Travis LaFrance

Propositions

As usual, the mailbag overfloweth with the dreamy, occasionally racy, inquiries from the fair sex. To wit, Miss MC writes:

Feel free to continue pursuit of my heart through these (or any other) means.  And by feel free I mean please don't stop.

Miss L responds breathlessly to my robust characterization of my own aesthetic style:

You can paint me with broad brush strokes any time.

And Ms. MG recounts a scene more and more common in the American household:

Tonight, my husband and I arranged our new bookshelves.  Usually, we put poetry in with fiction. We did that first, and then decided to pull the poetry. When we came to Toro and Fun With Falconry, I pointed and said, "Pure poetry. Pull them both."

But this one caught my attention as it came not from a lady. A certain Mr. Hourbutt writes:

I, myself am afflicted by the same need for wind in my hair, danger in front and a willing companion to the rear. My dear man, my question to you is; are you bound to this earthly plane by the restraints of cultural mores? Or fellow are you free to follow your heart into the dark recesses of absolute pleasure?

Mr. Hourbutt, I am flattered by your proposition. My appeal has never been bound by gender, creed, or nation. However, it is with sincere regret that I bestow my carnal gifts only to heroines, and never to heroes. Far from being restrained by puritanical mores or shying--God knows--from ecstasy, my life's second-most crucial work (the first being, of course, the repair and perpetuation of the Western Canon) is the pleasure of womankind. Simply put, my hands are full. I must stay on task.

Unmasked!

Generally my agent, lawyer, and publicity squad forbid publication of my photo without the proper and frankly exorbitant payment of fees. However in this case I made an exception, as I thought having my photo in the New York Times Magazine's feature on political bloggers would increase the readership for both the blogs and the magazine. Above all I am generous.

My one condition, however, was that the article could, under no circumstances, mention my name. I know, I know. You're asking how an article on political blogs could make it to print without lengthy discussion of my own contributions to the genre--as I am one of the most renowned, influential, and certainly poetic of them all. Well, when one reaches celebrity of my caliber, one learns to value his privacy above all. Despite universal name-recognition and a prose cadence as immediately recognizable as, say, the the paint drippings of Jackson Pollack or the Arkansas baritone of Johnny Cash, my face is relatively--even miraculously--unknown.

But I thought it would be fun to reveal to my faithful readers here that I am, indeed, pictured above. Be the first one to guess which is Travis LaFrance and you'll win a complimentary subscription to my mailing list. Not everyone at once!

Iraq Comes Home

At the onset of my long career as an international adventurer, I cut my teeth as an instructor for the Outward Bound school in Utah, leading expeditions through the rivers, canyons, and mountains of that rugged state. Far from a summer camp for preps, Outward Bound is a deadly serious enterprise. Founded by a German Jew who fled Germany after speaking out against Hitler in the 1930's, Outward Bound's mission is to impel young people into the hardship from which moral decisions are made. We teach citizenship—how to discern what is right from what is merely expedient.

Often tossed about in OB lore is an idea from William James that our charges should undergo "the moral equivalent of war." James had recognized that veterans returned home with an exceptional loyalty for one another—and an exceptional resolve to fight for what is right. And so it was with us—the fellows with whom I tramped across the perilous wilderness. While I won't equate the dangers of avalanche and rockfall with that of enemy fire, I reserve for those with whom I traveled the highest degree of trust, respect, and admiration.

This email arrived from an Outward Bound manager:

It is with great sadness that I write to share with you the loss of a member of the Outward Bound family. Alex Wetherbee died earlier this week in the line of duty while serving with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq. Alex worked as an Instructor in the Colorado Program from 2001-2002. He had intended to return to Outward Bound West after completing his military duties.

Alex embodied the concept of service at the highest level, and his decision to serve with the Marine Corps reminds us of Outward Bound’s founding spirit. As one of Alex’s New Instructor trainers, I remember his passion for mountaineering, his earnest commitment to Outward Bound’s mission, and his eagerness to return here. We will remember him and miss him dearly.

First Lt. Wetherbee was 27, and he is survived by his wife, also an Outward Bound instructor. A service for Alex will be held today at Arlington. I never knew Alex, but he is my brother. Honor him.

