Definitive Proof That Obama Is a Muslim, Lady Gaga is Transgendered, and That They're Both Communists

People have always looked at me and thought I had it made. Psychologists have demonstrated over and over that the very good-looking are almost universally perceived as more intelligent, more competent, and better in bed, but sometimes it’s a curse. Those on whom God didn’t smile so warmly — those with coarser, less symmetrical features, or stumpy legs, or lank, lifeless hair, or blotchy skin — have always viewed me with naked resentment, and on occasion attacked me with bricks and mortar.

In elementary school, no one wanted me as a square dance partner because they assumed God couldn’t have made me both gorgeous and light on my feet. I ate my lunch alone at the end of the playground that didn’t smell so good for reasons that no one was ever able to ascertain, at least before my promotion to what was then called junior high. There the PE teachers, rabid sadists every one, took delight in making me try to perform gymnastic feats that my congenital inner ear problem made quite impossible.

Later, in high school, the football team used to urinate into my locker because Donna Brisbin, the homecoming queen — who lied so baldly to the local newspapers about the impressive range of activities in which she was involved — had eyes only for me. Worse, Mr. A— D—, the journalism teacher, fell in love with me (I could see it in his very dark eyes) and gave me a B+ rather than the A- I deserved to spite me for having eyes only for Gail Hickey, who wore bright green contact lenses to dazzling effect, and yet somehow didn’t seem affected.

The biggest PR firm in Hollywood dispatched two women employees to try to seduce me in tandem when I wrote for the Los Angeles Times, and I have always liked the idea of a threesome, but not with them, thanks so much, though I’ve been a sucker for false eyelashes and immoderate eyeliner since the heyday of the Ronettes. Be my little baby indeed!

When I went to work for Larry Flynt Publications, a succession of female fellow employees came into my office and offered me the use of their reproductive systems, but I had eyes only for Tomasina L—, who reportedly thought anyone as gorgeous as I must be stuck up and shallow, which of course was only half true, or maybe five-eighths. One night on Sunset Blvd., a woman stopped in the adjoining lane scrawled her phone number backwards (forwards to me, you see) on her passenger window as we waited for the light to change, but she of course wasn’t my type. At that time I imagined leggy New Wave chanteueses in spandex to be my type, but heartbreakingly few of them shared my view.

I was nearly relieved in the early 90s when my looks began to fade, as it meant that people would finally start judging me on the basis of who I was, rather than what I looked like. But during all those years I’d gotten by on my looks, I hadn’t developed much of a personality, and boy, was I sunk! After my first marriage collapsed, my psychotherapist urged me to take a Learning Annex flirting class. There was a young woman there who’d have been on the cover of every magazine in the world if she hadn’t weighed 280 pounds; she had the most gorgeous white skin you’ve ever seen, but exuded self-hatred, and I wound up trying to lower the boom on a little French woman with a wonderfully Gallic nose I found huddled afterwad in a doorway on California Street because her boyfriend had thrown her out for reasons I was never able to claim I knew. In the produce section of Cala Foods, most of whose windows failed to survive the Loma Prieta earthquake some months later, I tried to lower the boom on a New Zealish blonde with a sexy updo. Her name was Kepi, though it sounded a lot more like Kippie in her accent, and we didn’t get along at all well.

Sometimes late at night (well, late for me, who gets up really early these days) I realize I haven’t written anything for the next day, and have to dash something off. On these occasions, I resort to an old literary device called “stream-of-conscousness”. Your indulgence gets mine.