Nina White is a pseudonym. As someone who isn’t outspoken in public, I write under a different name because it gives me the elbow room to freely bitch about my 9-5 job, discuss my awkward sex life, and admit that I’m a regular at T.O’s back-alley “I drank too many cocktails” vomiting scene on Queen West.

I can dance around naked eating spoonfuls of Nutella for breakfast and rant about my deepest darkest fears (e.g. peeing on a toilet seat with the seat down). I can share my unsolicited-opinions, talk dirty and dish personal stories about bladder infections and really terrible networking fails.

The problem with writing under a different identity is two-fold. I want to be proud of my writing, and I am, but I want to write about topics that aren’t professionally kosher. It’s not like I’m writing revealing filthy secrets about C-list Canadian celebrities or telling staff room gossip from my office job (mostly because I’ve never slept with a C-list celebrity and my work gossip could easily put you to sleep at the peak of a cocaine bender).

Truth is, I enjoy from writing anonymously about topics I personally want to read about. Like sexting, or why anal sex is terrifying (and eye-watering painful?) or how to know when it’s time to quit your job (because sometimes – almost always – I hate my job as much as I love it).

Beyond my colleagues, closest girlfriends and future employers – there’s my parents. They’re super sweet and British, and they watch murder mysteries after they finish work every night. They don’t have many friends, but they have each other (and their iPads) and that’s enough for them. And now that my mom is Google-search trained, I would die if she ever read anything that destroyed her image of me as a chicken-finger loving seven year old with ice cream on my face. I don’t want her reading about my latest dating catastrophes, or why I would gladly say “HELL YES!” to skipping work for a toast-and-sex-in-bed “sick” day (AKA a 24-hour Gilmore Girl Marathon on Netflix by
myself).

My mom isn’t allowed to read those personal things, and for all my parent’s hard work in successfully raising me, the last thing they want to know is that their daughter is a cheap Toronto hooligan who steals chips when she’s drunk and has raunchy sex with dirty old men. I want my parents to remember me by my dumb pink handwriting and smudgy artwork I made when I was 13, not my stretch mark rants and PMS meltdowns. No thanks guys, I’ll pass.

And then there are my lovers. This includes my sloppy no-name Saturday night lovers, the once-a-month fuck lovers, and all the others I’ll meet in the next few weekends. I would never want someone I care about to read something they might find hurtful or insulting. Raunchy writing requires details. Whether that’s the guy on Tinder who came faster than the time it took me to swipe right, or the sexy older knockout that snorted a line off my vagina – the specifics are important, and I don’t want to leave those out. Because I love reading about the hair-raising details about other people’s sex lives, including all the gooey stains and accidental sounds (“That wasn’t me – I SWEAR”). Even if that means admitting to all the unflattering details of sex that tanked, or the fine points of bone-shaking sex.

Future boyfriends, husbands and life-partners will never read about this, and I intend to keep it that way. I can continue to dance in my day three underwear, nap under desks and live in the shameful regrets I wouldn’t even write in my sparkly black diary. It’s liberating.