Book soundtracks like these have become increasingly popular among authors and readers, especially as the connection between writers and their audience has become more interactive, and as the fast popularity of music-streaming services like Spotify have made it easy to share songs online. But while a song on a movie soundtrack might be there because of a licensing deal or to boost an artist on a label also owned by the studio, author playlists, when done well, can deepen a character and enhance a reader’s connection.

“A big part of creating characters for me has always involved working out their tastes — in clothes, fashion, music,” said Nicholls, in an email interview. “I know what the leading characters like, what they wear, what they listen to, what they eat, and making playlists is, I suppose, a form of note-taking, a way of working without really working.”

Perhaps the leading popularizer of the author playlist is David Gutowski, who runs the music- and literature-obsessed blog Largeheartedboy.com. Since 2005, in the site’s recurring Book Notes column, authors including Bret Easton Ellis, Sloane Crosley, Karen Russell, Aimee Bender and Meghan O’Rourke have shared soundtracks. Hundreds are archived there; since last month, they’ve been streamable on Spotify.

“Hearing about the music a writer enjoys or envisioned for his characters or book humanizes the author,” Gutowski said. “Writers have often told me that thinking about their book in relation to music recontextualizes the work for them, gives them a fresh vantage into something they wrote years ago.”

Sometimes, these playlists are part of the writing process. Wesley Stace, who has also recorded a dozen albums as John Wesley Harding, built one for the young composer at the heart of his novel “Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer.”

“I had to have a very clear idea of what music he liked, and what music he might write. Therefore, I did have to write him an imaginary playlist (if you like) of influence. And then compute the actual music he might have made: to suit both his character and the musical currents. The actual music came afterwards — written by composer Daniel Felsenfeld — but was totally required to complete the character,” Stace said. “The next novel is about a band, I’m afraid — a very weird band, making not quite rock music, but a band nonetheless — and so I’ve had to steer even more in that direction. And for this band, I am actually writing songs. So they have both their own playlist and, indeed, discography.”

Other authors, however, while agreeing that music helps inhabit a character, don’t necessarily think it adds anything to the reader’s experience. There’s some mystery they’d prefer to hold onto, mystery that goes away when the CD racks are revealed.

“I don’t think it is all that important for the reader to know the kind of music the character likes,” said Dana Spiotta, whose new “Stone Arabia” is about a musician who creates an entire fake history for himself of albums, interviews, reviews, fan letters and more. “As part of my process, knowing things about the character helps it feel authentic to me as I am writing it … maybe it is a bit like method acting. I hope this eventually comes across as depth to the reader. But I don’t think a reader needs to know or recognize any of the references or pop objects. It is there for the internal logic of the character and a certain amount of verisimilitude. If you are writing about obsessives, you have to be slightly obsessive when you are working.”

Nicholls might come from an even more obsessive place. Dig deeper on Spotify and you’ll find an especially cheesy “One Day” playlist dedicated to Dexter’s favorite songs — as well as a 2,500-song version of Emma’s entire record collection that he made to play while writing her scenes.

“I love the idea of it being played at parties, or passed around on Facebook, or someone discovering an artist because of it,” said Nicholls, who has gotten notes from readers thanking him for opening their eyes to Jonathan Richman and the Slits. “A few people have found the Emma Morley Complete Record Collection link too, which is a wonderful list to shuffle and dip into — more jazz, more classical. The temptation is to constantly update it, but I’d probably be pushing the limits of what counts as work.

“It’s another part of the portrait you paint when writing,” he said. “It’s perfect that Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”) should like Huey Lewis and Phil Collins, that Hannibal Lecter should like Glenn Gould’s 1953 recording of The Goldberg Variations — and it’s only right that Emma Morley should like the Cocteau Twins, Public Enemy and Joni Mitchell.”

“It was a terrible situation,” said Morgan. “It wasn’t my mother’s fault. Something just went off on me. I wanted better for me. That was the hardest day of my life, and I heard my mother cry. It just broke me down, and I think about it now. I never meant to hurt my mother.” Morgan’s voice cracked, and he began to weep.

