Free Sex in the Title by Zack Love

Heeb, Lucky Chucky was impossibly selective, and the women he rejected left Heeb with a far greater number of opportunities to strike out than he would otherwise enjoy. In fact, if Heeb wanted to go out and look for women, he would just follow Lucky Chucky around – even if Carlos was just headed for the library or the grocery store, rather than some bar in Boston. Women just seemed to gravitate towards the Latin stud, sometimes with far-fetched pretexts (“Didn’t I see you in some Spanish movie?”) and sometimes with more brazen approaches (“Where are you going, and do you mind if I tag along?”). But no matter how perfect the girl looked to the rest of the world, Carlos always had some very particular reason for graciously rejecting her, and his reputation for extraordinary selectivity only made him that much more desirable to the women who knew of him. These women saw him as possessing a certain mythical, celebrity-like status and were intrigued by the challenge of trying to seduce a man whom no woman – no matter how stunning and brilliant – had succeeded in snaring. There were even occasional speculations that Carlos was gay, but those who knew him could see that he was clearly interested in women and unequivocally indifferent to men – including the many handsome homosexuals who regularly approached him.
    A peculiar constellation of Puritanical beliefs, severe standards, paranoia about germs, and a hesitation about developing intense emotional intimacy prevented Carlos from indulging in the only gender that caught his attention. For Carlos even to consider straying from his strictly celibate norms on behalf of a particular woman, she first had to meet the Carlos requirements that Heeb and others could at least understand if not endorse. The woman had to be:
strikingly beautiful;
“intellectually dangerous” (as Carlos liked to put it);
fluent in Spanish, so that he could feel comfortable reverting to his native tongue with her;
an ex-Catholic so that she would naturally understand his neuroses and cultural traditions; and
a staunch environmentalist who was a non-smoking vegetarian with a Buddhist outlook, so that their worldviews and healthy lifestyles would be compatible.
     
    Carlos was an eco-Nazi who excoriated anyone he caught throwing away recyclable goods, thanks to a crush he had had on his English teacher, back when he was a fifteen-year-old fawning after the brunette by the blackboard whose wardrobe always managed to show some leg. The busty Buddhist pedagogue was eight years his senior, but she shared her ideology with the pimply and precocious Carlos as if he were her peer. In time, Carlos became increasingly health-obsessed, eating only organic foods, exercising regularly, and avoiding all unnecessary environmental hazards (from excessive sun exposure, to X-rays and microwave ovens, to cell phones, when they became more popular during his late twenties). By the time Lucky Chucky got to college, his body was a temple to be zealously guarded from all elements or forces that might degrade its quality or shorten its life, and that included women with unhealthy lifestyles, germs, or worldviews.
    But it wasn’t enough for Carlos to find a gorgeous, intellectually brilliant, fluently Spanish-speaking, ex-Catholic-turned Buddhist, who is a non-smoking, strict vegetarian and a staunch environmentalist. The woman had to meet an additional set of bizarre requirements (or “crazy Carlos criteria,” as Heeb called them) that disqualified even the rare women on the planet who made it past the first set of “coherent Carlos criteria”:
She had to be able to name at least five great Latin American writers, at least two of whom had to be Mexican.
She had to possess a European passport, so that he could get European citizenship in the event that they got married.
While not an absolute requirement, if her name began with the letter “C,” it was a superstitious “bonus” for Carlos. His only two prior