Category Archives: matchmaking

02/12/20

Who’s Your Daddy? There’s An App For That!

PHOTO: TheSultanette

Who’s your daddy? Prince Charming, anyone?

Valentines Day! That day when love conquers all with a little help from 1-800-FLOWERS. But will romance bring you the partner of your dreams when it comes to raising babies? You know, those bundles of joy that suddenly appear (and it better be nine months!) after the wedding bells?

A recent Wall Street Journal piece, “Apps Help Strangers Have a Baby Together,” offers a stunning rethink for finding a baby-mate. While conventional mores favor the romantically bonded mommy and daddy (or two mommy’s, two daddy’s) to rear a well-rounded rug rat, apps now provide another option. The Platonic Parenting Partner. Read more . . .

01/24/17

Intimacy With Strangers

Beijing Chaoyang Park, 2008, drnan tu.

Open on woman alone in cozy living room. A sudden shattering of glass breaks the stillness as a man bursts through French doors behind her. He is hooded, all in black. He throws her to the ground. She thrashes back. Vases crash. He takes her violently and disappears.

I almost left Elle after Isabelle Huppert’s first rape scene, already skittish at the thought of returning to my New York apartment, alone with the image. Yes, I did say “first rape scene” and yes, I’m glad I stayed. Because after its brutal introduction the film, this year’s Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, takes an even more kinky but intriguing turn. Read more . . .

05/11/16

Where Have All The Playboys Gone?

Giove seduces Olimpiade, fresco, Giulio Romano.

Giove seduces Olimpiade, fresco, Giulio Romano.

I remember the Playboy Mansion like it was yesterday. Gotcha, salacious followers! Okay, The Sultanette never wore Bunny ears and cottontail though I’ve been known to don the random, ribboned corset. And I did press my face against the wrought iron gate of Hugh Hefner’s Chicago chateau at 1340 North State Parkway in hopes of spotting a louche Leporidae.

Freshly graduated from Dairy State U, I was living up the street in a mansion that had been converted into apartments. On weekends, my roommates and I joined the throngs along Chicago’s Gold Coast single’s bars searching for Sex-in-the-Second-City. Read more . . .

01/26/16

Do You Want Sex Or Düsseldorf?

Prostitutka, Boris Grigoriev, 1917.

Prostitutka, Boris Grigoriev, 1917.

The World Happiness Report is out! In its third survey since 2012, the United Nations reveals the happiest places on earth. Or so they say, reports John Kay in, “Why ‘happy’ is boring.”

I spotted Kay’s piece in the Financial Times Weekend last September, just as I was escaping New York City for three months in England. According to the UN, I had the wrong country. The winner was Switzerland. (We’re getting to Düsseldorf, intrepid globetrotters, restrain yourselves!)

As Kay assesses the findings, “Switzerland is rich, temperate and has some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. … You feel completely safe in the streets. And yes, the trains run on time.” Read more . . .

10/20/15

Are you dangling your participle, darling?

Lewis Carroll's cat of Alice & Oxford

Lewis Carroll’s cat of Alice & Oxford

It’s a chilly Sunday night in Oxford and I’m in heated conversation over the American elections with a boy at least half my age who has cat whiskers drawn all over his ruddy English cheeks. He seems oblivious to the impact this feline façade is having on our serious political debate and when I ask him about it he replies, vaguely embarrassed, “Oh yes, I’ve just been initiated into my college.”

It’s back-to-school at Oxford and the Scholars Anointed have begun to invade the hangouts along Cowley Road, the main drag on the “town” side of the Magdelan Bridge (pronounced “MAW-dlin” or you are pitifully exposed). Read more . . .