Sometimes, well most times, I think I do better on my own. Like maybe I do better not having to deal with people. I know that may sound strange, especially if you know me. My friends say, "…but Jerry, you are the most social, likable, loving, people person I know!"

Sure, I love talking to people, hearing people tell me their most intimate details and stuff, it's just I might be better as a chat buddy, email pal, the dude you know from radio, or that podcast you love that hasn't had an episode in a while, or a guy you love to Skype with… Maybe I seem more special with some distance between us?

Up close and personal the cracks and imperfections appear much more prominent and might come across as unrepairable and not worth the effort even as a friend. Maybe I'm like that fashion model you were lucky enough to meet at that party and you recognized from the magazine and you took home, but after having the best sex you ever had, found that there wasn't much to talk about because your lives were just too different and you were worlds apart.

I caught an episode of "The Golden Girls," because the people who've been kind enough to put me up in their home, (as they don't want me living in my car and either getting murdered, or getting sick and dying from some illness caused by living in a car and not getting the care you need…) watch the show even though they've seen every one of them and have them on DVD… Anyway, one of the old broads had been writing love letters to a guy in prison and making all these promises to him, then one day he shows up and wants what was promised, but she has to backpedal and explain it was all just for the fantasy.

Maybe it's the fantasy I like? That giddy feeling of knowing someone just on the surface before they start telling you about all the bad things that have happened to them, all the bad boyfriends and evil exes and child abusers and rapists that they have loved in their lives.

Sometimes I feel like a sponge that absorbs all the bad things people tell me. It's like when I watched an episode of that show, "Monsters Inside Me" about all the different kinds of parasites that live, breed and kill you from the inside. After the show, I couldn't sleep! I was itching and scratching all night long. Then I suddenly had some flesh loving fungi start covering my body! I saw it, I felt it, it came true!

I can hurt so bad from someone's plight, that I'm unable to function. I can shut down after seeing a traffic accident. I can read about a disaster in the news and I can't get out of bed. I see a mass layoff in the headlines and I can't look for work. Just can't do it.

Then that rare occurrence where you get a job offer and it sounds like the greatest job in the world and you think, "This is a career, not a job, this won't even be work, because this is what I love to do!" However as the days go on and your pay is being held back two weeks, your insurance doesn't even start after 120 days, the commute is awful, you can't decorate your cubicle, the people you work with become suspect of you, gossip begins, you notice procedures make little sense, their way of working seems wrong, odd and strange and the glossy and glamorous sheen of the offer becomes faded and dirty, not to mention the actual pay when you finally get it (was it worth it?) and you begin thinking of continuing your job search because you look around at all the people you work with and they all kinda look alike and you wonder if you were hired because you look like them and you'd hate to be like them.

It's not that you think you're better than anyone else, it's just that you think it'd be better not to be with any of these people, or anyone in person. My mom used to say this thing to me as a kid when I would go play with my friends, "Don't wear out your welcome!"

That has stuck with me forever!

I used to have friends that were strippers and each one of them told me their dad had left them when they were young and they couldn't believe that as awesome as they were, dad didn't want to be a part of their life. They obsessed over getting the love they needed from their dad! But there are dads that stick around and are good dads and their daughters don't think that much about them. Seems like you get more attention being absent!

I had friends that were adopted by loving couples and all they thought about was finding their birth parents and getting the love they were denied. Not the love they were already receiving.

Maybe the perfect relationship with me is the long distance one! Be my Skype lover! Marry me online! Date me in cyberspace! Fuck me on Facebook!

You can even stay married! You can even have kids! You can even be in prison!

Hug me from afar. Blow me kisses. Move near me and be neglected.