I drove into town for lunch, windows down, listening to the kind of music that makes you wonder why no one has yet developed a car with a snare drum for a steering wheel. I tapped my fingers along the side of the car, instantly attracting the lusty gazes of the beautiful young women who have come here for the summer in search of good jobs and thirty-two-year-old fathers of four who know what to drop in the CD player on a sunny day.

I'm so used to the attention, I don't even look their way in acknowledgement anymore — why encourage their pursuit of that which they cannot have? It hurts them, my dismissal does, but they'd never be able to keep up with the jetset lifestyle I've cultivated. Better for the attention of the young lovelies to be maintained upon the scraggly boys in their young twenties who would hacky-sack and/or frisbee their way into the female heart.

Some of the more persistent ladies kept after me, though, sprinting after my vehicle as I passed. Women in the heat of unrequited desire can run like cheetahs, and I quickly turned desperate for escape. I pulled a skid U-turn in front of the post office; my rear bumper clipped a postal carrier, sending a cloud of undelivered mail into the air. The pursuers became lost and disoriented in the postal smokescreen, and I continued unmolested to pick up my sandwich.

Ladies: I know you love me, but you've forced me to injure a quasi-federal employee just so I can enjoy my lunch without your collective pawing at me. "Control," as Janet Jackson so eloquently sang, although Janet hasn't been leaving me alone lately either.

And it's only going to get worse for me. Soon I will complete publication of a secret project which shall supplant this book as the defining literary work of our time, and the groupies will erupt from the ground like fire ants. By then I'll have a little less hair, slightly bigger pants, and (if current performance rates are continued) a few extra children, but this will only drive the female legions madder and madder. What will be the cost to mankind when all its women desire only me, me, me?

Maybe it's better that I'm so remotely located, so that the damage is limited to Maine and the Canadian maritime provinces. For the sake of the species, I promise to never leave.