My old craigslist anti-personals personals ad

Originally penned around 2007 and revised over a year later, following a particularly painful breakup (actually alluded to in the facetiously hypothetical “adult entertainer” scenario), the genesis of this piece was both an urge for therapeutic self-exploration and a frustration with the hackneyed banalities of the online dating realm—a realm with which I was by then quite familiar.  I had no intention of ever sharing this with anyone, let alone everyone.  I was just stretching my creative legs a bit while exorcising a few demons stirred up by the recent collapse of a major relationship.  But since my lifelong Daimon tends to urge me into ever greater arenas, it wasn’t long before I resurrected the piece for its first trial run on my local craigslist.  I was pleasantly surprised at both the scale and caliber of the reception.  I corresponded via email with a few women, and actually met and briefly (chastely) dated one of them.  About a year later I gave the ad another spin, with similar results (minus the dating).

I call the piece an anti-personals personals ad because, whereas the normal strategy in personals ads is to sell yourself by painting the most implausibly idealized and rosy picture of who you are, in this instance I deliberately went over the top in emphasizing my shortcomings and darkness — but in a jocular way. 

Aimless, joyless, complex loser seeks soulmate

(Stated “Location” in the original craigslist ad: “the outskirts of purgatory”)

No, this isn’t a joke, so please don’t flag it.  It’s scarcely even an exaggeration. To me, it’s honesty in advertising, something that seems to be in short supply in personals ads.  I mean, if the personals are any indication, e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y has a happy, full life, one which is only missing that someone special who also already has a happy, full life — all others need not apply. Those of us at the other end of the fulfillment spectrum — the relatively luckless, lifeless malcontents — need love, too, right?  And how few of us can there be?  There’s now what? — seven billion people on this planet?  If each person were a grain of sand on the beach... okay bad example, that’d only be about a square yard or so.  Still, with numbers like that, the odds of there not being someone for a case like me would have to be miniscule; there pretty much has to be someone out there: matter to my anti-matter; relative light to my relative darkness; substance to my void... sorry, bleh! — got carried away there for a minute.  Of course, I realize I’m fishing in a much tinier pond than The Entire Earth, and so the odds tend to reverse and grow exponentially and overwhelmingly not in my favor.  I have to hold a sliver of hope that this rare and strange creature coincidentally (or synchronistically) resides in this particular city and reads this particular online personals. Pretty slim possibility, that.  About like winning the lottery.  But the need for kindred companionship calls and I’m getting nowhere meeting people through work, grocery shopping, in line at the post office, etc., and the bar/club/pub scene has never been my thing, so I’ll cast my little net out there in this tiny pond and see what it brings in.

So, just how big a loser am I?  Good question.  I’m relatively stably employed and support myself comfortably, so I guess my loserdom is not absolute.  Then again, that could change at any moment, not owing to unforeseen circumstance but to my own chronic frustration with occupations that I default into in the absence of a viable livelihood that would actually demand something of me intellectually and creatively. When that frustration peaks, I’m gone — off to do something else, often completely different, though equally meaningless.  Like one of those disembodied animated brains from 1950s sci-fi, my “superintelligence” is almost completely disengaged from whatever impulse drives normal people to conceptualize a career goal, desire it (or not), then achieve it. Thus I languish endlessly in the vast purgatory of the service sector, or various levels of skilled and semi-skilled blue collar dronehood.

Sounds like fun, eh?  Wait, it gets even better.

I have no diseases, unless you count despair, which Kierkegaard called “the sickness unto death.” Not to be confused with depression, which is a mere mood disorder, despair gnaws away insidiously, beneath the predictable highs and lows of one’s transitory moods, like a cancer of the soul you can never die from, though you keep wishing you could.  Believe me, it’s way worse than any STD, but at least it seems it can’t be transmitted from one person to the next…though you may (with apologies to Woody Allen) get terminal bad vibes from extended association with the afflicted.

