(excerpted from the revised and expanded edition of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia)

Are you in quest of a Soul Friend or a Freaky Consort? A Wild Confidante or a Fuck Buddy? A Master of Curiosity who listens better than anyone ever or a Lucid Dreamer with whom you can practice the Art of Liberation?

Then steal these ads. The come-ons below have been designed by the Beauty and Truth Lab's rapturists to attract allies who are committed to the art of compassionate lust and blasphemous reverence. If you're a Crafty Optimist or Mystical Activist or Ceremonial Teaser who aspires to put the elation back in relationship, you're invited to plagiarize any part of these for your own use.

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MY EYES REMIND YOU WHERE YOU CAME FROM
Uncork me, angel. Unfurl me. Release me and restore me and unleash me. Not because I can't do it myself. Not because I'm just another narcissism-addict jonesing for a quick fix. On the contrary. I'm the most self-sufficient self-starter I've ever met. It's from my position of strength that I aspire to whip up spectacular synergies in tandem with your holy rolling reverberations. So keep in mind that I'm here to uncork you and unfurl you and release you and restore you and unleash you, too. That's the art of the game that stretches out before us in all directions. That's the beauty of the gritty reality that's disguised as a glittery fantasy. As you bless my risks and massage my unconsciousness and save my soul, I'll always vice your versa. P.S. My last fortune cookie said, "You need nothing and want everything."
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POLYAMOROUS MONOGAMY
You might say I'm catagoraphobic. I hate getting stuffed into pigeonholes. I run the other way when people try to tell me who I am. So don't try to figure me out. Just enjoy me. Or maybe I should say just enjoy us. There are so many different facets to my personality that monogamy with me will feel like a promiscuous feast to you. I'm a socialist libertarian and a pacifist warrior. I'm an atheistic lover of many gods, a streetwise thaumaturge with stuffed animals on my Qabalistic altar, and a humble megalomaniac who loves to perform missions of mercy. Always both and yet neither. And what about you? Just to let you know, I love architects who moonlight as smugglers of illegal flowers. I respect vegetarians who sneak pork chops now and then. I admire ex-druggies who get sober with the same fanaticism they once devoted to their addictions. Get the picture? My spirit thrives when nothing and no one are exactly what they seem. Here's the key to our happiness: As long as we give up our control fantasies, we'll always get what we want.
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PERSONAL GROWTH ADDICT IN SEARCH OF A DIVINE CACKLER
Disgruntled postal employee seeks zombie love slave or lonely bank teller to share erotic fantasies about IRS audits and root canals. Just kidding. That's my sense of humor. You like? Seriously, beautiful, this emotionally adept space case is looking for a flexible alien life-form for exotic forms of togetherness like taking long walks on the astral plane, listening to self-help CDs by the light of a webcast candle, and conducting Jungian conversations between your shadow and my anima, or your alchemical vessel and my philosopher's stone. Do you have more money than me and sometimes act like a character in a Tom Robbins' novel? Then e-mail me a tough love letter today. A plus if you can speak John Dee's language of the angels and know the difference between the Greys, the Pleiadians, and the Elohim.
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FAIRY TALE WITH MARKETING POTENTIAL
Future lottery winner and full-time thrill-designer is hunting for a brainteasing emancipator to share risky stunts and international scandals that have lucrative marketing potential. Let's do a reality TV show that features us hiking through China in our Halloween costumes as we distribute alms for the poor, or air-drop Anais Nin books on Bible Belt colleges as we ride in a hot-air balloon over Mississippi and Alabama. In the great tradition of Picasso, the richest Communist artist who ever lived, we'll become wealthy pranksters together, poking and prodding the edges of reality.
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OUR SECRET FREEDOM
Me: the soul of a musician, the stamina of a long-distance runner, and the psychological expertise of a veterinarian. You: the body of a feral kickboxer, the eyes of a jet pilot, and the holder of a PhD in Ingenious Love. In matters of the heart, you always know exactly when to sweat and when to cry. You like to play in the sandbox as much as you enjoy working in the trenches -- and you don't mind getting dirty. Send me an image of your face pressed against the copy machine, and I'll get started reading your mind. In the meantime, I'll be here in my lab dreaming up experiments we can do to tenderly shock ourselves ever-more awake from what the pros call "the nightmare of history."
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OUTLAWED IN 38 STATES
I picture us dressed like corporate executives and standing at a highway exit ramp giving away twenty-dollar bills while holding a cardboard sign that reads "I love to help; I need to give; please take some money." I foresee us passing scribbled love notes back and forth as we work side by side at the suicide hotline, getting turned on as we breathe in each other's death-defying pheromones and ride the inside-out exhilaration of saving people's lives. I have a vision that one day our arms will be brushing and our sultry gazes meeting as we serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lentil stew to homeless folks at the soup kitchen, and when it's all done we'll go home and spend the night generating material for our collaborative book, How to Make Love with Your Best Friend, which ultimately earns us a million dollars that we donate to electing brilliant poor people to political office.
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BITE MY WIT
Tasmanian devil seeks sleek fox or wily coyote for interspecies communion. It's a jungle out there, baby, but I know some great trails that lead to rebel grails, and I'm definitely not afraid of the deep, dark stuff. Put your paw in mine and together we'll ford the rivers and scale the cliffs and swing on the vines. Are you ready to have even more fun than merely being in love? Two grunts mean "Yes, dear." Two grunts and a howl mean "Fuck, yes, dear!"
