We are all just looking for someone like us. Someone who gets us, who looks at things the same way we do, or at least gets the spin. Who sees the absurd instead of the offensive, the possibilities instead of the reality, the point instead of the reference, and the comedy in the tragedy that is the macabre dance of life. For me this might be a tall order.

I rejoined a gym, and I go there, and I see us all there—20 years later—spit out by our experiences like some kind of end product of a Machiavellian machine; fashioned by an over-worked Seuss on a bender,, and sure, some of us have stars on our bellies, but most don’t. Most are stamped with tattoos, and bar codes, and worry lines instead of stars, the “too hep, gotta go” expression given way to a new mien: the realization that these hours comprising these days making up these weeks turning over these calendar years aren’t any kind of a warm-up. This is life—the real thing—and maybe it isn’t so effervescent, after all. Maybe it’s just the teensiest bit flat.

This is why it’s super important to find someone who burps.