—Did love strike like a lightning bolt hurled from a category 3 hurricane over, says, Barbados?

—Yes, but can we make it Jamaica? I'm a big fan of Lee Scratch Perry, and of course Bob Marley is thematically aligned with the love stuff.

—Yes, making a note: 'Jamaica not Barbados.' Okay, and did you default to classically guarded, jaded, male indifference, not unlike Scrooge in the first seven minutes of A Christmas Carol?

—Yes, that was me. We need our Tiny Tims, you know?

—And do heart emojis abound, both mentally and in texts and emails?

—Yes.

—Do you love your mom?

—Yes.

—Your dad?

—Yes.

—Have you ever fallen in love with a slice of pizza, Joe's in the West Village, for instance? Or maybe late at night, mildly drunk, ambling up First Ave, Stromboli on St. Marks?

—Yes. Though I have to say, the love usually involves pepperoni, burnt on the edges. And ideally thick pepperoni. There's a slice at Prince St. Pizza in Nolita that does really thick pepperoni slices—they curl, become waves, half pipes. I’ve ridden them. I’ve felt love. Felt like I could live there, you know? In the shade of the curling pepperoni slice. Then I wolfed it down.

—As we do with love. Wolf love. Big appetites.

—Have you loved a bagel and cream cheese, well-toasted, sesame bagel, the long butter knife turning the cream cheese into something sculptural, in the family of meringue, at, say, Canter's Deli on Fairfax, or Factor’s on Pico?

—Definitely love. Love that requires many napkins, and a waitress named Judith whose delivery of plate on table oozes, for lack of a better description, something profoundly maternal, a squirt of breast milk reimagined into a sesame bagel with cream ch-