Most days I focus on the negative.

What’s wrong with my life?

Why aren’t I the super-rich, sex-spoiled, cool-as-ice fat cat that I should be?

Why did Keith Foulke have to again surrender the tying and winning runs to the Texas Rangers to singlehandedly cost the Sox a win?

Isn’t there anything I can do to avoid going into work, where my life's direction is completely decided by other people?

And hey what’s this odd buzzing in my head?

That's called a hangover, fuckhead, and it’s a reaction to the six beers that you drank last night.

OK. That's enough negativity. Today I’m going to tell you that life is just grand. Chin up, asshole. You see, I’m wearing my new shoes from Aldo that Lisa helped me to pick out, and they really are the most comfortable motherfucking things you’ve ever slipped your dogs into. I still can’t quite determine if the brown color goes with my dark blue suit pants and regular-blue top, but it doesn’t look like the worst combination in the world. I also cannot determine why I should care about any of this. Fashion has never been a huge interest of mine. I bought the shoes because Lisa said I need to have a nice pair.

I have Mr. Ari Berkowitz making an appearance today and, frankly, I’m incredibly nervous. I’m worried that he’s going to pressure me to go into the city and get loaded. And he will.

Which isn’t a problem except for a couple of things. First is that I’ll likely be driving, at least to Riverside, which means that on the way back that I’ll need to make sure that I am not legally drunk. And the second is that I have to work tomorrow, so getting home very late isn’t really an option. Last night, for example, was okay. Sure, I threw down a bunch of beers, but I was done drinking by 9:30 and in bed by 11, which is why I feel just a little bit out of it instead of looking like some crazy wino after downing a bottle of Listerine.

I had some odd dreams last night, as I’m very prone to doing after a night of drinking. One of them had something to do with being at the beach. I was back at my Grandmother’s old place, in Madison, Connecticut The only reason I’m sure that it was Grandma’s place was the feeling I had, because I didn’t really see any landmarks to tell me that, for sure, this was it. I just knew.

There seemed to be a fierce storm going, causing pretty terrific waves to rise up and crash against the sand, cresting and foaming and <insert amazing description here>, but that wasn’t the interesting part to me. Nope – the interesting thing that was happening here was that I knew that something was in the water. Some kind of creature or monster. Like a super big snake maybe. A Leviathan.

I also had a strange dream about the Simpsons, and soul-swapping. It was sort of odd. To tell you the absolute truth, all I really remember is one weird part where there were two Simpson kids, Bart and Lisa I think, running around on the ground, trying to shoot one another, but it wasn’t really Bart and Lisa. I was controlling Bart, and Bart was controlling Lisa, because of the whole soul-swapping thing, you understand. I do not know where Lisa went after the swapping. Really, really weird.

Man, I feel oddly relaxed, even though in about twenty minutes I’m going to be in the office, at which point all I’m going to be able to think about is what needs to be done today. Horrible, you know. Absolutely terrible. And yet somehow, I really don’t care. Just don’t take it too seriously. Put on your headphones. Make your project plans. Call the people you need to call – talk to the people that you need to talk to – and, above all, go to the gym from 12 to 1. Exercise for your full 40 minutes of cardio. Lord knows that you need it, after all of those beers last night. Gotta stay on pace. Gotta keep it going.

Is this it? Is this all that I have to say today? Should I talk more about Ari?

Sure. Why the hell not. I got at least 5-10 minutes left.
So he calls me last night. Or, more accurately, I call him back after he’d left three messages on my machine over the past four days. He’s joking with me about not calling him and I’m lying to him about being away for the majority of the weekend. All in good fun. Then he tells me a story.

Apparently a few nights ago he went to a wine bar in Boston somewhere. He went to the sort of wine bar where pretty good looking women go. Fancy. Upscale. Exactly the kind of establishment that I don’t really venture into, unless I’m heavily coerced, or already drunk. And he sat down to drink himself some wine.

A few tables over, a trio of fairly good looking women had also sat down to have themselves some wine. Soon enough, Ari being the fairly social guy that he is, all four of them were having wine together.

They started to bar/club hop. They went to a few other places, some with dancing, all with wine, and before long, they were all pretty much roaring drunk. Which meant that it was time for the festivities to begin.

So one of them – May or something – starts making out with the one that I really like, Jennie, Ari tells me.

And then the third gets involved. And I think to myself, what would Toby do? Toby would get involved, that’s what. So I kind of start touching and fondling them and they seem pretty cool with it. Before I know it, we’re all going back to one of their houses.

Yes, this means that Ari was with three decently attractive girls that night. Three. It’s very, very difficult to pretend that I’m not jealous, because of course I’m as jealous as hell. And why? It was something that I was grappling with last night. I mean, I have a nice girlfriend. She buys me shoes and is, most of the time, pretty nice to me. She’s cute, even if she does have a bit of a tummy and is developing a heavy-looking bottom. What the hell would I gain from being with several women at the same time?

Pretty much nothing. And yet I want it. Stupid, stupid human nature. When I was on the phone with Brian last night, he asked me how things are going with Lisa, and I responded, fairly truthfully, that things are going well, but that I always have a nagging feeling that things could be going better with someone else.

This is a theme we discuss pretty frequently – that crazy human desire to try to upgrade everything in your life, to make everything better. It’s a selfish, horrible need if you think about it. That desire completely disregards the fect that you’re dealing with people here, not things. You can’t just replace a person in your life, can you? Could I just get rid of Lisa and put a new model in her place, as though the ‘girl’ role in my life is an interchangeable part?

I’ll tell you. I would feel so guilty about it, so rotten and screwed up, that the ‘upgrade’ in girlfriends would, at least for a significant period of time, end up being a downgrade to how I felt about my life. I like to think I'm a halfway decent person and dumping a longtime girlfriend to date someone prettier just because you're bored is obviously shitty person behavior.

And yet, the idea is appealing to me. I could have someone with a small bottom, a thinner waist, a flatter tummy, someone who might love me more, who would want to have wild sex with me, who would go down on me. There’s really no wonder why it’s appealing, when you frame it like that. I might walk home and this girl could already be naked on my couch, fingering herself, instead of looking at call-center data the way that Lisa does. A fancy free girl would get me excited about sex again. With Lisa, sex is just nice. With another girl, sex could be hot, dirty, sloppy, raunchy, unpredictable.

This is going nowhere. I have nothing interesting to say.