The normally placid Terry Gross, who had sounded cautious from the get-go, was on high alert now. It was a nerve-wracking moment, hearing the tough-guy facade fall away to reveal that deep-down, childish, clichéd longing: He just wanted to talk to his mom again. Practically every male comedian ever has mommy issues, but this was incredibly touching: We hate to see a grown man cry, except when we love to see a grown man cry.

“Are you OK to keep going?” said Gross. Morgan agreed that he was. (Meanwhile, some of us at home were yelling into the radio, “For god’s sake, give the man a hug, Terry!”)

“In the book you discuss how you and your mother never reconciled,” said Gross, referring to Morgan’s new memoir, “I Am the New Black.”

“One day we will,” said Morgan. “Maybe one day she’ll pick up this book. Maybe she’ll read it.”

Gross said, “Do you intend part of it to be a way of saying to her, ‘Let’s talk’?”

“When you talk to someone they can just argue with you, and shut you off, and walk out the room. When you talk to someone on the phone, they can hang up on you. But when you write them a letter, they have to read that letter. They just have to read that letter. Me, I forgive my mother, and I moved on. That’s for me. My mother had to forgive herself. I understand, Mommy. That’s all I’m saying. I understand the position you was in, and why you did what you did. I love my mother,” said Morgan.

The best comedy has a layer of sadness behind it, and Morgan’s sadness, perhaps unsurprisingly, is layered thick. His character on “30 Rock,” as written by the mothership of all girl crushes, Tina Fey, plays on his vulnerability as well as his “ghetto comedy” zaniness. But a man who misses his mother and isn’t afraid to say it in public is more than funny — he is fearless.

But will this book help to reconcile Morgan and his mother? (And why do we sense an Us Weekly cover story coming down the pike?) All we can hope is this is one letter that gets sent. And forgive us now, because we’re going to go call our own mother. 

I decided to act like a boy.

I flipped through my mental Rolodex and remembered the name of the last guy who wanted to have sex with me. I had met Tim about two months before in a bar. He had expressed a sexual interest but informed me that he was in the process of ending a live-in relationship. I didn’t believe him and, accordingly, I wasn’t interested. He was cute, but I’m not down with other people’s property. A few weeks back he had gotten in touch. Turns out he really was breaking up with his girlfriend, and he was now out of their apartment and in a new space.

Perfect. There’s no way this guy was looking for anything serious. He was stretching his arms, awakening after the deep sleep of an unfulfilling long-term relationship. We’re in, we’re out, we’re done. Make no promises, and take no emotional prisoners.

I e-mailed him and told him he had “popped into my head.” Six e-mails later (after the requisite “what’s new” exchange), he asked me why I had thought of him. I sat at my computer and stared at his question. Do I couch it? Throw out a “Well, it was really nice meeting you” or “I heard a song/saw a movie/read a book that reminded me of you”? Or do I cut to the chase, be bold and tell him exactly what I wanted.

That boy voice in my head said, “You get what you ask for in this life. Why screw around?”

Indeed, why?

I’ve written many a great love letter in my life, arranged my words to seduce and inspire, and have been very successful in the past. This note was not one of my finest works. I hesitate to even call it a “work.” It was like a note passed in study hall combined with a late-night posting in a chat room. I shudder to reprint it, and yet I find it terribly amusing that I wrote it.

“Well, it’s summertime, and I’m looking for a little fun, and you seem like you’d be a lot of fun in bed.”

Could I get any cheesier? I held my breath and then sent it. This boylike behavior does not come naturally to me, and I wondered if he would even respond. A few minutes later, he replied with, “Wow. Cool!”

Score.

