Meanwhile I trembled with glee because I knew I’d stumbled on the perfect marketing tool. I lost myself in the writing and design of a project worthy of my talents. In the end I flattered myself that the four shots I selected for this new, totally fictitious but seemingly authentic profile were of a sufficiently high standard that the photographer who took them could be considered at least semiprofessional.

  Username

  Beautifullylit

  Age

  23

  Body type

  Thin/petite (I get most of my clothes from the children’s ­section at Old Navy.)

  Languages

  French/English/Italian

  Occupation

  Photographer/Assistant/Model/Writer

  Last great book I read

  Diary of an Oxygen Thief by Anonymous. It’s a little scary but brilliant too. I highly recommend it.

  Superpower you would most like to possess

  To read minds

  Most humbling moment

  I’ll tell you later . . . it involves farm machinery.

  Celebrity I most resemble

  After being told I look like Jane Birkin so many times I looked her up, and it turns out we have the same measurements, so maybe there’s something to it!

  More about me

  Okay, the farm machinery thing. I realize it might be misleading, so I want to make it clear. I wasn’t disfigured in any way . . . my summer dress was sucked right off me by a potato grader . . . not as humbling in France as it would have been here (the workers hardly even noticed), but embarrassing all the same.

  Favorite onscreen sex scene

  The best sex takes place on the cutting-room floor.

  No messages. A twenty-three-year-old purportedly French photographer/writer with a gorgeous ass didn’t get even one reply? Maybe it was because her face was hidden. Maybe they thought she was disfigured. Even after adding the disclaimer about the farm machinery, she was still getting no responses.

  If, as I told Marian, I had been on datemedotcom only to sell books, I was now feeling the pressure to prove it. I had told her I was trying something out, and reporting back to her with a result of zero messages and therefore zero sales seemed somehow to indicate that I had been lying about my earlier claims.

  Hotlisting was a way of indicating interest without actually sending a message. If you were hotlisted, a little flame graphic appeared on your profile with the name of the person who thought you were hot. As in the real world, men were expected to make the first move, but hotlisting was an acceptable method for a lady to indicate interest.

  I hotlisted every male I could find in the New York area. Old, young, handsome, ugly—every guy I could find, and even some girls who indicated interest in women.

  It was one sure way to make sure they got an eyeful of Francoise’s ass when they clicked on the profile to see who had hotlisted them. Everyone was eligible, from the hipsters with clever headlines (this is your caption speaking) to the old men who barely bothered to fill out the questions because they knew they’d never get a response anyway (just looking). By the time I was finished, they were all aflame.

  But when I logged on, there were still no messages.

  Really?

  If I had been hotlisted by a beautiful girl with the body of a supermodel in varying degrees of undress, I’d feel duty-bound to at least reply in case there was an outside chance of my fucking her. It didn’t make sense. I studied the profiles more carefully.

  Maybe I hadn’t been attentive enough. I’d send each individual a specific message relating to the rubbish mentioned in their profile. To make each message personal would mean a lot more work, though the extra burden was negligible if my efforts translated to sales. I began tailoring emails to specific profiles: If you liked Trainspotting, you’ll love Diary of an Oxygen Thief. I was about to send this message to a mousy-looking guy who most certainly didn’t look like he was accustomed to being approached by beautiful girls when I noticed that under the option Send him an email there was a little subheading that read He sent you an email 3 days ago. This was maddening, of course, because when I clicked on Beautifullylit’s inbox, it showed 0 messages. Maybe he had included his phone number and contact details and had therefore been disqualified. The site didn’t like people exchanging such information because, naturally, this would put them out of business. Or maybe it just took a few days for messages to show up.

  Then I noticed that below the inbox there was a little section entitled Preferences. I clicked on it, and there, slithering over one another like newly netted fish, were hundreds upon hundreds of glistening messages.

  Seven hundred sixty-three, to be exact. I now saw that the default setting in the Preferences section was calibrated to allow only ideal matches through to the inbox. I was looking for responses from anyone from any area as long as they were capable of buying a book. I hadn’t filled out the Preferences section because I had no preferences. It was the digital equivalent of striking oil.

  There were so many messages that I couldn’t quite grasp the significance of what was happening. My glee peaked and dissolved into fear. Would I be the perpetrator of my own undoing? Would this be how I lost her? I’d be instrumental in her meeting some very pretty, very rich, very tall guy from datemedotcom. But it was flattering that all these men wanted my girlfriend. Her popularity was making me more possessive of her. And I was struck by how polite their advances were. I felt like I was being given an insight into what it was like to be a beautiful girl in a world of salivating men. It was hugely flattering and terribly frightening at the same time. I suddenly saw Marian’s position. Why she sometimes tried to make herself uglier. It was degrading to be admired purely because of the physical shape of your face, body, hips, and tits. But such considerations quickly evaporated when I thought of both her perfect ass and all the books I could sell. Twisted, yes. But it’s the truth.

