Several people, friends and fans alike, have asked me recently (and not so recently) what I'm doing with this blog. And my response has generally been along the lines of, "I'm going to get through the next couple of months and then try to figure it out." I don't really know if I'm through the next couple of months, yet, but I do know I want to figure it out.

I'm not having nearly as much casual sex as I was when I started writing here, and I don't feel particularly drawn to go back in that direction. And it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to have enough CL fodder to keep up this blog if I'm not actively pursuing that sort of thing. On the other hand, I have some friends who are, and they might be interested in posting here, too. So I might be bringing on some new faces to join me and Sapiophile.

I may also branch out into more general topics, still with a focus on sex and dating and the idiotic things people (including myself, I'm afraid!) do, either on the internet or in person. We can all learn from the painful mistakes of others, can't we?

It's been long enough that probably most of my regular readers have given up, but I'd be curious to hear from you ... if I change focus, or broaden it, or open things up to other posters, would it still be interesting? Or is it (belatedly) time to close up shop?

I've been on a tear in Craigslist recently which has given me a chance to accumulate some real gems of CL bad ideas!

Let us say your email exchanges have gotten you as far as meeting me for coffee, or maybe even into your apartment, and you want some tips on what to do next? You might want to avoid:

- taking a mobile phone call while we are together. Maybe just turn it off before we meet and turn it back on we part. If some call comes in that is really life or death critical, consider making it minimally short instead of chatting, okay?

- going dutch. Well, okay, fine, we can split the bill on lunch if we must...doesn't win you any points but doesn't lose you any either. Unless, after I've ordered my meal, you order yours and an expensive appetizer to share, without asking me. In which case, sorry, you are now obligated to pick up the tab.

- overplaying your hand. Just because I agreed to have a drink with you does not mean I'm now off the market, need to negotiate other hookups with you first, or will take kindly to a suggestion that I should pull my ad, having found, at last, the best guy available.

- whining about your [ex]wife, girlfriend, whatever. Really, I probably don't want to hear about her at all, but if we are to discuss it, I don't really want a long litany of her sins against your sainthood, about how criminal the level of alimony is you have to pay, or all the other ways she done you wrong. A wistful shake of the head and a "things didn't work out the way we had hoped they would" is all I need to know.

- whining about anything. While there may be many sucky areas of your life, I didn't sign on as therapist. I'm certainly open to entertaining the idea that you are human with failings and feelings -- that's a plus. But read above about the wistful shake of the head. Practice it. Perfect it! The first date is not the time to share in open, angsty detail about your struggles with drugs or gambling or weight, about how unfairly your boss treats you, or about the scam artists you fell for. What makes you think this is sexy?!

- forgetting condoms. Dude, you're trying to hook up, this just makes you look stupid.

One last note: I hook up on CL. Several of my best friends hook up on CL. Several of their friends hook up on CL. And we all love to talk about it. Which means if you piss off one of us, you've just shut yourself off of access to everyone. Among other things, if you promise a wicked wild sexual ride, and what you deliver is a 2 minute fuck followed by rolling over...word will get around quick that all you are looking for (or offering) is warm body masturbation.

There are a few instances where that's not the case: First, the fellow I fondly (and my friends less fondly) call my bad idea, who, to be fair, is someone I got together with a number of times, but I always wished for more. Second, the Brazilian (OMG, hot). And third, Mr. The View (about whom you can read here).

These are guys who I was highly interested in having further hookups with, and who expressed an interest on their sides, but circumstances prevented us from getting together again. Now, it may be that these guys are making up excuses to let me down easy, and that would be fine, but I operate on the assumption that if a guy says he wants to get together again, he does, and it's a shame when we both do but it doesn't come together due to schedules or he starts dating someone monogamous, or what have you.

But! these things happen and it's not a big deal, though I reminisce somewhat nostalgically about the really good ones who I'd like to have seen again. So it's extra delightful when I hear from one of the ones who "got away", for two reasons:

1. I might get to fuck someone who I had a really good time fucking in the past. There's no down side to this.
2. Even if we don't manage to get together, it's really awesome to have my sense of our previous encounter(s) as positive and worth remembering confirmed from his end, too.

In this case, I got an email yesterday from Mr. The View, saying he thinks of me from time to time and am I around this weekend, because he'd love to get together. *score!* Now, even if we don't get together, I know that a guy I fucked two year ago (almost to the day!) has good, happy memories of it.

That's a nice ego boost. Plus, it tells me I'm adding general good to the world. How could that fail to rock?