I’ve been told before that women can get laid anytime they want, and that it’s the boys who suffer, but I have to disagree. Or maybe it’s just that we’re not willing to sleep with just anyone. For example, I cannot sleep with anyone who is dumb, talks incessantly about how much money he makes, doesn’t have a good sense of humor or has really crappy taste in music. I simply can’t. If I find a man’s personality appalling, I’m not going to have an orgasm, so what’s the point? Men, on the other hand, are blessed with the ability to achieve their desired goals simply by finding a nice, warm spot to call home for 10 minutes. Lucky bastards.

Now Tim and I, we weren’t what you would call a match made in heaven, but I thought he was nice enough for a night. And apparently he did, too. I met him for drinks at his local bar, which was conveniently located across the street from his new apartment. To my great dismay, I discovered he wanted to talk first, and so we did, for a couple of hours. I met some of his friends, which was even more frustrating. I didn’t want to have anything to do with niceties; I just wanted to jump him and go on my way. Why wouldn’t he just let me be a boy?

We drank and talked, and after a while, I tried to resurrect the tone I had set in my naughty e-mail.

I scratched my nail on his leg, and he looked at me and smiled. I widened my eyes and smiled, too.

“You look so devious,” he said.

“No, not devious. Lascivious.”

“Oh.” He laughed. “So is this what you would call a booty call?”

Oh, the vulgarity! I almost got up and walked out right there, but then realized the only one to blame was myself. And I had come too far (and drunk too many beers) to walk away from this. Hot sex was only across the street and up the elevator.

“Well, it’s a little early in the evening for it to be technically that, but I would say that I am only interested in hanging out in an incredibly casual fashion.”

I’m such a pretentious, overeducated ass sometimes. I was losing my desire over language. I changed the subject quickly, avoiding any commitment to a concise definition of our relationship — a standard boy move.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

At that moment, the dynamic officially turned. We walked across the street, and he told me a story about one of his friends. As we got in the elevator, he was still talking and I moved closer. Why was he still talking?

“Oh. Yeah. I guess we could talk about that later,” he said, and then we kissed. I don’t think he was any better at this than I was, so I guess I had to lead.

In bed, I was more aggressive than he, but again, I had put myself there. If you start as a boy, you have to finish as a boy. The sex — all four times — was good, but it wasn’t great. I like it when a man grabs me and takes charge. Though I wasn’t always on top, I still felt as if I was. He was a conquest claimed. That just doesn’t contain the same appeal for women as it does for men.

I lay back after we were finished and felt the blood rush to my head. I thought about our conversation — so much talk that I had to consider. He had mentioned a day trip the next weekend, a concert in Battery Park in a few weeks, drinks on Monday. Did he say that to try to make me happy? Because all it did was freak me out.

And suddenly, I felt the inevitable, that thing all bad, bad boys have experienced before at the end of a sexual encounter. I felt incredibly fucking claustrophobic. I had to get out of there. I was not going to sleep there, man — no way in hell I was waking up in his bed. I didn’t want polite morning banter. I wanted to go home, shower, lie in my bed and drift, body buzzed and satisfied.

“So I’m going to take off,” I said.

“Why?”

“Your bed is really small,” I said lamely.

“No it’s not. It’s fine.” He snuggled up next to me. I thought I would hyperventilate.

“I think I would be more comfortable in my bed.”

“Oh, you should stay. You’re welcome to stay.”

“I’m going to go.”

“I don’t know why you’re leaving.”

“I really do think I’ll sleep better at home.”

And so forth.

I got up and put on my clothes. He walked me outside and hailed a cab. My final touch? I grabbed his ass and complimented him on it. The transformation was complete. I was a boy for a night. In the cab home, I buzzed a bit, and then ultimately, I felt a little drained and sad. It takes a surprising amount of energy to maintain emotional distance, and I was exhausted. I can act like a boy as much as I want, but when I wake up in the morning, I’m still a woman.

They looked pretty happy though, in their flimsy pink pants layered over sweats and long underwear and athletic shoes (New Balance and Converse low-tops, no less!) They approached my favorite tree and circled around it, gently swaying and singing. None of the folks sitting in the park were paying much attention, except for some Latino men, their shiny mountain bikes leaning nearby on a fence, who were clapping along and singing, because, let’s face it, that “Hare Hare” song is catchy.

