I am not nice; I am not nice at all. I despise fools, I reject sentimentality, and I am ruthless in the pursuit of any interests that I have made my own. That scowling asshole viewing you with disdain from across the bar? Me. The guy on the tube pointedly ignoring all your prettiness so he can read his inscrutable, fuck-you book? Me too. That man who looks up in hope when something gut clenching and bad kicks off, because he needs the thrill? Me and all.

What I am, however, is dynamic, intelligent, and utterly compelling. If you equipped the Bodleian library with a switchblade and sent out dealing crack, you might get an approximation to me. I look good, too: physically fit, masculine physique––all that shit. If it matters, I'm exceptionally professionally accomplished, but I'm thinking neither of us are going to want to murder an evening talking about our work journeys.

You, I am hoping, are intelligent, cynical, and probably beautiful. You are not understood especially well by the people around you, and are extremely tired of hopelessly nice men trying to impress you with their earnest asseverations. You're not a bitch; all those young men a perfectly good as friends––but there are only so many tears-after-sex neuroses and abortive erections you can put up with before you become frustrated. And that's why you're reading this. You need someone bigger and cleverer and more powerful than you, and that's me. (We'll let you win on the aesthetics and elegance front.)

So if your summer hasn't delivered much of anything––and whose has, this year?––message me. We'll mug what's left of it and steal its wallet. We'll eat like soldiers, we'll drink like fish, we'll fuck with the lyricism of poets. The sky is the floor, not the limit. All you have to do is reach out and grab the opportunity.

So grab it.