Undisclosed

Upper Middle Class Suburban City, USA -- It's 3:56 A.M., and I'm online, using a search engine in an effort to find a motherf*cking poster of Lilí Kim. Lil' Kim, of course, is the young, sexy, wildly outspoken black female rapper whose 1996 debut album, Hardcore, gloriously illuminated the gut-wrenchingly graphic trials and tribulations of a woman whose grinding sexuality seemingly buoyed her otherwise bleak gangbanging lifestyle and, ultimately, helped Ms. Kim climb out of the ghetto. Being 31, white and living in Fairfield County, Connecticut, I of course can relate to such circumstances. I like to think of myself as somewhat of a suburban outlaw, driving from Starbucks to Starbucks, Barnes & Noble to Barnes & Noble, corralling a harsh reputation for dishing out Latte Grande mayhem while special ordering copies of Catcher in the Rye under the assumed Latin aliases of "Gonzales," "Javier," or, on occasion, "Phillip."

So why the hell am I ordering an oversized poster of Lil' Kim spreading herself, you ask? Very simple: chicks. Chicks, dude. Chicks. Now you're saying, wait a minute. Even if you do order the poster ($12 plus $3.90 shipping and handling) and have the wherewithal to take it out of the UPS tube, slowly unroll it, reinforce the corners with masking tape and carefully hang it above your permanently outstretched futon, how will it have any bearing on your ability to score? If anything, you say, it might hinder such a conquest, perhaps confusing an already questionable female conquest when she rocks her head back along your collection of hipster bed pillows just to see the under-clad Ms. Kim sucking on a pink vibrator.

And I say Bling-Bling to that, man.

I am ordering a Lil' Kim poster for the same reason that I make myself listen to bad indie rock or buy experimental free jazz records on imported vinyl, wear knit beanies inside nightclubs in the summer or labor for roughly 17 minutes over which torn, shrunken, faded, numbered Midland, Texas Soccer League jersey I'm going to wear out to the said nightclub (#3; wait, maybe #15); for the same reason I bought a skateboard or have spent two-and-a-half months trying to get my two-and-a-half year old Chocolate Lab to pull me around on it (and for the same reason I took on the said Lab two-and-a-half years ago in the first place); for the same reason I find it necessary to internally catalog my amateur knowledge of red wine, carefully position stickers from outdoor adventure product companies (Patagonia, Rossignol, Teton Gravity Research) on my Thule bike rack or sit within five seats of the prep school girls or solo female travelers on the train-ride to work (with my herbal water, indie rock CDs and the Sunday Timesí arts section clearly visible from any angle); for the same reason I alternate my stages of facial hair (currently at the Sketchy Thin Unkempt Independent Record Store Employee stage), insist on wearing a pair of light-prescription plastic frames or exercise pseudo-vegetarianism at social gatherings when it looks like there are chicks there that dig vegetarians; for the same reason I own 14 hooded sweatshirts, buy already dirt-stained jeans ($58) or teach myself jazz guitar chords; and for the same reason I risk death and prosecution backcountry skiing in ungodly temperatures, work out or give a f*ck about politics.

Everything "everything" I do, I do because it enhances, in one way or another, my chance at getting laid. If I do it, listen to it, buy it, read it, watch it, display it, eat it, wear it, feed it or otherwise" I must have gotten the idea that somewhere along the line a young, buttery female might find it cool, sexy, cute, funny or fascinating and, in turn, it might lead me on the path to sexual gratification with the aforementioned buttery female.

As for the oversized image of a controversial black female rapper performing fellatio, doggie-style, above my bed? That falls under the Cute, Funny or Uncompromising Wit categories for the sequestered girl. The idea for it stems from a conversation I had in my car (the one with the stickered up roof rack) with a mutually plutonic female friend (Mutually plutonic? Yeah f*cking right" but that's for another column to explore) who found it cool, cute, funny and fascinating that I owned a copy of Hardcore and was blaring it out of my car stereo.

"I used to be scared of the dick," Ms. Kim recalls on Hardcore. "Now I throw lips to the shit, handle it like a real bitch."

Ah, that's my girl.