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For me, when the champagne corks pop and the New Year begins, it’s time to do my taxes. I know the deadline is months away and I could procrastinate like the rest of America, but I don’t do that. Why? Two beautiful words. Linda Moskowitz. My accountant. I’ve been obsessed with Linda ever since she started doing my taxes five years ago. I had been touring and making more freelance income than I had before, and a friend of mine, who I no longer speak to, my ex-friend, I call her my ex, because the breakup was as bad as if we had been sleeping together for years, my ex referred me to her accountant and I knew it was time for me to get all the professional help I could. I am a believer in professional help. Professional help is my favorite thing about being an adult. Unfortunately, my taxes aren’t very complicated, so I only get to see Linda once a year for a half hour meeting. Which doesn’t give me much time to convince her to have sex with me. Considering we also have to review my tax payments, financial planning and retirement savings in the same thirty minutes. “Retirement savings?” I would ask her. I never thought I would make it to 30, yet here I am with Linda, contemplating my life at 65. “I’ll think about it Linda, but will you still be in the picture? Will we be side by side in matching rocking chairs on a porch somewhere, me knitting and you reading the Financial Times?”

Each year, I would dress strategically for my appointment with Linda. I would wear things to make myself look more interesting. Outfits that a CPA in midtown didn’t often see. And I would do things to make my taxes more interesting, living my whole year for this meeting, making decisions based on how I thought it would look on my financial reports. I took trips to Amsterdam, ate at five star restaurants, and bought lots of lingerie at Victoria’s Secret. Waiting to be seated at Tavern On the Green, I’d be thinking about Linda reading through my account activity. Thinking about what she would be thinking about… well, what she would be thinking about me. This little act I was doing for my accountant was becoming a huge financial strain that I couldn’t afford. It was all getting very complicated and I was self-destructing in a world that I created and, even worse, only I knew about.

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I searched my name on the internet and, quite frankly, I didn’t like what I saw. And then I found another woman with my name. I started to open windows, links and splash pages about her and I thought we’d get along pretty well. I mean, we already have the same name, why shouldn’t we be friends? So I e-mailed her. No response. So I decided to call. When I looked us up in the White Pages, she was right there on top of me. Perfect. I knew which number was mine, so it was easy just to call the other. I started getting shy, so for practice, I called myself first. My line was busy. But I could hear the sound of my breath heavy into the phone and I must say, I sounded pretty sexy.

There's something I've been wanting to say about grammar for a long time. I've been carrying this around with me for awhile and have been wanting to share it with you, but something has always seemed more important at the time. And being the lady that I am, I've tabled it. But you know what happens when you keep something cooped up inside for so long? You carry it around and it festers and it snowballs until… Luckily, that hasn't happened. I think that I've been able to keep it together. I'm talking here about grammar. And I don't have time to really get into it all with you right now, but quotation marks? Just look at them! How perverted are they? And they're everywhere! They are basically fucking whatever words are stuck in the middle. And those little fuckers are penetrating. Even when they have that little ball on the end, you know it's just there as a safety precaution so you don't lose the whole quotation mark up your ass. And it’s not a gentle caress like you find with parentheses. Parentheses make me feel safe. They make me feel like nothing will ever hurt me again. But these little fuckers? Go get some "groceries." Have "fun." I mean, 8, 9, 10 year old kids are playing with these things? This can't be good. They're all going to grow up to become sick twisted perverts like me, perverts who can't stop thinking about sex.

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