Now, as most of my friends know, I've geen going through quite a long "dry spell" so my male ego is fragile enough these days. Things like this don't help at all.

There was a Halloween party last saturday. Dickie came to the Party as Christopher Reeve. He had a superman suit, a wheelchair, a tube to his throat, a "bald" cap and a baby doll hanging from the I V hook with a tube from the baby's navel into his head. As usual Dickie had a lot (that's actually more than a lot for most people.) to drink. Around 11 pm, there was this girl at the bar who I started talking to. She was 30ish and quite drunk. She had come with her sister, but her sister had abandoned her and gone off with a guy named Dave. I hadn't gotten two full sentences out before Dickie saw me and in his drunken stupor decided to "help" me. He came over and the conversation went something like this:

Dickie: I see you've met my friend, Lou. You know, my friend lou doesn't do well with the ladies. No, not at all. You see, it's because he's a "nice guy." I mean look at him. He's he's the nicest guy you'll ever meet. He's nice and sweet and smart and shy and nice and good and nice and basically, he's a nice young man.

Well actually, he's not really young. Now let's see. He's about 6 years older than me and I'm 38 so that makes him...

Lou: 44

Dickie: Yeah, Lou's 44. Hell, when you think about he's actually a really old guy, but you must admit that he's holding up pretty well for his age.

It's just that he can't find a nice girl. I mean I can just tell that you'd never want to go out with a nice guy like Lou.

Girl: Are you saying that I'm not a nice person?

Dickie: Here's what I'm saying: Go fuck yourself.

At this point, I made a quick, tactical retreat.