Questions you'd like to ask, but don't

Rico says that, in the midst of an otherwise mundane article about the new Chevrolet Volt, it's author, Gene Weingarten, suddenly writes:

The Volt has been selling disproportionately to men, which is why, to better serve you, the discerning consumer, I am stopping an attractive woman on a Bethesda sidewalk and asking her if she would sleep with me.
K.C. Hernandez is 32, a marketing associate visiting from Chicago. I assure her that I am a working journalist and that my question is purely hypothetical: judging by appearances alone, I ask, what would be my theoretical chance of having sex with her, expressed as a percentage?
K.C.'s friend is frantically bugging out her eyes and shaking her head no, no, but K.C. is laughing; she'll play. She surveys my body, which has the muscle tone of a yam souffle. I am 59. I did not arrive there the way some men (say, Harrison Ford) wouid.
"Three," she says finally.
Three percent? I'm pretty sure it's a mercy vote, but I'll take it.

Rico says he's a year younger and better-looking than a yam souffle (or so he's been told), but he knows better than to ask things like that...