Averagewalkingcliche.com

Dear Sasha

I’m a 38-year-old man who can’t get laid. To hear my friends describe me: I’m bright, very funny, I have a good (if eclectic) fashion sense and a decent and interesting job. I’m a leader, an original thinker and a slew of other qualities that should make me attractive. But for most of my life, all it’s got me is a slew of “great friends.” I’ve had precisely one relationship. It lasted eight weeks. That was 11 years ago. Frankly, it only happened because she pursued me. I realize that this makes me a walking cliché—the “nice guy” that women would rather hang out with than date, but it’s gone on long enough that I’m beginning to think of it as sexual dysfunction. When it comes to seduction, I seem to have no “killer instinct.” I never get the timing right, I’m perpetually awkward, the easy quips desert me when I try to turn someone on. I’m constantly falling in love with women who’ve already moved on. I know I can be good in bed (that certainly wasn’t the issue in my one and only relationship), I just can’t seem to get the women I like to perceive me as a contender in that area. What I need to know is how do I find out what’s wrong with me, and how do I fix it?

—Your Average Walking Cliché

Dear Average,

That’s it, I have officially had it with boys like you slipping through the cracks or being worked over by those low-rent Tom-Cruise-in-Magnolia types with professional monikers that sound like faux pheromone body spray.

Listen, I am dating a man just like you and I think he’s the living end. Did he beguile me with all kinds of slick lines? No. Did he use withholding-telephone-call tactics? No. Did he throw his bicycle (yes, his bicycle) down, shove me on some muddy grass and hump me in a notorious gay cruising park on our first date? Sure, but the reason he had the guts to do that is because he knows that being nice does not preclude being a hog when the time’s right. Bottom line, he is simply and unrepentantly a nice guy who refuses to take shit for it. Hot.

And since I feel so lucky, I have done you a favour. Not a huge one, mind you, but a favour nonetheless. I have purchased you the domain name

averagewalkingcliché.com because I want you to get proactive about your nice-guy status. If you accept that women don’t want to be with nice guys, you both empower this idiotic myth and along with it, the kind of women (many of whom, in my experience, tend to be a bit misinformed themselves—you know those girls who use the word “intelligent” to describe themselves because it’s the smart word for smart? Bingo.) who fall for the bogus “killer instinct” thing. By taking the plunge with averagewalkingcliche.com, you are saying, “You’re goddamn right I’m a nice guy and I’m not going to change that! Here I am! Come and get it, girls!”

Now, ideally and with lots of help, we set this up as a dating Web site for other AWCs and I’d like to get it rolling whether you accept the offer or not. (By the way, I set it up through Godaddy.com which has hosting at $3.99 a month.) Any Web designers out there who want to contribute to the look of averagewalkingcliché.com and, in exchange, have a place to put up a profile and be on the vanguard of the AWC movement? Writers who have clever ideas for profile questions? Other AWCs out there looking for a place to meet and chat? Female AWCs? Queer AWCs? Hardcore mid-life virgin AWCs? Get in touch with me here and I’ll hook you up. I’d also be happy to post ringing endorsements for AWC love on the site, should you want them, you know, “from an expert.” Come on guys, I’ve even got a slogan for you: “I’m Nice as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take This Anymore!”

So who’s with me?

Got any questions for Sasha? E-MAIL: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM

MIRROR ARCHIVES » Mar 08-Mar 14: INSIDE - COVER | ARCHIVES INDEX | CURRENT ISSUE