I Dream of Travis

It's no news to report that my aura has infiltrated the collective unconscious of a sizable portion of the world's female population. As if to punctuate the point, this piece of verse from a certain Miss K arrived over instant message--formed into line by the technology that delivers it.

i had a terrible dream about you the other night!
i'm sorry to say that it had a fatal ending
and the very curious part
is that it happened
when you accidentally stabbed yourself
while cutting diamonds
in my dream, i referred to the instrument
as a "diamond pick"

it was really terrible

one of my first reactions
was, oh no
no more emails
from travis lafrance

the whole thing was very vivid
you were in a little storefront
in the east village
sort of a vintage-y
bric-a-brac kind of store
and i think you had tied up your dog outside
and you were bent over the case
working on cutting these diamonds
just sort of for a lark i guess
and the knife slipped
straight into your chest
sorry.

I informed the poetess that there was no reason to apologize--that I couldn't help but to be flattered--and that just weeks ago I had characterized my prose style, aptly, as "fine as a diamond-tipped chisel, stronger than a sledgehammer", and she added as a footnote:

oh god maybe that was it
penetrated my dreams
as it were

I'm certain that it was only, as the French say, a little death.

W Stands for Wimp

Someone needs to sack the pantywaists who are telling John Kerry what to say these days. They had a chance for a homerun and bunted instead. By saying that our chickenshit president's middle initial stands for "wrong," they've taken another step toward emasculating our candidate as a Dukakis-style waterboy wringing his palms on the sidelines and mumbling toward the quarterback and the linemen, "Um, excuse me, fellows, what you're doing out there is, well, um, wrong."

The last thing liberals need to prove to the American people is that they're right all the time. There are plenty of college professors and think tank fellows to do that work—John Kerry's job is to be the strongest, bravest, and, if pressed, the most ass-kickinest commander this side of George S. Patton.

Our candidate is a goddamn war hero! This is a guy who chased Charlie into the bush in Nam and gunned him down in the heat of battle. He doesn't need to be correcting Georgie—he needs to be kicking sand in the little twerp's face.

John Kerry is a man's man—W is a wimp. Here's the evidence:

http://WstandsforWimp.com/

• Georgie was too chickenshit to go to Vietnam and fight the war he supported. He got Daddy to pull strings that would keep his Ivy League ass out of the jungle—and into Harvard Business School.

• Not man enough to win the election on his own, he turned to Daddy's cronies to pull some strings and give him the presidency.

• On 9/11 Georgie went crying like a baby to Nebraska while Uncle Dick took the helm of the country. Later Uncle Carl made up some wussy story about how the terrorists were going to fly a jet into Air Force One.

• Too incompetent to win the war on terror, Georgie let Osama get away at Tora Bora, invaded some other country, then dressed up like the soldier he never was and went on TV to say he'd won. These days he's afraid to even utter the words "Osama Bin Laden."

That's right: the W doesn't stand for wrong—it stands for wimp.

I Get Wonked, I Get Mail

Thanks to a nod from the gracious Wonkette, traffic over here at TLF.com skyrocketed this week. Wonkette's summary of my visit with the lap dancers for democracy seemed to miss the evening's nuances that I'd so fastidiously recorded: for instance, there are no sluts in my world, darling, just those who have transcended the confines of weak-willed propriety to taste the life of the flesh--and those who hope they someday will. But that's okay because traffic is traffic--and besides, we all know that Wonkette didn't get her job because was good at reading.

But with onslaught of adoration comes the responsibility of the mailbag. First in the heap is this gem from a certain Miss S.:

Have I told you lately that you’re fucking brilliant?

I replied:

No, but I'd love it if you did.

And then she wrote:

You're brilliant.

Now there's something we can all agree upon. A certain Mademoiselle Mingoclare writes:

Travis, your blog is divine for sure. My only question is why we are not pen-pals.

We are now--but let's dispense with the term blog and call it what it is: literature. An astute resident of the peanut gallery calling himself Rebob remarks on my characterization of my adopted Brooklyn as "the Hudson's rive-gauche:"

Uh, Brooklyn'd be on the East River...

Consulting a map, I find some geographic evidence to support this generally pigheaded assertion. But let's remember: I am an artist painting in broad strokes. And just as Picasso sometimes had to put both eyes on the same side of the head, sometimes LaFrance, in elevating the line to its fully-realized rhetorical flourish, simply must set Brooklyn on the Hudson.

