Philadelphia, March 2013
Every academic is pestered by textbook company representatives pushing for you to assign your students their latest frightfully over-priced, generally gay-free textbook instead of some of the thousands of articles and e-books available for free at the campus library.
I'm usually immune to their pleas, but the rep that knocked on my office door last month, Mark from ___ Company, was jaw-droppingly handsome, and knew it: wavy brown hair, square jaw, piercing green eyes, huge hands, and a bodybuilder's physque crammed into his too-tight white shirt and grey slacks.
He flashed the smile that had been getting him special privileges his whole life and began pushing the new textbook with interactive e-book that meshed directly onto our online learning management system and...
"Um...sure, sure," I said, grinning like an idiot. "But how is it with gay content? I never order a textbook unless it covers the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that started the Gay Rights Movement."
He didn't flinch at the "controversial" topic. "Well, let's take a look." He came over to my side of the desk so I could see his laptop and leaned over me, so close that I could feel his body heat and, if I looked down, check for a basket.
There were several references to gay people: Stonewall, Anita Bryant, Matthew Shepard, the AIDS Quilt, gay marriage -- a lot more than the none in most intro texts.
"Ok, let me send you a link to the supplemental materials, and give you my card." His huge bear-paw hand enveloped mine. He flashed that smile again.
The moment Mark left, I dropped everything to look him up on the internet: Linkedin, twitter, instagram, and Facebook.
Mark was 26 years old, grew up in Pittsburgh, spent his junior year in high school in Japan, graduated from Duquesne University, had been to Europe and Canada, had a DUI arrest, had a brother named Clay.
He wrote a google review of a restaurant in Philadelphia.
He wrote an Amazon review of the tv series Sherlock.
There were a lot of newspaper articles about tennis -- his various matches and awards in high school and college. He was signed on to a professional tennis recruitment website.
Facebook and Instagram had some pics of Mark with his arm around an older man and a guy he tagged as Mohammed, wearing a graduation gown, holding a fish [the illustrations are not really him]
Shirtless.
I saved the shirtless pic to look at his thick, smooth chest, his shoulders and biceps, and his sixpack abs later.
He had a profile on a professional modeling site: interested in print and tv assignments, photos in a suit, in a sweater, in a swimsuit. His resume listed some catalog work and local commercials.How did this guy have time to work as a textbook rep?
Mark was back in my office the next week to see if I had gone over the supplementary material.
I was a little embarrassed that I had done so much internet stalking, so I decided to come clean.
"I looked you up online. Quite an impressive list of accomplishments: decathlons, tennis, modeling."
The full story, with nude photos and explicit sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood.