Pursuing an MFA in Creepy Sex Allusions

GChat conversation, 11 AM:

william: how is school going?
me: pretty good
me: submitted for the first time last night
william: how was that?
me: stressful, critique is next week
me: i had to write a summary of my book for the first time
william: oh i thought you were talking about sexually and i was really surprised at how casual you were about bringing it up
william: i didn't really know how to respond
william: so i thought i would go with it

[...]

"Casual Encounters" is a pretty straightforward name for a website focused on NSA sex hookups. But sometimes people posting there don't seem to really grasp the nature of that term. How it means having no expectations of the person you fuck and no required commitment other than an agreement to bump uglies.

Even the title of this guy's ad is disturbingly uncasual: "I know my job and I own up to it".

[...] My job is to pay for dinner even if you say you want to pay half. My job is to be ambitious in my career and make enough money that if we live together and your career takes a turn for the worse - I would have the money to afford to keep you fed and healthy AND sexy (we will talk about you being sexy below). [...]

Oh boy.

[...] I recognize that obligation. I agree to it every day when I put my pants on, or when we take a photo and you have to lean into me (we know who is who). I don't lean into you. We don't have photos of me sitting in your lap. My job is to intuit, using my sexual psychic powers, when you need to be objectified and fucked like an animal (yet still ensuring your orgasm) or spanked or hair pulled, or more, and when you need gentle love like what you saw in that romantic movie you watched. I need to also magically know when you want it quick and urgent and when you want it to take all night. And when you scream the very painful words "fuck me harder," even whilst I am fucking as hard as I can and running out of breath, it is my job to find a way to do it harder. Yes, it is tough, but it is my job [...]

It is HIS JOB! But what is my job?

Now you: There are many jobs for you. Your first and last job are the same. The rest of the list is important too, but they don't work if you don’t do your first job first. Your first job is to be sexy in the way that you can be. It is your job to discover your own natural sexiness, manifest it, AND your job to figure out what I think is sexy. [...] I have heard girls get upset about this. They say, "it is not my job to be sexy all the time," or "It is not my job to meet your definitions of sexy." And I say, bullshit. Have you never stepped outside? Who raised you? It IS your job. It may not be your job to be sexy ALL the time, but you better believe it is your job to be sexy when you are around me, my friends, our friends, and the neighbors. I am not saying you have to dress up, I am only saying you need to figure out where/what and how to create your sexiness and make sure I agree with it. Sure you can have your off-days where you don't change your underwear until noon the following day, or you are bloated and gassy and you just can not be sexy. That’s ok - I like girls who are real - I will still love you. I know you fart and get acne in strange places sometimes and have all kinds of biological processes that are esoteric to me - those things don't turn me off either, afterall I like real girls. I just ask that you manage and control the things that are in your control. But don't let me catch you eating pork sticks everyday and then complain that your stomach hurts and you have the runs for weeks.

You be sexy. Eat right, wear sexy underwear (which I will gladly buy for you), comb your hair and as you dress in the morning DON’T ask yourself, "will this outfit make guys at the county fair want to jerk off on me? If yes, then change and stop wearing shirts with your name airbrushed on them. Ask something like, "Would this look turn my man off if I were giving him head and he were looking at me." or "would my man be proud to walk with me in this outfit?" This question will keep you from dressing like your grandmother, a nun and the lonely lady you work with that, when she shows up in the morning you look at her clothes or hair and murmur, "what is she thinking? And she wonders why no men are attracted to her?" Don't be that woman. You be sexy. Ask the right questions when dressing in the morning.

Okay, got it, fuck bunny, internalized. All the time, right?

And you need to be able to figure out when not to be sexy, like: when meeting my perverted father, when I am sick in a hospital bed, incapacitated and unable to move, but only able to see that some male interns and you are talking about my condition. At that moment you need to be clinical and NOT sexy; when you are at the dentists office and he is about to put you under (wear ugly stuff), when I am feeling down on life and we go to a party - don't be hot, you are only going to get me to sink lower. Just be nice looking or better yet, suggest that we cancel and have some "us" time.

