“Sometimes I think I should marry one of them and just fuck around. There are times when I wish I had kids. I just don’t want a wife. I think I need the kind of relationship where if I want to see other women every now and again, the woman I was with would understand it was just a physical thing, and not about loving somebody else. I would certainly be discreet, like I was very discreet when I was with Jill, my last girlfriend. True, she did find out, but not for a long time. And she didn’t leave me because of it. She left me because I gave her crabs—remember? That was the final thing, that I gave her crabs . . .

“Maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe that isn’t the right way to have a relationship. It’s just that I get very claustrophobic and . . .

“Here’s what I think. I think my areas of expertise are areas of expertise because I do them to excess. I’m expert at my work because I do it to excess. And I think that if I’m finally able to have a relationship, it will be because I do it to excess. It’s almost as if I’m working at it, but it’s a pleasure doing that kind of business. The trouble is, this girl leveled a couple of accusations that really . . . I don’t think they hit home, but they hit near home. They certainly hit my neighborhood, and I don’t like that.

“I don’t know if I should see her anymore. I mean, we’re talking about someone who’s smart and funny and has great skin and great tits—you know how I love tits—and a great ass and a perfect pussy, but you never know. I mean, she’s great, but there could be a better one. Maybe somebody like me dies looking for the perfect one. I wish I could look and see it all in one girl. I wish I could stay with that one girl and not feel suffocated, not feel frightened of my need, or repelled by it, or whatever.

“It’s like there are so many different facets to each of them, and it’s always interesting, but it’s never interesting for long. This girl’s flaw is that she’s a woman, one woman. She’s only one woman, not all of them. And she’s gonna act like one woman. She’s gonna do all that stuff where she needs me, or she yells at me, or she wants me to be something I’m not. Not that I would respect a woman who accepted me like this. She said something funny, she said, ‘If I could make a man, I’d make him just like you and then I’d try to change him.’ I thought that was pretty self-aware.