What about my career?  Well, I did in fact somehow get to be editor-in-chief at Dutton Books for almost two years.  But my tenure there was marked by an absolutely dismal string of failures.  The problem was, I didn’t have a clue about which books to publish.  My own taste is for a kind of dark humorous fiction – so when my editors came storming into my office demanding that we publish manuscripts about pets and weight loss and card tricks, I never knew whether they were right or wrong.  So I just kind of went along, hoping we'd get lucky.

Which we did.  Once.  And, curiously, that was the one book I adamantly resisted publishing.  Perhaps you've heard of it:  Spirited Cooking.  500 recipes like brisket in beer, Drambuie-glazed prawns.  The whole concept makes me sick to my stomach, and I told the editor that we weren't going to go ahead with it.  But that afternoon I found myself urinating next to the chairman who said he'd heard we had a new manuscript floating around the shop that sounded like a hoot.  A hoot.  Apparently, that little cunt Amy Smythe Newcomb had gone behind my back.  I wasn't about to defy the chairman, of course, and next thing I know we're on the bestseller list, not the Times', mind you, but the Phoenix Sun's.  Just for three weeks, though, and no higher than twelfth.  (Apparently, there's an unusually high incidence of alcoholism in Arizona.)

Anyway, I talk up the fact we've got a bestseller to my friends, family, relatives, the press, and I've got a little buzz going. But you can't fool the chairman.  And one morning his axe-man catches me as I'm entering my office and tells me I've got exactly one hour to be out of the building.  In a way it was a relief.

So, small penis, modest success in the work place.  What about my wife?  How fat and ugly is she?   Well, I hate to admit it, but Paula, for a 44-year-old woman, is actually a fox.  In fact, she's gotten better looking as she's gotten older, lost the baby fat, hit the gym, kept her hair a classy shade of blonde, and, as her confidence has soared in her new career as a psychotherapist, generally gotten prettier.  Plus, she's always had the most beautiful apricot colored bush with an aroma so intoxicating, my knees buckle at the mere thought of it. 

So, you might be wondering, what's the problem?  Paula threw you-know-who out with the same ruthless finality as Dutton Books.  The rationalization is that, out of a job, writing at home, I had made passes at too many of her friends.  You know, crazy bearded drunken Dylan Thomas-type writer seducing horny housewives enamored of the creative type.  Bullshit!  In my middle class neck of the woods the gals found me pudgy, cigar-stained, and tainted by the unmistakable stench of failure.  I won't get over loving Paula for the rest of my life.

So here I am, gang, kicked out of job and house, scrounging money from my mom, my ex-wife, my son, and my oldest friend Richard shows up in town.  Richard, you see, is none other than Richard Sherman, the Los Angeles producer who okayed the budget of “Vesuvius.”

Richard lives on a virtual estate in the Malibu Hills overlooking the Pacific, while I reside in a shabby rental in Cresskill, New Jersey.  His son is an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, mine a queer dental hygienist in Bergenfield.  His wife Allison has kept her figure and her looks.  In fact the only thing in the whole world that I have over Richard, and I don't think he knows this although he knows that she and I went out for a few months back in college before he stole her away from me, is that I once fucked the lovely Allison up the ass when she was drunk and she came with the most intense shudder I have ever felt so that I shot what felt like a tumbler-full of jism high up her rectum.  Richard once French-kissed my wife way back when, but he didn't butt-fuck her like I did his wife.

So that’s my story folks, E-man, biggest loser of all.  E-mail me anytime.  That’s  E-man@secondbestthemovie.com.  Remember, the only thing worse than being a loser is pretending you’re not.