The Bed List

I have a local writer friend who has a great feature on her blog. She frequently posts a bed list and a dinner list. The dinner list consists of interesting men with whom she’d like a dinner date. The people she lists are usually smart, witty, controversial, or just down-right interesting.

The bed list is, well, guys with whom it would be interesting to get horizontal (or vertical against a wall – trying to stay PG-13 here – failing.) These guys are usually hot, and that might be an understatement.

My happily married, 2 kids, and a dog friend works a full-time day job, writes chick lit (ahem, I mean women’s fiction with humorous elements), and recently signed with an agent. She’s on her way.

However, like most writers, she day-dreams a bit (or a lot) and these men come out of her day-dreams.

Alyson has a list, too. (See her Dream On blog about her list of 5 celebrities).

I’ve been thinking about men lately, more specifically – heroes. We explored heroes in last week’s Sunday Six and I’m trying to make the hero in my MIP to-die-for. I’ve also been thinking about love scenes – this coming week’s Saturday/Sunday Six here at Affairs. All this thinking led me to hotties. Think movie and television hotties. What makes them hot? I don’t always think we’d like them so very much if it weren’t for their roles. It is their role in a movie or tv show that makes them hot. But what is it that makes them sooooo hot? What quality do we perceive as hottieness?

I recently saw Catch and Release. The romantic lead opposite Jennifer Garner was Timothy Oliphant. Have you seen him?

Look up. (Isn't he hot?)

I’ve seen him other places, but this time, (Pitter-patter, pitter-patter) wow! I think it was his unkeptness. I’ve always liked rough edges. And the way he looked at the heroine. Such intensity. I want to convey that look on the written page. It’s a definite bed-list look. No wonder she fell for him. I’m going to take myself to see the movie again, just so I can think about how I’d describe that look.

This makes me think that more than the actor, it really is the role that gets me all hot and bothered. Take Viggo Mortensen. Love him. He’s been okay in other things, but in Lord of the Rings as Aragorn, he was perfect. He was incredibly alpha. I’ve always been a little sad that Tolkien didn’t include any love scenes, especially after they cast Viggo.

I’d have to put Hugh Jackman on the bed list, too. I loved him in the X-Men series of movies. Virile, brave, a little crazy, a lot brooding and beautifully flawed. Flawed – another quality I like in a hero.

Okay, so far for hottieness, I have “the look”, alpha, and flawed. Come to think of it, I’ve always liked heroes with expressive eyes or lips (the look), who were alpha all the way, and, as I’ve said, who were rough around the edges (flawed).

What other heroes would I have put on the bed list in the past?

Brad Pitt’s character in Legends of the Fall – flawed, oh so flawed.
Eddie Cahill as Jim Craig in Miracle – flawed, stoic.
Oh, and Mel Gibson back in the Lethal Weapon days.

All of these men made the bed list, not because of who they are, but the roles they played. The character made the bed list.

It’s certainly something to think about.

Macy