Like A Ton Of Bricks Through Greased Air

I am attracted to five kinds of women: sprinters, Pullman trunks, wounded sparrows, lobsters and porcupines.

Sprinters are the ones who like to be chased, because that gives them the power to decide when to slow down and who gets to catch them. And it's never somebody who runs after them. The guys they wind up with never break a sweat. They are the living embodiment of Groucho Syndrome: they refuse to end up with anybody stupid enough to chase after them.

Pullman trunks are those divinely damaged women who walk into your life with enough emotional baggage to fill Grand Central Station, every piece of which they will unload on you before walking off arm in arm with somebody else to Gate 69, where they will gleefully hop on a one-way express train to Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

Wounded sparrows? Ah, those beautiful frails. You cradle their helpless, hurting souls in your caring hands, and you mother them and you father them until they're healthy enough to think of you as a brother.

Lobsters are those confident dames who are so hard-shelled on the outside that you just know it's a front to protect their inner vulnerability. It's a front, all right, but in the same way two security guards with Uzis are a front for a ten-ton vault with a time lock.

And porcupines? Porcupines are the ultimate challenge. They're perfect in every way except that you can't get close to them without bleeding. They're the ones who make you say to yourself, "I can be the one--I can be the one that'll get through to her." And when you get hurt, and you always do, and it's always bad--when you get hurt, you always say it's her fault. But it isn't. It's yours. When you impale yourself on a porcupine, you can't blame the quills.

And why are these five types of women irresistible to me? Because I am all five species at once.