style="font-size:15px;"> WHEELER: Point is, I don’t lie.
PAUL: You don’t lie in response to a question no one’s asked you?
WHEELER: Want to get a bite to eat? Want to get some Mexican? On me.
PAUL: I can’t, Margaret and I have a dinner thing. Old friends of Margaret’s. They’re in town.
WHEELER: They’re not staying with you, are they?
PAUL: Just tonight. They’re in for a wedding tomorrow. So we’re going out to dinner. Fleming’s.
WHEELER: You seem enthusiastic.
PAUL: It’s all right. It’s fine. They’re old friends and we don’t have a lot in common anymore, you know?
WHEELER: That’s why new friends are better than old friends.
PAUL: You think?
WHEELER: Cause of what you said, we lose whatever we had in common with old friends, we change. Why do we have to stick with old friends forever? They’re not family. We should be able to just trade in old friends for new ones.
PAUL: What about loyalty?
WHEELER: Loyalty to an idea is better than loyalty to people.
PAUL: No. You believe that?
WHEELER: Loyalty to people is how you wind up camping with Hitler.
PAUL: And he was not a good camper. One thing with these friends, they’re so conservative politically?
WHEELER: Which is exactly what I’m saying. Don’t tell me they’re Trump voters.
PAUL: I don’t know, I’m afraid to bring it up.
WHEELER: You cannot be friends with these people. The problem with these racist cocksuckers isn’t that they’re doing too much OxyContin, it’s that they need to do a whole lot more. I stopped trying to be polite about it.
PAUL: Were you trying to be polite about it?
WHEELER: And we’re supposed to find middle ground with these people. What middle ground, where is this ground in the middle? These people are so fucking stupid, they think human beings walked around with dinosaurs. I have to find middle ground with that? “No, sir, you’re an idiot, I’d prefer not to meet you anywhere near the middle. I’ll stay right here and you stay way over there on the stupid side.” Aren’t you obligated to deal with these assholes at work?
PAUL: Kind of an unwritten rule at City Hall, we never talk politics.
WHEELER: I was out to dinner with this girl and we were talking, turns out she comes from this big military family, like everybody in the family has served, and I hear this and I’m thinking, “Please don’t say some dumb shit about the stupid border wall or NFL players taking a knee cause I just won’t handle it well,” and so I play it cool, y’know, “Thanks for their service,” or whatever, and then I said, very concerned, “Too bad we’re always stuck in these pointless bullshit wars, like too bad all these motherfuckers are dead for no good reason.” And she went off on me! I said, “Didn’t I say, ‘Thanks for their service?’ I’m on their side, I don’t want these guys going off and dying, I think they should just stay anchored out there in the bay doing their dumb fucking maneuvers and doing, y’know, pushups.”
PAUL: How’d that go over?
WHEELER: I got the check while she started singing “Proud to Be an American.” And this girl, my God . . . like Ali Mac-Graw. I would’ve worn a MAGA hat if she’d let me do all my dirty things.
PAUL: Wow. Like Goodbye, Columbus Ali MacGraw?
WHEELER: More like Convoy Ali MacGraw.
PAUL: Ew, with the perm?
WHEELER: She didn’t have a perm.
PAUL: Ali MacGraw had a perm in Convoy.
WHEELER: This girl did not have a perm.
PAUL: Then how is she like Convoy Ali MacGraw?
WHEELER: The essence. The essence of Convoy Ali MacGraw.
PAUL: When you say Convoy Ali MacGraw, I pretty much just picture that perm.
WHEELER: Well, stop picturing that.
PAUL: I don’t get that, why’d they make her perm her hair? That long straight brunette hair was her signature, y’know?
WHEELER: The crooked front tooth was her signature. The long straight brunette hair was a feature, but the crooked front tooth was her signature.
PAUL: She was a sex addict, you know.
WHEELER: Really? How do you know?
PAUL: I don’t have any inside information. She wrote it in her autobiography.
WHEELER: You read Ali MacGraw’s autobiography?
PAUL: No.
WHEELER: She was a sex addict? That pisses me off.
PAUL: Why’s that?
WHEELER: I never meet any female sex addicts. I’ve never once met a female sex addict. Where was I when Ali MacGraw was addicted to sex?
PAUL: You were about nine years old.
WHEELER: Don’t play with numbers. There’s a principle here.
PAUL: There’s no guarantee she would’ve been into you at any age.
WHEELER: Isn’t that the whole thing about a sex addict? They’re not known for their discernment.
PAUL: The most hardcore sex addict still might not be into you.
WHEELER: What kind of addiction is that? C’mon. “Sex addict.” Is that even a real thing? We start throwing around the word addiction for everything we do or use immoderately but does that really make it an addiction?
PAUL: I guess it depends on how you define—
WHEELER: Let me ask you. I don’t even have to ask, I know the answer. When you were a kid, didn’t you jerk off all the time?
PAUL: Sure.
WHEELER: Is that an addiction? When you were thirteen years old, were you addicted to jerking off?
PAUL: I’m still addicted to jerking off.
WHEELER: Up top.
(They slap a casual high five.)
Maybe Ali MacGraw just liked to fuck a lot. Should we criminalize her for that?
PAUL: I’m not criminalizing her. I didn’t call her a sex addict.
WHEELER:
