No time for love, Dr. Jones. Or rather, no time to post in the morning, so you're getting an installment tonight.

I often receive letters from people with little sexual experience, asking for advice or thanking me for things they've discovered here. When it comes to sex, you can consider me an SME (subject matter expert, for those of you who don't have to deal with TLAs -- three letter acronyms -- all day). Things are pretty easy with fuckbuddies: find a time that works for everyone, pick a location, fuck, say a polite goodbye. No mess.

This dating thing, however....

I've dated plenty of men, but the last ten years have been, well, let's call them unusual. In 1995-96, I was dating someone a few hundred miles away. We became engaged, but the relationship ended very badly just as I was about to move to his area. 1996-97: I dated someone in England. Several wonderful trips, another engagement, and then we grew apart. 1997-98: on and off relationship with a man I truly loved, who died. 1998-2000: I lived with a man I hated, but that was my way of hiding my heart during the worst of my grief. 2000-01: Another long distance relationship, Adam in Australia. 2002-03: some casual and not very promising repeat daters, including Seth. 2003-04: yet another Aussie, Brian.

It's amazing to look at the list and realize I haven't had what most people would consider a normal dating relationship in a decade. Jitterbuggin' Jesus. A decade. Nope, no commitment issues here! I suppose you could consider living with someone from 1998-2000 to be "normal" -- we slept together and vacationed together -- but he was an argumentative, sullen introvert who rarely talked or left the couch, so I consider that little different from having a fuckbuddy I don't particularly like who happens to live in the same building.

Mark is so open and sincere that I'm trying not to let him see that he's freaking me out. It's not what he's doing, but just that I'm out of practice at having a simple, local, romantic relationship. I'm used to getting one phone call a week, at an odd hour on the weekend when timezones align, not two calls a day.

Well, ok, some of it IS what he's doing. Mark has been out of the dating pool so long that he has the enthusiasm of a lovestruck sixteen year old. He tells me everything in his head -- which is cool, because I want to be his close friend and confidante, but is also terrifying when I realize he's thought years into the future after a single date. I'm this bright shiny object that he's just discovered and he makes no secret of the fact that he's fascinated. He's not trying to cage me, in fact, he knows of my plan to head off to greener pastures and he's supportive of it, but he's already dropping breadcrumbs to lure me back home after I've had a break.

I don't know if this will make sense to anyone or just reinforce that I'm a freak: Mark has made it clear that he'd like a hardcopy photo of me, and I find that so scary that if I had balls, they would be retracted up to my lungs. I realize I'm a digital kind of girl, but only three men in the past ten years have kept photos of me offline in frames (and that was mutual). Having a photo of someone in a place others can see feels like a declaration. My solution with Mark has been to remind him that he can print out the digital photos I've sent. If we're together a couple months from now, maybe he'll get a 4x6 glossy.

I enjoy the attention, affection, and companionship that he's given me over the past couple weeks, and I'm looking forward to our next date. We're just getting started, but Mark's exuberance and openness have rushed emotional intimacy ahead of everything else. That's not a bad situation. It just scares me to the point where I can feel myself pulling back already, and we're going to need to get the pace normalized or the last he'll see of me will be a puff of dust with the fading echo of a "meep meep!" as I disappear over the horizon.

Excerpted from a letter I received:

I am a married man whose wife is obsessed with the idea that I am playing her dirty. Now mind you, I have put myself in situations that were not the best, but I have not cheated on her in any since of the word (at least my view of cheating and not her as she believes that talking to a woman for any purpose other than work is cheating). Do you feel, in your experience, that a woman will ever get past the idea that her partner is cheating if she is determined that he is? She spends most of her time researching and analyzing everything and anything to try and catch me cheating. This has been going on for about three of the three and a half years that we have been married.

My immediate reaction to this is pretty heartless (get out before she eats you alive!), so I welcome and will post advice from others. It's too late to ask if she showed any of these traits before marriage -- the deed is done and that's irrelevant.

I've been on the outside of relationships like this, when my male friends got married and were no longer allowed to socialize with me (even though our relationships were never sexual), and would get the evil eye if they talked to me at a group function. It's normal to feel territorial and protective of your marriage, to some degree.

Not all men (or women) understand how they are perceived -- it may be that this man comes across as flirtatious and his wife sees other women reacting to him in a way she doesn't like. No matter how much you trust your partner, the idea that another woman may try to seduce him can be threatening -- we know how men react to pussy, we've used it to our own advantage, after all.

To be quite so obsessed, however, seems to indicate a high level of insecurity. My less heartless advice would be to examine the causes behind that rather than trying to stop her actions directly. Does her self-esteem need some work, either through love and support, finding a hobby/job where she can excel, or seeing a professional? Couples counseling may be worth a shot.

