ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

When you're trying to pick up a woman on the internet, it's easy to come to think that it's not important to tell the truth about every little thing. If my ad says I'm looking for someone who likes to go to fancy restaurants, it's no skin off your teeth to say that you do, even if your idea of a fine dining experience is the quickie Chinese takeout joint around the corner, right?

Except, when you start out telling lies, that doesn't give you a lot of options down the road, if we hit it off. Suddenly, I want to go try the tasting menu at the French bistro around the corner and you'd really like to order a pizza. We want different things! So, now, you can do what? You can come clean, explain that you'd fudged your self description a bit and aren't so much the foodie after all, or you can keep going with the lie and pretend it doesn't drive you bugfuck to spend $100 for a series of tiny plates with weird silverware when you could be at the pub having a beer for $5.

I'm not going to tell you that you should tell the truth because it's the Right Thing to Do, though I think it is (and I'll discuss that in a later entry). Instead, I'm advocating the Truth as Ultimate Laziness approach: It's always easier to tell the truth. You don't have to make anything up. You don't have to keep track of the things you've made up. You don't have to pretend to be someone you're not. And you don't end up having to deal with people who aren't the kind of people you want to spend time with.

Every relationship involves compromises, and telling the truth from the get-go won't stop that from being the case. But, it will give you a firm ground from which to approach those compromises.

If I post an ad looking for a casual hookup, and I say I'm looking for a guy who can recite Shakespeare to me while we fuck, but you've never bothered with any of that nancy-pants crap... well, you can make believe that you're a big fan and that it'll make you hot to do it, and that might get you in the door, if you can pull off the make-believe well enough. But once you're in the door, it's going to become pretty clear that you weren't, in fact, on the same page, and that's going to piss me off. Furthermore, are you actually going to have a good, hot time while trying to fool me into thinking you're into iambic pentameter as much as I am?

It's easy to think that it doesn't matter much when you're looking for casual sex, that as long as you get laid, it's all good. Lying, however, probably won't get you laid, and it will get you blackballed. I share the names, photographs and email addresses of the obvious posers with my friends who also enjoy casual sex, and they do the same with me. We don't really want to waste our time, you see, because we want to get laid, preferably with someone who will get off as much from reciting Shakespeare as we get off listening to it.

Starting out with the truth is smart, and it will make your life easier. Maybe you don't like Shakespeare, but you do like talking while fucking. You could lead with that, and explain why you think I'd find that even hotter than listening to some dead guy's poetry. Maybe I'll agree with you, and we'll both have a blast. That sounds better, doesn't it?