If you'd like to be my pen pal, and join the most talked about mailing list in the blogosphere, write me: TravisLaFrance AT TravisLaFrance DOT com.

Back at the Explorer's Club

It's rare that Travis meets his match—a woman who rivals my aristocratic grace, literary marksmanship, and two-fisted bohemian flair—yet whose knees resist buckling when I enter the room. But the breed exists, and last night one of its specimens came whirling into Manhattan and left me, frankly, windblown.

The woman in question is my Editrix Sophisticate, and the occasion was a book release party for one of her lesser authors (aren't they all?). She demanded that I escort her to the A-list event. She'd flown in from out west, because, like me, she trades in a literature too robust and grit-laden to hold but a temporary office in this claustrophobic city.

I met her at sunset in a Greenwich Village roof-top garden, clad stylishly in denim and lace, and with the champagne still bubbling she'd hauled me to the street and hailed a cab.

"To the Explorer's Club!" she cried, as the cabbie hit the gas, and then purring in her trademark Tennessee lilt added: "You do know where the Explorer's Club is, don’t you?"

The driver muttered something in his native tongue, to which ES replied in some sort of pidgin. The man erupted in smile, and before long we were there, at the stately townhouse on 70th Street.

"Put away your wallet, Travis," she scolded, flinging a pile of cash into the front seat. "The magazine is buying tonight."

That's how it always is with the Editrix Sophisticate: she orders taxi-cabs from one penthouse to the next; she calls for the best Pinot Grigio on the list and when it arrives declares it "too sweet," sends it back, then with a bawdy toss of her head demands a cigarette and crisp bottle of Belgian beer.

The party was for Aron Ralston, the unfortunate lad who'd got himself pinned in a Utah slot canyon for six days before sawing off his arm with a pocket knife and rappelling to safety with a hand-fashioned tourniquet strapped to the bleeding stump. The fellow has clearly taken a lesson from the LaFrance school of swashbuckling prose, as evidenced by this stoic gem from Between a Rock and a Hard Place, his freshly inked account of his ordeal:

In that moment, I promise myself I will yell for help only once a day.

And what better place for a reception than my old haunt, the Explorer's Club. I feel quite at home among the membership, having shared with the fellows many a rodent and reptile for makeshift dinner out in the Serengeti—the sort of crude bar-be-cue that forges friendships for life. It is perhaps silly to mention that due to our casual chumminess, the board has never formally extended my invitation to join.

And it was a fine venue for this tale of survival, there beneath the glare of the giant stuffed polar bear, in the shadow of antique toboggans that had traversed the Antarctic, and bedecked by Explorer's Club flags that had been hoisted atop every vessel worth its salt from Kon-Tiki to Apollo 15. Don't mistake this place for an institute of armchair neophytes: as the plaque out front portends:

First to the South Pole
First to the North Pole
First to the Summit of Mt. Everest
First to the Surface of the Moon

Ralston had cleaned up real good—dapper in a new three-button suit with a magnificent shining metal hook protruding from the cuff where his right hand once dwelt. He sported a pair of orange tinted riflery glasses—a nod to the another writer living in his adopted home town of Aspen, Colorado—Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

While I nibbled on coconut-crusted shrimp, roasted on a skewer and dipped in chutney, E.S. gave a brief, heartfelt introduction, and then Ralston took the stage. He said he'd done 21 interviews that day, and was set to embark on a 15 city reading tour that would land him in six different countries. He thanked the many who'd helped him, was applauded, and then got down to the evening's real business of autographing books for the bevy of sweet-smelling editorial assistants and junior publicists lining up by the dozen to shake the claw of this hunky auto-amputee who'd appeared shirtless this month on the cover of a national magazine.

Watching the young writer bask in his moment of glory, I couldn't help but to be reminded of my own lean years, bursting upon the scene with a debut which, although it didn't command the sort of crass media attention (nor was the Explorer's Club available for my own event), certainly made a lasting impression on the hearts of our nation's book-buying females.

Meanwhile E.S. was finding herself ringmaster to a veritable pony show of adoration, with the stags in blazers and khakis (permit me a quick change of metaphor here) drawn hopelessly into orbit around her magnetic field, earnestly discussing diplomacy and blue-chip stocks and praying inwardly for just the slightest flash of her ethereal radiance.

