Dear Diary

A stream of consciousness-style journal-entry kind of thing from my analyst days, when I was coming off a hot-streak at the office and feeling burned out. I wrote this on a Saturday night. For whatever reason, enjoy...

I’m in the vortex. The magnetron. I’ve been suffering from too little sleep, such that the two, jumbo vodka rocks at the bar in a nondescript, upscale, Midtown seafood restaurant (white marble, everywhere) with colleagues yesterday afternoon were 1) enough to put me over; 2) potent enough to vaporize the effect of the two, generously sized key bumps I had during the stopover at my West Village apartment later on; and 3) free, courtesy of one of our traders.

On the way to the men’s room, so far from the bar it might have been in another borough, another analyst and I stopped to admire the lobster tank. Of immediate note were two, hulking critters that had been placed in their own compartment, glass panes on either side separating them from other, less evolutionarily successful specimens. These two were big. Their claws were taped up, “double wrapped,” as I nodded my head, transfixed, in awe like a kid in Sandlot. We kicked around possible reasons for their segregation, aside from preservation of other menu product. A scene from Django came to mind. One of them might have winked at me. Fatigue was knocking at the door.

Everything comes at a cost. In short order, and after the apartment stopover, I find myself across the table from a specimen of a different varietal – this blonde hardbody I’ve been seeing for a little over two months – we'll call her "Blonde" – and we’re sitting in the patio section of an upper-midrange French restaurant in the West Village. Apparently this place was converted from a townhouse at some point. “A townhouse called Benihana?” I blurt out as I skeptically eye the mirror-covered doors with oriental wood trim design at the rear of the patio. What proceeds is a textbook case study in bad dinner behavior (if I had a recording, I might overnight it to HBS to gauge interest).

Uncouth comments abound as my mental faculties deteriorate. Synapses fire sporadically. By the end, I find myself slumping in my chair (a total sin) with the sensation of hurtling forward, tumbling head over heels, in space. In fairness to Blonde, the blame lies entirely on me. And lucky for me, she has a massive reservoir of patience which she somehow stores in her size 0. She tolerates the worst of my petulance. In short, Blonde is a saint, and by the end of the evening I collapse into unconsciousness back at my apartment, cradled in her arms.

Blonde was gone (only to adhere to her strict running regimen) by the time I woke up at 9am. Ten hours, a workout at Equniox, and several errands later, I am still in the fog, but slightly more functional, and less socially offensive. Relatively speaking. The standard is low, I’m told.