Missed Connections

Over the weekend I slipped up and did something I'd sworn to avoid fora  while. I answered a Craigslist ad.

I know, I know. You've all heard me malign Craigslist time after time. In my metro area, it's the nadir of online cruising. In the last few months, I've never had a truly successful hookup from the site. I've met weirdos, yes. I've met men who never show.

Saturday I answered an ad from a guy who lived in my zip code. Looking to suck guys at my private gloryhole, it said. Come in, unzip, get off, get out. I liked the direct approach, and I'm fond of a good gloryhole, private or public, so I wrote back with my location, stats, and a shot of my wrangling my dick. He wrote back with an enthusiastic WOW! I want to taste that!!!


Then it was downhill from there. I asked him if he was available, and where the gloryhole was; he said that he was looking for right then, and that the gloryhole was at the foot of his basement stairs. I asked for an address. He wanted to know when I was free. I told him I was free right then. He said he might have to postpone, because he didn't like spending time in the basement in the dark behind the gloryhole. (Which baffled me. Why offer the services of your home glory hole if you don't like being behind it?) I repeated I was looking for right then. Then he disappeared for twenty minutes, and that was that.

When he came back, I'd already given him up, but he wanted to know my cock size. I asked him if he was honestly looking for dick or just playing games. He asked if I knew someone I could bring with me.

That's when I lost it, more or less—I wrote the guy back and told him that it wasn't my responsibility to line up a party for him, and that if he'd seriously been looking to suck right then, he would've invited me over already, and that he could've had me over forty minutes before. Good luck finding someone, I wrote, but it won't be me.


I'm not a game player! was his last, sad little reply. I trashed it.

So no, I'm not really positive about Craiglist at the moment . . . though I am perpetually fascinated by one of its sections. The Missed Connections, that is. I read them every day.

I think I like the Missed Connections because every little snippet is almost a story unto itself. It’s a bit like switching on a soap opera and catching so few lines of dialogue that it’s left to one’s own imagination to construct the scene around it. It’s a fantastic resource for writers. Voyeurs, too.

I mean, who is not intrigued by what’s left unsaid in something like this?

Lowe’s: Instant on/off lamp switch plug device (m4m)
I should have paid more attention.

What’s going on here? Did a customer walk into Lowe’s and become so enamored with the clerk explaining the instant on/off lamp switch plug device that, when he got it home, he couldn’t remember what it was for? Did he spend the rest of the evening in a romantic daze, stroking his dick and thinking of the Lowe’s clerk in his tidy apron and name tag? Or did it go down in an entirely different fashion, with the customer walking into Lowes intending to buy a timer for his sprinkler system, and was so overcome by the clerk’s pulchritude that he walked off instead with a much-despised plug device? I want to know!

Broke down (m4m)
hot stud with broke down car at rest area i gave u pop bottle for water would like to meet again

Who isn’t intrigued by this barely literate collection of run-on sentences? I like to picture our protagonist as wearing a plastic trucker’s cap and a stained tank top, clumsily proffering a Jolt Cola bottle (used) full of water for the stranded hot stud's radiator, his other hand stuffed into his dirty jeans, smiling his broken-toothed smile when the musclebound hunk thanked him. Then I picture Mr. Trucker Hat creepily staring at the handsome guy in the dark from behind the windshield of his busted-up Ford truck, a sticky spot in his shorts, as the poor stalked guy waits for AAA to send a tow.

There's more in my imagination, but I don't want to freak you out.

I’m always fascinated by glimpses of a city in which I live, but don’t recognize in the Missed Connections:

Woodward Avenue Studs (m4mm)
You and your hot friend were driving north on Woodward when you both lifted your shirts and flashed me. Damn! You two were amazing! Are you brothers? I couldn’t stop, was heading home to the family, but if you two are interested in a married man, tell me what color shirt I was wearing and what my bumper sticker said.

I drive north on Woodward all the time, and no one’s ever flashed me. There are all kinds of questions I want to ask this guy. Was he late to dinner? Did the wife notice his distant, pensive air? Did he need some time to himself in the basement workroom, after? I’m almost tempted to start writing emails with guesses. Blue stripes and My Son Is on the Honor Roll of the Roeper Academy?

I suspect everyone who reads the Missed Connections section likes to think that someday their eyes will be traveling down the list of locations and situations and, in a sudden spark of recognition, realize that someone is looking for them. Why, it was ME at that supermarket, Wednesday afternoon! I was INDEED the guy in the blue SUV at the Sonic! Who wouldn’t be honored to be noticed, remembered, and desired?

I have no such illusions, primarily because being seen would require occasionally leaving the house. If someone did write a Missed Connections ad to me, this is what I’m sadly afraid it would look like:

Weird-looking tall guy in Papa Joe’s grocery (m4m)
You were very tall, you have a fuzzy face, and your clothes were covered with cat hair. I followed you around the store hoping to catch your eye, but you were too busy trying out every food sample to notice. First you were all about the cheese on toothpicks, and then I saw you take seconds of the blueberry bread. Then you choked on the homemade peanut butter and yelled out, “Jesus Christ, it’s rancid!” really loudly. I was going to bring you water, but you’d already moved on to the deli meat and the open container of ginger snaps. Wow, you really like your free samples, don’t you? Maybe next time.