Uh...all right...but wha -

I can not tell you how to locate your inner sexiness - but I can offer you some advice on how to avoid being unsexy.

Thank god.

Unsexy: photos of yourself cramming food in your mouth, or cookies or an alcoholic beverage. Or photos with your mouth gaping open as if you are wasted and screaming at a party. I am out here working out, staying in shape and taking care of myself - for what? For you to cram cookies and beer into your mouth, run around drunk with your jaw hanging open? and take photos? No. We will not date.
Unsexy: Your growing gut.

But what if I have, like, a little pooch, even though I do 1000 situps a day?

Pooch like Maya Rudolph - very hot. Gut like post high school ex-jock? It is diet time.
Unsexy: yellow underwear. You wear it, you sleep on the couch. I don't want to see it and I don't want it touching my laundry.
Unsexy: panties with little cutesy polka dots on them or any pattern that looks like something a 4 yr old girl would wear at her pajama party. Save those for when you feel puffy and bloated and want to snuggle with your stuffed animals and eat chocolate ice cream.

This is where he really started to lose me. I'm sorry what? You don't want me to wear cute underwear?

Don’t tell me that your ass is fat because that is your body type - and then shovel lasagna down your throat 3 days a week. We have a deal. I will do my part. You do yours. Stay thin - meaning if you are 130 pounds - you need to stay around 125 to 135. I like slender girls or muscular or thin or thinner than average. Slender does not equal thick. If you look like Minnie Driver or Kate Winslet - then your excess weight is hot and I love it.

It's his lucky day, because I am in fact (size 6) Kate Winslet. Sam Mendes says hi, future loverman!

Your job is to be in charge of our morality. If we are at a dinner party and I say something a little mean to someone and you notice it. It is your job to pull me aside and say, "that was wrong - you go and apologize because you hurt that persons feelings." I won't like it - but I will obey. You are doing your job and I respect it. I will somehow find a way to go apologize.

You are in charge of the our emotional health. Even if I say I am fine. When you notice that I have some unresolved issue that I need to work on, I have to listen and do whatever it takes - even if it means seeing a therapist or counseling or reading some stupid book. You are in charge and you must find a way to do this without ever being bossy or over-critical.

How do you do that? I don’t know. It's a tough job and only you can do it. My job is not easy either.

***

Way more potentially loveable, although just as problematic probably, is this guy, "Gaslight Fairytale - NY, 1896":

You're a female who has always daydreamed about
(1) being an inquisitive child, and
(2) having a dear older stepbrother, cousin.

In "real" life, we two are adults who share this
Edwardian / Victorian, Grimms' fairytale,
pseudo-Euro-art-film taboo vision.

Oh! Okay, okay, we're Goth, got it...

(Glasses, skinny, stringy hair, or geeky?
Not mandatory... but fine.)

Whatever your beliefs, you likely have odd tin-type, daguerreotype
memories of the past. A poetic pickpocket
or a scrappy street-urchin -- if only at your core.
Be intelligent, sometimes submissive but often
terribly sassy,
perhaps a collage of girly and tomboy spunk...
and possibly a wee dram secretive or
shy about your unusual nature
and thought processes.

(I love how it is spaced out like freshman Intro to Poetry homework)

This is not a mere kink:
We may share strong roleplay and
ageplay; but also much sibling
conversation -- it's quite natural for
you to believe this is real.
So by all means, have your own "normal"(?) relationship
in your other, grownup life. As I do. But you and I keep in
touch by e-mail, telegraph, lurking on a
streetcorner.
When we can, we meet up and play, fight, romp
around, hold hands.
Let yourself go... and regress: I keep
a sharp eye out for swerving trucks and
frothing carriage-horses, and stare down
sneering villains (Your brother
is terribly brave).
I rescue you from all manner
of real and invented dangers,
as we escape from the (fictional?)
"scary man in the park."
We roam ancient churchyards, dank
alleyways; secretly mock passersby;
play at Alienist and amateur sleuth;
or just watch the
rain from a swell Deco diner booth.

