True story. I sat opposite a very strange man on the Tube recently. Although not quite dirty or thin enough to be a bona fide vagrant, he had about him the fetid air of a man in possession of a one-way ticket to Trampsville.

Middle-aged, grubby of apparel and with several plastic bags full of newspapers on the floor by his feet, each of his four chins was unshaven and his fat, pasty, sweat-soaked, piggy-eyed visage resembled a grotesque caricature of Numan, Jerry’s neighbour and nemesis on Seinfeld. In short, the man looked like the kind of bloke you’d see on Crimeline: an artist’s impression of a paedophile, perhaps, or one of those gone-to-seed Gardai you see answering the phones in the background.
Of course encountering strange people with questionable personal hygiene on London’s public transport system is about as surprising as spotting spring lambs gambolling around a meadow. What set this guy apart from all the other weirdos I tend to invariably end up sitting near was his reading material and the manner in which he was defacing it.
He was deeply engrossed in what appeared to be a fanzine for bus fetishists. I’m guessing this, because the thin, cheaply produced, black and white magazine in question was illustrated with a variety of grainy photographs of National Express coaches, double-deckers and assorted other multi-wheeled on-road public conveyances.
Which is fine, if you’re into that sort of thing. But what was really intriguing about this chap was that he was busier than a small child building sandcastles… colouring in all the letters with loopy bits in them (A, B, D, O, P, Q, R etc), then methodically drawing circles around every single word with a green biro.
Now if I have learnt one thing in my years as a journalist and horse racing buff, it’s that only two kinds of people ever write in green ink: people who settle bets in bookies’ offices and the insane. Bookies use it to avoid confusion: green ink on a winning betting slip distinguishes their handwriting from that of whoever put on the bet. The insane, on the other hand, use it to indicate confusion: green ink on an envelope distinguishes the hysterical, paranoid ramblings of the pigstick nutty from the more coherent correspondence of readers who are less unhinged.
But I digress. The object of my intrigue was deep in concentration, peering at his magazine and chewing on his tongue as he busied himself colouring and circling, colouring and circling, colouring and circling. As sights go, it was truly mesmerising, until he caught me staring at him, split me in half with a dirty look and covered the page with his hand in a manner that suggested he thought I was going to copy him. A likely story. Even if I’d had a pen, I had no paper to write on and a cursory glance showed he’d already finished the ones in his bag.
I could be wrong, but I imagine this is the kind of chap who posts and answers ads on the “Casual Encounters” section of craigslist.org, a small ads website I read about in a recent edition of the Observer. According to the article in question, some modern women are so busy rollerblading and skydiving their way through their periods, ascending the corporate ladder and just generally being independent, that they don’t have time to devote to proper relationships with men anymore. However, they still have carnal needs and are looking for no-strings-attached sex instead. Indeed, if the Observer is to be believed (and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be), up to 27,000 of them in London alone have posted ads on Casual Encounters – with each and every one of them looking for the proverbial “zipless fuck” with a tall, dark and handsome stranger.
Despite meeting only one of these criteria (I’m over 6ft), I immediately logged on to Casual Encounters to see if what I’d read was true and was surprised to find that it was. Up to a point. Yes, there were quite a few women after a good seeing-to from an anonymous stranger, but for every “bored housewife (28) seeks big black cock”, “horny sex-starved, swallowing student (19)” and “Ex-RC nun (42) seeking very well-endowed men for ecclesiastical romps” (I am not making this up) there was a battalion of men willing and apparently able to fill their aching voids.
And if their self-penned descriptions were anything to go by, these were no ordinary mortals, oh no. Stallions to a man, they were tall, dark, handsome, athletic, hung like Sadler’s Wells and so good in bed that any woman lucky enough to have sex with them would be well advised to don a crash-helmet when the time came to get it on.
Purely in the interests of journalistic research, I replied to a few of these sex-crazed nymphomaniacs, but despite my best attempts at erotic fiction, aroused not a smidgen of interest whatsoever – not even from the 11 harpies who didn’t require a photo.
Feeling suitably snubbed and posing in a variety of guises, I started posting ads of my own, looking for all manner of hot, sweaty, depraved trysts in a variety of guises. Finally, after days of trying, one of my ads finally solicited a reply.
In my guise as a bored, insatiable husband whose wife was away, I had implored like-minded females to join me for a bacchanalian evening of riotous excess at my luxury pad, which would include drinking games and naked Twister.
The solitary reply? “Naked Twister sounds very interesting. I know you stressed that you wanted women only, but my boyfriend Steve and I would love to join in if you’d let us. Hope to see you soon, Dominic.”
Steve?
Dominic?
Jayzus wept.
So, Casual Encounters has proved a bust as far as I’m concerned, but if any of you fancy giving it a bash, there’s more than a few sex-starved Irish people to be found there. Just mind how you go and be sure to steer a very wide berth of my final ad and hope for happiness: “Fat, pasty, sweat-soaked, piggy-eyed bus fetishist seeks like-minded female for no-strings-attached colouring in and circling. No weirdos.”