Some of my experiences would suggest that people who act this way toward their partners create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their actions drive their spouses into the arms of others, just to have normal, accepting relationships, and then the accusers can relish their self-righteous anger. Did one of her parents cheat on the other? She may be recreating something she saw in her childhood. Clearly she's convinced that men are dogs and the merest conversation will send them humping another stockinged leg. How's her relationship with her father? Again... more areas that might need therapy and years of patience.

Good luck! Anyone with better advice?

Some admin and mail-answering:

- Thank you to all the women who answered my survey. If you were expecting one, didn't get it, and really, really want to answer it quickly, drop me a note by Wednesday (I'll need it back before Saturday). Being sick last weekend screwed up my schedule, so if you haven't returned yours, you still have time. Sorry if you wrote to me asking for a copy and didn't hear back -- mail has been piling up faster than I can sort it.

- J, it's your fault I had a Partridge Family tune stuck in my head all day yesterday! Thanks, though!

- i, your evaluation of whether you wanted to fuck each of the women in my photo gallery, on first impression, cracked me up. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; I still can't figure out why anyone gets tight pants over Julia Roberts, for example.

Not to sound like Elaine Benis, but I think Mark may be glossary-worthy. We have plans to see each other again this week and I'm enjoying getting to know him. The fact that he's so unconcerned about telling me his feelings is a breath of fresh air; I found myself explaining to him that I'm a lot less forthcoming in that area, but he shouldn't take that as a bad sign.

I've already warned him about my commitment issues and told him the Reader's Digest version of the Brian saga. Mark has issues of his own -- he was faithfullly married for many years and is just re-entering the dating world. I see that as an advantage; his mind isn't full of what he should or shouldn't do, he just does what he feels and thinks best. He knows that relationships don't take care of themselves, either, but need effort from both sides to thrive.

I was quite pleased today when he reacted strongly to my pouty declaration that I had been a bad girl. Oh yes, the man has potential. When we're not face-to-face, I find him very sexy... let's see if I can carry that over to our interactions in person. I could use a good healthy dose of affection and companionship, not to mention some regular old "couple sex", rather than "stranger sex".

That said, I have plans with my friend James to play around this week, too. May as well take the edge off so I can let things unfold slowly with Mark, right?

A reader has kindly asked me a question about animals a couple of times, and -- because I didn't get nearly enough hate mail last week -- I thought I'd answer it here. No topic is off-limits, I suppose.

I love and am kind to animals, and I am also a leather-wearing omnivore. Though my views appear contradictory, I am at ease with them as long as I believe that I've made my decisions based on sufficient information. My ethical choices related to animals are very specific and not necessarily logical.

Ok, who broke the Internet? Surely it's not excruciatingly slow just for me. Then again, I did install WinXP's SP2 today. Hmm.

Whatever made me so fatigued yesterday is still hanging on. I can barely keep my eyes open for an hour at a time, though otherwise I feel fine. I wonder if it's related to the fact that I've been taking Ritalin every day lately. I always have a rebound crash in the early afternoon; perhaps this is the crash at the end of the week? If so, yikes. No clever post today, though. Hopefully I'll be back to normal later or tomorrow.

This morning, I woke up at 7:00 and ran some errands, then came home and went back to bed. Even after an eight hour nap, I'm exhausted and I don't feel well... so I'll see you tomorrow.

Wow. I actually had a perfectly normal date this week. Believe me, as someone who meets most men online, a traditional date is a rare and comforting thing.

Mystery is something I miss in the online realm. While I embrace meeting here because I can look for a potential partner that matches me below the surface, I think we sometimes try to find out too much ahead of time. We try to eliminate all of the things we haven't liked in previous partners and seek a checklist of our desires. As a result, I end up sitting across the table from someone for the first time, aware that he already knows what's beneath my clothes and in my head. There's a lot of freedom in that, but it doesn't allow for the same pleasure of discovery.

I had a great time with Mark. Over dinner, he was funny, charming, a gentleman and yet very down-to-earth. Mind games are not part of his repertoire and he had no inhibitions about telling me what he was feeling. We ended the night with a hug.

By 9:30 the next morning, he had already left a message for me at home and called me at the office. I should point out that Mark was married and faithful for many years; he's just starting to date again and doesn't feel the need to play by any rules, such as observing a waiting period before calling. In fact, he phoned me two more times before the day was done. He's made it clear that he dates one woman at a time, but he isn't the jealous type and "of course" expects me to be seeing other men.

I'm having a hard time writing about Mark. I like him a lot and I'm looking forward to spending more time with him. I smiled every time I saw his name pop up on my Caller ID. But, I'm not quite as intoxicated by him as he is by me (and he knows this). The stumbling block is that he's a bit... funny looking. I wouldn't say that he's ugly, but he is far from handsome. If you've been looking at my photo gallery, you've probably noticed that I appreciate a variety of styles and body types, but the women I feature are universally pretty (of face, and to my eye). My tastes are the same in men; what attracts me is a good-looking face. Everything else is icing. As a result, I felt no physical attraction to Mark.

