Gays feel about popularity the same way teenage girls do. Is it that we really want friends we can count on, or do we just want guys around us whom we can share our curlers with?

Start a conversation with someone with whom you have "nothing in common" and no possibility of scoring with, networking with, or even seeing again. In other words, a conversation just for the civilized hell of it.

Stay up and listen to lightening. If there is no lightening around, stay up and listen to nothing. Just listen to the sheer joy of your thoughts trans-versing from one corner of your brain to the next.

There are certain restaurants where you should photograph the food rather than eat it. These are great places to bring a narcissistic boyfriend before you break up.

Wanting someone so much that his very presence takes your breath away is one of the most thrilling happenings in life. Not getting him in no way diminishes this.

Remember that that "rude awakening" which your parents and well-meaning relatives threatened you with as a kid is better than no awakening at all.

The Egyptians had a particularly nasty way of getting rid of people they felt had no consequence. Instead of embalming them, they simply constructed a fake mummy made from old strips of linen wrapped around a dummy of mud. If, in our modern world, you feel that there are a lot of "mud mummies" around you, get rid of the mud.