Update: As of 6/17 I'm no longer a resident of the greater Boston area, or anywhere else for that matter - quit my job and am headed out across the country in search of adventure - sort of like "Into the Wild", but without the part where he gives away all his money, ditches his car, and starves to death. if you're out there on the highway and you see a black Nissan pickup with a groovy Chad Everett-style cap, give me a wave.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled profile:

Apropos of nothing...

Although my mind has taken up what appears to be permanent residence in the gutter, it is, however, a tastefully-appointed gutter with a well-stocked library and a discerning music collection. I expect that what I've written here (particularly, the Q and A section) will be misinterpreted by a few of you to mean that I'm down for anything with anybody, but nothing could be further from the truth. Ok, there may be a few things that are actually more distant from the truth, but not by far. Sure, I'm a grade A perv with the impulse control of your average 18 year old boy, but those of you packing higher perceptual wattage will see it for what it is. Or maybe you won't. That's entirely up to you.

A very nice man once wrote me and said that there was one - and only one - man in the world for me (he wasn't suggesting himself) and that I *would* find him. I'm starting to believe the former. The latter... I have my doubts. He very well may be on the other side of the planet, machete-hacking his way through thick jungles of conventionality, artifice, and hypocrisy.
I'm fairly pragmatic and accepting of the slim-to-none odds of actually meeting this rogue male - so far, he's proven to be as elusive as a snow leopard. In the meantime, while I'm not interested in in shopping for bed linens at Ikea with you, I do crave something a little sweeter and more intimate than your standard, garden-variety shagfest. After all, I didn't read all those goddamned books just to exchange naughty jibberjabber with you. Are you getting me, mister?

Good, enough of this crap, let's light this candle!

I'm charging waves (well, little ones), climbing mountains, reading Waugh, admiring Hitchens, riding bikes, eating pancakes, driving north, carving turns, helping animals, leering at dudes (sorry, I mean men), making bad art, ferreting out subtext, falling down, laughing at everything, being fabulous, and trying, Ringo, trying reeeaaal hard - to be the shepherd.

I'll defer to someone far more eloquent than me:

"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."

That's Milton. That's how I try to live, but sometimes I'm a coward.

There are only a few things that I'm exceptionally good at: skiing, riding (horses), and - inexplicably - calming irate, emotionally overwrought, and downright batshit crazy people.

Oh, and the NYT crossword puzzle. Friday through Sunday - the rest of the week is an insult.

And I'm one of the five women on the planet who can actually drive.

Should you meet me in person, go slow, make no sudden movements, and speak to me in a calm, even tone. If you'd like to give me a treat, such as an apple, carrot, some creme brule, or a shot of Patron, offer it on a flat hand, palm up, keeping your fingers away from my mouth. Above all, do not make direct eye contact - I may perceive this as a threat and attack.

In the event of an attack, do not attempt to run as it will trigger my predatory instinct, and I can cover twice the distance a man can in the same amount of time. In fact, don't do anything - resistance is futile. Just accept your fate. Like a man.

I love: Evelyn Waugh, Tricky, Smartwool Socks, manual transmission, negative capability, Keith Moon, gazpacho, Henry Miller, Central America, Iggy and the Stooges, the sound of Death Cab and Sigur Ros cds snapping in half, Tallulah Bankhead, Driggs ID, the old men you find in rural diners at 5AM, Bootsie Collins, woodstoves, '70's cinema, Voltaire, pancakes, the OED, good tequila, shaggy-haired wildmen in need of a shave, outdoor showers, outdoor showers *with* shaggy-haired wildmen in need of a shave, your earlobes, blood oranges, the great state of Maine, pinecones, chickadees, Utah powder, the principle of paradox, Wisconsin Death Trip, The Gun Club, Beethoven's 7TH, Miki Dora, Mark Lanegan, Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, and good waves.

I don't love: The contrived preciousness that lards much of contemporary american culture, peddled by artists like Feist, Regina Spektor, the creators of "mumblecore" cinema and the like. If pinned by a boulder in Williamsburg I'd consider gnawing my own arm off to escape a welcome erotic pleasure. I'm sorry, but when an entire community is on the same adorably quirky page, it disipates aesthetic tension, and it's aesthetic tension that makes art. Suck on that, Brooklyn!

I'm an anaerobe, I'm a buttercup growing on the surface of the moon. Take it all, see if I care!

My hair, Immanuel Kant's theories on the second Copernican revolution and categorical imperative, if Coriolanus works as a valid parable of pre-World War II pro-Fascist propaganda, and the Linnaean system of taxonomic classification.

But mostly my hair.

Shaving my legs while watching the McLaughlin Group.

"Leg shaving - oppressive societal construct or social imperative? George Will!"

(my guess is Will likes em hairy)

Back in the Nam I had to kill a few people....... I don't like to talk about it..

You want something really private? Sometimes I put on Nat King Cole's Nature Boy and get all misty-eyed.

There you go.

...You're a whipsmart urban woodsman with reprobate tendencies and an abiding love of the inappropriate.

...your tastes run to both the esoteric and the lowbrow, and if both exist in the same person, place, or situation, so much the better.

...you fully understand that being an adult male does not have to mean cashing in your testosterone for a pair of Dockers and a golf club membership.

.... you're neither the alpha nor the omega dog, you're just off to the side, amused by it all.

...you're not looking to ride my coattails into the middle distance, rather you're ready and willing to push *me* into the uncharted territories.

...you've got soul, you're superbad.

...your compass is oriented to true north.

...you're a surfing, mountain-climbing, acerbic, high-riding, hard-charging, pervy, in need of a shave, carhart-wearing, paradox-loving, flame-fanning, pancake-making, hyperliterate man of the world, and if you keep me laughing, I'm your slave forever.

(of course if you have the emotional bandwidth of a garden slug, none of this means anything)

"They say best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad."

Measure for Measure

and yes, that's the way Shakespeare spelled it.

PS:
Only interested in men who do not have children - seriously, I'm intractable about this. Listen, you don't want me around your child anyway. Do you really want me teaching your seven year old how to do donuts in an ice-covered parking lot - in your car? Do you really want me to show your four year old how to mix a Tom Collins? Do you really want me instructing your second grader to inform her teacher that the correct term isn't "Native American", it's "Injun"?

I didn't think so.

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