One item on my ever growing list of pet peeves that always shoots up to the top this time of year is the ubiquitous sidewalk clipboarder.  And within that category of peeve there's definitely a hierarchy of peevishness.  Each cause has a different sort of clipboarder, doesn't it?  They're all college kids, of course. You're simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by them.

To me, the Save the Children Campaigners are the worst, with their heart-rending plea — "do you have just twenty seconds to save the children?" as if there's a school bus about to go off a cliff somewhere.  And there probably is.  But we all have our karma, don't we?

I find the scruffy alternajocks of Greenpeace almost poignantly gullible.  So righteous is their cause that they often can't conceive of anyone seeing them as little more than an obstacle on the way into Starbucks, which is where you'll always find them.  They huff and puff, and cluck their tongues at you, like: "duuuude!  Come on!  The Planet is MELTING!"

The Obama fundraisers seem a little redundant.  I mean, come one, he's got over half a billion dollars, people.  Let's not get greedy.  If he can't get elected with that kind of cash then he doesn't deserve to be Oprah Winfrey!  In fact, he better be planning to give away free Priuses to his audience on that big infomercial he's forcing down our throats.  Spread the wealth, bitch!

The thing about clipboarders is, the big name causes have it down to an evil science.  They can afford to have them on both sides of the street, so that you can't cross over to avoid them.  Then they'll station them at both entrances to Starbucks, so that they get you coming and going.  There are usually no fewer than four of them, two to a sidewalk, each facing out.  It's straight out of Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Sometimes they spot you from afar and stare at you with their big Village of The Damned smiles.  It gets uncomfortable.  And then there's the pitch.  White lies:  "Got just twenty seconds for The Breast Implants for Middle-Aged Pole Dancers Fund?"  Veiled accusations: "Do you care about Hair Extensions?" Heartbreaking pleas: "The Third World Child Beauty Queens Satin Thong Fund needs you!"

Mostly it leaves me cold, if you want to know the truth.  I don't see the point of wasting their time just so they can waste mine.  I mean, you know they're going to ask for your credit card.  That's how white people plan to save the word. 

Just once I'd like one of these clipboarders not to whip out the form that asks you for your firstborn, and instead to be like, "Wanna save the world?  Take these magic beans, and plant them in your back yard!" Or maybe for one of the cute, scruffy ones to say, "Duuuude, you got time for a quickie?"  Only love can save the world, people.  And oral love is as good a place as any to start.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the Fenway, walking past the Starbucks across from the Berkeley College of Music and I crossed paths with a lone — perhaps renegade — clipboarder... for Mass Equality, the gay marriage people.  He was wandering up and down the street shouting with forced friendliness at passersby, who instinctively recoiled from him.

He was sort of cute, I have to admit, but they should really have more than one of them.  It's the Wingman Method.  If you want to see it in action, go to any gay bar without a wingman and see what happens.  You could look like Brad Pitt, they'll still treat you like a pariah.  There's some primal fear of the loner.  Is it because we associate the loner with either danger or detriment?  Someone too strong or too weak, too smart or too stupid to fit in?  Freak or reject?  "Why are you single?" they'll ask you, as if you'd tell them if you were a cannibal.

Frankly, this Mass Equality clipboarder looked desperate.  Lucky for him, I happen to find desperate dead effin sexy.  But I figured that could be part of his pitch, too.  Gay people sometimes act in mixed company like they're all meek and mild, only to spring a Miss Thang on you at the last minute.  I was in kind of a hurry, and didn't want to risk it.  I've been Miss Thanged before, and it takes about three months of physical therapy to get back to normal.

But something about cruising the Mass Equality clipboarder appealed to me.  First of all: why not?  I turned it over in my head. 

"Got a second for gay marriage?" He'd scream in that forced-friendly way they have about them.

"No marriage before sex!"  I'd reply, with a wink.  Or, tossing my head back with a worldy chortle: "Romance me a little first!" Or, throw a little snark in: "Do I look like a lesbian to you?"

"Oh, um, er..." he would stammer.

"Just givin' ya a hard time, there, stud," I'd wink again. "lemme buy you a coffee — surprise, there's a Starbuck's right here!"

I'd lie over coffee and tell him I already contribute to Mass Equality.  That's what I tell all the clipboarders I sleep with anyway. 

"Yeah, I'm a charter member of Greenpeace.  My college roommate started it.  I bought him his first flotation device.  I'm on the board of Save the Children.  I spent six years sewing up cleft palates in the rain forests of Bolivia.  I saved a busload of kids from going off a cliff yesterday on my way back from donating a kidney to Michelle Obama. Oh, don't worry: it'll grow back."

I regretted not snatching my opportunity with the Mass Equality clipboarder.  It haunted me.  I mean, we're talking Beginner Level of Difficulty here.  He's practically shouting "I'm gay! I'm desperate!  I'm not even making minimum wage!  Please help me!"  The kid could be had for coffee, a bear claw, and a fake name, address and credit card number.

So when I saw him outside the Starbucks in Davis, even more fakily friendly than in the Fenway, I thought, this has got to be fate.  He seemed so happy to see me, and to discover that, yes, I do care about gay rights! Enough, even, to take twenty seconds out of my day!

But as soon as he'd got me off to the side his tone changed completely.  All the sudden all levity evaporated — and he had been ALL levity before.  And, frankly, it had suited him better.  Suddenly it was all, like: "Did you know that people in 38 states, while sometimes tolerated, can still be legally hunted by helicopter for being gay-married?  Did you know that in Alaska they make gays wear a niqab, or face veil? That in the Deep South they are routinely rounded up and forced into Cosmetology Camps and then made to do retired women's hair and make-up eight hours a day for exorbitant rates?"

As I listened to him innumerate the horrors of gay life outside of Massachusetts, and the little islands of civilization that legend has it exist in the Hinterland, I couldn't help but notice that he was not as cute as I'd originally taken him for.  While he counted the ways that gays are oppressed elsewhere in the nation, I counted the blemishes on his face, noted the slightly jaundiced skin, the split ends, his uneven shave...

"Are you with us?" he finally blurted.  "Are you for equality?"

I nodded vigorously.

"Oh, I'm vers, all right!  We're talking total reciprocity!"

"Um, great!" he said, whipping out... that awful form, and thrusting his... clipboard at me. 

"I just lost my semmy." 

"All we ask is a monthly contribution..."

"But," I protested, "I'm already a sperm donor."

He gave me a quizzical look.

"Visa or Mastercard accepted."

"You want me to pay you to donate my sperm?"

"Excuse me?"

Uh-oh.  Here comes the Miss Thang.

Yes, Marriage Equality is a serious business.  And so was he.  I guess it was kind of trollish of me to try to lure him away from a just cause for a bit of quick fun.  Not while he's still on the clock and there's still injustice in the world beyond the Charles. 

And it's not that I don't want to help.  It's just that I'm a terrible person.