Recently, though, I got two new ways to be wacky:

1. A guy sent me three emails in the evening, the first to introduce himself to me, the second to reiterate how perfect we are for each other, and the third to castigate me for not responding yet and to encourage me to respond ASAP. I hadn't read my email that evening, and was thus impressed to discover, when I did get around to it, that he'd sent three followups the next morning, first to castigate me further, second to remind me again that we're perfect for each other, and the third to tell me I'd be missing out if I didn't write him back.

Now, I'd never say that someone consents to be stalked, but I'm sure that if I responded to this guy, I'd be asking for it. Yuck.

2. A chain letter. On the topic of determining your value as a person by how many of your friends respond to your sending it to them.

Maybe he just needs more friends.

It's not only the profiles or CL responses that consist of a few "words" and a picture of a cock, but it's also profiles or responses that have no photo but a lot of words about the owner's cock. Is there really so much pressure on men to have big cocks that they can't imagine that a woman could possibly care about anything else? If so, where is this pressure coming from? I mean, I enjoy a big cock as much as an average or small one, but it's nowhere on my list of required characteristics. If I were going to be shallow about the cocks I fuck, I'd go into more detail about shape and proportion than size, anyhow.

I, of course, would have to be pretty hard up to respond to an ad or an email that consisted exclusively (or nearly so) of a photo or description of a dick, but let's talk about this a little bit more. Why don't cock shots make me hot? In part, it's because almost every guy has one, so it's not like its presence sets him apart in any interesting or useful way. In part, it's because relying on it demonstrates a lack of imagination that I assume would translate to extremely boring sex. In part, it's because I also envision that extremely boring sex would be extremely cock-focused. And, hey, I love me some cock, but, really, no matter how fast and easy I am, I want to start with face, mind and body.

Face: I fully admit that I am a shallow bitch. If I don't think you're attractive -- and I'm not saying you have to be Denzel Washington (sigh!), but attractive -- I'm not going to want to kiss you. And if I'm not going to want to kiss you, I'm not going to want to get naked with you. And if I don't want to get naked with you, it doesn't matter how gorgeous or huge your cock is.

Mind: I don't even have anything interesting to say on this topic. We all know the brain is the biggest sex organ. Let's move on.

Body: Do you move your body like you really live in it? Do you seem to take joy in it and think creatively about using your whole body to seduce me? If not, again with the not getting around to seeing your cock.

Ultimately, I think the weight such a large proportion of men seem to put on their cocks as the only important thing in a casual encounter demonstrates yet another way that our society is deeply fucked up about sex, so even though I find it kind of pathetic and annoying in the individual cases, as a trend, I find it depressing.

I think I'm gonna go pick up someone smart, hot and creative to drown (ahem) my sorrows.

Growing up, girls -- well, probably everyone, but I think especially girls -- get a strong message of how important it is to save sex for marriage. There's a lot of acknowledgment that loads of people have sex before marriage, but even then, the dominant paradigm is that sex is a Big Deal, and you should only do it when you're in a committed relationship with someone you love.

And on top of that, there's this weird fetish our culture has for female virginity, so especially when you're young, you get a lot of rhetoric about how important it is to be sure, to pick the right guy, etc.

I remember a having a discussion in high school with some friends about which would be worse: to be raped or to be murdered. Read that again; I'll wait. Smart, thoughtful girls actually had a conversation wherein there was serious consideration of the question of whether it might not be better to be dead than to be raped. That is fucked up.

But the point, here, is that there's a lot of time and energy going into giving people the message that sex is HUGE, and that, if you're a girl, at least, you're a prize, and you should be sure not to give yourself to just anyone. ("Why buy the cow, yadda yadda?") And I'm not saying that people, especially young people, shouldn't be smart and thoughtful about sex, picking when they want to do it and with whom. But I am saying that the current dialogue about it is fucked. And not in a good way.

And one of the great great things that casual sex has done for me is allowed me to stop thinking of myself as a prize that I award to someone for being the nicest guy or the smartest or the hottest or the nearest or whatever -est he happens to be, and, instead, to think about what I want out of sex. I'm not someone's prize; I'm my prize, and my reward is that I get to to what I want with my mind and body, when I want, and with the person (or people) I want to do it with. I'm not having sex to pat some guy on the head to say, "Hey, man, nice work! You win the good guy award! Have some pussy!" Instead, I'm having sex because I like sex, and it's what I want to do.

And despite having a couple of kickass awesome relationships before my casual sex days started, I think I'm a better lover now than I was then. Not because I have any great new techniques (though, let's be honest: I may), but because I'm choosing for myself when I take my clothes off.

You know the air I mean. It's that air of desperation. It's the air that precedes him when he walks into a room so all the nice women there know to avoid him like the plague, and all the mercenary women perk up and think, "Oh, hey, I can string this guy along for months before he catches on that he's not gonna get any..."