Uh, this is Manhattan, right?

Tell me every daydream, desire, complaint, obsession,
bit of angst, woe and fantasy, light or dark:
I cannot be shocked by anything. I will mentor and
protect, scold and praise you, make you laugh when
you cry. I'll be glad to advise you (your brother is
very smart, you know), and pick your eager
inquisitive brain. I entertain you; brush your hair
while you tell me your dreams.
If outbursts are in your nature, I dodge your fury,
hold and tease you while you wriggle;
tickle and/or spank you should you require:
The extent, intensity and limits of our
relationship will go no further than what you
desire and are able to handle, dear Baby Sister.

I mean...he's not wrong in thinking this is an attractive scenario for a lady. I'm half tempted to email him. Unfortch, I know that as much as I hope my secret fantasy Edward Gorey big brother looks like the most recent incarnation of Mr. Tumnus, the truth is probably closer to this. Or maybe it's my friend Daniel. Hi, Daniel!

Eavesdropping for fun and profit

Right before the band came on at the My Bloody Valentine show last night, after the second terrible opening I've seen the Lilys perform (saw them open for the Brian Jonestown Massacre in 2005 and it was just as terrible), this trio of people did that annoying thing where they push through the crowd pretending to look for someone and then it turns out they just wanted to be closer to the stage. They decided to plant themselves right next to me. In doing so they separated a woman with an amazing 80s goth haircut (sort of a monklike fringe, shaved in the back) and her man.

"Excuse me, I need to stand next to my wife," the man said with utmost restraint.
"OH WATCH OUT YOU'RE SEPARATIN' FAMILIES!" One of the trio chortled to another, moving closer to me. They were two women and a man, maybe in their mid-to-late-thirties. One of the women was either drunk or medicated, because she proceeded to speak loudly about things that most people, even me with my penchant for public uncomfortableness, do not.

It seemed that she and the guy were a couple who had dated in the past, but he had "cut her off" sometime in August, and she was pissed. At first I thought she was complaining about him cutting her off in her babbling conversation, but then it was clear she was demanding an explanation for his behavior in August. But our girl - who was, say, 5'2", with a perfect helmet-blowdried red bob (she probably brings in a picture of Louise Brooks) and dressed in that near-goth inexplicably slutty way lots of women her age do for concerts - was not the type to take a straight train of thought from A to B.

"Why did you cut me off in August?" She demanded of the guy (who I will note here was not the type of guy anybody should be hurting over; sorry, it's not okay to wear aviator sunglasses inside in a dark room even if you're a blazing hot British vampire, and this guy was more like a slightly-better-looking Kevin James, which oh god makes me WISH I had started Personal Ad Hell on this website before I found this amazing Casual Encounters ad where the guy said he looked like Kevin James). "I went three and half weeks without sex. I cut myself off. I cut MEN off."

"Three whole weeks, huh?" The guy said, mildly concerned.

"Yeah, and then when I was on the phone with that guy, I told him, I told him all kinds of fucked up shit. ALL KINDS."

"Like what?"

"I told him I got herpes from my lover who was bisexual, oh yeah..." The couple dissolved into giggles and then a prolonged openmouthed kiss. "Yeah, all sorts of fucked up shit. And you know what? You know what I am SORRY I don't have the big ass you want. I know you want a big fucking ass. I know you do. But I like being a waif. I like being a little girl. I can't put Botox in my ass to make it big so you can fuck it..." The guy grabbed her and made out with her again, presumably because he was crazy turned on, or maybe because he was slightly more conscious that they were sharing space with a couple thousand other people waiting to float away on a tide of shoegaze.

At this point I was kind of blushing for them, but not really because what they were saying was inappropriate, more because it was so inaccurate. Botox doesn't, uh, inflate anything; maybe she was thinking of lip fillers like Restalyne or collagen? But you couldn't put those in your glutes, either. There are implant procedures, but they're pretty costly and stupid. More bothersome was the fact that even this crazy drunk-or-just-loud lady was slipping back into this thing I watch women do all the time, which is tout their own thinness against the broad tide of society's demand that they bulk up. Cram it! No one is ever going to give you a hard time for being tiny!

