I lived in New York most my adult life, and came back to the Midwest when family obligations called. I once would have been considered a successful wunderkind, now I'm trying to catch up to stuff that being a successful wunderkind didn't let me do that was more important than being a successful wunderkind, but I can admit I haven't been all too successful at it. I write real sentences with subjects and predicates and both independent and dependent clauses, and I spell out the word "you." I am a leftist. I believe there is an unquantifiable truth that can be gleaned methodically with common sense and science, but that objectivism is utter horsesh-t and that God may be a fine thing to keep in your own way, if you must, but once you get in my face with Him, you have left the realm of spirituality. I cook most of the stuff I eat, grow some of it and make dishes — sans recipes — that would knock your socks off.

I'm not really 39, but there's a procedural explanation to that I'm happy to tender upon request. God knows it's not a vanity thing. I scare people for no other reason than I have big arms and a shaven head, which I'm letting grow a little more recently. I write a lot. I like noir films. Puritanism and censorship piss me right the f-ck off.

Speaking of which, I swear. A lot. Sorry. But not really. I mostly read non-fiction because I want to have learned something by the time I finish the book. Oh, and, yeah, I read books. I don't believe in True Love. I believe in lots and lots of true loves, and have experienced them to prove it. One of them lasted nine years and ended a year ago, one of them lasted six months and lit the night sky like lightning, one lasted a profound, unquenchable weekend and still gives me shivers to remember it — just to name a few. Not everything fits a template. I think maybe more people need to apprehend the pointlessness of their existence before they make everyone in their f-cking life insane and crash their skulls onto the rocky shore of Love because they have confused Love with assuaging their gross insecurities and pursuing fairy tales that never actually happened. As great as our pain can be sometimes, it does not make us the axis upon which the Earth spins. My friend Rob's grandfather, when he was ailing and things looked bleak, would say to him, "Robert, if only this was all the pain in the world . . ."

That's one of the best things I ever heard. If you don't get that, well, maybe work on trying to get it. Send me a shout if you do.

And before you get all judgmental over my horrible, horrible cynicism — which isn't — look at the stories-after-stories on this site from divorced or otherwise wronged people who nevertheless still expect a great panacea to incarnate in front of them on a shiny burgundy satin pillow. There is a pattern here. There is a catalyst that prompts people to do X versus Y in grand pattern, and that, in this case, is bad information. Bad information prompts you to make stupid decisions and measure others by impossible expectations.

Sometimes things are simpler than you think, and breathtakingly lovely in their simplicity. Take a deep breath and live now and then. I have no time for anyone who needs me to "complete" them, because, frankly, I'd rather hang out with complete people, people who figured out how to realize themselves while everybody else was waiting around for some f-cking Prince Charming to show up. People who didn't bother to accept sh-t as advertised generally are the ones with the best stories.

And I like sitting at the bar swapping stories with people I like. Turns out you sometimes learn things that way.

We're all flawed, and we've all f-cked up. Maybe the key to becoming more than what we have been is to not continue to do the same sh-t and expect different, much less miraculous, results.

Um, I also like The Venture Brothers. And Coen Bros. movies. And Thai.

UPDATE: If this whole thing seemed too long to read, by the way, it might be an indicator we won't gel. Not to say that I wrote anything as a litmus test, per se. I just always kind of thought the purpose of these profiles was to give a stranger a good representation of yourself, which tends to save people time, right? Either way, I'd prefer not to have more crazy people contact me with a handful of cursory, monosyllabic sentences and then get mad at me because A) I don't understand their punctuation-less typing or B) I use "big words." Personally, I don't find "big words," rudimentary language skills or, say, reading to be bad things. If you do, swell, it's your life to live, but maybe NOT messaging me is a better option than messaging-me-and-being-a-dick-for-no-good-reason.

UPDATE II: I will almost never initiate contact with anyone on here, so if I do, you're probably a pretty spectacular exception. Lately I find myself a bit insecure about how worthy of anyone's time I might be, especially amid the din of hamfisted fratboy solicitation and smarm likely inundating you, and whether it's worth it to make an ass of myself right along with the other snorting mandrills. I know, I know, these f-cking sites are made with the express purpose of ass-making, but that just happens to be my thing at the moment. If you see me as a "visitor" to your page more than once, chances are I'm mulling it — that or I like how you write or I forgot I already looked at your profile before, possibly because I was drunk or possibly because the thumbnails on this site are tiny and un-representative. That said, I'm much more amenable to the being-contacted thing, as it were, so if you get the inkling, fire away.

UPDATE III: If you are a Republican, objectivist or evangelical/born-again, in the unlikely event you haven't clicked off to another profile by now, you might want to consider it. And that is about as nicely as that can be put.

Get ****ails — and, jesus, apparently you can't type f-cking c o c k t a i l s here without getting it censored — discuss why food doesn't get to people who need it, argue over movies, make out. EDIT: I guess I should note that this particular outcome would be that of an ideal first date.