At first, like everyone who watches The Office, I was drawn to Jim. Tall, rangy, witty and with an extremely malleable face, Jim was everything I look for in a television crush.
But soon I began to realize my true love for Toby. Yes, he is balding and is 40 years old, but Toby is a nice man who needs your love so much more than Jim. Jim can go to bed with the purse girl, or confident Karen Filippelli. Toby has nothing and no one.
Imagine a date with Toby. How hard he would try to impress you! Maybe he’d be one of those guys who buys you an awkwardly expensive dinner on your first date, or proposes marriage. (For the record, and here I speak from experience: a marriage proposal on the first date does not impress me. But I will continue to date you for a few more weeks out of a sick fascinated need to see what you will do next.) Or maybe the date would be punctuated by long silences that slowly fill up with your sense of his overwhelming need to be acknowledged by some woman. Any woman at all.
If needy guys do not do it for you, you might still enjoy the real-life Toby, Paul Lieberstien. I especially like his post about what he ate during the Olympics.
He also wrote for the short-lived Dead Like Me, which is probably the reason I fell in love with the needy dead guy played by Mandy Patinkin on that show. What can I say? I like ’em needy.
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