At this point the third member of the trio, the other woman, who had not been a participant in this conversation, turned around and apologized to me. "They must be really annoying," she said. "So much drama."

"No, it's fine," I told her. "Kind of amusing." I immediately thought, ah ha, here is the much-abused nice friend. But all of my sympathy evaporated when the redhead detached herself from the guy who wanted to fuck a big ass and started kissing her friend. This is also behavior I abhor! Admittedly, it wasn't exactly Girls Gone Wild gonzo-style performalesbianism, but just all the weird homosocial cuddling that goes on in public. Once when I was home visiting some friends I hadn't seen in a while, I met one of their friends from the local college, and watched with a little bit of vomit in my mouth as she proceeded to interrupt conversation all night by making eye contact with one of them, saying "Kiss," and pecking them on the mouth.

Don't get me wrong - same sex affection is fine by me, in fact it's sexy by me. But this stuff just combines the queasiness of PDA with the pointlessness of weird showy public cuddling. Anyway, then there was some ass-stroking between the women (apparently they were free from the derriere neuroses that led to the redhead being cut off) and then the music started, and I figured the whole thing was over.

Until they started taking cutesy pictures of each other throughout the entire concert. Who knew that cell phone cameras have flashes now?

Lettin' the ladies have it

One of my loyal readers (okay, my only loyal reader) pointed out that I never take apart the w4m section of CL's casual encounters. So I will try tonight. I suspect there's a lot of good reasons why I haven't ventured over here before. It's certainly not because, as a woman, I think that women are less capable or less likely of writing totally hilarious requests for NSA sex...

...it's just that a lot of what I've seen has been, uh, boring.

This lady, who is "looking for a man that can handle [her]", writes: My Friends describe me as delectably seductive. Really? Well, uh, that's a rousing endorsement, especially considering your friends must be an intolerable passel of aging Carrie Bradshaw wannabes.

"I'm new at this" tries to slip her baggage in between relatively pertinent facts: Jodie, curly black hair, kind of gray eyes, 147 lbs, 5'5, stuck in a loveless marriage, Weather woman, like to watch football. Whoa there, lady! Don't think you got your emotional neediness past me!

At first glance, the headline "I'm big and ugly but want to get laid today! - w4m - 33" seems refreshingly open, but then it gets weird: inside she says: Oh I have green eyes, auburn hair, 5'8, 36D boob size, 117 lbs. So are you playing some weird woman mindgame where you only want to have anonymous sex with a dude who wants to fuck an ugly chick? Is there even a school of thought where that works?

Easily half of the listings have been flagged for removal, most likely because they're advertisements from working girls, or actually contain links to adult friend finder-type websites.

This one (NSFW NSFW!!!) is interesting because it features pictures - and not just pictures, but pictures that show the girl's face. It must be my stupid societal conditioning but this ad makes me sad for some reason instead of giggly. Why are you putting your blowjob face on the internet, lady?

So this one seems, at least, semi-legit and original in terms of incest fantasies...until you look at this m4w ad, which is worded almost exactly the same way. What does this mean? Is a company posting these? Is it some sort of all-incest all the time escort service?

As usual, women provided me only with frustration and mystery, whereas men were imminently more understandable.

Epiphany

Would I have stalkerish tendencies if it weren't for the internet? Probably, but there's no chance they would be so well-honed. I really have to watch it. I buy something on CL and Google the seller and before you know it I know where they went to high school and meeting them in person to pick up the tickets is going to be a little awkward.

Come, strip and get us drinks. Get us snacks.

I was going to count the number of question marks in the title, but instead I'll just cut and paste it: football SLUT ?????????????

This is part of a trend I've noticed on CL. Men who claim to be amazingly handsome and rich who just want a "whore." But not, presumably, an actual working girl. Here's another:

I need a young bitch

"Female only," huh? I'll make sure that the puppy I bring is all lady.

