Hi! Are you hot and outrageously boring? Me too! Sit down; I’ll buy you a beer!

Cheers, stud. I saw you standing at the bar when you bought your Jäger bomb, and I thought, “Wow, that Abercrombie guy looks just like how I want to look. I hope he’s single.” You are? Me too. Hey, cheers!

So have you been out long tonight? I haven’t seen you here before, which is weird because I drink here five or six nights a week. Don’t worry, I’m not an alcoholic. I only get totally bombed out of my effing mind on Fridays and Saturdays...and holiday weekends. Otherwise, I’m just social.

So what do you do for work and stuff? No, I just mean “for work.” I don’t know why I said “and stuff.” Oh, you wait tables? That’s cool. I hear it’s great money, especially if your alternative job would be cleaning toilets. I work at a law firm. No, I’m not a lawyer. I do photocopies mostly.

You’re cute!

Yeah, I work out a lot, too. Usually cardio, then free weights, but I go to the gym every day. I think weightlifting makes for intelligent conversation! I can talk about the elliptical machine all day. You use that one? Yeah, it’s good for like, your calves and altoids, I think.

For fun? I like to have sex, hang out with friends, have sex with friends, drink . . . I have TiVo. How about you? Yeah, TiVo’s great. To TiVo!

Um, mostly my friends and I come here. Sometimes we’ll do dinner at each other’s houses, then come here. My friends are great. We all have nicknames for each other like frat boys, because we’re just like frat boys except we’re all gay and in our 30s and 40s. But we do force a bond we don’t really share. Because frat boys are hot! Huh? Mine’s “Murph,” ’cause my last name’s Murphy.

Like my Von Dutch hat?

Oh yeah, I have one other hobby. I’m into porn. Not like rare porn or anything collectible, just regular porn. I have a lot. You too? Yeah, I would love to do it with a Catalina model so bad. Man, I knew you and me would have things in common!

No, I don’t have a favorite kind of music. I like everything. That’s my way of saying I have no artistic taste. I wake up to NPR in the mornings, but just because I like the sound of voices better than the sound of music. Do I get what? “The sound of music?” No, I don’t get it. Was that a joke? Anyway, I don’t really pay attention to what the NPR guys are talking about. I have to concentrate on getting dressed and tying my shoes and stuff.

So what kind of movies do you like? I mean besides porn . . . or do you want to talk about porn again? Because I do! That makes me think about sex, which I’m usually doing anyway, but when we’re actually talking about sex I don’t have to pretend I’m thinking about whatever we’re supposed to be talking about. No? It’s cool. Go on. Hmm, The Golden Compass? Yeah, I heard that’s good. You think Daniel Craig would sleep with me?

Let’s do a shot. Hey Bobby, two over-the-tops, please. You want a Jäger bomb, too? And two of those. And two Miller Lights, too.

Hey—to new friends! Ahh, that was good. Hey, can I tell you something? I’m ploughed enough now that I feel can tell you something. Like, even though we just met, I feel like we have a lot in common. I feel like we’re both insecure guys with no ambition who need a group of six or eight clones around us at all times to be comfortable, and that we both have trouble communicating when we’re not totally bombed out of our effing minds. But even when we are ass-face wasted, we can’t say what’s really bothering us because we don’t introspect enough to know.

Instead, what we do know is that there is a thing at the core of our beings preventing us from being more; a thing we are so deeply afraid to speak of, touch, or look at for any longer than it takes to see that it’s definitely there; a thing that perhaps we could heal and use to help ourselves grow—if that were what we wanted, and if it weren’t so frightening.

But don’t listen to me, dude, I’m drunk. Wanna go back to my place?