First fiction since the Johnson Administration--please help!

[RamosWashington]

Cyrano, I normally do not react well to people who tell me to "suck it up", that something I don't particularly want to do is really for my own good. It seems as though every innocent diversion one takes up, be it tennis or bridge or pornography, leads to a killjoy telling you your failings are a moral offense. "How dare you say, 'it's only a game!'"

However it so happens I have scraped one more plot line from my impoverished life experience, about a straying husband. (No, I was tempted once in real life, but chickened out.) Here there is a genuine need for pornographic detail, as the guy is getting a different sexual experience for the first time since marriage. So I'll give it a try, but if I find it tiresome, you won't see it.

I find your preconceptions about occupations most interesting. I'm the dropout of my family, with only a master's in chemistry. The rest, including my late father are PhDs and an MD. My wife has a PhD in art history, as did her late father. Both our fathers were tenured professors and all these degrees were from Columbia, Harvard and Wellesley.

None of this is to brag. I grew up seeing the slimy underside of the academic world. My father assured me one has never plumbed the depths of human stupidity until the experience of a Columbia faculty meeting. My computer programmer friends were passionate about art, music and all other forms of high culture. A genuine Ivy League intellectual will, in his spare time, talk about nothing but baseball.

 

[CyranoJ]

leads to a killjoy telling you your failings are a moral offense.

Yes, clearly your failings offend me deeply.

Hopefully it should be evident from the joke gifs and emoticons that my remarks are half playful. Nobody here can force you to do anything you don't wanna. The only failing you have that comes close to genuinely irritating me is coming here to ask for advice and then getting defensive about it. Take the advice or don't, but don't go calling me a killjoy for providing it, please and thankyou.

I find your preconceptions about occupations most interesting.

And your evident tenderness on the subject likewise, but it's wholly unnecessary. If you did read my comments you already know I said professions aren't inhabited by only one type of person and that wasn't the reason for my recommendation.

Good luck with your further story.