March 04, 2005
The Easy Way To Date:
The Easy Way To Date: Dignity Not Required
Late last week, dear reader, one of the interns here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let’s just call him “Chip”—was perusing the area’s local freebee weekly, in search of new material for the genius that is the crack young staff. As you can imagine, this feculent opinion rag has all the qualities you’d expect from a throwaway publication: Stalinist politics, copious ‘phone sex advertisements, &c.In fact, “Chip” was ready to toss this cut-rate tabloid into the old circular file when he came upon one interesting section: The personal advertisements. Naturally, “Chip” found this “interesting” for professional reasons only: Even though he’s only twenty, he’s already married to a narcoleptic insomniac.
Anyway, “Chip” came across a couple of curious personal ads, and we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” figured that we’d share them with you, our quasi-loyal readership.
The first advert (as our British friends might call it) reads as follows:
STRAIGHT GUY?
Are you a straight WM? Masculine, in shape, D/D-free, and discreet? I’m a clean-cut WM, 32, athletic, safe. Real low key, blue-collar type guy only.
Let’s see if we can get this straight (feeble pun intended). This youngish white guy, who is so discreet he’s advertising in a local paper, seeks a heterosexual white male with whom he can have sexual encounters.
Now we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” don’t want to whip out our pocket dictionaries, but we can’t quite concur with the definition of the word “straight” that our athletic, safe friend is using. After all, this whole scenario collectively strikes us as about as straight as Richard Simmons.
If you thought the first ad was bizarre, the second is even stranger:
ROMEO’S ASSISTANT
Discreet, straight SWM, 6’1”, 180lbs, ISO couple that wants to give juliet [sic] some “extra attention” while romeo [sic] watches! Nice guy, fun for all!
We know what you are thinking, dear reader: This fellow is not only a paragon of discretion, he’s a rather learned character as well. Whereas other young gents would simply ask you if they could have their way with your girlfriend, this chap dolls it up with some highfalutin Shakespeare references. Perhaps this is Harold Bloom’s personal ad?
This brings us to our third advertisement. It reads as follows:
GENTLE & NICE
MWM, easygoing, likes sensual massage and safe sex, ISO mature, 50+, liberal discreet woman, available during weekdays.
Hmmm. This married gentleman wants to set up an affair with a mature, discreet woman. Nice to see that he’s easygoing; if not, he might be rather hard on himself for engaging in adultery.
What really troubled us, though, was the injunction that the lady in question be “liberal.” Sure, she has to be discreet: Discretion, it seems, is the sine qua non of the personal page. But what’s wrong with a “50+, arch-conservative discreet woman, available during weekdays”? And what about libertarian chicks?
