urveys tell us around 5 in every 5 Americans is single, divorced, widowed, married in unhappy relationships, married and swing, or married and lie about whether they swing or not. That makes for a lot of people trying to find the right person out there, and keeping their significant other from finding out about it. In some major markets, for busy single people or adulterers on the move, “fuck and run dating� has become the hippest way to meet Mr., Ms., or Mrs. Right, and her sister.

It started in New York City as a gangbang gone weird, but “fuck and run parties� have sprung up in other major urban markets as a way for couples to get together and speed up the meeting process for people who haven’t found the person they want to be with yet. As Valentine’s Day approaches, more people than ever are signing up for fuck-and-run dating.

“People love it because you spend less time getting to know someone and what makes them compatible or incompatible,� said Mitzy Horowitz, a single art gallery owner who has been hosting fuck-and-run parties since 2002. “With fuck-and-run dating, you compress months—sometimes even years worth of a relationship into a few hours. Or as Grandma Horowitz used to tell me, ‘You never know if someone’s going to fuck you over until they fuck you over.’�

That’s precisely what fuck-and-run parties are all about. As Horowitz describes, it’s a socially acceptable environment for what is traditionally called a “one night stand,� and which I call the weekend. Copious amounts of alcohol and drugs are made available to party guests, which gives them all the excuse they need to cut loose and hit the sack with someone they just met. But fuck-and-run goes beyond the awkward sexual encounter, since after the sex, instead of going to sleep, the couple is then encouraged to hash out their relationship issues and guilt and confused intentions immediately following intercourse. Cuddling gives way to shouting, foreplay becomes guilt trips and insinuations, and sometimes, the more astute fuck-and-run dater can jump straight to “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.� Months that might have been spent turning love into emotional issues is covered in a few short hours, leaving more time to search for someone not out to just fuck you over.

Nicole Wesley, a partygoer since December 2004, praised its way of building relationship experience.

“Before I started coming to fuck-and-run parties, I spent six years dating two different guys,� said Wesley, waiting on the couch for the next party to start. “Both of them turned out to be real losers—one a jobless dopesmoker, the other a real controlling macho shit. Since I started fuck-and-run dating, I’ve met three different guys—all complete pricks. But I did it in a two-month time span, and really compressed the emotional suffering to a short time. I can’t believe how much faster the miserable experience of meeting the wrong person can be!�

Men, too, are enjoying the ease of speed-breaking-up.

“Within about twenty minutes of making out with this beautiful girl, she went totally fucking psycho on me,� says NYU college student Gopher Grass. “All I was doing was checking the messages on my cell phone and she accused me of sleeping with someone on the side. I was like, damn, that was fast! I mean, five of the girls I’ve dated have gone psycho on me, but it took weeks or even months sometimes. I knew within twenty minutes I had made a bad fucking choice for a relationship mate! That’s what a matchmaker dating experience should be.�

Rough estimates say fuck-and-run dating has a 100% success rate—no couples have continued dating since the parties began, but all have happily broken up and been glad not to have wasted more time on the futile pursuit of love with someone clearly wrong for them. And there’s more innovations on the way—party hostesses like Mitzy Horowitz are already at work on weekend getaways to simulate seven years of stifling, soul-crushing marriage.

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Much bitching and moaning has been expelled over the course of human history about the unfortunate reality that man needs to sleep. Some women, too. From ruining slavemasters' productivity figures to making everyone late to the airport, sleep has always been a thorn in the side of humanity. But where does it come from, and why do we need it so desperately?

Modern science gives us the answer that we have no fucking idea. Sleep is as mysterious today as it was back before anyone knew anything, circa 1953. Scientists have come up with a lot of lame excuses over the years for why they can't figure out sleep, most of them revolving around them being too tired. A Belgian scientist claimed to have had a dream that explained it all in 1964, but the only parts he could remember didn't make any sense to anyone and revealed a disturbing internal fascination with snail anatomy.

The closest scientists have come to explaining the need for sleep has been to document what happens when you don't get any, subjecting some poor underpaid bastards to days of insanity-fertilizing sleeplessness. Rarely, if ever, has there been a more satisfying way to give money to people you strongly dislike.

After the first 24 hours without sleep, the average person retains most normal functionality, only with any asshole personality traits magnified by a factor of four. Normal people become assholes, assholes become giant assholes, and giant assholes are usually shot by research staff to prevent further incident.

After a second day of sleeplessness, motor skill coordination becomes impaired, which makes sleep-deprived Jai Alai one of the most entertaining sports to watch. Thinking becomes slower, and internal mathematical calculations are always off by five. Social skills erode further as well, causing most normal people to act like Gilbert Gottfried. Phone numbers and birthdays are nearly impossible to remember in this state, and anything softer than a dumpster full of broken glass begins to look like an appealing place to lie down for a nap.

Day three is best glossed over. Imagine a mental institution on "Free Cocaine Day," add a wolverine that's been soaked in gasoline and set on fire, and dub the whole thing poorly into Cantonese. Smart researchers usually schedule their days off to coincide with Day 3.

On day four, subjects seem to start acting normal again, only until researchers realize they have swapped personalities with each other, and underwear. Subjects in this state have a difficult time speaking in anything less than a full-throated scream, and most express a desire to learn square dancing. A spontaneous understanding of Japanese is often reported.

By the fifth day, complete bladder control is lost, and internal monologues are involuntarily spoken out loud, a hilarious fact that leads many scientists to subject their subjects to five days of sleeplessness even when two or three would have done the job for the research's sake.

