My friend Tom (name changed so he doesn’t knife me in a dark alley) is a confirmed bachelor. I don’t mean in the coy, 1950’s he-likes-the-opera-but-we-don’t-talk-about-it kind of way. I mean, he’s never had a relationship that lasted longer than an episode of The Client List.

As is typical of people who don’t have to worry about what hijinks their genitalia gets into, Tom occasionally picks up random women at bars. And since he is single, and since any hookup is comprised of two adults old enough to spell the word “consenting”, this is probably none of my holier-than-thou business.

But then, there’s Lisa.

Lisa is a seemingly nice, 27-year-old girl who Tom has brought home several times. She’s cute, she’s fun, and – here comes the slightly problematic part – one could say she enjoys a festive libation, because she’s routinely, eye-crossingly HAMMERED when Tom encounters her, generally around 7pm.

“Yeah,” Tom says with a disturbing measure of either pride or laissez-faire (I’m not sure which), “I’m a Hot Mess Enabler.”

Upon arriving at Tom’s house, Lisa allows Tom to take photos of her which could most politely be described as Unfit for Facebook. And he gets her to perform acts that would make Heidi Fleiss roll over in her grave. (I know she’s not dead, but this would kill her.)  

He then holds her hair while she hurls (always an attractive quality in a booty call), and he thoughtfully forbids her to drive home, dropping her off in front of her home where she presumably “naps” with her skirt up around her head.

Exactly how starving for attention must someone be to take advantage of a girl who is so clearly FUBAR? If there is one truism in life, it’s that we all crave intimacy and companionship, even people like Tom who claim to love being a “playa”. (He’s white, which makes it worse.) And we all want to feel attractive and desired, but I’m not sure how validating it is to have someone think you’re incredibly hot when they’re seconds away from being out cold.  

Tom’s a great friend to the many people who love him. He just sucks at relationships.  He, of course, blames it on the crappy women. I blame it on the man who picks up the crappy women. As Marianne Williamson once said, “It’s not that you attract the wrong people, it’s that you give them your phone number.”

I think it’s never too late for us to discover our inner benevolence. Maybe the next time Tom picks up someone like Lisa, he’ll play Farmville with her instead of asking her to squeal like a pig. And maybe then, a nice girl can stumble across his path. A girl who doesn’t wake up in her driveway and call the police to report a stolen car.

I had dinner the other night with my friend Jenny and a visiting co-worker of hers, Darren, a 49-year-old gay guy. He was warm, sophisticated and well-traveled, and he brought along his 23-year-old son.

Oh, wait, sorry, that wasn’t his son, that was his boyfriend. You can understand my confusion (as could the concierge at the Andaz Hotel in West Hollywood, who said to Darren, “He looks just like you”). When there are more years between the ages of a couple than one of them has been alive, it’s rather easy for unsuspecting onlookers to mistake the younger one for either spawn or a rental.

As someone who came out in my mid-twenties (which was already five or ten years too late and which involved a lot of unnerving man-on-girl activity and a near-miss wedding), I did not spend a ton of time dating guys for whom being able to order a drink was an exotic novelty.

But I’ve noticed that men who don’t come out until they’re 40 or 50 have a tremendous appetite for youth. They want to date it, they want to dress like it, they want to talk like it. My friend Sallie once said, “Guys who come out late spent so much time being someone they weren’t, that by the time they allow themselves to be who they really are, they have to live out the years they missed.”

Wiser words were never spoken. This late entry into the gay game results in a lot of men in their 40’s wearing super skinny jeans and hoodies emblazoned with One Direction, and using words like “Chillax” and “Hater”. It also results in relationship drama that would make the characters on Gossip Girl cringe. A 40-year-old man who has just come out has the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old girl, without the hormonal insanity to blame it on.

On the plus side, if you’re a 50-year-old man who was once married, your 23-year-old boyfriend can be BFF’s with your children, since they’re often the same age. Darren’s boyfriend spends more time with his kids than Darren does, although the kids sometimes tire of the boyfriend’s enthusiasm for skateboarding and prank calling the Apple genius bar.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against dating younger – you need somebody to wheel you around when you’re old. And unless you have kids that you can guilt into it by showing them pictures of the third world orphanage you plucked them out of, or an estate that makes nurses uncommonly interested in your romantic side, it’s up to the spouse. My partner is 8 years younger than me and will gladly push my wheelchair (off a cliff, I suspect).

I just think that one should marry someone within cultural striking distance of one’s own age. Because, after all, if you can’t share memories like Wonder Woman and Hot Wheels, what on earth do you talk about after you’ve redecorated the house?

I spent most of today bitching about President Obama.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I mostly love the dude. He’s done a reasonably heroic job fishing America’s lifeless body out of an economic dumpster. And this whole gay marriage stance is pretty nervy in an election cycle. The guy’s got nads.