Young Millionaires looking for attractive Female

I guess most guys who post on Casual Encounters get a lot of responses from gay men and pros. But even the guys like the one above seem to imply that they don't really want a pro; they want a sweet college student who wouldn't mind having sex for money.

Looking for a specific of Girl...

...A Working Girl.

Bear, Lehman, Merrill...Need a New Job?

Ooh, zeitgeisty!

Equivocating: "My Wife's Type of Men"

This guy knows his wife doesn't really want to have sex with another guy, so he gives a frustratingly specific description of the mystery man who will blow their sex life WIDE OPEN:

Her type of man is long haired, fit/athletic no big muscle and of course younger. A man like Bon Jovi type, into rock/heavy metal.An american indian will do tall with long hair. Age must be 40 years or younger. Other nationalities, Italian Greek, frensh, spanish, brazilia, portugese, American white Canadian, south African australian and argentinian Mixed black with light skin and dreadlocks No eastern europeans please.

I'm not sure what "American white Canadian" looks like. Personally, I hope they get a Frensh guy.

This morning on the train I was standing behind a fit Asian businessman. I couldn't see his face, but I could read what was playing on his iPod, which he held up to examine as he flipped through songs. He settled on Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People." Serendipitously, today Jezebel's Dodai covered Cintra Wilson's Times piece on the long life of Goth culture. All of this made me very happy.



I was never a proper goth, but I wanted to be. Starting in seventh grade I felt pangs of jealousy when I spotted one at the mall. Where did they get arm warmers and black lipstick? In eighth grade I started listening to Marilyn Manson (who I know is not the arbiter of goth, thanks) after seeing the video for "The Dope Show" on MuchMusic. My love of his music grew through lucky finds of Manson's earlier albums and EPs, and on April 20, 1999 my dad took my best friend and I to see Marilyn Manson at the Rosemont Horizon. He was supposed to be on tour with Hole, another favorite of mine, but Courtney Love had dropped off the tour and we saw Nashville Pussy instead, which was probably the only enjoyable part of the show for my father. When I got home, proudly clutching my brand-new size large shirt emblazoned with naked, sexless Manson, Columbine was all over the news.

After that I acquired a spiked leather color and a pair of close-fitting shiny black pants. They weren't vinyl, not yet; instead they were made of a sort of crunchy track-pant acrylic. The summer after that I discovered Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls, as detailed below, and learned about what would always be thrown in my face as "real Goth": the Cure, black lace, orange lipstick, relentless mopiness. At this time I also became deeply involved with Jhonen Vasquez's comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and its fandom, but that's another blog post for another tie. Suffice it to say I found myself deeply sympathetic with variously "gothy" things, including a host of comic books, endless vampire erotica, and a strong desire to be more depressed than I in fact was.

Then, at the beginning of ninth grade, I discovered online shopping and Hot Topic. By mid-September I was outfitted in skintight black vinyl cigarette pants that laced up with a suede string; various "corsets" that zipped or lightly laced up, in red brocade and pink vinyl; shoes that even I couldn't pretend didn't look like part of a Sexy Pilgrim Halloween costume; a miniskirt airbrushed with the image of bats flying out of a belltower, and very dark unappealing lipstick. I bleached my hair, then I dyed the tips purple, then I dyed it bright red. I owned a black velvet minidress that came to about the middle of my thighs with purple inserts behind black netting and bell sleeves.

At certain times older and more experienced alienated teenagers would look at me and inform me that I wasn't really goth - I was a kindergoth, a kinderwhore, some strange amalgam of raver and bored-looking suburbanite. Thank god the term "emo" didn't exist yet. My parents didn't really care; my mom even had some fun with the whole thing, going to Express with me and helping me suss out the most-Goth items on display.

From sixth grade on I owned a Sony Discman that gave me an entirely other life, one in which I was the protagonist of an incredibly cool movie scored to my favorite music. No matter how pathetic my tentative stabs towards romance were, no matter how harshly I fought with my parents over my relationship with my new boyfriend, no matter how hard I struggled in Math class, I could always escape to a world where "Rock Is Dead" was playing. "Set the Ray to Jerry" was on next, and both songs were just for me.





