Notes from an Underachiever

I’m a writer. At least, that’s what I keep telling people when they ask me what I do. The first question they ask me is, “Are you a published writer?” I am, I tell them. Some are impressed; others couldn’t give less than a s**t. I don’t blame them. Writers often fall into the category of carny grifters, stumbling alcoholics, and unproduced filmmakers. It’s a ghastly category I am not proud to be a part of. However, things must be appropriately said without propaganda. To a writer, propaganda is anathema to them. It’s something they are constantly fighting against. “All you have to do is write one true sentence,” Ernest Hemingway said in A Moveable Feast. So here is my one true sentence.

Shhh. Don’t tell anybody this, but…

I haven’t been laid in almost 30 years. That is not an exaggeration, untruth, or propaganda. It’s an actual fact. I have been celibate for 30 years, and I don’t even wear the habit. How the hell have you managed to stay away from the p***y for so long? 

Because I haven’t had a relationship since high school. You do the f*****g math, I’m too tired. The truth is often too brutal to confront.

Next, you’re gonna want to know, do I masturbate?

Yes, I do, Quite often. 

What is your technique? 

Well, it used to be porn, but I don’t like porn anymore. I like looking at girls on Instagram and TikTok. 

That’s when you go, “Are you a pervert?." 

“Why, yes, I am.” 

“You degenerate f**k,” you usually say. 

And I don’t disagree with you because I may deal in fiction, but I don’t deal in lies, especially in my own life, however private I construct it to be. And if I can help it. 

I don’t know why I’ve done anything. 

Next month, I’m scheduled to meet a therapist. 

Where will that take me? 

I have no f**k of an idea. Friends, comics on podcasts, Woody Allen, and Howard Stern have all been in therapy for years. 

I used to work for Goodwill Industries. I was an instructor. I taught classes about becoming exemplary employees. I had a student who, in our 1:1, admitted to me she was seeing a psychiatrist. She said, “My psychiatrist told me if most people had one true friend, they wouldn’t need me. I was like, whoa, Really?" Her doctor nodded his head. 

So, I don’t know where I am on that topic yet. Hopefully, after a few sessions, I’ll have a better idea if therapy is just a parlor trick or if it is effective.

                

I’m calling these dispatches Notes from an Underachiever. Many more to come.