grandmother's flat, many of her encounters happened on a pink sofa that her gran had covered in plastic covers to keep clean.
'I'm a total believer in one-night stands. Girls today are given all sorts of ridiculous advice on dating. . . It's outdated and contrived'
But it wasn't so much the squelching sounds from the sofa that grossed her out. It was usually the men.
'There was a bite-your-arm-off ugly Canadian – the hairiest man I have ever encountered,' she says, describing her horror at the fat man she drunkenly dragged home from one bar.
'Steve was covered in coarse, pubic-like hair. He looked like a fat horse. If that wasn't bad enough, he also smelled like a barnyard animal,' she says.
When Periel pushed him away, he took off his underpants and started pleasuring himself.
Periel ran off to the bathroom in disgust. When she returned, Steve had passed out naked on the floor and was snoring loudly.
'I kicked him awake and threw him out. I thought that encounter was my lowest point.
'But then I decided to really self-destruct – by sleeping with my best male friend Nico, a man who was also technically my boss.
'He owned an advertising agency with offices in News York, London, Paris and Tokyo. He convinced me to do some freelance consulting.'They started having sex shortly after Periel's long-time romance ended – and everything instantly went wrong.
'He just wanted to have a good time. I, being in a dark depression, was looking for someone to save me.'
Periel says she turned from fun friend-with-benefits to a needy screaming harridan.
Nico made it clear that the last thing he wanted to be was to be Periel's boyfriend. But she ignored every warning sign and threw herself into what was a non-existent romance.
'I was pathetic,' she says, explaining how she went 'psycho' for no logical reason when he told her friends were joining them for dinner.
'After reading my book, my mother told me she felt like she needed to wear a burkha to leave the house'
Most women would find it hard to admit that sort of behaviour to even their best female friends. The fact that Periel has charted every cough and spit in her new memoir is surprising.
'After reading my book, my mother told me she felt like she needed to wear a burkha to leave the house,' she says.
'My uncle read the sex stuff and he screeched, "On your grandmother's couch, have you no shame?"'
One of the oddest bits of the book is a strangely un-erotic encounter with elderly American author Philip Roth, who fed her cherries as he peered down at her chest.
'My mother had read every single one of his novels, which is probably why I hadn't. It was only after the encounter that I picked up his books and kicked myself for not trying to sleep with him,' she says.
But she had no qualms about bedding a trainee fireman, who had a broken ankle.
'He was a kid, maybe 24, with a gold chain and a slick body covered in tattoos,' says Periel.
'We actually slept together a few times but he wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack.
'The sex was good – despite the broken ankle – but we didn't have a lot to say outside the bedroom.
Telling all: Periel has charted every cringeworthy detail of her one-night-stands in her new memoir
'I had a fling with a British guy – and I was dumb struck because I just wanted to listen to his accent.
'He was such a smooth-talker and really courted me. It was hard to take him seriously though, when he gave me compliments, because I was so wrapped up in his voice.'
Periel had given up on finding the perfect man when she flew to Israel for a cousin's wedding.
'I wasn't expecting to meet my future husband there,' she says.
'Guy apparently spotted me sitting on the floor drunk with food smeared all over my face.
'I was so out of it I didn't even notice him. But the following day he came to my aunt and uncle's home and it was like boom, an-out-of-body experience. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.'
But the course of true love hardly ran smoothly. They went to a bar with friends and she was so frustrated that Guy didn't seem interested that she carted another man outside and snogged him for 30 minutes.
'I was wasted. This man in his gold chain and wife beater shirt seemed hot in a cheesy sort of way but outside under the street lights I sobered up and realized how ridiculous it was,' she says.
'I could try and make this sound better than it actually was but if I'm really going to be honest, I had just made out with a character out of a Sasha Baron Cohen skit.
'Upon realizing this dreadful error and having no interest in repeating my ordeal with the masturbating Canadian, I got the hell out of there.'
Guy, an internet marketing executive, had disappeared but re-appeared at her cousin's home the next day and invited her to dinner at his apartment.
Periel says she expected sex and was stunned when he dished up a home-cooked ten-course meal. But when she finally got him into bed, she says their love making blew her mind.
'I still thought of it as a one-night stand yet I broke all my own rules - I slept the night there with him, rather than disappearing. Then the next day and the next day…'
'I still thought of it as a one-night stand yet I broke all my own rules - I slept the night there with him, rather than disappearing. Then the next day and the next day…'
Three years ago, they tied the knot and now the couple have just welcomed their first child - a baby boy named Ari.
Periel admits that she never expected to meet her future husband while doing her best to sleep with him.
'I had no expectations when I met Guy, so I just acted like myself,' she says.
'Everything you ever read about the rules of a first date – don't get drunk, don't sleep with someone immediately – went out of the window.'
Periel became an accidental feminist clothes designer during President George Bush's White House years when she walked into a Los Angeles boutique wearing a T-shirt she'd designed saying 'The only bush I trust is my own.'
The shop owner asked her to print more and her business Body As Billboard took off. T-shirts bearing the words 'Marriage is so gay' and 'Does date rape mean I also get dinner?' became massive hits.
Today she's the creative designer of an online boutique called House of Exposure and to promote her memoir she'd had bags made up carrying the words: 'Can a book be better than a blow job?'
It is a question she's not sure she can answer but she has certainly given two fingers to all the dating advocates who advise being cautious when it comes to casual sex.
'I found my future husband during a drunken one-night stand. And if I can do it, so can anyone else,' she adds defiantly.
On My Knees by Periel Aschenbrand is published by Harper Perennial. For stockists, visit perielaschenbrand.com
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