But it wasn’t working. I started comparing myself to my family again. They weren’t running themselves ragged trying to support every humanitarian cause in existence, and they weren’t giving away their money to charities left and right. (Well, Mom did drop coins into every Salvation Army bucket she passed at Christmas, but that wasn’t the same.) They weren’t standing out in forests linking arms with hippies and singing old folk songs around an ancient redwood. But they were still happier than I. What was the deal?

Love. There it was again, that pesky reality. They were married, they had kids, they had someone to kiss and make love to and hold hands with on walks around the neighborhood. I thought back to when Dianne and I had first started dating and how I’d been convinced that all anyone needed was love. I’d been pretty happy then. But I’d just told Mom I didn’t want to get married and have kids, hadn’t I? Truth be told, that was only partially true. I didn’t want kids, but only because I was sure I’d screw them up. And I was selfish, but wasn’t everyone? And hadn’t I stopped being selfish for a little while when Dianne and I had started dating? I’d gladly given up my plans in order to go out with her or go where she felt like going for dinner. It hadn’t lasted, but then maybe that was a symptom of how incompatible we really were, that we really weren’t meant to last for very long. And there were a lot of couples who did make it in Hollywood; they just didn’t get as much press as the ones who married after dating three months and then got divorced a year later.

So maybe I was just scared of screwing up another relationship. I’d messed up in a major way, and I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t do it again. But everyone was screwed up; no one was capable of having a perfect relationship, so maybe I should just get over it and start dating again.

That was my plan. I started sizing up the women I encountered: were they pretty, did they seem intelligent, were they fun? I went on a few dates. A couple people even tried to set me up with women they knew. But I always managed to find something wrong that would disqualify these women I met: weird laugh, bizarre taste in clothes, too flighty, too focused … I became the king of flaw-finding.

Trish Gardner: great woman, really nice, very smart, but she did this thing with her hair. Twist twist twist around her finger, untwist untwist untwist and toss over her shoulder, even though it was barely long enough to stay back there. Then it would fall back in front and she’d do it again. And again.