Whoever first said, “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings” sure knew what the hell they were talking about, let me tell you. Extreme boredom has led me to, among other things, drink myself into a drooling stupor, hike from my house in Brooklyn to my mom’s place in Manhattan (a span of just under ten miles), and in my younger, sparkier days, feverishly churn out a 300-plus page novel. The sense of the slow, inexorable passage of time always galvanizes me into some kind of action, sometimes for no other reason than to drown out its steady, constant, clock tick.

But with only a week before my GREAT EUROPEAN ADVENTURE, I had the unpleasant sense that time had halted utterly. My nervousness and wild impatience to leave had hung me in a horrible sort of suspended animation, and I had absolutely no idea how to encourage forward motion again. Well, as luck would have it (figuratively speaking) my mother had left town for a week to tend to my ailing cousin in Detroit, and as a result of this I had an empty apartment with free Internet access and a small stock of very good chardonnay at my disposal. What’s a bored girl to do?

The first thing I did on Tuesday, after dinner and a long bubble bath, was log onto Craigslist and go shopping, so to speak. I strongly urge those of you who have not been introduced to the joys of Craigslist to check it out ASAP. It is a quirky, amusing, totally free site where you can find everything from a new sofa to concert tickets to a husband, and hit all points in between. There is also a fascinating but mildly disturbing part of the site called Rants and Raves—the level of racism among New Yorkers these days is more than a little disappointing. Whatever the case, it’s a terrific timewaster at work.

My interest that evening was in the Casual Encounters section, which provides exactly what you’d imagine. Unfortunately, because I tend to shy away from cameras and am an Internet moron, I had no pictures of myself to send to potentials. Then I remembered my friend Chris had posted his pictures of us at the NYC Pride Parade on his website.

Here is the picture I used (my first thought upon seeing this was REALLY low-budget drag queen). I had a date in less than thirty minutes. God bless the single-mindedness of men. This one was a cutie named Ben with a shaved head and eyes as blue as the Atlantic. We romped for thirty minutes on my mother’s sofa bed, he came, I didn’t, and after a little murmured chatting, he kissed me and slipped out the door like a thief in the night, leaving me to ponder how exactly to get semen out of silk brocade upholstery.

Overall, my first real life honest-to-goodness booty call had been a fun experience, not skyrockets and balloons, but certainly tons better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns (except season three—I’d miss my grandma’s funeral for those). So I did it again the next night and scared up Anthony, an Italian stallion who separated himself from the hordes of men beating down my mailbox with the tantalizing promise of being able to go for “hours” and the certainty of working his way through at least half a box of condoms in the process. Okay, I’m not dumb enough to believe all that jazz, but I figured he was good for at least two hours or so. What the hell.

Lesson learned: Men will say whatever they have to to hit it. Anthony must have been on Martian time or something, because he was there and gone in about forty minutes, including foreplay. Also, dude must have thought he was being filmed or something, because he came at me like Ron Jeremy in his prime (whenever that was), complete with requisite dirty talk, biting, slapping AND the money shot. What the hell is up with guys wanting to shoot sperm right in your eye? Is it like some kind of sex merit badge if you blind your partner? Someone please kindly explain this to me.

After it became clear I wasn’t going to get my just desserts this time either, I watched quietly as Anthony dressed himself, pecked me on the lips and swaggered out the door like John Wayne having mowed down a whole reservation full of unsuspecting Indians. This time, I went home to Brooklyn rather than staying, as I kind of wanted to get away from the scene of the crime.

What was I doing? Was I the empowered New Woman who sought pleasure for herself rather than waiting for it to present itself to her? Was I just a skank ho, and a dumbass in the bargain, because I didn’t really know if I was getting any pleasure? Or was I just lonelier and sadder than I even imagined? When all was said and done, I wanted them to stay, so the sex part of it was a lie, or a very bad lure. I should have been posting in the Women Seeking Men section, but it just seemed (seems) like so much work. But if I wasn’t really getting what I wanted, what was the point? Not to mention the fact that my everything below my waist was screaming for painkillers, I had assorted bruises, my neck felt like I’d been strangled and I hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in two days.

