With writer's group looming tonight, I look at all the raw material I have in my files. As usual, every single thing I've ever written sucks. If it doesn't suck, I've already read it aloud in group and received the usual critiques ("less dialogue, please" "is that really autobiographical? You're a fucking freak, aren't you?" "Your fiction has too many characters in it, and I can't keep 'em straight." "Do you ever think of anything other than sex?" [Answers: fuck off, yes, fuck off, no]).

I should read from my Big-Ass Crime Novel, but that sucks more than usual this week. In desperation, I turn to an embryonic piece I've had on the back burner for a while about triangle relationships in my teenage years. I start to flesh it out, and end up with something I'm (just barely) willing to read tonight. Presumably that will end up being part of my looming semi-autobiographical flim-flam.

But at least I'm not writing poetry any more, which is a step up. I think.

When all else fails, I metaphorically take off my clothes: the story begins with my feelings about jealousy, and a few snapshots from times I felt it very strongly. I'm not discussing envy, here: I'm talking about jealousy, when you desire attention from someone who's enraptured by another person. It's an amazing feeling, because it's so purely an expression of id. And it's the most bald-faced liar of any emotion: what else can make you murderous at the same time you feel disempowered and insignificant?

When I shut off the computer in relief to make myself my eighteenth cup of tea for the day, I think about the songs I've heard that have tried to capture not just the pain of jealousy, but its ugliness as well. How do you write about an experience so universal, so painful, and so prone to transform the sufferer into a complete monster?

The partial green-eyed discography:

• "Jealous Again," The Black Crowes
• "Alison," Elvis Costello
• "Jealousy," by the Gin Blossoms, which conveys the energy, but not necessarily the excruciating pain of the experience.
• "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" Joe Jackson
• that Marianne Faithfull song "Why D'ya Do It?" which documents the ugliness of jealousy, but fails IMHO because it becomes ugly itself.
• "Jealous Again," Black Flag
• the Alannis Morissette song "You Oughta Know." This might be the best effort: it's got plenty of energy, which—say what you migh—jealousy will give you, though I don't mean that in a good way. ("Will she go down on you in a theater?" "And every time I run my fingers down his back, I hope you feel it—yeah, do you feel it?")
• The Pursuit of Happiness' "It's Hard to Laugh" ("You have to laugh to prevent yourself from cryin'").
• "Jealousy" by Queen; one of the reflective, mournful takes.
• "I Want You," by Elvis Costello, which is quiet and reflective, but no less intense than tunes with lots of drums and bass. It tears my heart out every time I hear it. ("I want to hear the things you do that we did, too . . . were you fool enough to love it when you heard him say, 'I want you'?")

Did your id ever lie to you more than when you were jealous? And how did you come to terms with the situation?

Do you know anyone who escaped this?—and did they really, or did they just learn to lie and pretend they were above it?

How ugly did you get when you were jealous? What's the worst thing you've ever done under its influence? (No criminal confessions, please. Don't make me call the cops or anything like that.)

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Discuss.

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My stepmother postulates that no one is ever entirely happy with his/her first name. Discuss.

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