And unexpectedly I found myself humbled and inspired, both by the winning spirit of Aron Ralston and by the stunning class of my Editrix Sophisticate, and without a goodbye I crept downstairs to the street, ducked into the nearest subway stop and headed back to Brooklyn, where a good night's rest would deliver me early to sit at my station and channel the literature with which I've been burdened and blessed.

Lap Dance for Democracy, Part 2

Read Part One!

I stepped into the dance chamber and was surprised by what I found. Laps of both genders were arranged in folding chairs up against the wall, and the dancers were also co-ed, and fully-clothed.

"Here's your ticket," said a girl with nose ring, pressing something into my hand. It read Your lap is mine.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Go upstairs and find someone you like. Bring her down here and give her a lap dance."

Ain't that the problem with liberals? Who else could take good old-fashioned sexploitation and turn it into some sort of gender-neutral politically-correct you-dance-my-lap-I'll-dance-yours sort of hooey.

And besides, they just saw this whole undertaking as a chance to get hip-to-hip with Travis LaFrance—with yours truly footing the bill. Not so fast, League of Pissed-Off Voters. I'm already swamped with indiscreet propositions. And if I had to contribute seven dollars to left-leaning activists each time some liberated tigress wanted to see my pelvis up close—well, let's just say I'd be broke and the Republicans would be in trouble.

But then, maybe that's just the sort of fundraising scheme we need. Send all inquiries and proposals to travislafrance AT travislafrance DOT com.

Lap Dance for Democracy

After last week's infiltration of the Republican singles scene, I directed my attention leftward this weekend to the boys and girls fighting the power this election year. An email from someone named "lovecreature" arrived, inviting me to a Saturday night party called "Revolutionary Love in the Pleasure Dome," all proceeds of which benefit the League of Pissed-Off Voters, a group staffed by shapely mares and dedicated to trotting out the 18-35 year-old voters on election day. The invitation promised:

• lap dances from the hottie of your choice
  
• raffle with prizes from toys in babeland
  
• live show that will be OFF the HOOK!
  
• an all stevie-wonder set by DJ reborn 2:30am-4am
  
• strip tease contest

Needless to say this soiree wasn't held over in Manhattan with the suits and squares and Gap shoppers, but right here on the Hudson's rive-gauche: bohemian Brooklyn where the ghosts of Walt Whitman and Henry Miller smile down on our libertine lifestyle.

When a cocksman such as myself wants to get rubbed up against by an available female, he certainly doesn't have to pay for it. It is she who generally waves the dollar bills my way, and I who gently refuse them. But I headed up Fifth Avenue nonetheless, clad in the suede sneakers and hip-hugging Levis required to mesh with the younger generation. It was September 11, and I could see the the twin shafts of light beaming up from Ground Zero in the western sky.

Despite the group's name, no one here seemed pissed-off. Dancing was frenetic, break crews hit the floor, navels were exposed, cocktails were gulped. Those of us of Nordic lineage were in the distinct minority, but as a man who has traveled the world as an ambassador of good will, I felt right at home.The staff of the LOPOV took the stage—an ethnically diverse eight-some of babes with bared shoulders and low-rise waistlines –and they raffled off condom gift boxes, racy panties and sex toys.

I cornered one of these fair creatures on the dancefloor, her chest heaving and tattoo glistening with perspiration, and asked her what she thought of John Kerry.

"I'm mobilizing thousands to vote for the guy," she panted, "but if I had to endorse him I'd vomit."

I wandered downstairs to the bathroom and, by accident pushed open a door labeled "Private." A guy in a trucker's hat looked me over.

"Lap dance?" he said. Behind him was a curtain, and beneath it I saw woman's legs in high heels.

"No, I was just looking for the bathroom," I said. "But just to wonder, how much does it cost?"

"Seven bucks."

I took a mental inventory of the money in my pocket. It is an important election, I reminded myself, all funds are going to get out the vote. I reached for my wallet and stepped into the chamber.

Our democracy is in peril—and everybody has to do his part.

A Man of My Word

Several nitpicky readers have argued that the President said that "home ownership"--not "homo-ship"--is on the rise. Look: I leave the hairsplitting and the beancounting to the hairsplitters and beancounters. I paint in broad strokes, and I stand by my comments.

I'll be damned before I back down to my opponents who try to distort my words and question my journalistic integrity.