Having said all that, where do you suppose Thursday night found me? Home in bed with a heating pad on my tummy watching Will and Grace? Oh hardy har har. I was exchanging emails with John, who was so goddamn handsome I almost want to post his picture here, but that just seems like a recipe for disaster. To sum him up—blond hair, six-four, and a body and face (and unit) tailor-made for porn. Gay porn.

John had brought two bottles of wine and we drank and talked for a little bit before getting down to business. In the course of our conversation I learned that John lived just a hop, skip and a jump away from me, that he was pulling down a pretty impressive salary on Wall Street, and that he was charmingly, certifiably insane. Later, I also learned that a man can make you feel like an absolute fucking goddess when he takes the trouble to do so.

John spent three hours with me that night. We tried every position in the Kama Sutra, and a few that probably aren’t. Everything I did, every place I touched seemed to drive him crazy, and I felt the same way about him. In between, we took more wine and chat breaks, and every so often, when an up-temp song came on the radio, John would hop out of bed and break into an impromptu little happy dance that was a cross between the Chicken Dance and the Running Man. Call it the Running Chicken (which sounds about right considering the way most white guys dance) It was about the cutest thing I’d ever seen, and made me want to do things to him that are probably illegal in most states. Which I promptly did. Suffice it to say that every woman should have a John in her life (okay, that didn’t sound right).

It was later, as we taxied home to Brooklyn, that I learned one more thing about John-boy that shouldn’t have surprised me half as much as it did. When he was younger he had a deeply passionate relationship with another man. John eventually decided he preferred fish to beef and went back to the ladies, but not for what sounded like a deeply fulfilling year. “Did you love him?” I asked. John looked at me like I had three eyes. “Of course,” he said simply. Just like that. “Of course.” Not, “Nah, it was just a phase,” or “Nah, we were just having fun.” As if it was crazy to question the strength of his commitment to this man. How totally lovely.

When the taxi arrived at his door, I tried to climb out after him, perfectly happy to take the subway the rest of the way, but John demurred. He gently pushed me back into the cab, pressed two twenties into my hand and told the driver to take me home. Two soft, sweet kisses later and off he went, weaving slightly as he navigated the parked cars, probably never guessing how hard he had rocked my world and reaffirmed my faith in it and its inhabitants at the same time.

I should have known. I just should have known. The other two men I met on Craigslist weren’t assholes (okay, maybe Anthony was a little bit). They weren’t violent, or rude, or even particularly bad in bed. They were just fundamentally men, following the orders of the raving Tasmanian devil in their pants at all costs.

But sweet, sweet John ... John who made me scream and laugh in the same breath, who was gentleman enough to bring wine in the first place and thoughtful enough to bring both red and white in case I preferred one to the other, who praised every move I made in bed like someone had spiked his wine with Ecstasy—I should have known that someone like him would have the capacity to fall in love with another man, the good sense to make a go of it, and the courage to own up to it later even though he wasn’t feeling it anymore. What a wonderful surprise he was.

I haven’t heard from John since that night, not that I expected to, but I am going to send him this column and hope that he reads it. He’s going through some changes too, not such good ones, and I want him to know how special he is and not to let them get him down, also that if he ever needs an attentive ear (or tongue), I’m there for him. I still don’t really know what I was looking for this week—excitement, diversion, a venereal disease? Well, two out of three ain’t bad. ;-)

I did decide, however, that the next time I post on Craigslist, I’ll be looking for a little more than wham-bam-smooch-scooch. Hey, I like that expression!

Well, I’m off to Berlin on Tuesday to visit my favorite fag Athain, so Auf-Wiedersehen for now, SWiSH-ers! All I can say is if I’ve managed to get up to this much trouble in Bloomberg’s New York, imagine what’ll happen to me in the city that spawned Cabaret?! They’ll probably firing-squad me. Either that or elect me mayor. Stay tuned.

Yours in hagdom,

Jamielah