Call it pre-Frühjahrsmüdigkeit, but in February my frustration with living in Toronto reaches its peak—the joyful excess of the holidays has passed, my new year’s resolutions are on the fast track to failure, and it’s still grey and cold 24/7. Almost inevitably, I start to feel an unbearable itch that I just can’t scratch (on my own… heyo).

Some people fly to Costa Rica (cute pics, love your work on Instagram, really) or some other tropical haven while I continue to trudge around this salt-crusted ice-hole because money, right? Oh, the beach-side flings they must have. That’s another problem with the Canadian weather. Now is the winter of my vagina’s discontent. Uninspired to go out into the cold in hopes of bar flirting and too lazy to charm someone via Tinder, most of my Friday nights revolve around Netflix, my roommate, and a bottle of fancier-than-I-can-afford booze. Call it Winter Bed Death. It’s like a House of Cards-infused No-Man’s Land. UNTIL.

Here’s how it goes down: around glass 2.5 of wine, I decide I need some lovin’. I start trolling through my contact list for former conquests, sending out a few cursory “Heys,” “Sups,” and “Hiiiis” to delicately test the waters with those dudes you only reach out to in times of true desperation. Conveniently forgetting that my bits haven’t seen a bikini wax since a hopeful New Year’s Eve (I’ve started adorably referring to this region as my “winter coat”), it’s easy to be emboldened and these innocent lil texts are suddenly on the fast-track to the land of Booty Call as I sit home in varying states of undress. Sounds ideal, right? Like ordering a pizza. WRONG. This is bad pizza. (Sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but stay with me.)

To give you a sense of how dangerous this behaviour can be, here is a random sampling of the truly garbage dudes I reach out to in these situations: the guy whose dick doesn’t work (ever), the guy who ran out of breath and dripped sweat onto me in a joyless 10 minutes of the most banal sex I’ve ever had, and a drug dealer/musician who prefers the term “entrepreneur.”

This carefree delivery of attention-via-iPhone while in your super fly PJs is rarely a fair or smart move. These dudes WILL call your flirting bluff and you will have to face the very real possibility of hooking up with someone that is the personification of one of those “BREAK IN THE EVENT OF EMERGENCY” boxes on a bus, simply because you were bored and too lazy to find something better. This became very clear to me as I told my roommate of my plans to IRL hang out with one of these bros. She immediately reminded me of the time we went to dinner at a lovely restaurant and saw him out with a girl. At the end of their meal, he began flossing at the dinner table. I don’t mean flossing in the J.Lo sense, I mean truly using dental floss to clean his teeth. In public. On a date. I think we can all agree:this.

So, I’m not doing it. Literally. Sex can be good, but not simply for its own sake. I’m going to leave these guys in the past, where all mistakes belong, and rely on my vibrator and some double A batteries til spring. Because that’s my Costa Rica.