Marilyn Manson is an easy target. Neither his music nor his posturing could ever be called terribly original, and his hopefully-fauxmance with Evan Rachel Wood doesn't endear him to me, either. But I miss the days when he was on MTV, when he was present enough to offend people. It's not that popular culture has hardened to shock tactics like the ones Manson used; instead, some marketing genius over at Disney realized that if you grab the kids younger, when they don't like to be scared, they'll have brand loyalty to whatever dreck you pump out for them for the rest of their lives. It's part of the death of the record industry, too, I understand; right now the only people who can be counted on to buy albums are under 21 years old.



But there was a time in my life when nothing was more satisfying than the easy-to-swallow transgression that Manson served up. Everything about it was palatable to me at age fourteen: the queasy depiction of his escape from South Florida presented in his autobiography, the constant crowd roar effect he used in his songs, and his look.





I don't really care for the aesthetic any more, but when I was a Manson fan the way he looked made me feel thrillingly free. He was and is often awfully, brutally ugly, but with such style that it seemed okay. I was surrounded with images of what beautiful teenage girls were supposed to look like, and all of them were a far cry from anything I could or would be:





It was nice to have permission to be a little ugly and weird.

This blog should be called Personal Ad Hell, I guess

Holla, eh? Okay, how about aaaah! Why are you topless in what appears to be a deli?

I missed True Blood this week

...but this guy is definitely looking for his "Vempire."

Edit: Since he has not one but two amazing posts, I don't feel bad at all about posting dude's picture:




Man, if I was a "Vempire" I wouldn't want to chew on that.

Last Edit, I swear: He's got three ads! Also, he "LOVE[s] TO WORSHIP THE GODDESS BY SMOKING THE SACRED HERB OF VENUS(MARY JANE), IF THIS INTERESTS YOU THEN YOUVE FOUND THE RIGHT MAGUS OXOXOXO."

XOXO, indeed.

Ho ho ho!

This guy is an entire sociology course in five minutes. The title is "NOT a picture of my penis" but it is posted on the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist, where people can be forgiven for expecting and maybe even hoping for penis pictures.

Alan Moore reference, but probably relating to the movie? Check. Emo cutie t-shirt pose picture? Check. NJ Guido persona pose picture, complete with tribal band tattoo and spray tan? Check. It might be worth emailing him to find out just how bad his cultural schizophrenia is. One thing's for sure, though:

He was Edmond Dantés... and he was my father. And my mother... my brother... my friend. He was you... and me. He was all of us.

Why so, uh, turgid?

Amazing.

True love?

My friend Leon once told me that he'd figured out why women like vampires.
"Because of Vampire Weekend?" I asked.
"No," he said. "It's the ultimate inaccessible guy. He literally cannot commit to you. He's dead."



I don't know if this is the reason I like vampires, but I always have. Although as I child I was terrified of almost all mythic beasties (especially aliens), vampires always seemed more sexy than scary, even when I was too little to think something was sexy. Starting around 1998, when I was in eighth grade, my interest in the undead became a bit more prurient. In November of that year I saw John Carpenter's Vampires, a not-good movie I deeply loved and which gave me the gift of the word "polesmoker." On a vacation to England with my family I bought a copy of Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls, a book that forever married homoeroticism, New Orleans and vampirism for me (although I am the child of Anne Rice fans and met her at age ten wearing a cape and fangs, I have never really enjoyed her books). Lost Souls is also a pretty handy primer on high eighties goth. It became my gospel insofar as a book in which a fourteen-year-old vampire named Nothing waxes rhapsodic about blowing his dad can be the gospel of a suburban eighth grader. Which is to say, totally. I even underlined my favorite lines of Lost Souls in red lipstick, just as Nothing's doomed mother Jessy does in her copy of Dracula.