Day six is a nice break for the researchers, since everyone suddenly falls into a coma and dies. Reduced appetite is also reported.

Scientists didn't understand the importance of sleep until the early 20th century, prior to which people only slept involuntarily, like when you doze off behind the wheel of a carriage and trample sixteen epileptic children while dreaming of pastry. This fact helps to explain the whole of history prior to the year 1900, from the horrors of colonization, to wars, numerous creative forms of public execution, and the widespread belief in Jesus. It also explains how people used to get so much done in a day; however this was something of a small consolation for the millennia of balls-out worldwide insanity.

A few native cultures have always understood the importance of proper sleep, as evidenced by their completely boring histories. Eskimos, Jamaicans and Canadians have long been distinguished by their lack of berserk rampages of bloodletting, a fact not coincidentally tied to their shared cultural heritage of long, restful nights of sleep.

What we do understand about sleep, however, does explain another popular question every third smartass who rides the elevator with Griswald Dreck feels the need to ask. This pertains to the oft-repeated but seldom understood notion that human beings only use 10% of our brains. What most people don't understand is that this figure is an average. If you subtracted the small number of cogent individuals using large portions of their brains from the mix, the truth would be revealed that most people actually only use about 2% of their brains, which becomes even more frightening when you realize that it takes 1% of your brain to remember to breathe. The average person splits up the other lonely percentage point between the sections of the brain responsible for channel surfing, being hungry, and thinking Jeff Foxworthy is funny.

Incidentally, cows use up to 4% of their brains, and university research has shown cows can chew bubblegum and roller-skate at the same time. Food for thought.

So why do we use so little of our non-cow brains? Because they're there? Funny answer. But in truth, the reason is that the rest of the brain's vast potential is reserved for sexual fantasies and plotting out the upcoming night's dreams, a very complex affair since it is exceedingly difficult to weave talking penguins, long-dead historical figures, and inappropriately sexualized elderly relatives into the same dream scene. This takes up most of the brain's energy and is the reason everyone gets tired in the afternoon, that and eating four pounds of bacon for lunch.

So sleep shall remain a mystery, unless some berserk sleepless madman conquers the world tomorrow and decrees that we're all living in a dream world we return from only during our sleeping hours. Then? Not so much a mystery, by decree of the king. As Roger Daltrey observed on The Who's final album, "Who Cares?" in 1984:



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The situation has darkened, good people. Frequent readers of my column, and despite what everyone says I'm convinced they exist, will remember my recent revelation that I was a pro-wrestler briefly in the '80s. To my surprise, everyone has been extremely warm and receptive about it. I mean, I haven't heard anyone approving of my lifestyle or remarking how brave it was to come out and admit it, but it is pro-wrestling, a little resistance and unspoken prejudice can be expected. Either that or none of them have read any of my columns.

But not everyone has been so accepting. As I discovered Thursday night when I came home and found a note pinned to my door.

It was a hand-scrawled note with sloppy penmanship and spelling. But I knew all-too well who it was from and what it was about. It read:

"Finger! So yur the 4-Feet Nitemare. Yu turd. I new Id find yu sonir or laytir. Im a kill yu like I wud have kild yu then. Yu run away cowird. – MD"

At first I suspected my family physician, Dr. Scrudd. But then I remembered seeing his handwriting on countless prescriptions and it didn't match at all; Scrudd's pen is blue, this one is black. Finally, after hours of meditating, falling asleep, waking up again to start meditating once more, I realized who my anonymous adversary is.

The Masked Dude has come back for revenge.

When I discussed my pro-wrestling secret life, I left out a lot of details so as not to gross out the general public who is uncomfortable with such information. But one important bit that needed mentioning was my furious antagonist, The Masked Dude. He was five-foot tall, the second-shortest wrestler in the Dandies of America league I was part of, and had a severe complex about it. He was remarkable for many reasons: His glittering sequined spandex pants, his red glossy boots, his hairless, flabby mid-section, and his match record of never having won once.

Usually The Masked Dude was hopelessly overpowered by his opponents. Some of them reaching heights of up to 5'11", with vicious names like The Vicious Scrunch and Eddie "Pin Them Drunk" Vicious, The Masked Dude soon proved to be a laughingstock of the D.O.A., which was already the laughingstock of wrestling fans everywhere, who are the laughingstock of the rest of us, so you can imagine the shame. The Masked Dude was intent on gaining respect, and I soon provided the best possibility of winning a match.

I was a good wrestler. Good? Hell, I was possibly the best God ever created. Really? Thank you, that's sweet. But for all of my talent my winning record was frequently fifty-fifty, meaning I won half my matches and half of that was won by deceitful tendencies. I was merely making up for a game that was stacked against me, me being short and not that good at wrestling the way they wanted to do it. But actual statistical match records were the lowest in the league, next to The Masked Dude. He sought me out obsessively, and thus started our rivalry. I thought it ended when I hung up my tights, sniffed them curiously, then threw them away for good. But apparently not.

I have to admit I'm a little worried. I don't know when and from where and at what time The Masked Dude is coming after me. I assume he's reading this column, since he's the only one who's mentioned my former pro-wrestler status, and I hope to implore him to let bygones be bygones and blowguns be blowguns, to put the past behind us and start anew as friends who share a common history.

But don't mistake this as fear or cowardice, Masked Dude. I will put the smack down on you wicked if you want to get shitty with me.

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