February 15, 2003

I have spent the entire day alternating between despair and shock.

Despair because the actor who was my houseguest for a week and whose mere physical presence rendered me almost incapable of spelling flew back to Los Angeles this morning, where he lives.

Shock because someone has actually responded to my Drip personal ad. (For the story behind the ad, click here; for the text of the ad itself, hieroglyphs and all, click here.) I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that, for whatever reason, my attempts to write a witty, charming, and insouciant ad had produced a document that caused gay men to flee me as they might flee a pair of plaid golf pants or Anita Bryant. And yet someone had read my ad and found it intriguing enough to respond to.

So I went down to Drip and looked at his ad, which was totally charming and funny. His grammar was impeccable, as was his spelling (though he did write “theatre” instead of “theater,” but I’m not prepared to write him off yet, since that is his only evident flaw, at least so far). The first word in his self-description section was “zany” and among his biggest turn-offs was “braying pretention.” Plus he listed Marshmallow Peeps among his interests.

At the moment, however, Mr. Zany is an unknown quantity and the actor is thousands of miles away.

Thank God I have a dog or I would be so fucking lonely I would die.