The original entry

In addition, the interviewer asked me about my hobbies. I told him that I read and I had a popular web page. And that is it. How completely misanthropic do I sound?

Buddy, it is not that you sound misanthropic. It is that this man assumed that you were gay and wanted nothing to do with you.

Also, "popular"? By what metric?

Okay, so you want to know how I am handling the Todd thing.

You try to be okay with his death, but it is mostly by not thinking about it. You can try to put it in a spiritual context, but it is the same salve humanity has slathered over its pain forever.

Someone died in your life, taking you by surprise. The option you have chosen is to find a loophole by which your friend isn't really dead, just on another plane of existence.

I assure you sincerely: Todd is just dead.

I did not end up going to Todd's wake. I just could imagine seeing him lying still in clothes that weren't absolutely garish.

No. That's not why you didn't go.

I was scared to go alone.

There we are.

M and I are joyfully together, one month today. We struggled for a bit, owing entirely to my wanting to be alone. But I am decidedly in love with her.

You like her, but you are not in love with her. You struggled because the honorable thing would have been to slow that relationship to a crawl or stop it entirely. You lack the fortitude to do either.

She came to my side when she found out Todd had died. We spent four days last week in each other's beds. I sleep well in her arms.

Three traumas in the first six months of your relationship keep you with her for comfort or expedience: losing your beloved library job, Todd's death, and 9/11. With the latter two, you need someone to tell you that the world isn't all evil. She excels at this. She is a compassionate, sweet girl (particularly when not asked to direct that compassion and sweetness inward.) With the former one, you are adrift without a job. Her offering to work with you at the Renaissance Faire means that you must spend nights with her and hang out all day during the weekends. It is a blast, and it bonds you more than simple dating would have. She's a delight to be around in public. However, it does mean that you are deprived of the option to think about changing your relationship until the Renaissance Faire is over, by which point 9/11 occurs and to rethink is unthinkable for a while.

I was serious about holding off on a sexual relationship. It is merely cuddling, with the occasional story thrown in for good measure.

Good. If you held out on this longer, you would have been even happier together.

Our relationship is very secure and I can see myself being with her for a while.

I do not know how much you believe this. What I do note is that you wrote "for a while." You are a love addict -- no better word for it -- but you are still hedging with Emily. Why? You could have written "I can see myself being with her" without modifying it. Or, you know, acknowledge that you are with her.

She is ridiculously funny and it does wonderful thing to me. We watched The Blob in Zack's basement last night. We were both cracking jokes about it for the entire duration of the film, and I laughed so much my stomach muscles still ache.

Zero objections to this. Emily is witty and hilarious. She easily charms people.

I plan on [...] applying at three local libraries tomorrow.

You do well at libraries. If you had not had aspirations toward being a teacher (or if your parents did not have them in sufficient concentration for you), you could have been happy hanging out near the books for life. You will one day get a job processing books in the basement of a library and find it near to ecstasy.

I had to deal with some truly vile adults when I worked at the children's museum,

Remember Pedophile Duty? Whenever an unaccompanied man showed up, the museum management told you to take his admission, then constantly clean within a few feet of him until he took the hint and left. They made you do this only because you are male, even though some of your coworkers were surely better at knocking men out if it came to that. They still took the men's $3 admission rather than turning them away, and this protocol was unnecessary for women.

Fun times.

I got a postcard and a letter from Kate. She remembers me. Aw.

Of course she remembers you. That was never the issue.

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Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.