But every time he visits our fair city, my 90-minute roundtrip commute becomes four hours, as the police  -and whatever secret service agents are not currently busy talking hookers down on price – close every thoroughfare within, it seems, a 30-mile radius of the President’s motorcade. Sure, I’d like to eat Peking duck and artichoke salad with George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and Tobey Maguire, too, but not if it means 5 million people have to spend two extra hours wishing the guy selling oranges on the overpass was selling guns.

So I spent a lot of time bad mouthing the leader of the free world today. And then I read that, along the canyon roads that the he took to Clooney’s house, families gathered to cheer the motorcade.

And children manned a lemonade stand with a sign that said, “Presidents drink free”.

At another corner, a boy held up another hand-drawn sign that said, “Will trade Lakers for Bulls if you stop”.

And finally, two guys and two children stood at the end of their driveway with what may be the best sign of all:

“Our gay family thanks Mr. President.”

Maybe I shouldn’t complain so much. Any event that brings out that kind of togetherness and sense of community without planes being flown into buildings is probably worth those two extra hours in the car.

But next time, I’ll wear an adult diaper. ‘Cause once you pee into a coffee mug, you kinda don’t want to use it again.

I know you’ll be as excited as I was to learn that Living Social is offering substantially discounted subscriptions to the magazine, Garden and Gun.

Imagine the thrill of getting all your mulching and armor-piercing bullet information in one glossy monthly, and saving 50% to boot.

Consider the advantages of learning how to grow sunny yellow daisies that you can then insert into your 12-gauge and blow right through the torso of an unsuspecting deer.

Picture the rewards of burying that guy who stepped onto your property wearing a hoodie under your stunning new tulip bed!

Really, the uses for a magazine this comprehensive are virtually endless.

You can shop for Garden & Gun-branded shooting shirts and beer cozies (two things that always go well together) while pretending to read an article about Eudora Welty.

You can savor the high-quality photos of a dead moose surrounded by English wildflowers.

You can even join the Garden and Gun Club and be invited to periodic events where, one presumes, a bi-racial busboy is festively decorated with turkey feathers and given a head start across the woods.

My only real disappointment in such a valuable offer is that the subscription is for one year only. After that, if I wish to continue blending the zen art of gardening with the – some would argue – slightly less zen art of blowing holes in living things, I’ll have to pony up an extra $10.

And I’ll probably need that for bail.

I don’t know how I’ve surrounded myself with people who are so annoying.

A very close friend of mine and I recently took a weekend trip. Lars (not his real name) and I have traveled together dozens of times over the years and always had a blast. He’s so funny he makes me pee, and I am as comfortable with him as any human being on the planet.

But on this particular weekend, I knew things were gonna go downhill fast when we arrived at the hotel (which I had paid for) and he had issues with the décor.

“It’s just trying too hard,” he sniffed.

Then, he had issues with the hotel’s clientele.

“These girls’ dresses are so short, you wouldn’t even need to lift the hem to insert.”

And with the guy talking too loudly in the spa.

“Inside voice, please! Or do they not have those in Appalachia?”

He had issues with the non-working refrigerator in the kitchen.

“I’ve already unpacked,” he announced when the front desk clerk volunteered to move us to another room, “my unmentionables.”

He had issues with having to pay a brief visit to female friends of ours.

“Why can’t they come to us? Did Gloria Steinem empower women to do anything besides torch their boulder holders?”

He had issues with having to change hotels for the final night (which I had added on at the last minute).

“What are we, on the lam?”

 In short, he was thoroughly cranky and unpleasant.

When I returned home, I told my partner about all the nasty remarks and difficult behavior. I was appalled, absolutely appalled that someone I was so close to could behave so abominably.

“All I was trying to do,” I complained, “was give the two of us a fun getaway, and he turned it into an endless barrage of criticisms and tense moments. Why am I being so tormented?” I outstretched my arms in a subliminal Christ-like motion.

“Remember when we went on that cruise to Mexico,” my partner said gently as I unpacked, “and you hated the room and pouted for about a day and a half?”

“THAT,” I replied, “was different. It was under the pool!”

“Or when you couldn’t get the car you wanted in Portland and you threw a hissy fit at the counter?”

“I wanted a hybrid! I was trying to be green!”

“Remember when we were in New York and you said ‘Moving around this hotel room requires lube and a diet plan”…?

“And your point is…?” I snapped.

“You’re friends with Lars so that your rough edges can rub up against each other. You see in him some of the same behaviors you don’t like in yourself. He’s a mirror for you.”

This from a man who claims to have never heard a Marianne Williamson lecture.

“Well,” I said haughtily, “a funhouse mirror, maybe.”

“And God knows,” he added as a highly unnecessary afterthought, “what rough edges you’re scraping all over him.”

But I knew he was right. Lars and I have been major teachers for each other on a variety of awkward, uncomfortable, super un-fun topics for years. ( He could doubtless write a dozen entries just like this, about which the less said, the better.) I’m Oprah to his Gayle, he’s Edith to my Archie. He has his bad days, and, I sure as hell have mine. But hopefully, bad days like this one teach us both a little something about ourselves.

So I guess I should thank Lars for being my mirror. But next time, I think I’d rather him be my Dorian Gray picture.