Have You Ever Been Grabbed By The Personals?

There's this new thing on Facebook called Canoodle. It looks harmless enough. It comes up with the faces of other users who are looking for romance. You would be forgiven for thinking this was a public-spirited service being supplied by Facebook themselves and that clicking on one of those smiling faces would take you to the love seeker's Facebook page. It doesn't. Not only does it take you to one of the big dating websites, but it automatically places an ad in your name (your real name if that is what you use on Facebook) with your Facebook photo. You then start receiving email notifications that someone has sent a message responding to your ad. I can't confirm that these are from individuals who get a free membership in return for responding to new ads, but I wouldn't be surprised. And if you go to the site to see what these lovely people are proposing you find that you have to be a paid subscriber to even read the messages, let alone reply to them.

The first time this happened to me, I thought, "Well, it's only $3.95 for a trial 3-day membership. What's four bucks to satisfy my curiosity about this site?" The site is called Be Naughty. Hey, a whole site full of people who want to be naughty. Sounds O.K. until you realise that some people's idea of being naughty is conning you into giving them your email address for nefarious purposes or conning you into signing up with a rapacious cam site by offering the prospect of a free personal striptease. Not that there aren't any genuine members. I had a chance to interact with some in the couple of days before I cancelled my membership.

One lady was very direct. She offered me half an hour of sex for $60. She assured me that she was not a "pro" but just having a bit of financial difficulty. I expressed sympathy for her financial troubles but didn't take her up on her offer. But it did occur to me how strange it is that only in the field of prostitution (or pornography) is it consider a selling point that the service provider is neither experienced nor accredited. When you hire a plumber he doesn't say, "Don't worry, I'm not a professional."

One of the features of this website is what they call a Flirtcast. This allows you to call up a list of members, for instance all the ladies who happen to be in online chat at the moment, and send a bulk email to them asking a question which can break the ice and initiate some conversation. They have a bunch of set questions, and since I'm a movie fan I chose : "Do you like to watch movies?" Then I added the personal comment : "What is the sexiest movie you've seen in the last year?". I got some interesting replies.

The first reply was Fuck Off. I looked it up on IMDB. Must be a fairly obscure movie because it isn't listed.

A couple of women picked The Proposal.  I have to give them that. I'm not the biggest fan of Sandra Bullock, but nude Sandra Bullock is definitely preferable to the "aren't I God's gift to educationally-challenge African American football players who are twice the size of King Kong" Sandra Bullock of The Blind Side. And there is something very sexy about the idea of a hot chick and a hot guy who hate each other being forced to share a bed.

This makes me think of the old desert island scenario. Could a hot and heavy relationship develop between almost any pair of gender appropriate individuals if there was noone else? Some say that even arranged marriages can work because the partners, having no alternative, concentrate on bringing out the most that the relationship has to offer. Perhaps the one thought that most eats away at a relationship is the thought that there is someone better out there for us. If you are trapped down a mine shaft and all you have to eat is a three week old Cherry Ripe, I'm sure it is the most delicious thing you ever tasted. But if you are standing outside a gourmet candy emporium it won't seem so sublime. And this is part of the problem with dating sites. Choice. Given the competition, we haven't got a chance. Who is going to pick a boring old fruit and nut bar from a window display which also contains chocolate truffles and Turkish Delight?

You have to fill in an age range for who you are interested in. Since I'm 48 I put 53 as the upper limit. Five years older than me wouldn't be too unacceptable. And a minimum age of 18. Hey, there's nothing wrong with being an optimist. Some girls say they go for an older guy. True they usually say it is because older guys are more confident and experienced. They usually don't admit to looking for a "40-year-old virgin" type because they love guys who are neurotic, pathetic and desperate. But everyone knows that the best sex is dirty sex, and what could be dirtier than having sex with a fat, hairy middle-aged guy with bad breath and body odour? We live in a world where people do all sorts of gross things for sexual kicks - vomiting on each other, pissing on each other, eating shit. Surely it is not unreasonable to assume that some deviant out there would get a kick out of sex with someone like myself. I grant you that when I look in the mirror and try to imagine what making love to someone who looks like me would be like I get kind of grossed out. On the other hand, I don't mind making love to myself with the lights out.

Getting back to the answers to my movie question. One lady said that the sexiest movie she's seen in the last 12 months was Gnomeo and Juliet.

I hope she was joking. The idea of getting turned on by the characters in a children's cartoon is wrong in so many ways. Unless we're talking The Little Mermaid.

Rowrrrrh! Talk about driving the pig skin bus into Tuna Town! The only problem is that I don't think she's got a parking bay.

Another woman said that she only watches thrillers, dramas, action films and horror movies. This seemed a strange reply. Who says that those kinds of movies can't be sexy?

One of my favourite classic thrillers is The Big Sleep (1946). A very sexy film. The dialogue between Humphrey Bogart and all of the females, particularly Lauren Bacall, fairly crackles with sexual electricity. Of course there are no sex scenes. That wasn't allowed in 1946. In 1946 smoking said sex in much the same way that a rocket being launched from Cape Canaveral said sex in the sex comedies of the 1970s. (Am I the only person who likes to watch the "good bits" of the Apollo 11 launch in slow-mo?) In the 40s it was all a case of what they did with their cigarettes. Just replace the cigarettes with cocks and clitorises and you can see what is really going on. (But don't be too literal. Applying a naked flame to one's partner's genitals is frowned upon in all but the kinkiest of circles.) The 1940s were a time when the only act that could make a baby (in that technologically backward era) was considered obscene, but corporations selling addictive substances which fill your lungs with tar, give you bad breath and can lead to a slow agonising death from cancer or emphysema was not.

And what about action films? I was asking my question of women. Don't women find it sexy when some big muscly guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean-Claude Van Damme takes his shirt off? It takes some imagination for me to put myself into their minds of course. I wouldn't know the appeal of watching the sunlight glisten from the beads of sweat that drip over Sylvester Stallone's man nipples as he ripples his muscles and squeezes off another round from his big throbbing AK-47. Not my cup of tea. But the chicks dig that kind of stuff, don't they?

And as for horror movies, they are full of sex! Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, A Serbian Movie...

That goofy bunch from The Last House on the Left are always up for a spot of good lovin'.

One woman said that The Pink Panther was the sexiest film she'd seen in the last year. "Which one?" I asked. "Both of the ones with Steve Martin," she replied. I'm not a narrow-minded person. If I met a woman on one of these sites who was a Scientologist or a member of Al Qaeda, I would say to myself, "Well, you never know, she might have a really nice personality or be good in bed." But if I compromised my sense of self-respect enough to sleep with a woman who could bring herself to watch a Steve Martin Pink Panther movie, let alone enjoy it, it would only be a matter of time before I was smoking crack and hanging around the local retirement village offering to suck off the old men for their pocket change.

Of course one could have fun with the scammers on these sites. It's pretty well known that, whether you are a man or a woman, if a much younger member of the opposite sex with a hot photo contacts you, the reality is that they are someone living in Nigeria who is just hoping to con you out of some money. I'm tempted to respond by saying, "There's no need to be coy, hiding behind a fake photo and location listing. I love the black chicks, and I'm up for a long distance relationship. And, even if you are not really a woman, I am thinking it might be time to overcome my obsessive compulsive inhibition to sex with my own gender. After all, gay guys don't need dating sites. They just need to write their phone number on a toilet wall."