Why am I unsociable? I’ll tell you. Say, for instance, I did not happen to be so, I would surely experience the following every evening at my regular café table where I retire to try and rest up after a hard day of doing nothing: “Do tell us, Peter Altenberg, I’m just dying to know, what’s your position regarding the works of Karl Schönherr?!”* First of all, of course, I have no position, and second, if I had a position, I would have no burning need to impart it at 10:45 on the dot after the seventh mug of Pilsner! Or: “Gee, Peter, it’s good to have met you in person, one thing I’ve always wanted to hear from your own lips, this business about women, dames, they always seem to have played a significant role in your life?! Do you really think they matter that much?!” But if you reply: “what matters to me is me and how I experience the various kinds of women!” then he says: “Naturally, you’re all swelled heads, you scribblers!”
So now do you understand why I’m unsociable?! To which you’ll promptly reply that that’s just the way life is! Yes, but in my book it’s different!
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*Karl Schönherr, 1867–1943, Viennese folk dramatist and doctor