  I was now living in New York without a job. My severance wasn’t going to last forever. I would need to make money somehow, and it wasn’t as if I was leveraging this profile and her body without her knowledge. It had been her idea. If I had been in love with her before, now I was in awe.

  And I was getting a glimpse of what life was like for her and for women in general. Having so many men, from such diverse backgrounds—uncouth, urbane, entrepreneurial, blue collar, white collar—standing patiently in line to get to her put her beauty into concrete perspective. I decided not to tell her exactly how many messages she had received. I couldn’t risk the possibility that she might put a stop to it. Not yet. Even seventy was a potentially scary number of men to have peering into your existence.

  I told her seventeen people responded.

  This was flattering without being overwhelming—though nothing, of course, compared to the reality of ­Francoise’s inbox. Would she be curious to see if there was someone she liked?

  I know I would. But then the profile represented a twenty-three-year-old French photographer/writer, not a thirty-six-year-old would-be sculptor from Poland Springs. Mind you, most guys probably wouldn’t give a shit once they actually met her, but it would definitely be a hurdle. And the more hurdles I could arrange around her, the more fenced in she’d be, and the safer I’d feel.

  The book was already mentioned under Last great book I read, but nobody was going to actually buy it just because it was mentioned. They needed some incentive. They’d buy a book only if they thought there was a chance of getting laid. I tried to remember what had piqued my interest. It was the fleeting presence that fascinated me most. The hot and cold ambiguity of the replies. The girls who would arrange to meet and then cancel on the day—I’m sooo sorry—and then take the sting out of it by adding the word baby. The way they’d casually announce a willingness to fuck, but only on the condition that I didn’t fall in love. Could I pull this off? I strove to emulate just such a delicate balance with my first customer, whose headline announced a fondness for the work of the French writer Balzac. I have a friend who refers to him as Ballsack. If you like his writing, you might like Diary of an Oxygen Thief.

  Ballsack? Was I out of my fucking mind? A French girl would never say that. I fretted over my technique. Surely I had been too obvious. I had read that when Stanley Kubrick created a new character, he would invent childhood memories for them: the school they attended, their first kiss, where they holidayed, their parents’ relationship, a knee injury. Maybe I should have waited until at least the third email before blurting out the title of the book. hahahaha ballsack??? that’s hilarious . . . I haven’t heard of that book but it sounds interesting . . . I’ll check it out.

  He was thrilled to receive any sort of reply from a beautiful twenty-three-year-old French girl. It was becoming clear that another foolproof method for creating convincingly lifelike characters was to ensure they had a world-class ass. A great ass could bend reality. After a few more attempts I settled on an approach that presented the book as a personality test, the reward for which would be access to Francoise. have you read Diary of an Oxygen Thief? I find I can tell a lot about a guy from his reaction to it. Are you game?

  One guy asked me to elaborate on the farm machinery thing: you were in france? is that your home? j’adore la france. The fact that he had ignored the salacious image I had inserted in his head just confirmed how dishonest these exchanges were. Any normal guy would be forgiven for at least referring to the idea of a semi-naked girl in a field full of French workers. The omission was so conspicuous that it was like complimenting a stripper on her nail varnish. I’ll pick up a copy of oxygen thief on my way home.

  My toes were awiggle.

  The older guys were so thrilled they didn’t care if it was real or not. You’re young enough to be my daughter, but I’m okay with that.

  If a beautiful, sexy girl recommended a book because it was a good barometer of character, I’d assume she was just protecting her interests. Online dating was a treacherous, conniving world where men would do anything to get into the pants of a girl like this. Francoise was merely filtering out the bad ones, the bad eggs—at least, that’s how I hoped it appeared. It was a simple test to see if they were worth meeting. One thing was sure; they would never suspect she was a guy posing as a fictional character suggesting they read a true story purporting to be a novel.

  I was getting a glimpse of what it was like to be intelligent and female in a world of drooling men. Guys who had ticked financial or medical to indicate their profession felt comfortable offering tips on how to improve my photography. Why did they assume they knew better than a student of photography? Because they were men, and I was just some little bitch. That’s why. One idiot suggested I boost the levels, as if the shot was mistakenly shadowy. Then another guy pretended he’d read the book when it was obvious he’d only read an online review. When he offered to pose for me, I asked him to send some pictures, and he sent three pictures of himself naked, with a huge, frightening pole of flesh sticking out of his midsection. what do you need me for? you could fuck yourself with that, I demurred before blocking him. It was fun being female and beautiful. To actually be the object of desire. A living, breathing potential possession. But in reality, the possession, by sheer force of its magnetism, was the real owner.

  One young guy volunteered to fly me to Mexico to see the Mayan villages while we got high on shrooms. Another guy, older but well maintained, offered a private box at the opera and dinner at Le Cirque; yet another, a businessman with not a suit in sight, wanted to know my preference in hotels and my shoe size, so he could lay out some options for when I arrived. Young couples invited me for drinks no strings attached. Out-of-town husbands were careful to mention their expense accounts. Filmmakers gave me two thumbs up. Architects asked me about my plans. Journalists promised to report back. Chefs said I sizzled.