Then an older gentleman, who wore a suit and reminded me of one of my high school teachers, announced on a microphone that the Hare Krishna movement had commenced in New York 30 years ago at that very tree. In fact, I was sitting in front of a religious landmark! So that’s why I loved this tree so much. Maybe I had a little “Hare, Hare” in me?

I sat there, giggling and thinking: Well, all right, this is what I’ve been doing wrong all this time. I just need a cult, see, a cult to solve all my problems. Of course, it’s not particularly clever to make fun of Hare Krishnas. It’s not their fault that they’re bald, favor pastels and can’t think for themselves. After all, this is America and people can sing and dance wherever they want (except for certain towns in Texas).

And then I realized that this whole moment would make a great entry for my online journal, except it’s gone. I had to take my journal down this week; it’s dead, gone and over. But I’ll get to that later.

The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising. I hear voices from independent zines and Web logs (“bloggers”), but for me, it’s always been about the Web journals. I hear those voices loud and clear. They’re not necessarily always interesting, or angry, or worth your time, but if you talk loud enough (in this instance, update regularly, send a flattering e-mail with your URL to a more popular journal writer who may then link back to you, and make yourself known on message boards), someone is going to listen. Unfortunately, all that talk can get you into trouble sometimes.

Diarist.net, which claims to be the “largest and most definitive resource for finding online journals and diaries,” counts more than 2,000 sites in its registry. That’s 2,000 exhibitionists clamoring to be heard; people seeking community, seeking an audience. And they’re just the people who choose to index their sites. There are probably thousands more, all over the world, who detail the minutiae of their life for publication on the Web. And with the advent of do-it-yourself sites like Diaryland, you don’t have to be Web-savvy to put your life online.

It’s an interesting idea, creating a private space in a public arena. Some journal writers choose to password-protect their site, which is either an incredibly responsible act or a paranoid one. But the majority of writers display their emotional wares freely, even if they seek to maintain anonymity by inventing an alternate name or identity.

When some of the first journals appeared on the Web five years ago, not enough people were online for it to make an impact. But, as we all know, the Internet has exploded in the past few years, and if you don’t have a computer at home, you at least have one at work. Many online journals get the most hits of the day during the lunch hour.

And now people are being held accountable for their words. Initially journals could get you in trouble with your friends, families and lovers. Now journals get you in trouble with your employers and, in some instances, incite legal action.

Take the case of Gus, who writes the Web journal Randomly Ever After, which gets about 400 visitors a day. Gus has been writing online for more than four years and has had three separate journals in that time. Among descriptions of his life with his girlfriend, his dog and his art lies a notoriously critical analysis of his job as a Web developer for an online portal (which he elected never to name specifically.)

In February, on his 32nd birthday, he was fired from his job. He claims on his home page, “They decided that the wild and crazy things said in this site are at odds with their corporate goal of global conquest.”

Gus’ documentation of his corporate existence rings true not only for those working in the world of technology, but for anyone who feels like a victim of a bait-and-switch by their employer: You signed on for one thing, and you got something completely different. Whether or not he was actually fired entirely because of his journal is unclear.

According to Gus, his employers cited three separate reasons for his “de-hiring,” the third of which was his Web site. But it was cited in his exit interview; even if it wasn’t the main reason, the fact that it was raised at all indicates that it was a contributing factor.

In an e-mail interview, Gus revealed the name of his former employer, CollegeClub.com, and commented on why he thought he was fired.

“I was fired for speaking my mind about the cult of superficial money-obsessed Barbies & Kens managing the place. I never used any names, but they could tell I was writing about them. Actually, though, this was a good thing, since I was sick of working for a well-funded Heaven’s Gate. When they fired me, it was their loss, not mine.”

