If I had to have a motto, I suppose it would be "That which doesn't kill me, makes me strong." I'm thinking about putting it on my tombstone, but I'm not sure people would get the joke. You got it, though. Right?

To provide a brief description, I have hair, a reasonably flat stomach, I speak in complete sentences and I don't live with my mother. I hope that counts for something.

Stable, relatively sane and gainfully employed in a job I actually like. Not rich, not poor and not particularly concerned about it.

Have been told by women whose taste and intelligence I trust that I'm not difficult to look at, though I'm honestly undecided. In good physical shape, I hate working out but feel that having worked out is truly sublime. I feel that way about a lot of things, really.

I like women who like guys who occasionally pull their hair when they kiss them. Among other things. Pliant, moderately dissolute a huge plus.

Day job as an editor at a financial news service; freelance magazine writing, covering photography, technology, medicine, and other subjects; finishing a novel; improving rusty photographic skills left over from former life as a professional photographer

Writing stuff and taking pictures. Allegedly a wonderful conversationalist, too.

Hmmmm.... Maybe you should ask them.

Books: Gatsby, by Fitzgerald; Demian, by Hesse; Portrait of the Artist, by Joyce; Hells Angels by Hunter Thompson; Last Exit to Brooklyn, by Hubert Selby; anything by Graham Greene, John le Carre, Dashiel Hammet, Hemingway, Salinger, Henry Miller, and three or four thousand others.

Movies: Orpheus, by Cocteau; anything with Dietrich; most documentaries; most film noir, and anything by Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Kubrick, Scorsese, the Cohen Bros, Terrence Malick, Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze, John Huston, Fritz Lang, or Woody Allen before his brain fell out.

Food: Chili, and any recipe from Tuscany

Music: It's easier to say what I don't like -- Lawrence Welk, Barry Manilow and anything played while you're waiting on hold for tech support. They're piping the same stuff into Hell.

Horribly overpriced drinks in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel
Running
My motorcycle
Women in very high heels
Google
Mozart

Nuclear non-proliferation. Yeah, right.

Somewhere else

I don't recycle. And I'm not ashamed.

For the rest you'll have to sift through all those nosy questions they asked when I joined up. The answers are all public.

You really, really want to and might possibly be interested in meeting for a drink and a few hours of pleasant conversation. Normally, I'd suggest the aforementioned horribly overpriced drink in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel. Unfortunately, they've "renovated" the place (the Oak Room is history, alas) and it now looks uncomfortably like a Doubletree Inn. So I'm open for suggestion, although I do know a few reputable places we can meet. Several disreputable ones, too, but is that really a good idea for a first date? Bonus points if the answer is Yes.