  Applicants all.

  It was tempting to fuck with them.

  Oh, how I could have fucked with them. I wasn’t even sure how much of this was legal. I didn’t want to get into any real trouble. Mischief was one thing, but crime was another. It was as if I’d broken through into some forbidden, never-before-seen realm like a pharaoh’s tomb. I felt a strange sense of responsibility. Mustn’t knock anything over. Just take what you need. No more. Somehow I reasoned that if I just confined myself to selling books, I wouldn’t be accused of desecration and would therefore be spared the wrath of the curse. It would be regarded as artistic experimentation. A happening. As soon as they acquired the book, I was finished with them.

  On the other end of the scale, there were the less confident respondents. These were guys who knew they didn’t have a chance but felt they better send something because hey, you never know, she might have a thing for short, fat, bald, older guys. I had the power to lift these unsunned, gnarly gnomes aloft.

  To absolve them.

  And, grateful to find themselves within spurting distance of my mighty vagina, they wobbled away to buy my book. But it couldn’t last. I would have to tell Marian before it went too far, and when that happened, I knew she’d want me to stop, which I really didn’t want to do. What I wanted to do was select each state and systematically hotlist every guy I could find and recommend the book ceaselessly until I’d exhausted every city and backwoods town this wonderful country had to offer. After all, Barnes & Noble had stores in every major city in the United States, and I had access to datemedotcom’s members in all of them.

  I didn’t overtly need to say Francoise was French in her profile; I merely included French in her Languages spoken section. And because she was female, there was no need to send out initial messages, since the men were expected to make the first move. Each email was subtle and polite on the surface, but trace it back to its source, and there was a stiffening dick. It was fascinating to watch these guys wrestle with the same subject I myself had spent so many hours trying to perfect. They approached gently, as if nearing a skittish lamb, and even though my headline was fairly bold—Likes literature, cinema, and sex . . . maybe even all at the same time—very few made any actual reference to it. In my thigh-high stockings, showing my ass to total strangers, I was hardly demure, but these mealymouthed modern males had been so consistently conditioned to conceal their true desires under courteous cloaks they made a girl feel dirty standing there in her underwear. In response to my beautiful, jaw-dropping ass, all they could say was I find you intriguing? No mention of what they’d like to do to me? The lines between fantasy and reality started to blur. A soon as I logged on to datemedotcom, I became Francoise, and she became me. After one guy went on and on about some excruciating pseudo-intellectual treatise on photography, he broke down and got to the point: by the way, do you like to be tied up?

  By the way? Surely this was what he wanted to know in the first place. I responded: No, not really. Do you like to be gagged? Because you sure talk a lot before getting to the point. Delete. Block.

  The guy behind the counter at St. Mark’s Bookshop was pleasantly suspicious.

  “I know you’re doing something, I just don’t know what.”

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” I said innocently.

  “Well, whatever it is, we’re burning through the copies.”

  If he inquired where these eager customers heard about this little literary oddity, they were not going to say “A hot French girl with a gorgeous ass from an online dating site wanted me to read it as a prerequisite to fucking her.”

  No.

  They were going to say a friend recommended it. This would translate to the booksellers as that most coveted of sales phenomena. Word of Mouth.

  It was becoming obvious that men would do or say anything to get into the pants of a twenty-three-year-old French girl, and it didn’t stop at age fifty or even sixty. There were no exceptions, only variations. One guy, a Brit, tried to play on my insecurity when he accused me of oozing entitlement. He had correctly guessed that among the fawning emails such an approach would stand out. It was interesting that a Brit should be the one to take this approach; his first contact with the object of his desire was an attempt to instill in her a feeling of inferiority.

  I had become that most dangerous of propositions: a beautiful girl with the mind of a man. Actress and agent in one. Pimp and ho. And as such, I conformed effortlessly to men’s stereotype of women: All women are basically sluts who barter their bodies to get what they want.

  No wonder I met with such universal approval. One guy sent email after email after email. What did he think? That I hadn’t received the others? That he’d catch me at a weak moment and I’d let him fuck me? Far from being flattering, so many uninvited emails were just pathetic. The book is about an older guy who becomes obsessed with a young photographer’s assistant (you might pick up some tips). Okay, I’ll get it today. I need some new fiction. He was already taking part in some. Another guy wrote three weeks after he’d bought the book. I’m still interested in getting to know you. What do I have to do? He was a sad-looking little guy. Bald, of course. Probably wanking off over pictures of my lovely girlfriend’s ass. Of course he wanted to fuck her. So did I. He’d have to get in line. One guy was on the right track with Call me paranoid, but are you the author? I thought he was onto me until he began to unspool a vertiginous scenario in which he suggested Francoise was the French girlfriend mentioned at the end of the book and that she had written it anonymously, pretending to be the oxygen thief. so you think I wrote the book? I wish Two days later he sent Francoise a glowing review. I think he enjoyed it all the more for having been introduced to it in such an unusual way.

 

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