Hi, Andy Dass here. My pal A.B. asked me to do a short celebrity piece for his site as kind of a favor, to increase his traffic. I love A.B., he’s one of the few people who really get me, so, I agreed.

I’m known mostly as a comedy writer, but this time I’m going to talk about something serious. No, no, it isn’t some un-treatable, life altering, disfiguring anal-genital disease, or starving, wormy bellied kids crawling with flies. It’s about a problem that is more pervasive and less obvious even than chlamydia. It’s about the odd.

I, myself, am odd, and not the pleasant, socially reserved oddness that causes people to say, "he’s odd." No one ever had to say, "he’s odd" about me, any more than they have to say past Barak Obama "he’s a tall black guy". I’m loudly odd, I can’t help it, I love people, even though it hurts me to be with you. When I’m with people, I’m happy, it makes me mouthy and loud. Cocaine might make it worse, particularly taken with any liquor with a bat on the label. A hot babe, the kind that makes my face flush and my hands jitter and my old soldier wish he could tent my pants without a pill, that will also tend to make me more conspicuously, courageously odd, which helps my effort only occasionally.

I’ve read through a few of the things on this site, and I see that one reason A.B. and I get along so well is that he understands that we can’t all toe the line. America was founded on the idea the person has the right to be who they want to be, and do as they wish. America should be the one country on earth where a person has the right to be odd; instead, it’s France.

The odd are the only minority it is still OK to prejudice in public. What do officials always tell people in time of crisis? "Report any suspicious behavior, or anyone acting oddly." I’ll tell you this, people, once in a while one of us goes off his nut and kills someone, but not usually. Generally there’s a woman involved, and I’m not blaming the woman, I’m just pointing out that is a special case. Mostly, the odd want to be liked, just like you do.

I make my living in one of the few industries where being odd can help. Sure, I get to live where I want to, and make an obscene amount of money, and generally have the best drugs and alcohol and all the newest electronic gear, big screen hi-def with full international satellite, and that means I get a lot of company, but I’m still lonely. The drugs and international parties and physically perfect and dexterous sex workers are my way of trying to fill an enormous black void in my life. I’d trade everything for a sweetheart I could trust laying beside me at night, and grandkids who wanted to see me. I’d rather live with a woman who liked me but never wanted to hide the weenie than any of the skilled and beautiful women who pass through my bed. In other words, I’d give it all up to be normal. A guy can live without sex with other people. Especially with the internet, my God.

I’ve decided to dedicate myself to this cause at some point in the future, by founding the Organization for the Differently Disposed, or O.D.D. That might already be a dyxlesia organization, maybe, "Dyxlesix Overcoming Disrespect"? Whatever, if someone else isn’t using O.D.D., we will.

So, next time you’re at a party and there’s a woman whose slip is an inch below her hemline but she can’t tell because when she bends over to check the skirt dips down and looks all right in front even though in the back it looks like she has a nightie on under, be kind to her, talk to her. When you’re in church and the normally quiet guy with the unusual haircut suddenly begins confessing to things that make the women of the congregation resolve to dry their unmentionables only in the dryer and not on the line anymore, do the Christian thing, forgive him, take him in the flock, give him a chance to get next to some silkies with something in them. When you get on a bus and the only two empty seats are next to a middle aged woman in sweats eating a raw onion and a young man with pimples carrying a Hello Kitty umbrella... Well, you can take either seat in a case like that.

You have a patriotic duty, and a Christian duty, to bring the odd into the flock, to make us feel more accepted.

If you think you might be the woman to make a lonely, isolated, really well off gracefully aging man happy, please contact A.B. He’s screening my applicants. Thanks, A.B. You’re my dog.

A. D. Dass