I want to spend more time with him and maybe we'll end up as good friends. Or, perhaps I'll be able to get past this, and we'll be more. Mark is a good-hearted, funny, sincere, intelligent man, and there's no rush for us to get to the bedroom, so I can hope an attraction develops. I don't believe, however, that this is something that can be forced. Time will tell.

I’m feeling pissy today. You see, every now and then, I find myself surprised that easily offended people still read this blog. I’m an insensitive bitch and they’d be better off skipping past J1B. I don’t mean this post as a personal attack against the person who wrote to me yesterday, but I did want to address this absurdity publicly, as I’ve seen similar comments in the past. So, to the person who wrote: thank you for your well-intentioned criticism.

Now…

Allow me to assure everyone that this blog’s traffic numbers are significantly lower than the circulation of the New York Times, the New York Post, the New Yorker, and even the Riverdale Review. Also, as much as it would flatter my ego to believe otherwise, I am slightly less influential than that crazy guy on the corner shouting that Armageddon is coming next Tuesday. And, while my credentials should not be an issue in this matter, when I write about the boroughs of New York City, I do not need to refer to media accounts in place of personal experience.

Before I go further, let’s try a test. If I say, “I picked a purple flower,” does that suggest that all flowers are purple? Does it suggest that all purple things are flowers? Don’t make me pull out my Plato, folks; this is a matter of basic semantics. Of course that statement has neither meaning.

So then, why did some people insist that by “liberal media” I was asserting that all media outlets are liberal? Or, for the example that initiated this post, when I compared a badly-dressed woman to a “hooker lurking near a Bronx underpass”, that I was promoting the idea that all of Bronx County is infested with tacky whores? I am quite aware of what a generalization is, and in neither case did I make one.

I understand that it is human nature to take things such as one’s politics, race, religion, ancestry, and place of birth very personally. “Are we rockin’ hard tonight, Mississauga?!” has more emotional impact than “Are we rockin’ hard tonight, you guys?!” (And to the fine people of Mississauga: I mean neither to imply that you rock hard nor do not rock hard, as the case may be.) That said, perhaps before putting one’s finger to the trigger or clicking the Send button, it would be worth a second look to see if the perceived slight was real or imagined.

I never claimed to be politically correct, fair, or balanced. Even self-professed fans of mine get pissed off at some of the things I write, as they should. I don’t agree with me every day, for heaven’s sake. Saving your bile for times that I deserve it will only be a tiny step toward making the world a happier place, but I’d still appreciate it.

And, in considering the medium – this sexually frank blog – one might reasonably conclude that for some J1B readers, the rumored existence of hookers in the Bronx could be a selling point. I can see the specialized tour brochures now! Hollywood’s star maps will pale in comparison. Tourism will boom. Businesses will spring up. Real estate prices will go through the roof.

So, in conclusion, the Bronx has no tacky whores. I must have been thinking of Bird-in-Hand.

When did it become acceptable to come to the office dressed like a drug-craving hooker lurking near a Bronx underpass? Apparently I missed a memo.

Yesterday I walked to the parking lot behind a slim girl in her early twenties with earrings like dessert plates, rhinestone-tipped talons, stiletto mules, and a skin-tight halter that left enough of a gap above her low-riding stretch jeans to reveal most of the tattoo on her lower back. This morning, a skinny blonde skulked outside sucking on a cigarette, teetering on high-heeled sandals, wearing a baby tee and a miniskirt about the size of my business card.

Not to sound like a prude (too late!), but when the hell did that become acceptable attire inside a corporate office? We've always been proud of our lack of dress code here -- you'll see VPs and ass-kissers in ties, engineers in shorts, and most people in preppy or creative casual -- but this recent crop of hires has been the first for whom "skanky ho" would be a compliment. Mind you, they're pretty women and their clothing would be fine in a club, but in a company where women have a hard enough time being taken seriously, it's disheartening to see them dressed like that. I find myself thinking, "I'd fuck her, but I hope I don't have to count on her for anything," and I'm a woman, for heaven's sake!

/rant. Join me tomorrow for "Is that noise what you call music nowadays?" followed by "Why doesn't anyone enjoy a nice quilting bee anymore?".

You know those mornings where you begin to toss and turn hours before the alarm goes off, finally reaching the point of no sleep long before you'd like, but then you're as coherent as a zombie when you get out of bed? This is one of those days. I can't sleep, but I can't keep my eyes open, either.

Oh fuck it. I'm crawling back into bed with a book for an hour or two.