On the other hand, I’ve got the whole meaning of life thing pretty much wrapped to my satisfaction, so it would seem I’ve got that going for me, though I stand as quasi-living proof that working it all out in your head will get you nowhere — or worse.  (Didn’t Nietzsche’s hyper-lucidity drive him insane?  Not that I’m on a par with Nietzsche, though I did once grow a damn impressive soup-filter of a mustache.  But I digress.)

Despite the despair, my libido rages as it did when I was half my age.  Nevertheless, I would rather be alone than allow desperation to drive me into an ill-fitting relationship.  A relationship, for example, with a globe-trotting, multi-lingual, surgically enhanced “adult entertainer” with an improbably chart-busting IQ but an emotional capacity smaller than her original cup size…speaking strictly hypothetically, of course, since I would Never. Compromise. My. Ideals.  My many, many, many years of reluctant celibacy bear stark and painful testament to this fact.  So, it’s not for just anyone that I’m going to pull it out and dust it off.  My heart, that is.

On to more important matters, just how homely and out of shape am I?  That really would complete the picture, I know.  Not to hedge, but this is fairly subjective. I will venture, though, that the faintest hint of consensus seems to be that I’m not too awfully hard on the eyes, and am in alarmingly good shape, thanks to good genes, years of exercise and a healthy diet. Yes, I may be mortally soul-sick and lonely, but dammit I’m going to leave a good looking corpse.  But really, even if I were an Adonis it wouldn’t matter in the slightest, given all of the above.  Like buying a car with a perfect body and beautiful paint, but a problem-prone engine and drivetrain: you’ll look great sitting in it or standing next to it, but you’ve got your work cut out if you want to actually drive it.

In light of all this, you might wonder how I can justify a sincere search for a significant other. You’re right, of course, it seems absurd. “What would it come to, if a person has no love of himself, no respect for himself, no love of his friends, family, work — something.  How can he ask for love in return?  I mean, why should he ask for it?” (The quote is from FIVE EASY PIECES).  Well, he asks because he must, to paraphrase Goethe.  The need for love, companionship and sex is just as implacable as the need for food, shelter and warmth. Whatever else is wrong with you, it’ll just be worse without these things.  Besides, it should go without saying that I’m not looking for perfection here.

So, amidst this online dating milieu wherein everyone apparently “loves to laugh” (who the ¡%#$&! hell doesn’t?!), and enjoys a passion for dining, dancing, world travel and waterskiing, just what sort of woman do I hope to meet? Well, clearly you will have to be well acquainted with your dark side, though not to the point of being ready to slash your wrists (you’ll have enough insight, or at least intuition, to recognize the metaphysical futility of suicide as an escape, anyway).  You will probably have a strong cerebral bent, though not divorced from your emotions. You’ll be smart and self-aware and have some wit, even (or especially) where it comes to your pain.  It’d be a huge plus (and turn-on) if you’re eloquent and can write…but at this point I’d settle for being able to punctuate and spell beyond a third grade level.  It’d be nice if you’re attractive and shapely, but not essential.  Okay, at least just shapely.  Again, in that department you really won’t be slumming by being with me. I guess, when you get right down to it, I’m probably looking for a female version of myself, the light and the darkness and all.  It doesn’t take a Ph.D in psychology to see what’s going on there.

“What, no pic?” you say.  Damn straight.  I mean, if you placed an ad like this, would you post your picture? Any genuine, non-mean-spirited replies (that is, replies other than “your pathetic” [sic] or “I’ll sell you a gun”) containing more than a sentence or two, and revealing something of substance about yourself, will get a response with my picture.  Meanwhile, the picture I’ve painted here, with all its “big and little tiny words” (thanks, Sue), is indeed both sincere and representative, though it’s still only partial.  It’s an impressionistic self-portrait, done in deliberately dark and muted colors, with contrapuntal strokes of levity, to reflect my present state.  Dear reader, read a bit between the lines, keep an open heart, trust your intuition, but don’t abandon your critical faculties.  Something transformative may be awaiting us both.  Or there may be nothing at all.