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SACRED AGENT SEEKS FREAKY CONSORT
Tired of both boringly nice goodie-goodies and menacing lunatics trying to pass off their pathologies as "sexy"? I'm the happy medium: a straddler of the mysterious edge where bliss and struggle overlap, where the difference between light and dark just ain't that simple. I feel too deeply to pretend that every question has a correct answer. I cry too easily and love too much. And you? Are you smart enough to be guided by your sacred dreams of transgression? Are you free enough to surrender over and over again to the waters of life? If you've got the courage, I've got the secrets. I'll be your wild-eyed, smart-mouthed, spread-eagled muse if you'll be mine.
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MYSTIC ACTIVIST SEEKS PRIMORDIAL GOSSIPER
I'm the one! Pick me for your mission impossible! I'm the one! Pick me to help you storm the kingdom of heaven! Everybody's somebody's fool; let me be yours! I have no shame and I have no qualms! I give not until it hurts but until it exalts my libido, and if you're smart you'll let me teach you the method in that madness! So electrify me in a sanctuary, you stunning ravisher! Amaze me in a labyrinth! Undress me on an altar! Engorge me in a way station! And I'll resurrect you wherever you want!
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RIDDLE MY BLISS, BIG-TALKER
Slapstick thinker with refined sensibilities seeks a saint-like sinner with insanely effervescent style for a long-distance joyride toward the outskirts of Nirvana. Established meditation practice and a good bedside manner are desirable. Would it be too much to ask that you might also have a high level of emotional intelligence without boring me to death with your maturity? Is it possible that you'll be an entertaining talker who also knows how to listen with your wild heart turned up all the way? Let's keep reinventing ourselves for as long as it takes to get the hang of changing forever.
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WABI-SABI, BABY
Like the skilled Japanese pottery-makers whose work is valued for its trademark blemishes, I thrive on life's imperfections. Have you ever considered the possibility that your flaws are interesting? I'll love you for who you are, not who you might be someday. Let me massage your booboos.
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I'M THUNDER IN THE EARTH AND YOU'RE RIVER IN THE HEAVENS
Fire-breathing earth-worshiper with the warrior genius of a geisha and the intimacy skills of a samurai seeks an undomesticatable creature of the night with a talent for walking on water. I want a lover, yes, and a blood ally, but I also want a partner in crimes that don't break any laws ... a joy scientist who's in training to be an ethical outlaw ... a dissident bodhisattva with the messianic ambition to overthrow reality. What's so bad about obsession, anyway? You look fabulous when you're pushing it to the limit, and so do I. My turn-ons: taboo explorations on the frontiers of enlightened compassion, and peak performances at the border of wildness and discipline. Turn-offs: easy tests that merely flatter my ego and familiar games that put my higher mind to sleep. Resolved: My inner guru wants to get into the funnest possible trouble with your inner shaman.
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SUCK MY BEAUTY AND TRUTH
Are you a stable, down-to-earth romantic who'd enjoy wearing matching sweaters with me while browsing through shopping malls? If so, please stop reading immediately. I'm on the lookout for a Funky Pagan Tantric Nobody with inside knowledge of the Big Bang. Or a descendant of Grandmother Spider, who created the world by imagining it. Or something like that. I've figured out six of the 13 Perfect Secrets from the Beginning of Time, and I'm hoping that maybe you've got some of the others. Keep in mind that even if civilization goes down in flood and flame tomorrow, we've got all the time in the world. Remember all the past lives we've shared? And there are more than enough still to come to accomplish all our esoteric schemes and dreams. So I hope you're ready to rejoin me in singing backup harmonies to the music of the spheres. I trust you're curious about all the new things I've learned that'll come in handy when I suck your beauty and truth again.
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SEX WITH FRIENDS
James Thurber once said of a ruined relationship, "Our love never ripened into friendship." But I promise you no one'll say that about you and me. I'm not just a trophy hunter lusting after your prize, sweetheart; I'm a multifaceted truth-teller who wants to collaborate with your soft touches, your hard knocks, and everything in between. One of my goals in life is to learn the art of reading my best buddy's body language as well as my own.
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LET'S SELL VICTORIA'S SECRETS TO DOUBLE AGENTS IN NORTH KOREA
I'm a contemplative daredevil -- an angel-wrestling, magic carpet-riding lover of the impossible. You're a cynical optimist -- a reformed smart-ass who's worked out a deal with your evil twin. I predict that our collaborations will be legendary, our cahoots numinous. We'll teach emergency dance lessons on the beach just after the hurricane has passed; we'll take long romantic strolls on tightropes stretched over yawning abysses; we'll spend the night in sleeping bags on Emily Dickinson's grave in Amherst, sipping absinthe and acting out her fantasies of making love; we'll sit in the back row of a musty theater at a midnight-to-dawn marathon of the old Planet of the Apes movies, tickling each other's ribs and gnawing on each other's elbows and giving each other past-life readings in loud whispers that annoy the three other weirdos in the place. Are you ready to relax your search for the meaning of life so you can be the meaning of life? Come find me. I'll be sitting on the post office steps with a toy sheriff's badge on my lapel and my ego half-unzipped. We can trade clothes in the alley and rollerblade out to the nearest bridge for a spitting-into-the-wind contest.