“I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.”

“I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.”

“Rarely do very handsome men allow their faces to run around without a leash. I am not very handsome, but I am above-average handsome, which means I have spent only one-sixteenth of my life in front of a mirror practicing facial expressions, as opposed to the maybe one-fourth that a very handsome guy might have. Yet I can tell you that if I had accidentally spilled coffee on a first date, I would have immediately made facial expression number 69b: Spilled Coffee on First Date face.”

“I think…Have I given up anything by living with another person? Has there been a trade-off?Always, there is a trade-off. And the answer comes to me instantly. I have given up a certain degree of freedom. The ability to plow through my life with utter disregard for the thoughts and feelings of other people. I can no longer read a magazine and throw it on the floor.In exchange, I get unlimited access to the one person I have met in my life whom I automatically felt was out of my league. My favorite human being, the single person I cherish above all others. This is the person I get to share the oxygen in the room with .And for this, I will happily scrub the toilet.”

“It was a great story and I admired her. And I also felt a little envious. Because that bloody tampon had been a secret weapon. And every woman had one. But only a woman like Debby would be brave enough to use it.”

“I understood at once, I am not living, but actively dying. I am smoking, living unhealthily. I’m shutting down. I need to go the other way, inside. And it was so clear to me what I was doing. It was suddenly perfectly clear. I understood, I need to write. Live here, in my words, and my head. I need to go inside, that’s all. No big, complicated, difficult thing. I just need to go in reverse. And not worry about what to write about, but just write. Or, if I’m going to worry about what to write, then do this worrying on paper, so at least I’m writing and will have a record of the anxiety.”

“It turns out that (he) has a condition known as micropenis. This means his penis is less than three inches long, fully erect. It looks like a large clitoris, sticking out above two balls."Suck my big, fat cock, " he tells me. "You like that big dick?"I am dizzy. I am literally dizzy. I was so shocked to encounter the micropenis and now am even more shocked to encounter the apparent lack of knowledge about the micropenis. I grip it in my hand, and it's lost, so I use my thumb and index finger to jerk it."Yeah, " he says. "Yeah, man, stroke that long, hard cock. Work it."I am now engaged in what I consider volunteer work. I am jerking him off purely out of pity. This is really no different from donating five percent of my paycheck to United Way every month, and it occurs to me that maybe now I don't need to give to the United Way and instead can keep the cash for myself for dating, which I am obviously going to have to do quite a bit more of.”