That might seem a wee bit bitter, but his online description of the actual meeting where he was fired is a solid, measured piece of writing. It’s hard to tell what the real truth is, but then again, it’s important to take any journal entry with a grain of salt. We are hearing one side, one voice in the many that are out there.

John Halcyon Styn, himself a proprietor of two personal Web sites Prehensile Tales and Cocky Bastard, is a senior editor at collegeclub.com. “Everyone knew about it (the journal). It wasn’t a big surprise,” Styn said. “I don’t know why he was fired, but it wasn’t about that. We hired him because he was a free thinker, and he was not fired because he was a free thinker.” Adds Styn, “Gus is great. I gave him a reference for his next job.”

Reading Gus’ writing, one definitely gets the sense that he wanted to push it as far as he could, that he never had any intention of developing boundaries in his journal beyond not naming names. Was he responsible to his employer in his journal? Perhaps not. Does he have any obligation to be responsible? Well, I haven’t seen the contract he signed with Collegeclub.com.

Even if you make every effort to act responsibly with your journal, it can still be held against you. Terri Polen maintains *Footnotes*, a journal that dates back in its current form to 1998. (Polen has also included personal entries from as far back as 1981.) She documents her life as a recovering alcoholic, her relationship with her partner, David, whom she met online and her experiences with non-custodial motherhood. Her site receives about 50 visitors a day.

In the past year, the estranged wife of Polen’s partner, David, has attempted to maintain sole custody of their children, using Polen’s entries as a basis. According to Polen, the bias was, ” … based mostly on things I had written about my drinking, and a half-hearted suicide attempt 20 years earlier.” The children were kept entirely from David and Polen for three months, though he now has partial custody. It wasn’t until her journal entries were brought up yet again, in January, during a settlement hearing, that Polen actually began to document the struggle. Until that time, she had focused her writing on the rest of her life.

Polen has no regrets, as she comments, via e-mail, ” … The bottom line is that I’m extremely proud of *Footnotes* and of the work I’m doing there, and I have David’s 100 percent support in this project, and I would unhesitatingly drag printed copies of any entry into any court of law. The Web site documents all of the ways I’ve fucked up, yes … but it also documents all of the ways I’ve tried to atone for those fuck-ups. And I think that’s the important thing.”

So, there’s a sense that many people are using these journals to heal, as well as to vent. At the recent South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, I attended the panel on Web journals: “Life Online and Confessional Web Sites.” There was almost a group therapy feel to the discussion, as participants went around the room and introduced themselves, adding their experiences with their online journals. Some said they did it as a way to communicate with friends who lived far away. Others did it to get to know themselves better.

Sarah Bruner, of syrup.org, spoke eloquently about her struggle to test her boundaries and learn lessons about “the definition of truth, the definition of honesty.” Several people mentioned in introductions whether or not their mothers read their sites. (It always comes back to the mother, doesn’t it?) When one attendee introduced himself as a psychologist who was fascinated with journals, there was a collective palpable discomfort, followed by nervous laughter

Later, I spoke with the psychologist, John Grohol, and asked him about his interest in online journals. “Therapists have been using journals for years to encourage clients to write out their feelings. A journal allows you to keep an ongoing commentary about your life and reflect upon it … We tell the story in a different way when we write it down.” He’s been following them for years, and, in fact has written open-source software to encourage people to post their thoughts online.

Another nervous moment during the panel came from Mark, a 15-year-old who bore a strong resemblance to a young Tobey McGuire. He announced he had a private, password-protected journal that had spun off from his Web log. “I can’t let my family read it. I can’t let my friends read it. I can’t let my girlfriend read it,” he said. “I’m scared.”

I ran into him later that night and asked him what he was writing about in his private Web space, and why he felt like he couldn’t share it with anyone.

He mentioned that his father was a conservative Christian and added, “I’m discussing my issues with my sexuality. I’m not sure if I’m gay, but I just want to be able to talk about it somewhere. My father isn’t into me putting myself on the Internet. If he read it, I wouldn’t be here (at SXSW) right now.”

