The Dealer

I was a dry, sterile, joyless eunuch, suit and tie and martini after work, pressed and folded and mindwashed and full of sophisticated, cute jokes and a kind of hip laugh. I pulled in a thousand dollars a month for sitting in an office in the city dreaming up little ad schemes for products that nobody needed. I had dates with girls who were well-educated, a little horny, physically graceless and messed up, and very verbal, sit around restaurants and talk for hours about their roommates or ski conditions in Vermont or the liberal wing of the Democratic party.