3 Years of Self-Confidence Training

"I like everything with sugar, lots and lots and lots of sugar..." She poured packets of sugar into her Jack and Coke.

I was never averse to sin. I was up for anything - and then some! Non-conformity had simply deprived me of sin opportunities.

We were in a bar in Newark. Every time I'm in Newark I get a vague Richard Price feeling. Oh, that man can WRITE HIS ASS OFF - and then some! Proud to be in the "Iron Triangle".

The bar was in downtown Newark, a Rutgers hang-out.

I at least had a job at that time, but I had to beat myself up about something. In this case it was that I did not make MUCH money as a UPS handler.

As usual I was in a morbid depression, lead deposits in my face, my body covered with damn poison from head to toe. THIS one was the one to save me.

Her name was Mory and I associated her with Harold's Latina love interest in the first "Harold and Kumar". She was just as pretty. It was March and Spring was JUST getting started, so I also associated her with that tenacious goddess, Hope. Hope Herself. Spring was just around the bend so I did look forward to playing catch with her in the park.

She was a huge Mets fan and I just knew they would have to win the World Series that year. They would have to. It was 2006, 20 years from 1986.

She was the one to bring me back to life. See, she could possibly restore what my life once was. My life was lonely, dreary drudgery. I once again felt like Nobody, Nowhere, doing Nothing. Unfortunately, that's a state I still have to fight against every day.

How could she possibly want me? How could I compete against flashier guys with real jobs?

She had breasts like the Brazilian porn star Chloe Veria. A gap between her canine and the next tooth over (whatever the next tooth over is called...) Was she human? Was she? Could I touch her, feel her, know her? Would I be given the privilege?

She had long, black curly hair and that alabaster skin. She had a face like the face of this girl I grew up with, Tara, the daughter of a bank-robbing cop.

In a way, I am n much better shape now. I'm not as alive, but if she had gone to talk to those semi-hipsters (Newark is a weird NY/NJ limbo) now I would have made some kind of scene. I would have beaten their faces in, or walked out, or overpowered them verbally.

But that kind of confidence can only come from sin-immersion.