Although by this time - the middle of eighth grade - I had created two highly embarassing websites which will apparently stand in perpetuity on the internet, I was not familiar with fan fiction. Wait, actually I'm going to have to revise that, because I had been shown a good deal of tenacious, stomach-turning Hanson slash by a friend. In any case the internet had little to do with my first and last foray (thus far) into the world of serialized play-format fan fiction. The project was called My Life As A Vampire and comprised of escapist fantasies in which my friends and I became vampires endowed with the ability to fly. We started hanging out with other vampires: the members of the Smashing Pumpkins at first, and then basically every actor or musician I ever liked. Together we terrorized my school and enemies, mudered Cameron Diaz (of whom I harbored an intense dislike which has since cooled to disinterest), and flew around dreamily. It was overwritten, embarassingly self-indulgent, the blatant product of early teenage sexual frustration, and I decided to show it to everyone, sending weekly installments to ten or so lucky souls. Around the time I was sixteen I put together a bound edition of My Life As A Vampire that I am still quite proud of, surprisingly well-designed document of my dorkery that it is.

So I guess I came to HBO's True Blood tonight with more than a casual interest in and history with vampires. I haven't read the Charlaine Harris books the series is based on; I've actually never heard of them before now, which is surprising considering that for many years I read almost every piece of vampire lit I could get my hands on (notables include this one, this one, and hey! definitely this one). I think the first episode, "Strange Love," shows a great deal of promise. I presume Alan Ball knows what he's doing with the campier elements of the show, but some of them were unforgiveable, especially [SPOILER WARNING, I guess] that out-of-control vampire sex scene. The whole concept comes with so much great built-in eroticism - there was a good line in the episode about the uses of the artery in the crotch - that it's easy to overdo it. Did you know that vampires are sexy? That they have to lean in close to you and smell your blood and then bite your neck? Which is kind of a sexy place that people like to get bitten anyway? And that maybe the whole thing could be seen as a metaphor, for, I don't know, human sexuality and its implicit dangers and risks?

They've also got to style Anna Paquin a little bit less like Buffy:





And while I like the conceit that Sookie's telepathy is quieted by Bill's presence, they're going to have to give the two leads something to do with each other other than stare meaningfully, because we got a great dose of that in the first episode. The IMDB photoset has no fewer than nine stills posed exactly like this one:


"Should we move yet?"
"Naw, let's just keep arching our backs for a while."


I'll just put it out there that my sister maintained throughout the show that there's something weird going on with Paquin's boobs - they are remarkably high and small and close together. But I'll defer to the Paquin-boob experts on this one, whoever they may be.

What I most like about this show was its handling of its setting, the Louisiana town of Bon Temps. Lots of small details were nailed, especially the socioeconomics - many characters work two jobs and nobody seems to be going anywhere fast. I'll admit to enjoying the juxtaposition of revivalist healings and baptisms with vampire-y sex in the opening credits, although a small voice inside me is complaining loudly about the implicit equation of crazy poor southerners and their crazy religion with creatures who actually, uh, eat people.

I finally figured out what happens to NYU grads who can afford to stay in the city after graduation!

Nevertheless, if you're cute, cultured, sassy and [in-shape], and a person that has an actual life also (AKA friends), but can't resist amazing television such as these shows (plus Californication, Dexter, Brotherhood and a number of fun and funky HBO dramas)...

Let's get it on...

Jeffery,

A quintessential New Yorker at 5'10, 160lbs, rock-stair hair, brown eyes, killer smile, a world-traveler, guitar musician, works in advertising/media, and loves sushi/sashimi and dive bars in the East Village..

Bands: The Killers, Damien Rice, Rilo Kiley
Books: Candide, The Alchemist, The Fountainhead
Movies: City of God, Amelie, The Spanish Apartment

Hmmm

Well, I mean, they have to pull out sometime, right? Otherwise everybody'd be all glued (gooed?) together like they were LARPing conjoined twins.

Personal Ad Hell

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This guy doesn't think he deserves much. Just a skinny lady. I mean, she can be totally wrecked, but as long as she's thin, they'll work it out.