Homo-ship Is Up

Bush keeps saying in his syrupy drawl that homo-ship is at an all time high in America. Well, it's a good thing they're going to ban gay marriage! This thing could get out of control!

I Say Om to the Bush Agenda

It seems that no matter which way I turn I find myself one-on-one with some exotic doe, both of us breaking a sweat in unlikely positions.

Last night I was so deflated and defeated by Dick Cheney's sinister sneer and aw-shucks authoritarianism that I'll admit that for the first time of the campaign season I succumbed to the sin of despair. Gasping for air and freedom I stumbled out onto 42nd Street. I was unable to utter a word, and with my fiber of my humanity I began scribbling on a scratch pad and shoving notes at passersby. The political has gotten personal, I wrote on one, following it with, It'd be funny if he weren't our government.

This project constituted peculiar behavior even my Times Square standards, and as I result I netted only one phone number—though the holder of said digits was a creature so rare and ebullient that I'm tempted to count hers as three if not four. (That reminds me: gotta go to the pile of paper scraps and promote that one to the wallet.)

But back to the subject at hand. Today I was still a bit low—the chaos of the week catching up with me. Yesterday I was forced out of my apartment and my intended cottage fell through—leaving me stranded on a friend's sofa until further notice. I couldn't find that spiritual ease that elevates me to the higher plane where readers seek me. And who could blame me? For four years the president has pushed our God and our democracy out front like a pair of hostages, nudging them with his Tommy gun of purported patriotism, bellowing: "Down on the floor and nobody gets hurt. Make a move and Armageddon breaks out."

And for many of those years, those of us who answer to a higher calling than profit motive and brute stupidity have, by and large, lay there. But today I rose up.

I did what I often do in such moments of doubt—stuck out to a secure, undisclosed, mindful place. I picked up my yoga practice while on pilgrimage in Nepal, and honed it while incarcerated in Madagascar on bogus political charges. It guided me then and it guides me now. So I headed out to the studio, where my instructor, a Swiss-Turkish émigré with a voice like small bells tinkling in the wind.

As it turned out, I was the only pupil.

"Pity," I remarked. "I guess it's just the two of us."

And so we swept into an hour and a half of movement, the toxins poring from my forehead, and trembling there in Warrior Two, my mind lifted out of that Brooklyn studio and traveling to a freer place where our current slate of con men in government were locked up in irons.

"We are not humans in search of a spiritual experience," she counseled. "We are spirits enjoying a human experience while on this earth."

Those of you whose private schooling served a course of lighter-fare American Lit may be familiar with the dismal denouement of Salinger's Franny & Zooey, where a distraught Franny takes her best shot at communing with the oversoul by listening mutely to the buzzing of her telephone's busy signal. This was nothing like that. Instead we sang together, man and woman, American and Eurasian, harmonizing in God's holy vibration. Om, om, om.

I came floating back down to earth, and walked out onto the sidewalk, heading for midtown and the convention.

Welcome to New York, Mr. President. I'm ready for you now.

The Women Swoon, the Papers Report

Having forged life into literature with my tale of a visit to the ConservativeMatch.com singles mixer, (in Parts One Two, Three, and Four) I spent the morning sorting through the various book offers from publishing houses and daring propositions from unwed Republiquettes. As many of you know who breathlessly logged on overnight for the conclusion, the onslaught of traffic overwhelmed the system, and while I slept, the page went blank. But I'm back now.

A frequent sentiment in the mailbox is like this one from Miss L.W.:

"Travis, reading your adventures makes me feel something deep in my abdomen that I've never felt before. I can hardly explain it. You glow with the golden aura of a charmed being, and everyone in our department is glued to your site. That shrew Denise in Accounting thinks you exaggerate. "How do I know he doesn't just make the whole thing up?" she whines. We think she's frigid. Please confirm that your stories are true."

Indeed, as a quick glance into the mirror reveals, I am as vibrant in the flesh as I am on the page. Perhaps more so. If Denise in Accounting needs more evidence please refer her to these accounts of the night in question, as reported by The Hill and the Wall Street Journal (subscription required, but if you write me at travislafrance AT travislafrance DOT com, I'll send you a pirate copy.) Tempted as you might be to denigrate these pedestrian versions by a close comparison with my own, please remember not to confuse the purposes of journalism with those of literature: one exists to make the soul soar, the other to fill the white space between undergarment advertisements.

