I am in an open marriage and love adventure. My ideal date shows me something I've never seen before.

I teach, I write, I am a husband, I am a dad. And there is all the ancillary stuff I have to do in order to do all that, which is important to me. Beyond that, there is music, theatre, live performances of all kinds, things I don't know, things I need to experience.

Reading things--a book, a room, a person. I pick out oddness, particularity, better than most. In fact, I seek it. That, more than anything, is my drug.

Oh, the glasses probably. In life, I am a slow-burning fuse, a series of occasionally thrown-out comments that strike you as so right. I don't want to be noticed at first. I just want it so, after a while, you can't stop thinking about me.

This is an impossible question--I teach books and film, and I write about music. Stephen Sondheim, Johnny Rotten, and Fozzie Bear were the trinity of my adolescence, and if you get all of that you're halfway to my heart. Joss Whedon is also a certified god, but there are so many more--Shakespeare, Scorsese, Springsteen---argggh! Do you accept art? Are you open? I could never touch a snob, of any stripe . . . but if you get excited by wildly varying things . . .

My sons. My music (25K tracks on my iPod). Creativity/something new. Coffee. Curiosity/the pursuit of knowledge. God (you don't have to believe but I do)

how to trap the intangible into a sentence.

(a) trying to remove old tracks from my iPod so I can add new ones; or (b) seeing friends perform

If I admitted it to everybody, it wouldn't be private, would it? Privacy, you've got to earn--and I assume it works the same on your end.

You think neither of us has ever met someone like the other before.