I live in a world of imaginary paintings. They have taken the place of my imaginary friends. My imaginary friends were a treacherous and surly lot. There was no honor among thieves.

The Imperial court of Czar Nicholas was much kinder and gentler. His son, the Tsarevich, suffered terribly from necrophilia… no, not necrophilia, hemophilia. As I get older, I sometimes have trouble keeping all the afflictions straight. There are so many of them—a near infinite set. Think of this—with or without hemophilia, Alexis would have had the same response to the bullet in the brain fired by the red revolutionaries.

I am sorry. I have lived too long with imaginary friends, with imaginary paintings. My father told me I was a bum and would always be a bum. That was at a critical stage of my development. Thus, I flirted with becoming a Jesus freak, but didn’t give in. Bob Dylan gave in. He painted his face like Batman’s Joker and declared: You’ve got to serve somebody. Bullshit. The only person you’ve got to serve is yourself at the ALL YOU CAN EAT buffet. Also your legless wife—she can’t serve herself. She was a hero in the Iraq War—she had her legs blown off. That’s how you can tell she’s bona fide.

Every day I live in a home, I have beaten my pater. If I was homeless, He would have won. I have imaginary Picassos on my walls, imaginary van Goghs, imaginary Rembrandts and Matisses, and all of my paintings are better than the real paintings by the same artists. I have a collection worth billions of imaginary dollars. How much am I worth? My worth is an illusion. This is true of all of us.

I gave my one-year-old granddaughter a birthday present—My First Buddha. She points at it on the shelf on which it lives. I take it out of the box and set it on the couch where she can reach it. She knocks it down like a bowling pin. I set it aright. She knocks it down. We do this dozens of times. I have huge patience for the innocent, joyful shenanigans of babies. She keeps my serotonin level high. I thank her. She will never be a Jesus freak. She’s been too well-loved to be a Jesus freak. Only those who have been deprived at an essential level go on to become Christians. It is their shout-out for affection. If they didn’t get natural love, they crave supernatural love. It is overcompensation, the most common thing in the world.