From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

Hey, sorry I've been a bit slow to reply. It's been a weird 24 hours.

First, someone posted a really quite funny joke on the Yale Law School electronic bulletin board that was a mock-up of a Harvard Crimson article that said I had been hired as a professor at Harvard Law School. Some people thought it was actually serious! I guess April Fool's Day was a while ago, but I am, as anyone can tell you, not particularly a legal scholar, so it seemed an obvious lampoon. But crazier things have happened.

Then I had to figure out if I was actually going to write this op-ed piece which could be really bad for Obama, who I like. The problem is, it could be bad for me too, because it's about his friendship with the leaders of the Weather Underground, and I think unless I condemn them utterly I look like a bad person.

Then some other things happened, but I can't remember what they are.

Life never really stops being high school, which is worrisome, though I suppose I've made an effort to never quite escape college.

So, back to your question: What am I looking for? I am not going to say that old trope that I'd like someone with a sense of humor, because EVERYBODY says that, and what does that even mean? I'm afraid the answer really is tall, handsome and smart, everything else is just extra. I really like the standard good things. All my boyfriends have been the theme, with very little variation on the theme. They've all been kind of obvious choices, except that they have been terribly difficult, given me a hard time, made my life unmanageable--and I think I've had enough of that.

What's your wife like? How long have you been married? Do you like being married? Someone I know who is happily married recently described the whole thing to me as kind of tawdry, and he didn't mean it in a bad way. I think I know what he was trying to say. Just getting through the day is kind of tawdry.

Did want to mention, by the way, that they've come a long way toward treating psoriasis, so there's no reason you should have to live with the condition. But imperiousness--not so much. I mean, the only treatment is meeting someone who knows how to handle it.

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

I agree with you the that Birkin bag situation amounts to madness. It's not like it brings you pleasure, like absinthe or cocaine, and yet it's being dealt with as such. Crazy! But women are crazy. And bags are cult objects. See?

As for boyfriends, I gave your interrogatory considerable thought. I must explain that my relationships amount to these rather rambling affairs with no real beginning or end, and what goes on in the middle is pretty indefensible. Pretty much, the way it always goes is it starts by, I meet some guy, sparks fly like shooting stars and fireworks and every other pyromaniac's delight--until things cool off of their own accord. Then usually he realizes he just doesn't want to get involved, which I know is code for doesn't want to get involved with me. And logically, that should be the end.

But it never is. Somehow, I just don't or won't go away, and there's enough good energy to keep things going, sometimes in fact years will go by in this middling state of no relationship, but here we are. I am very good at the bad dynamic. And I've managed to derive a reasonable amount of pleasure and satisfaction from it, or I suppose I would have recovered from this sickness by now.

At any rate, the way these relationships usually end is that finally, one fine day, I can no longer bear the pain of what's not happening, or I meet someone else who I defy technology with, or my friends give me an ultimatum because they can no longer stand to listen to me complain, or we just drift apart. Someone moves to another city or another continent, somehow I am saved by the bell.

Not that I haven't had my share of cohesive relationships that have ended with screaming matches in the TWA terminal in the Saint Louis airport (all right, so that was many years ago) or by exchanging cross words across Barrow Street. And a couple of times, I've even told someone he's just not what I wanted, or I've had that said to me. But mostly, it's all just slipped away. For a Jewish girl, I am shockingly mellow, and have really failed to hold out for a ring or anything solid. What can I say? I'm a little mutant.

The poet laureate of not regretting anything: Edith Piaf And then, with all of them, time goes by, and they turn up again, there's either a reason to be in touch or there's no reason not to. Sometimes it seems like no sooner am I out the door before the guy realizes, Oh fuck! Should have never let her go! And by then it's too late. Men don't get this: When women are done, they are DONE.

But I'm always happy to keep up. I'm really not a bitter person. Which is truly a character flaw: bitterness is a self-protective trait that alerts us to when enough is enough, and I just have no sense of that. I'm just too interested to see what will happen next, and bitterness doesn't figure into the plot twist. I don't really have much use of it in any part of my life, frankly. After all, everyone who has ever hired me has eventually fired me. But then they've usually found a way to get me to work for them again, later on. Time goes on, you're up, you're down, it just doesn't seem worthwhile to be bothered about what someone did to hurt you years--or even days--hence.

My old boyfriends are like my whacked-out family at this point. I loved every single one of them so completely and truly that I just can't see fit to lose them now. I never compromised on love, I never forced myself to love someone because he seemed like the right idea or to fit the bill, I really fell hard for every guy I ever loved. You know, it's like, je ne regrette rien. I guess this is all very corny, and the result is that I'm alone now, but it's never been dull.

Your love life has led you to a more natural outcome, so for you having exes hanging around is just a pain, it's ghosts of Christmas past. But for me it's still an ongoing story. I'm waiting to see how the plot thickens--or thins...

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel
To: Ben Karlin

Hope you killed the man in Reno!

You are so Johnny Cash!

That is so Jew-y of you!

I love that you are multitasking TV shows. Excellent! I too multitask, thereby accomplishing nothing, but you, you create hit fake news shows. Right now, as I compose this email, I am also sitting on an Amtrak train and reading an article about this poor (actually, apparently quite wealthy, but never mind) Palestinian scholar who can't get tenure at Barnard because she wrote things that might be construed as less than kind about Israel, and I am also eating a Cup-of-Noodles soup, and having a phone conversation about termites with my mother. But you are probably coming up with the next Daily Show for HBO and an online version of The Onion for Slate or something like that, and maybe even writing a buddy movie for Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, or whoever the kids think are funny these days, all the while I'm just typing this email and slurping away and telling my mom to look in the Yellow Pages for an exterminator.

If that paragraph made no sense, forgive me.

I'm not good at doing six things at once.

It's funny you should mention the 237th richest man in the world. As I told you, my thesis is about intellectual property, and there's a section about how rich you would be based on the order in which you receive valuable information, like a hot stock tip. And I go through the regression from the 27th richest to the 270th richest to the 27,000th richest person in the world.

The college nose ring: Still got yours? So, you see, maybe our work has something in common.

Speaking of failed relationships, I know a lot about those. Somehow all my ex-boyfriends are still in my life now. No idea why. I might just look good in a rearview mirror. And all of them are good guys, just no one I'd want to be bound to anymore.

One of them, who now produces movies in LA, is somewhere in Connecticut right now, and I think he wants to hang out, which is possible, because Connecticut is, after all, a state the size of Connecticut. It's not a state the size of Rhode Island, but nothing is very far from anything else here. Eek!!!

Anyway, my favorite people all live in Brooklyn. This is a foul fact I accept.

A goattee is better than a soul patch.

All good men go through an earring phase.

Look, people in Wisconsin wear tube socks to scuba dive. You can't be blamed.

I wore nothing but black all through college. These things happen. I still have a nose ring. It looks good when I'm not wearing any clothes.

Everyone makes mistakes.

Next: Staying friends with an ex