Sunday Morning Questions: Classy as Shit Edition

Most of my Manhattan adventures (of the clothed sort, that is) tend to take place in Starbucks. I was puzzling out the other day why that was, when I was fixing to type out another account of something odd that happened in a West Village branch of the franchise. What I realized is that I tend to use coffee shops in New York City as a hangout between appointments during cold weather months. In the spring and summer, if I have downtime, I can always relax on a park bench in Union Square Park or somewhere along the High Line; there are plenty of places to park my butt for a couple of hours and watch the people go by.

In winter, though, I don’t want to sit outdoors. So I keep in my head a mental database of the larger, less populated Starbucks branches and other coffee shops near the places I need to go. If I need to get out of the cold for an hour or two, you’ll find me there, wedged in among the students and hipsters and food bloggers, catching up on my email or reading. That’s where I was last week, on a particularly cold Monday night. I’d had dinner with a friend and taken a downtown train to the general vicinity of my meeting. The brisk walk from the station to my destination’s neighborhood did nothing to warm me up, and I was early. So around the corner I went to buy myself a half-hour of warmth and a coffee-adjacent beverage.

The Starbucks I chose was busy. A couple of people stood in line in front of me, so I breathed on my fingers and tried to coax them out of their popsicle-like state. While I was waiting, a gentleman came in from the wintry weather and stood behind me. He was on his phone. Speaking French. In a very deep and masculine voice.

Naturally, I turned around to check him out. He was much shorter than I—everyone is shorter than I. Maybe five-seven. Dark-complexioned. His dark hair was buzzed down nearly to the scalp. His equally dark eyebrows were thick and even, like brushstrokes. And oh my god, was he ever handsome.

Long-time readers know that I don’t usually buy into the nonsense in which guys automatically count themselves out of the running with Oh, that guy’s WAY out of my league!, but holy fuck, this guy was totally out of my league. His was the kind of masculine beauty that makes jaws drop. The fact he was wearing a heavy trench coat and business attire beneath only made him more compelling. I was trying to be casual about checking him out as he continued to parlez with his phone partner, but as he talked, our eyes met. Then the woman behind the register asked to take my order.

Once I was done with the transaction and standing by the pickup counter, I took a deep breath and checked out the guy again. He was staring right at me. While part of my brain was very calm and matter-of-fact about his scrutiny, some high school girl inside my brain was jumping up and down and shrieking in panic. Oh my GOD he’s looking at me! Is he looking at me? Why is he looking at me? Is he? He IS? Oh my GOD!

Yeah, I know. Not my proudest moment. But wait. It gets worse.

So I collected my coffee-adjacent beverage and managed to navigate across the shop without tripping over myself or biting my lip with my braces or any of the other things Jan Brady might have done in such a situation, and found a seat on the cushioned bench that ran along the exterior plate glass. I was wearing a formal moleskin coat and a scarf of a length that makes Tom Baker’s neckwear look skimpy; it took me a while to untangle myself from it. By the time I had my coat open and my scarf untied and my gloves off, the person sitting immediately next to me had finished her coffee and left. Then I heard a very deep voice inflected with an unmistakable Gallic accent saying, “May I be cozy wiz you?”

I looked up, and the French guy was smiling at me. I KNOW. It was like one of the best dreams I’ve ever had, come true in the fading light of day. I looked into those big brown eyes of his, admired the faintest trace of stubble adorning his sculpted cheeks, and said in sultry tones, “Get as cozy as you like.”

Well. That’s what I wanted to say. When I thought of it a couple of minutes later. That’s what I should have said. What I actually said, as my suddenly useless tongue flopped out of my mouth like a particularly juicy St. Bernard’s, was this: “Hhhhnuuuuhh.” Then I moved over.

Oh yeah. It was real classy. He seemed a little startled to be slavered at by a mental defective, but he sat down and immediately pulled out his phone. Then he made another call in French while I moaned softly to myself and beat myself up internally and tried to pretend I had super-hot Frenchmen getting cozy with me all the damned time.

I didn’t say another word until I had to go, about ten minutes later. He and I had spent time checking each other out sideways in the meantime, as he conducted his call. He hung up just as I started collecting the three miles of my scarf. “Are you leaving so soon?” he purred.

I’d kind of planned for this moment. I intended to say something clever. Something witty. Something European. Something that would convey my lusty good sense of humor and my intention to land him flat on his back on the bed of his designer-decorated apartment. So I opened my mouth and “Huhh-huuh-huh!” came splatting out. Then I tittered like a geisha and went running out of the coffee shop with a flaming face.

Classy as shit, that’s what I am.

Considering getting your favorite unpaid blogger a last-minute Christmas gift? You could always get one for me too, while you’re at it!

Let’s get to some questions from readers. I haven’t done this in a while.


You are so full of yourself.

Wow. Ya think? No shit, Sherlock.

I mean, I spend time writing about me, myself and I on a regular basis for total strangers on the internet. How many months of getting a monitor tan while jacking off while reading me did it take for you to come to that brilliant conclusion?

Actually, you know who I find tends to tell someone else—anonymously, of course—that he’s full of himself? Someone whose life is sad and extremely empty, that’s who. Truth.


Is there a sexual experience you've had and, afterward thought, nope don't need to do that again? If so... what was it?

Scat. I would like to make clear I was on the giving end, not the receiving side of that particular fetish. The other fellow was in hog heaven, so to speak; I kept thinking that despite being the dominant partner, how humiliated and vulnerable I felt in that position.

So nope. Never again.


How does someone get to meet the breeder? :)

Proximity is a factor—it helps if you're in the metro NYC area. A willingness to work with me on finding a time and place is key. But hey, if you want to pay for a plane ticket and fly me to you and put me up for a couple of days, I'm game for that too!

I've met, and consequently written about, quite a few of my readers at this point. I think they'll testify that I am real and that I give a guy a very good time.


Have you ever misinterpreted someone's body language as sexual advances?

Oh, absolutely.

I started learning to read people in my early teens, when I was active at cruising spots like my local park and library. The ritual of sexual courtship in those places could be quite stylized, as men would pass each other multiple times, making eye contact and showing preference, through their body language and stance, for their intended mating partner. The strutting, the showing off, and then finally the consummation as the pair would wander off into the woods or down to the toilets, was like an episode of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" that never made it to air.

But there were quite a few times, especially when I was younger, that I misinterpreted a friendly posture, open legs, an inviting smile, or a dangling hand as an invitation, when it probably wasn't. I also learned to read, by the blank stares or puzzlement when I would come close to these guys and they wouldn't understand why, when I was just plain wrong.

Nowadays I'm more apt to misread the kind of body language that's closed down or shut off or turned away as disinterest, when it's really the guy's lack of confidence to make known his desire for me.


If they were filming the story of your life, what would it be called?

Tales from the Slurp Ramp: The Peregrinations of a Sexual Adventurer, starring Bradley Cooper.