Ilona Billing has Lonely Friends

An open letter to Ilona Billing, my best friend.

Dear Ilona Billing,

I was delighted to receive an email from you recently and I'd like to start out by thanking you for your brevity. Most of my friends are borderline alcoholics with festering, untreated psychiatric conditions and generally surly dispostions. This I can tolerate, natch, but they are by and large insufferable windbags to boot. So I do appreciate your brevity. In fact, the entirety of your message can be quoted here, without edits (although, charitably, I might suggest a copy editor or two should you have room in the budget for an intern):

"k these married girls don't want to be lonely, so why not have fun with them at www.shesdoingitnow. com opssy delete space before com WO"

Ilona: thank you. We aren't exactly tight, you an I--in fact I don't recall that we've ever met--but it's not a big secret that things have been slow around here of late. And by 'around here' I mean 'having sex' and 'slow' I mean to say 'not happening at all.' I mean, with some of the verb tenses changed or whatever. Oh, and 'with women' figures prominently in that last part, too, I guess. So I'd like to thank you for tossing me a frieking bone.

Don't get me wrong; I mean, in lieu of dating I've had lots of time to develop other, more useful hobbies that are really very interesting but unfortunately too numerous to be named here. But they are rewarding, those hobbies of mine. Sporting events, also. The local teams have been winning and or losing in quite dramatic fashion of late. And the weather, as you know, has been copious. At the same time, all things being equal, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.

So you have at the very least my gratitude for taking an interest in my personal life; offering to set me up with your friends is just the cherry on top. You are in many ways a better friend than any other friends of mine that have not lifted a finger to help me out in this area, which is to say you are a better friend than the rest of all my friends. Which is to say that you, Ilona Billing, are my best friend.

So, yes: I appreciate the sentiment. But I cannot take you up on the offer. I'm not going to lie to you and say I've never had sex with a married woman, because I have. Not saying I'm proud of it, I just don't want you to think I'm a stick in the mud or anything. It's just that your friends don't sound like they'd be my type. I mean, if they don't like being lonely then why in God's name did they get married? That's just not thinking things through, and I am nothing if not a thoughful man.

I wouldn't be perfectly candid with you if we weren't best friends, Illona Billing, but since we are I will be. You & I are Just Friends and I don't think of you In That Way, so I've never mentioned this to you before, but since you're trying to set me up with your friends I think it's only fair for me to tell you that based on everything I know about you I'm reasonably certain that you, all of your friends, and their websites are just oozing with all kinds of nasty viruses and infections. I'm not judging here, I'm just saying. And I'm a grownup and there are things I can do to protect myself, so it's not a deal-breaker for me. But my computer? That's a horse of a different feather; I can't seem to get these damn comdoms around my monitor without having them break on me. So I guess we won't be making it to shesdoingitnow.com anytime soon. But are you free for brunch this weekend?

Yours,
Gabriel