God help me, I’ve added a photos page.

Welcome to PlanetOut Personals!

Personal ads tend to fluctuate in importance in my life, depending on various things: my mood, my idealism, my realism, my desperation, my disillusionment, my horniness level, the temperature outside, the newspaper headlines. They have brought me coffee, new faces, interesting stories, perspective on life in Tennessee, perspective on life as a Mormon, and sometimes even sex. But they have yet to bring me love.

I was going through the personals this morning, reading the ads of other people and tweaking my own.

This is what I’m getting paid for, right?

No?

Oh.

The concept of a personal ad — at least, if you’re using it to find a relationship — is inherently flawed. It’s not just the fact that you’re making decisions based on some text and a photo, although that’s a part of it. Basically, personal ads share a problem even with something like Date Bait, where you’re actually seeing people in person. The problem is, you’re seeing someone completely out of context. He’s selling himself.

This sort of all-American hype and self-promotion is great if you’re looking to buy a new mixer, because you know what you want there: you want something that can mix. You want your floor wax to give you shiny floors, you want your camera to take great pictures. But what do you want your boyfriend to do? Make you laugh? Walk your dog? Rim you? Clean your shower? Pick your cotton? Boyfriends don’t “do” anything. They just “are.” And you can’t find one if you’re going to be task-oriented about it.

I go into PlanetOut and type in my search criteria. I choose among male, female, MTF, FTM. Gay, bisexual, queer, lesbian, straight, questioning. Type in an age range. Looking for relationship, long-term relationship, sex, friendship, support, “hiking partner or whatever,” something online. Butch, femme, androgynous, all over the map. African American/Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latina/Latino, White/European, et cetera. Activist, bear, blue collar, circuit boy, conservative, goth, hippie/granola, homebody, jock/sporty, leather, military, preppy, punk, suburban, urban hipster. Slim, swimmer, average, stocky, musclebound, curvy, athletic, petite, heavy. CD player or cassette, A/C, leather back seats or vinyl, power windows, small, medium or large, fries or onion rings, permanent press or tumble dry, slice, dice, puree, julienne. Metallic green or non-glossy teal, eggshell or ecru, mauve or taupe. Should I buy the hardcover or wait for the paperback?

If you don’t fit the above physical description, dont worry about it. It’s a preference, not a requirement.

If I don’t fit the above physical description, you’re not going to talk to me.

Okay, random thoughts: I’m just your average Wile E. Coyote super genius type – though often my evil schemes work out, I have been known to end up holding up a sign that said “yikes” moments before something nasty landed on me.

You’re making me a little uneasy.

Am finally ready to avail myself to someone special, after having finished grieving a relationship that ended a year ago. I want to meet someone who will reap the benefits of all that I learned in that relationship. Timing wasn’t right then, but now it is.

You’re making me run.

The sad thing is, any of these guys could be terrific, but I’m not going to know it. You can’t meet someone when he’s selling himself, and yet whenever you post a personal ad, that’s what you’re doing. I look over my ad, trying to pick a catchy title, trying to strike the right tone, one that makes me seem sane, but not boring; witty, but not obnoxious; interesting, but not exhausting; intelligent, but not intellectually threatening. And then a couple of weeks later I go back and read it afresh and I realize that I’ve failed on all counts. And yet how could I not? You can’t meet people this way. You can’t choose among people like this. Sending someone an e-mail, tossing a few messages back and forth, talking on the phone, and trekking over to Xando to meet them for coffee takes too much time and effort for you to waste the choice on someone whose ad gives you even the slightest frisson of uneasiness. One: People are flawed. Two: If you have a flaw, you won’t be contacted. Great system.

Newsflash: people are complicated! And thus:

I’ve considered including a link to my blog in my personal ad.

An Internet marriage of PlanetOut and Blogger — wouldn’t that be neat? I could write, “Here’s a link to my online journal. If you don’t know what to think of me right now, read my journal for a couple of weeks and see what you think then. If you like me or find me interesting, say hi.” I’m still considering it. I don’t know if it’s such a great idea to post up my URL indiscriminately like that. On the other hand, I can’t really think of any other reason not to do it, except that friends might come across it, and only one of my “pre-bloggin’ days” friends knows I have an online journal, and he doesn’t even know the URL.

You can’t get to know someone who’s trying to get you to know him. You can only get to know someone who doesn’t think he’s being evaluated. In fact, you can only get to know him if you don’t think you’re evaluating him. And then some random day, after months of looking out the peephole, asking to see everyone’s ID card before opening the door, you notice that a guy whom you hadn’t even known you were thinking about has somehow seeped into your life through the cracks in the wall.

That’s the way it happens.

In the meantime: do I want fries or onion rings?

That Ninety-Nine Percent

After Saturday evening’s big mish-mosh of sulkitude, yesterday I decided to treat myself to a day in. I basically lounged around in my underwear all day, white t-shirt and gray boxer-briefs, sitting up in bed, reading and writing. I decided it was time to tackle some story ideas I’d had for a while, so I picked up Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird off the bookshelf and read select chapters for the umpteenth time. Short Assignments, Shitty First Drafts, School Lunches, Characters, Plot, Plot Treatment, and so on. And over the course of the day I managed to get down several pages of what I hope will be a novel. I don’t know if that’s just a little too ambitious. But it’s the story I’ve always wanted to write. At the same time I have a couple of unfinished short stories that I’ve been working on for two or three years. It would be nice to finish those as well.

I worked on my pages intermittently throughout the day. Every so often I’d read them over and think, wow, these are pretty damn good. Better than I expected.

And then I picked up Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and started reading it, and I thought, damn — how can I compete with something like this?

I’ve been a fan of Michael Chabon ever since I stumbled across his second novel, Wonder Boys, on the new paperbacks table at Barnes & Noble five and a half years ago. It was one of those times when you’re looking for a book to read, and you know what you want but can’t quite put your finger on it, and then you find it. I picked up the book, read the description on the back cover, and thought, this is the one. And it was. It was terrific. A couple of months later I picked up his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which was published when he was 24. Twenty-four! That’s disgusting. And it too was terrific. I’ve read it twice.

The thing about Chabon is that although I love his dizzy plots, I can’t quite get a handle on his writing. Sometimes his words seem like those of a foreigner who has mastered English better than a native speaker; stiff, formal, unnatural, as if they’ve been translated from Czech or Polish or Spanish, or as if they were written a hundred years ago. His prose is not quite human; seamless, smoothed over, with no holes. He can feel overwritten. His prose can be a bit cold.

But oh, his skill, and his plots, and the little observations he’ll throw out at you!

I wondered what the heck I was doing, trying to write a story of my own, but then I thought of what Natalie Goldberg has said: it’s a spacious world. There’s room enough. Tell yourself: He is good, and I am also good. They’re not mutually exclusive ideas; it’s not a competition. There is always room for one more person to speak. After all, there are billions of us on this planet.

If I’m going to be published, I have to write. Regularly. And not just in my blog. So, although I lack discipline, and can rarely keep myself enthused about something for more than a few days, I’m going to try to sit down every night and work on my story. I’m just gonna do it. I know that I have it in me, I know that I have the potential. I’ve got the inspiration, just gotta work on the perspiration. And if I don’t have the inspiration, then I’ll write until I do. Good old Thomas Alva Edison.

Meanwhile, speaking of discipline, I came into the office an hour late and I’ve yet to do any work today and it’s noon. Better get cracking.