"I'd make her a home-cooked meal: champagne, an Italian main course and then a romantic dessert like chocolate-covered strawberries. After dinner, I wouldn't plan anything -- we'd just see where the night takes us."
"How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice."
His sister called. She said, "Jimmy, I need a picture of you with your shirt off."
Jimmy considered the request. He asked, "What Internet site are you going to post me on?"
The peculiar exchange, between Jimmy Mensinger of Newark and his sister Liz Ashton of Pike Creek, introduced Mensinger to the possibility that he might be named to Cosmopolitan magazine's annual list of bachelors, alternately deemed America's hottest or most eligible.
She had asked for his permission in early April before she submitted a snapshot of her little brother. But Mensinger, until that call, hadn't a clue that he'd made it past the first round of cuts. His sister, 27, hadn't checked her e-mail in a few days, and she was hurrying to meet the deadline. In her backyard, Mensinger went topless.
A few weeks later, he learned by voice mail of his selection.
"I couldn't believe it," says Mensinger, 24. "I had to play it three times."
"I was left in the dark," she says. Her friends weren't. "My friends," she says, "have always thought he was hot. But he's off-limits to them."
Cosmopolitan, a magazine that some women consider mandatory reading, selected one man from each state to appear in its November issue, which hit newsstands Oct. 12. Mensinger was one of a group of the bachelors who met for three days in Manhattan, where they were shuttled through a lineup of interviews on "The Today Show," "Live with Regis and Kelly," with the New York Post and on a few more television programs. They attended a party in their honor and posed seductively on a beach in the south Hamptons.
In the photo published with his online profile, Mr. Delaware lounges in a black T-shirt and khakis atop a grassy dune, propped on his right elbow. The look on his face seems to say, "Hey there. I'm comfy on this dune. Join me."
At the bottom of his online profile, readers can download Mensinger wallpaper by clicking a link that reads, "Sex up your screen with this bachelor!"
Be advised, however, that Mensinger is more than a pretty face. He's a computer programmer working toward a master's degree in business administration at the University of Delaware.
"Working on computers every day," he says, "I never imagined there'd be a background with my face on it."
Co-workers had a surprise waiting for him upon his return from New York.
"Someone thought it'd be funny to set up my computer with it, and when I got back I was staring myself in the face. I hadn't even told anyone there about it yet."
By now, more than a few people know of his exceptional bachelorhood. His online profile includes an e-mail address, delawarebachelor05@ yahoo.com, that was assigned to him and is a bit long for Mensinger's taste. He says he might've used the postal code for Delaware, "DE."
Women, however, seem to be more patient than men -- by Friday he had more than 120 messages in his inbox. He tries to respond to each of them, spending more time on letters that seem less like carbon-copied notes than genuine expressions of interest.
He's spoken to girls as far away in the United States as Oregon and Montana. One wrote him from Nigeria. Mensinger was surprised to have received only two or three from Delawareans.
His friends, he says, have been supportive. He didn't expect that at first, and so he told just a few female friends.
"It's safe to say my guy friends didn't know until about three weeks ago," he says. "I thought they'd be ragging on me. I thought I was going down hard-core, that I'd never hear the end of it. But they were great about it from the start."
Their motivation, Mensinger acknowledges, may not be righteous: "My friends are more into thinking about how they can exploit it for their benefit. I don't blame them. I'd probably be doing the same thing if I were them."
He approaches girls with a subtle confidence, using humor to start conversations. But Ashton, one of Mensinger's two older sisters, needn't worry that his newfound status might go to his head.
"Her friends used to think I was cute," he says, "when I was 5."
Contact Christopher Yasiejko at 324-2778 or cyasiejko@delawareonline.com .
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