As for the pang in your belly, L.W.: that's womanhood. That's how it's supposed to feel.

Undercover with Republican Singles: The Final Chapter

Get caught up with Parts One and Two, and Three.

"Who are you going to vote for, anyway?" T---- asked me.

She'd called me out. And suddenly I had to choose. I had to choose between the penthouse floating above the avenues or the unwashed protestors down below yelling at cops. I had to join the club or sneak out the back door. Somehow I'd lost the upper hand with T----, somehow this had become a referendum on my own manhood. I had to regain my advantage.

"Um. Bush?" I said.

Just then T----- was tapped on the shoulder by a grey-headed man in a blazer and a tie. He said something in her ear and walked off.

"Well it was good to meet you," she said. "We're off to another party."

She shook my hand limply, and then was gone. I looked around. The rest of the Republiquettes were looking better now—beautiful even—holding court for the clean-cut men preaching about the free market.

I crept out the door and down the elevator to the sidewalk. The street was hot and sticky and smelled like garbage. I decided to head back to the Tank and see if the Democrat girls were still up drinking. Trudging along 42nd Street I'd forgotten I was dressed in my Republican costume until I encountered yet another late-night protestor, some derelict, waving his anti-Bush sign to anyone who'd look.

"Two more months, buddy," he sneered at me. "Two more months."

"Get a job," I snapped back, and marched on past.

Undercover with Republican Singles, Part Three

Start from the start with Part One and Part Two.

Inevitably I found myself seated window-side above the sparkling city with one of these Republiquettes, whispering in intimate tones. T---- confided that she'd been on a blind date, and that it hadn't turned out well, but that that was for the better. The guy was a jerk anyway. As the glow of the beer settled, conversation drifted to my literary accomplishments. When she'd not heard of my books, I asked what her interests were.

Dear reader, her response may raise doubts about my authorial credibility, but I assure you that I don't mean to build cariacatures—but simply to report the truth. T----- pondered my question, and then with good-hearted earnestness replied:

"The stockmarket. Ways of earning income without working."

I waited for the punchline. I considerd. T----- smiled sweetly. Then I explained patiently that the these could not be suitably classified as "interests" unless she would claim that she found reading the business section of the paper to be interesting, at which point she admitted that such reading was "boring."

"So what are you interests, anyway?"

"Continuous ecstasy. Fulfillment of all my desires. The usual."

"Oh."

"I'm a hedonist," I declared.

"You mean, like: Marquis de Sade?"

I let the slip pass, and instead popped the most important question: "Do you think you'd ever go out with a liberal?"

"Sure, why not?" she said. "As long as he wasn't some starving artist type."

"What do you know about starving artists?"

"This is New York—they're everywhere. They're here tonight picking their dinner off the snack platter."

"Well, what's wrong with that?"

"It's fine, unless you ever want to raise a family, or own a house, or retire."

"I can do that whenever I want."

"Living paycheck to paycheck? You must be kidding. Do you have any investments?"

"No."

"It's no wonder you can't get a girlfriend."

"I got more woman than I know what to do with. Let me tell you about the time I was sailing off the Azores—"

"Who are you going to vote for, anyway?"

She'd called me out. And suddenly I had to choose. I had to choose between the penthouse floating above the avenues or the unwashed protestors down below yelling at cops. I had to join the club or sneak out the back door. Somehow I'd lost the upper hand with T----, somehow this had become a referendum on my own manhood. I had to regain my advantage. . .

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion later tonight!

Undercover with Republican Singles, Part Two

Make sure to read Part One!

I got my first beer and the host led us up to the roof, warning us to tiptoe and whisper to not disturb the neighbors. And we arrived on the roof, where the party's numbers were doubled, and the Empire State Building rose up in glowing magnificence. We towered above most of midtown.

Snacks and singles may be less appetizing in real life than they appear in the promotional photo

I frankly found this a risky location for such an event, as one of these conservative maidens, now deep into her thirties and faced with a choice between spinstery and settling for good with one of these pink-faced accounts manager, might instead fling herself 46 stories onto Sixth Avenue.

But by caution was misplaced. Actual mingling was occurring. Shrewd PR folks that they are, ConservativeMatch had sent out a press release for this event, and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and NPR were there, interviewing us lonelyhearts about the dating prospects for Republicans.

