As if mentioning Marcuse would make my CraigsList ad any less pathetic.

Billing myself as a "very cute, very smart" teenager whose ideal date would

spend the night reading in bed, I clicked "publish", winced, and watched in

amazement as my inbox filled over the next few hours. Amid the captionless

genitalia pictures and promises of naughty, 420-friendly fun, there were a

few earnest replies; guys who liked Freakonomics and Vonnegut, mainly, or

claimed that they loved reading but just didn't have time anymore. Before

going to bed that night I deleted all of the more than seventy messages, and

later when I told my friends about the experiment - shame had revised it,

from sincere romantic gambit to anthropological experiment - I ended my story

with a bashful shrug. "That's what I get for expecting to find E. M. Cioran on

CraigsList."

>>