There was no one in Mark’s personal community he felt he could go to, so he placed his thoughts in a controlled space where he could get feedback. He created his own community, in a simultaneously public and private manner. It’s a fitting tribute to the many possibilities of the Web, though a precarious situation, particularly for an adolescent: substituting interaction with strangers for real communication with friends and family. But Mark is one of thousands — there are a lot of isolated people out there posting their stories in hopes of anyone, anyone at all, listening.

As for me: How isolated was I to post my thoughts online? It initially began as an experiment, a step toward developing an online writing voice vs. my existing print voice. It eventually helped me to create a career as a multimedia producer, and I made some friends in the process.

My journal was never fancy, nor did it garner a lot of attention. (Lately I’ve been receiving 150 hits a day.) I never used my last name, and I certainly never used the name of my employers. I didn’t want to piss anyone off; I just wanted to document my experiences in New York, get some feedback on my writing style and, in general, just keep myself writing on a regular basis. I wanted to maintain it as long as my identity remained a secret.

I recently published my first article on Salon, and damn if smart, curious readers didn’t suss me out. I thought I had erased any connection of my first and last name to my journal, only to discover that former band mates had used my name in the meta tags of their site, as well as indexed me on certain search engines. A persistent investigator would find a link to my journal on the band’s site. My journal was suddenly flooded by people who knew exactly who I was. Worlds collided. I shut down the site.

My private life became public, and the worst part was, I did it to myself. I’m not too upset about it, to be honest, because I haven’t lost my ability to write, just my ability to self-publish temporarily. I’ll get over it. It’s just a little difficult on those bright, sunny days in New York when Hare Krishnas dance wildly around trees.

I want to raise my voice up high with them.

I’ve always been stacked. I just woke up one morning at the age of 9, and — boom — I was already a B-cup. I was the first girl in my grammar school to get a bra, and the first to start drowning myself in large sweatshirts. It takes a little while to get used to that sort of thing. I swear I tilted for a few weeks. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I realized that, while my breasts were sometimes unwieldy, I was pretty glad to have them. I arrived at this moment of clarity during my first semester, when I attended a Thursday night happy hour wearing a tight white T-shirt and jeans. Where I formerly had been ignored, I was suddenly bestowed with drinks. (OK, Coors Light drafts, but you take what you can get when you’re 18.)

And so went my late teens and early 20s. Boys like breasts. Breasts get you things. Go, breasts, go. I got over the negative attention pretty quickly (“Hey, buddy, my eyes are up here.”), but I was always aware of their power. It’s a continuing fascination for me because that was the first time I got that kind of attention. No matter how many feminist tracts you read, you never forget what boys like.

Now I’m in my late 20s and while my breasts are still beautiful, they’ve started to lose their perk. That’s right, the girls are feeling a little down, a little tired, and are losing their battle with gravity. I don’t know how to deal with this exactly. Should I feel sad? Should I buy them a little nip and tuck on their birthday? A friend once told me, “No one judges mountains for shifting and changing, so why should they judge you?” Of course, he’s right — but every once in a while you need a little reassurance.

It’s particularly rough watching young Hollywood in action. I’m starting to take their perkiness personally. Jennifer Love Hewitt (or Jennifer “Love My Breasts” Hewitt as she’s often referred to) is a perfect example of someone genetically predisposed to make me feel like crap. Unless she had a little silicone help …

In the 1998 music video for her one and only single, “How Do I Deal?” (an enthralling piece that starred her then-19-year-old breasts), she wore a white tank top, and bounced around angrily in the rain, her breasts buoyant, large and damp. I remember watching it for the first time with my roommate, shaking my head, blinking my eyes, and then saying, “Oh, come on. Come on! She’s not wearing a bra. Goddammit, they just can’t be real. They can’t.”

