Beef Stock

I've been seeing this guy lately. He's kinda cute, with a sort of harmless puppy-dog scruffiness to him, letting his facial hair getty prickly and letting his dirty-blond locks go a little wild. A subtle smile and totally dreamy eyes.

I first ran into him on a men-for-men dating web site. What's cool is that we seem to have a fair amount in common: he's a bit of a techie, who not only has a broadband internet connection, but he's already running his home phone on it. I'm smitten.

The bad news is that he doesn't even know I exist.

That's because I've been seeing him... in online adverts. The first one is for the gay dating site I mentioned, where he serves as bait for other lonely homos. "Next week he'll be someone else's boyfriend," the caption warns browsers such as me. The second one is for a voice-over-internet-protocol service that advertises heavily on Slashdot.org. No come-on... just eye candy.

Of course there's a chance he's unaware of either use of his likeness. He's clearly a professional model who's posed for a stock-image photographer, who then sold the rights through an agency to use pretty-boy's face in their ads. For all I know, he's straight as a jacket and married, and uses a Hotmail or Yahoo address as his only e-mail account which he logs into at the library. He's just whoring himself out, using his looks to make some cash, attracting customers he has no feelings whatsoever for. Not that there's anything ethically wrong with that, of course. It's just another form of prostitution.

On the other hand, if he's really the person he's presented to be, he's quite welcome to drop me a line.