One Item Checklist

I like men with talent—any kind of talent as long as it makes them passionate, animated, so completely over the romantic notion of being jaded.

I like the artsy and I like the logical; the realist men who don’t put down the happy, wide eyed, chatter of their neighbor, or raise up the dark, pounding, blistered rant on pointlessness from their brother.

I like men who know things. Men who can whip out facts on the insect that just scuttled across my sneaker. Men who can look up at the night sky and find something witty-wonderful-wise to say, and still somehow make it sound like: whatever.

I like men who speak eloquently. Men who know words like vernacular, catharsis, palindrome, corpus, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious…

I like men who are self-deprecating, but never conscious. The kind of men who can laugh at their own mismatched socks, but never get upset if someone else beats them to the punch.

I like men who avoid playing the devil’s advocate, the kind who know when to say what they believe and how to say it; assertive.

I like men who smoke cigarettes; all the drunk smoking, social smoking, chain smoking, only-just-this-once smoking men—any of them—as long as I can catch a whiff of their cigarette.

But I don’t like you, because—you know what—the number one thing I like is a man with guts.

You’re a coward.