There is, as Carrie Bradshaw once noted in the episode “The Ick Factor,” a certain threshold for cheesiness in the modern era. To be sure, romance is much appreciated, as it distinguishes between the label of “friend” vs. “lover,” but an overwhelming display of affection and/or forced gestures of bathetic amorousness tend to negate the belief in a “man” having a dick.

With fall in full swing, the couples scene tends to reach a crescendo of annoying maudlin-ness that is especially noticeable in Williamsburg. From sipping hot chocolate together at Mast Brothers to walking along the waterfront hand in hand, there’s nothing more vomit-inducing that the Wburg cold-weather tableau. But what takes the cake for dicklessness is when you pick a leaf up off the ground, offer it to your girlfriend to hold and ride with her on the L train without shame as you and she touch the leaf together while entwined together. It smacks of a goddamn Mandy Moore movie. Not even The Notebook, a Mandy Moore movie. So try to rein it the fuck in. This isn’t 1948, after all, and you’re certainly not dressed well enough to pull off anything other than buying your girlfriend a book that you thought she’d identify with (probably, knowing your dicklessness, Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham).