The one that got away! I had a fairly decent setup for a good blog post, but none of my plans worked out. I recently appeared in Time Out New York magazine, in a feature called "Friends With Benefits." Not surprisingly, the subject was about people looking for friends to have casual sex with. Basically, they interviewed me and took my picture, then published a little article about me online and in the magazine. I had to answer the following questions: What are your views about sex? What are you looking for in a "friend?" What makes you good in bed? What is your favorite position? I gave wordy answers, filled with metaphors, puns and figures of speech. The photo shoot was quick and painless; I was just told to "look sexy" and pose. When the article was published about a month ago, my friends told me that I was the best candidate out of the 11 people who were listed, but I did not receive a single valid response!
Well, let's back up a little bit here. I had a lot of ideas about what could happen with this situation. First of all, I have tried online dating before and let me tell you, I am terrible at it. I am sure there are plenty of guys who have the whole digital personals things figured out, but I fail miserably. What? You don't want to date a skinny nerd who thinks a lot about psychology and politics? It is hard enough speaking for yourself, so I figured that having a magazine speak for me would increase my chances of, minimally, validating my attractive values. In hindsight, I was wrong, but it was enough to fuel a ton of fantasies leading up to the publication (and subsequent barren wasteland of responses).
I did get a nice professional picture of myself out of it. I had never been photographed professionally before (aside from, possibly, the creepy guy lurking around me when I was wearing my top hat in the city a couple years ago), so that was one of the reasons why I accepted the invitation to be in the feature. If you must know how I ever came to be invited to appear in this feature, well here's the brief story: This was the second time they've run the feature. The first time, they put out a call for people who wanted to be included and a friend of mine responded. She was accepted and appeared in the magazine when the feature ran, resulting in many responses. Of course, she had a kinky outfit on and appeared in a mask with a paddle. Maybe my clean cut good-guy look wasn't naughty enough. Then again, I don't have breasts and a vagina. Anyways, this friend was subsequently asked if she knew anyone who would like to appear in the second coming of this feature and she approached me. Now you know that story.
I even got my buddy William involved in the feature. They asked me if I knew anyone and I was quick to point out my friend. Nothing will score you points with friends more than getting them laid. He's more of a sweet teddy bear type, and generally goes for different women than me, so I figured he was not competition. His ad said he liked to be pampered after sex, including cuddling and spooning where he was the little spoon. How adorably honest, but alas, he did not get any responses either. We sat, William and I, commiserating about our total failure to attract women for the purpose of casual sex.
Had this ploy succeeded, I would have had a blog post filled with the adventures of meeting people with the specific pretext of eventually having casual sex. I'm usually remiss about the research I have to do for some of the ideas I get, but I could totally get behind this one. It would have been spectacular.
The catch with this whole situation is that I never really needed the article to meet someone cool, sexy, and fun. I feel sorta silly for ever feeling like it was necessary.
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