Your favorite book is Cryptonomicon, whose alchemist symbol you have tattooed somewhere no one will see. You live in a studio apartment — whose walls are covered with Soviet propaganda posters, out of politically vague yet intuitive feelings — five miles from the house you grew up, in whose master bedroom your depressed divorcée mother succumbs to heavy doses of Lorazepam, sleeping away the memory of her only son, perhaps a little sensitive, who grew into the bitter person he is. Your only relationship, which lasted four months and happened three years ago, is prone to launch you into monologues about the perceived infidelity of your now married ex-girlfriend. The emotional void of your life is supplemented by a partially neglected hamster you got at PetCo with birthday money from a sympathetic aunt. You beat people at references to Marx and yourself off at night.