| The Loser is surrounded by a coterie even worse off
than himself. A local real estate salesman, for example, never selling
more than one or two houses a year – because he's too timid to make
his clients buy a house, so that after awhile, his wife, who had somehow
thought she was marrying a man of promise, develops a case of ileitis
colitis so ravaging, she cannot leave the house, literally unable to face
her friends driving merrily about in their BMWs. In the end, with all
hope gone, she bleeds to death in a hospital room. Better dead than to
live with chronic disappointment.
Or maybe the Loser has another friend who can't earn a
living, and this man's wife gets so fed up she simply up and leaves,
taking the kid and clearing out the bank account…and the poor bastard of a
husband, with no money, no job, no prospects whatsoever, succumbs to a
raging prostate tumor that is chewing him up alive at this very moment.
If, for example, the Loser counts a doctor among his
friends, it is never a heart surgeon or oncologist. No, this doctor sews
up wounds in the emergency room of a small, local hospital under the
pathetically transparent title "Trauma Specialist." His wife? She's out
gallivanting with just about anybody she can hike her skirt for. To cover
his pain, he affects a kind of blithe bi-sexual persona, as if life's just
one big happy open marriage. It is, but only for his wife.
These are the kind of friends I, Elliot, E-man, surround
myself with, for anyone more accomplished would trigger the most
unbearable feelings of envy.
If you’re a loser who can’t find friends worse off than
yourself, or can’t find any friends at all, I’ll be your friend.
That’s right, me, E-man, the biggest loser of all. Next to me, anybody
can feel superior. E-mail me anytime, night or day. That’s
E-man@secondbestthemovie.com.
Remember, the only thing worse than being a loser is pretending you’re
not.
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