My roommate just grinned at the television set. His head bounced ever so slightly to the rhythm. A small trail of drool formed on the corner of his mouth. I don’t think he cared either way — a nice rack is a nice rack, real or not. I, however, am one of those people who need to know if things are real: noses, eyes, hair color and especially breasts. I know it’s none of my business. I know it’s rude. I don’t care. I want to know. So when I had the opportunity to find out if Love’s best asset (surely it’s not her singing voice) were store-bought or homemade, I decided it was worth it to invest my time in a little research.

Last September, I was walking home to the East Village from my office in Soho. I took Bowery, and when I hit the corner of Third Street, I saw a camera crew setting up for the night. A man walked by me with a walkie-talkie, and I heard a voice crackle through, “Love and Jonathon are coming this way.”

Love? Wasn’t that Hewitt’s nickname?

My heart started pounding. Could it be? I walked around the corner from the crew and stole a peek at a director’s chair. Yep, it was true. The chair read: “Time Of Your Life,” Hewitt’s hourlong drama, which at the time had yet to debut in Fox. (It has ultimately done poorly in the ratings, and is, in fact, on hiatus. Renewal status is undetermined. Apparently a clear complexion and good posture can only take you so far in life.) This might be my chance to learn the truth! I was sticking around for this one.

I stood on the corner for a good 45 minutes and watched the activity. A truck drove by and sprayed water on the streets to create a post-rain appearance. Three 10-year-olds waited anxiously nearby clutching paper and pens, presumably for autographs. Their mother, who grasped the leash of a west highland terrier, tried to schmooze one of the production assistants, to no avail.

Hewitt was nowhere in sight.

How long could I wait to see those perky breasts? I mean, this was something I could tell my grandchildren about: I saw the perfect, perhaps cosmetically enhanced breasts of an aspiring superstar. At the same time, I had completed a 10-hour workday and was just plain tired.

Love my breasts, I began chanting internally. Touch them. Feel them. Love them.

PAs temporarily relocated me while they dismantled some boards they had mounted on the side of a building. The signs were plastered with posters and scrawled upon with graffiti to make them look all gritty and urban and shit. I found it amusing that they had to make a street corner in the East Village look gritty. There are plenty of places in New York City that need no decoration.

I chatted with one of the PAs, a younger guy, while he pulled down the posters. I told him I was there to see perfect breasts.

He said, “You really think they’re perfect?”

I said, “Perfect, cosmetically enhanced breasts.”

“Aw, that’s not fair,” he said. “The minute someone gets famous, they say, ‘She has fake breasts,’ or, ‘He’s gay.’”

I hadn’t the heart to tell him “they” were usually right. Instead I said, “Fair enough. Perfect breasts, then.”

“Well, actually, they’re not bad,” he said and laughed.

“I’m sure,” I said.

They cranked up some huge lights on either corner of Third, and then another set farther down towards Lafayette. People started to gather on the street corner. We all just stood around, waiting for something to happen. We could sense the impending presence of greatness, or some crap like that.

I chatted with a scruffy NYU student who was smoking a butt nearby.

“Are you here to see the breasts, too?” I said.

“I’m just chilling, taking a break. I don’t even know who it’s supposed to be.”

I explained that we were awaiting the arrival of an international pop singing sensation, television star and horror movie princess.

“Huh,” he said. “I don’t have a television set, so I don’t know who she is.”

And then I asked him to marry me. No, I didn’t do that, but I did smile at him warmly.

Finally she arrived and shot her scene, and wouldn’t you just know it? She wore a jacket. No breasts for this fan. No, not tonight.

I bid my compadre farewell and headed home. On Sixth Street, I ran into two of my co-workers, returning from their weekly volunteer session at an art program for homeless teens. They were glowing from their good efforts and intentions. I told them what I had witnessed, and they told me they had no idea who Hewitt was. I then realized, as I tend to do about once a day, that I was an asshole. They invited me to join them for a drink in Soho, but I declined and shuffled onward.

When I entered my apartment, I immediately went to the bathroom. I pulled up my shirt, camisole and bra, and stared at my breasts. I pinched my nipples until they were hard. I looked for a minute more, and then covered myself.

Perfect.