" Are You Screwing Me? Or My Job?"

We've all heard of star-f*ckers. But it seems there are plenty of other industries that inspire lecherous behavior, too. Do you sometimes suspect you're getting a little extra nookie because you have the coolest gig in the world?

Lovelies:

My new-found flirtiness occasionally runneth over, spilling out unto people who I don't necessarily want to make out with ... like the 65-year-old man with three gold teeth who works at the car service down the street, who recently asked me if I'd like to go for drink after I gave him a muffin to tide him over for the night shift. (Aw!) Other times it spilleth out unto chicks. And it has, in the past, helped me make new friends.

Which was also the case a week or two ago, when I went to a roof-top party with my friend Harry Berkely. I'd gone over to the makeshift bar, solo, hoping to flirt ... when I found myself next to a really groovy woman. While searching for a corkscrew, and then some club soda, she and I got deep into a discussion of her love life. She told me in great detail about a photographer she'd recently met, who seemed like a perfect person to have a summer fling with--which interested me, since I am incapable of having casual sex. ( I even asked her, in all wide-eyed seriousness, if she had any pointers about how I might do it. She laughed. I'm a nutball.) Then the conversation turned to about another photographer she'd fallen hard for earlier in the year--despite the fact their romance lasted only about two weeks (before he moved off to a foreign country to see if he could work it out with an ex-girlfriend) and despite the fact they never had sex. That story interested me, too, since I have also had my heart-broken by men--or at least one man--with whom I never slept.

Long story short, she was quite groovy and I was enjoying talking to her.

She also has a fairly glamourous and interesting job, which takes her to all sorts of high-profile events and gives her access to scenes the rest of us peasants don't normally get to intrude upon. And as a result, though she loves what she does, she told me there was one distinct drawback to her enviable job: Sometimes she feels like dudes are more into what she does for a living than they are into who she is as a human.

Or, as she put it: "Sometimes, I think: Is it ME they are f**king? Or is it my job?"

This made me wonder: Have any of you had experiences like this? Where you feel like people are more into your job--or more into your connections--than they are into you?

Or: Have you slept with someone mainly because you were turned on by his or her job?

Certainly, here in NYC, I think a lot of writers and editors get more booty than they would if they were doing different gigs. And in Hollywood, I'd put money on it that directors and cinematographers reap extra (carnal) benefits ...

In Colorado, does it turn people on if you own a ski resort? What about running a cool bar in Virginia? Or being a rancher in Montana? In San Fran, does news that you run a start-up get people hot under the collar? In Chicago, is it the theater actors who are the hot commodity? I know rock stars get lucky everywhere ...

As for me, well ... I'm pretty sure being a dating blogger will only serve to turn people off!

Unless I meet some kind of exhibitionist. Hmm.

xxx