This guy isn't looking for casual sex; he's looking for a serious relationship leading to marriage, and he's utterly miserable about the lack in his life. Seriously, he can't have a conversation without bringing it back to this at some point along the line. It kills me.

Why? Because if he weren't so achingly, painfully, heartwrenchingly desperate, he might have a chance. But I like him, and even I get the willies when he's around women who are potential matches, because I can feel all his clingy little psychic tentacles reaching out with trembling, pathetic hope that maybe... possibly... could it be...?

I want to tell him to chill out and relax, but, of course, that's no help, because, well, he really does want a girlfriend, and unless I have some specific suggestions as to how to chill out and relax, he maintains himself in this incredible downward spiral of flailing desperately, which makes any potential partner nearby flee in horror, which leads to more flailing...

So, listen, I can't tell him this, but I can tell you:

The absolute first step to being hot is not to need to be hot. In fact, it's not to need anything from the stranger you're meeting-and-maybe-interested-in. It's all well and good to need things from your friends or from your partner, but if the first sense I have of you is that you need me, you can be damn sure I'm going to run screaming. And the people who find that hot? Watch out for them. Abuse comes in a hell of a lot of forms.

This friend of mine, he has several great hobbies, which he continually talks about as ways to meet women. It's true that hobbies are great ways to meet new people, but you should be doing them for yourself above all. As long as every act you engage in is oriented toward finding someone to hold you at night, you're going to give off that air.

My advice is this: Find yourself. Make yourself a whole and happy single person. Create a life that is complete and fulfilling to you. Then figure out how to make a space in that will be comfortable and inviting to someone new, who might like to come home with you and spend the night and maybe make a life together, if that's the sort of kinky shit you're into.

"would love to ram my cock in you"

It is accompanied by a photo of Prince Charming (naked, of course) squatting in front of his big screen TV.

I am hard pressed to explain why, exactly, this isn't getting me hot. Is it the impersonal lack of "I" at the beginning of the sentence? Maybe it's the TV. It's just so hard to be sure!

I think deep thoughts. Uh. I don't even know what that means, but I suspect it's something along the lines of, "I have a high opinion of my opinions, and you should, too." Deep thoughts? Really? If it's not obvious from conversation, it's probably not true.

I know you said you like X, and I'm Y, but.... Now, I'll grant you, sometimes -- very occasionally -- someone will have something good following the "but..." in this kind of statement. Maybe he'll have a different take on the whole X/Y division or he'll be outside of it in some interesting way, but... almost always, that line is a lead-in for a long paragraph that I can sum up thusly: "I disregard your opinions, because they don't match with mine. Isn't that hot? Please do me."

My sign is ... What's yours? Is this the 70s? Do you really think this matters? Either you do, and, hi, let's not get into that, or you don't, and you're just using an outdated, slimy pick-up line! I'm amazed how frequently I get this one.

I like girls who... I actually use "girl" to refer to myself and my (wait for it) girlfriends with some regularity, just as I frequently use "boy" to describe my male friends. But very few of the guys who put this in their email seem to use it with any self-consciousness, and it just makes me fret a bit. I know they really mean women, and they'd no doubt say I'm making a big deal out of nothing if I raised a stink about this, but it nevertheless rubs me the wrong way if there's no indication of understanding the complexity of it all.

I've had some fun with dating sites this year and moved onto trying to pick people up in the real world. Had successs on the two times I've tried - once was a friend of a friend of a friend in a pub and once picking up someone behind the counter of a shop.

In both of these, I had a the chance to make chit chat before I asked them
out. Easy and fun!

For my next amazing trick, I want to try meeting people who I only see for
milliseconds at a time - waiting for the lifts or in busy coffee shop. Hard
places to strike up any kind of conversation.

Do you think this is too direct:

Hi, can you tell me what your name is?
Uh, huh. My name is XXX. Are you a scary lawyer?
Thought so. Would you like to have lunch/dinner with me?

Or better to try and create some chat first?

I would love to have something insightful and brilliant to say, but I really don't. Mostly, I think this is a great idea, and I'm certainly getting a kick out of thinking about it!

Pros: It's playful, fun, lighthearted, and you don't end up spending a lot of time or effort on any given attempt before taking the dive and seeing if it goes to a date-like event.

Cons: It's pretty much a snap-decision sort of issue, so your personality (assuming you have one! which you seem to) doesn't have a chance to shine. I'm guessing that you're reasonably good-looking, though, if you're considering this sort of approach, and that will obviously help. Good grooming and a confident carriage also, obviously, are key here.

I'm guessing you'll get turned down a fair amount, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that women took you up on this more often than one might expect on first blush. I definitely want to hear how this goes for you!