Hot with A Chance of Sexy: James Purefoy

When I was in college, I had a government teacher that I just fell in love with the first day of class.  He was an older gentleman with longish salt and pepper hair and the black eyes of a Plains Indian.   He had an easy laugh and story upon fascinating story.  I could sit and listen to him for hours, and I did since I barely passed his class the first time and had to re-take it.  As I got more comfortable with him, when I didn’t feel like hanging out in the student lounge between classes, I would sit in the back of his lectures and do homework while he taught.  I would hang out with him in his office all the time.  I loved his energy and being around him.  Maybe if I had been more sophisticated and aware of myself, I would have seen like everyone else with eyes, that there was something sexual in my attraction to him and I would not have shaken like a virgin at a prison rodeo when he eventually made a move.  We could have had one of those flings that bitches always seem to fantasize about in erotic short stories and I would've had a great story to tell instead of this watered down Ann Landers Petting Guide excerpt.  Thankfully we got past that unfortunately uncomfortable incident and I still idolized him. In fact, to this day, I can’t think about college without thinking of him and what an influence he had on me.  Again, if I had been more aware of myself as a woman and a sexual being at that point, this G-rated paragraph would have definitely been NC-17 and NSFW.

I let y’all sip my tea about that professor because I have started watching The Following on FOX and every time I look at James Purefoy, who plays Joe Carroll- a college professor/author who is obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe and becomes a serial killer- I can fully understand how he gets people to do his evil bidding.  In a recent interview, Purefoy says that the character’s appeal isn’t a charisma or charm that brainwashes people, it’s that they already have a propensity for evil and he gives them “license, care, love, and no judgment” so they feel safe with him to do all the jacked up things that he wants them to do.  In Purefoy’s opinion, that’s what makes the character Joe Carroll “so terrifying” as a cult leader.   

I know it’s bad to start our imaginary relationship off with a disagreement, but I simply have to disagree.  I think we place ourselves on the level of the people we praise- we admire and welcome them into us, physically, emotionally, and psychically.  We aren’t going to admire some person who doesn’t make us feel special and unique and valuable and it takes a kind of charm be able to do that- to want to do that.  That charm is twisted, self- serving, and wrong in this case, but it’s charming so it draws people in.  Throw in even a bit of physical appeal, some animal attraction, and a dollop fear of that person’s soul - and bitches will do whatever that person wants.  I like to think that I am not a vicious murderess, nor the type of hooka who could be easily turned out to become one, but I squirm a bit when I think of my naivety and eagerness to please my college professor.  If he had turned out to be a Joe Carroll to some degree or another, what would I have done?   Would I have stolen eyeballs and lit peeps on fire if he had asked?  I like to think that I wouldn’t have, and I realize that these self-questioning questions may make me seem psycho, but it’s the bitches who don’t question themselves that we should worry about.

I am so glad to see James Sexy Ass Purefoy (that’s what I call him in my dream journal) in a (potentially) hit show again after such a long time.  Some of you may remember him as Marc Antony in HBO’s Rome, so hopefully you will remember the sex appeal that he exudes.  I don’t know what it is- he’s good looking, but certainly not the best looking man on television.  He fairly comes across as smug and condescending, the way English actors sometimes do with their Scrabble- triple- word- score- words  like “nadir”, “diametric”, or “vis a vis”, and their classic theatre training.  But beneath all that vocabulary and training and “polite in mixed company” behavior, there seems to lurk a predatory animal that snakes up through his humanity and harkens him back to a cave, a club, and hair pulling.  In every role which I have seen him perform there is something so fundamentally reptilian in how he moves his eyes and reveals a smidgen of the ever present smirk that lives behind them.  It scares me, but I am very excited by the fear.  He seems like a man who would show me pain- but only as a reminder of how pleasing and pleasant pleasure would be later. And he seems like a man who would look into your eyes as he made love to you in his own special way.  Oh, who am I kidding trying to make this a grown woman’s version of 50 Shades? He makes me feel funny and I want him to pin me to a cold, wet rock and dirty verb me until we’re hot and dry in the sun.

Sorry.  I realize that I have yammered on about me and revealed that I spend way too much time thinking about this man sexually, I guess y’all want to know a little something about James Brian Mark Purefoy- so here ya go:

-   This Gemini/Dragon (another fuckin' dragon?!  What is my deal with dragons?  Who am I, Daenerys Targaryen?) was born in Taunton, Somerset, England on June 3, 1964.  He's 48.

-         He worked at Yeovil District hospital as a porter before studying acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

-         Joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988.

-        Screen tested for the role of James Bond in 1995 for GoldenEye, but lost the role to Pierce Brosnan.

-        When he falls in lurve with a lady, he gets booed up for realsies:  Had an 11-year relationship with actress Fay Ripley.  He was married to actress Holly Aird from 1996-2002 (they have a son together), and he has been in a relationship with art historian and TV producer Jessica Adams since 2004.  Damn, guess the animal he reminds me of is the grey wolf because they practically mate for life and he is one relationship having son of a mother.

The name “Purefoy” was originally derived from the Old French pure-foy, meaning one who was “staunch and true”, and it seems a very fitting name for him.  He seems to have lived and loved the way he needs to be himself, and you can’t get much truer than that.  Now for the opposite of that, let’s pretend I ended this with some smart four syllable word or a profound Shakespearean quote.  At least I’ll tell James that I did next time I imagine that we’re lying in bed talking.