IN AN ATTEMPT to improve my state of mind, I wander the streets of New York looking forlorn, as is my way, in order to attract women who might think I’m deep or that I need to be saved, a technique that has not yet proved fruitful but I am confident will. One might think I would have given up on it by now, but it is the single technique in my arsenal. I invented it at the age of fifteen at a teen party, where I sat in the corner and wrote in a little notebook. What are you writing? asks the sad and beautiful girl of my imagination. Oh, just some thoughts, I say, matching her sadness. Do you hate these things as much as I do? she continues. I do, I say. It seemed like it should work. But it never did. I mean, not with any of the pretty, sad ones.