I listened in while the NPR reporter, who was by far the best-looking woman in attendance (point: liberals), tried to ask the guy with the Ronald Reagan shirt about his love life.

"I don't trust any station that doesn't support itself with advertisements," he announced, his body taking a defensive posture. "I don't trust any news organization that has to ask for money. And then purport to be unbiased."

The reporter smiled and held out the mic: "So have you met any woman tonight?"

"If you hand over your revenue to the free market, you're guaranteed to be neutral," the fellow demanded. "No offense, but that's how it works."

The reporter slid off her earphones to make sure she was hearing him right. She told him, with a smile, that no offense was taken, and that she didn't speak for the organization.

"People are only going to pay if you tell them what they want to hear," he sputtered, trembling slightly.

The woman sighed and turned to interview someone else. My heart pounded. I longed to be leap from this khaki and oxford cloth prison suit I wore, and reveal myself to be like her, to tell her how much I loved world beat music and economic reports from Botswana. I, too, drink my tea from a pledge-week reusable plastic mug. But I resisted. I had some reporting to do myself.

Stay tuned for Part Three in which:

• I discuss the Marquis de Sade with a woman of traditional values
• I learn the hard way why conservative women are not attracted to artists

Undercover with Republican Singles, Part One

I hold an account with the Republican online dating site ConservativeMatch.com, which purports to deal in "sweet hearts not bleeding hearts," and requires applicants to agree/disagree with such questionnaire statements as,"The homosexual lifestyle is immoral" and "Cutting taxes is generally good for the economy." With my never-ending parade of paramours, I of course have no need for such matchmaking—I use the site strictly for research.

But when early this week I received an email invitation for an "rooftop cocktail party for Republican singles," I accepted. After all, why deprive an entire female demographic of my rugged company simply because my robust politics—applauded by all countries that participate in the Kyoto Protocols—are demonized as "liberal" by the Babbittry here at home?

So I cleaned up—dragged a razor across my face and unearthed my suede bucks, khakis, and a blue oxford shirt. But before I could reach the 41st floor of the midtown apartment where such a costume would be de rigueur, I first had to run Williamsburg's Bedford Ave gauntlet—that mean street of the green-haired agitator and art student with ironic moustache.

"Go home, fascist," someone muttered as I passed.

I untucked and unbuttoned my oxford, revealing a suitably stained undershirt, and continued on my way, unharassed. When I emerged at Herald Square I ran another gauntlet—this one of weary cops, eyes on the last straggling protestors and fingers tapping on their billy clubs. I quickly fixed my shirt and headed uptown.

I suppose I was expecting Gatsby's mansion, and couldn't help but to be a bit disappointed by the hot apartment cramped with adults whom we can assume did not belong to the "cool crowd" in high school. On the upside, we had a stunning view of the Empire State Building bathed in red, white, and blue, plus open bar and free finger-food.

I took a look at my fellow singles. The men huddled in tight cliques and groused about John Kerry's treasonous behavior and the media's leftist agenda. "Liberals don't want to debate," announced a fellow with a Ronald Reagan insignia on his golf shirt. "They just want to tell you how they feel."

I determined that Conservative Match may shortly need to reconsider its opposition to the homosexual lifestyle—not simply to accommodate the muscled lads who'd arrived in snug trousers and upturned collars on their polo shirts apparently still under the quaint impression they were straight—but because even with generous portions of alcohol, with the current boy-girl ratio, only a smattering of the men would "match" tonight with a woman, while the majority would be left to their own, um, devices.

Almost immediately a woman approached me (we can't blame her) and told me she was "in education," before which she'd been "in the arts," in a discipline she later specified as "apparel design." I was feeding from the plastic tray of crustless sandwich triangles harpooned to olives with toothpicks, and when I told her that I was an author, stringing together my modest fees for a living, but surviving chiefly on the nourishment that comes from international acclaim, she suddenly had to go get a refill in the kitchen, and did not return.

I skewered another sandwich and rethought my strategy.

Stay tuned for Part Two in which:

• I gain access to the roof!
• Republican bachelors harass cute NPR reporter because they "don't trust any station that doesn't accept advertisements"
• I discuss the Marquis de Sade with a woman of traditional values.