Hurts My Ears to Listen Shannon, Burns My Eyes to See

Did I mention I had a Grateful Dead phase in college?  One of my favorite GD songs is Jack Straw from Wichita with the above lyrics.  I believe it is written in the first person as an outlaw on the run is telling his tale in his mind to his lady who must be far away.  I don’t know if I would tell this tale to my lady far away.

So where do I go from here?  We are nearing the mid-point of summer and I am a little shaken from this first intimate Ashley Madison experience.  During the month that you could say I was “seeing” Alecia I had hidden my AM profile.  So I start thinking, what would Riff do?  I’m sure he would pick himself up, dust himself off, and start all over again.  While perusing his blog I see him mention this gal named Claire.  Uh oh…. would I/could I really go there.  Hmm… I could just chalk it up to an experiment as Riff does; if it’s for science then its OK?  Right!

So in this down time for me I go a little off the reservation and create Shannon’nNOVA71 just to get the female perspective, I mean this is for science.  I sort of use my wife as a guidepost.  So Shannon is 5’6,” weights 125#, is 39, limits undecided, lives in NOVA (unspecific), is an attached female looking for males, and her caption is “Life should be Exceptional.”  Her perfect matches are professional/well groomed, stylish/classy, sense of humor, imagination, creative/adventurous, confident, a good listener, casual/social drinker; with interests checked as travel, fine dining, music, dancing, theatre, wine tasting, and I am a social drinker.  Unfortunately I can’t check off her real interests like “La Mer,” “Sephora,” “Banana Republic,” “Caribbean Vacations,” “anything expensive” – oh wait this isn’t supposed to be real and I said I wouldn’t say anything ill of my Shannon.  OK, I write a few notes about traveling a lot, having a busy life, in sales/marketing, loving a good glass of Riesling, etc.  And I do go a step further than Riff Dog, I include a picture.  Shannon looks a bit like Kate Winslet so I crop this picture (of Kate, not Shannon).  Probably going too far, but I have to or the experiment won’t be complete you know.

So any ladies out there, tell me what do you think I get?

Well as much as I hate to admit it, Shannon got a bit more attention than I have ever received!  Here are the gory stats:

After 3 Days:             200+ notes; countless winks (hey, I just delete those as well)

Of the 200 notes:        75% are requests for keys, access to keys, additions to “my favorites,” and other highly deletable trash

Of Remaining 25%:     mostly quick notes such as “like your profile, please check mine, if interested send me a note at idiot@yahoo.com”

You know the funny thing is that while I was doing this I started to project myself as Shannon and started to think who she would find attractive and if any of these guys were good enough for her.  I wonder if I am in need of some therapy?  Of the 300+ notes by the end of the experiment I would say there were only 5 that, from this male perspective, a normal woman would find interesting.  These were guys who from their public profile were good looking (I didn’t open private photos – didn’t want to see anything revealing) and sounded interesting.  These few took the time to react to interests in Shannon’s profile and made a connection between their interests and her’s.  These few were also the only one’s that set a “vision” of what they might be like, for example what type of restaurant they would like to go to or where they had traveled.  They also had interesting careers or hobbies.  For instance one was a teacher but additionally was a music producer; one a lawyer; one an avid skier.  Of course, that is making the big assumption that they were telling the truth J

But the most funny thing was that one of those 5 had obviously been reading “Ashley and Me” because his note was a complete bullet pointed Riff Dog rip off!  Oh wait, maybe I shouldn’t kid because many of my notes have been complete Riff Dog rip offs – ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black.

The disturbing thing was that one guy from North Carolina (apparently travels to DC for business) would not leave me/Shannon alone.  See, he was from Shannon’s hometown and I made the mistake of responding by saying how do you like it in *****ville?  His first note was fairly nice but his second note included the comment “Damn you’re hot!  Please let me know when we can meet!”  Now even I know begging is never a turn on.

So what did I learn?

·           Yes, all of us guys are jerks.

·           I don’t know why women are interested in us.

·           If I was a woman, I would definitely consider the lesbian option.

·           Wow, if getting this much attention is this exhaustive for just 1 week what must it be like for an attractive woman 364 days a year?

·          Against this competition, I’m not so bad; so let’s hang this up and get back in the ball game!  According to my arithmetic I am more interesting than 98.7% of the Greater DC Ashley Madison male population J

I do learn that having a public picture is really important if you are going to separate yourself.  Like applying for a job you only have a brief few seconds to make a good first impression and that public profile picture is the first thing a women is going to see when she is going to decide if you are any more interesting than the other 300+ options she has on AM.  Yes guys, there are other guys who still have hair, have good abs, and make a lot of money so you need some separation, something that makes you distinct!  So I do add a public picture of myself shoveling snow and looking fairly outdoorsy, but not too close to be obvious.  Hint – a women will get over 100 bare abs pics so show yourself doing something classy or interesting like hiking or skiing or looking out over Paris from the Eiffel Tower, etc.  But don't post anything too obvious you need to preserve "plausible deny ability" - that's be able to lie in Washington-speak, yes I live near DC!  Of course I’m not classy so all I had was shoveling snow J

Overall, it was interesting to have a quick peek into the world women see.

I think there is a scene in the Jerk where Steve Martin thinks he’s invisible and says “think of the great things I can do for society” and then in the next frame you see women running screaming out of a bathroom after he goes in to take a peek.  Yeah, I might have said it was for science but I am not sure if I used it for good L Oh well, at the end of the day I am just a guy!