My Doppelgänger, Myself: Brave Howie Kleinberg Reveals His Ontological Crisis on the "Top Chef" Set

Sure, possums, both these men are red, gruff, overweight, temperamental, insecure, and possessed of regional accents and farcically outmoded notions of masculinity, but if you look closely, there are differences: one is slightly taller and has hair.

These are small details, but they are important, as cheftestant Howie Kleinberg will tell you. He has courageously broken his silence to discuss his painful struggle with a problem that has beset philosophers, Prague-based Jewish novelists, drag queens, science fiction visionaries and gay couples alike: nothing less than the nature of existence. As the bastard love child of Carrie Bradshaw and Jean-Paul Sartre might have put it, Who are we (in fact, are we?) when others can't tell us apart? Or, why do gay couples in long-term relationships always end up looking like twins?

As Howie told the folks at mediaVillage.com, it was thanks to Casey Thompson that his "relationship [with Joey Paulino] ... moved on to a level where we got the BS out of the way." However, "[a]bsolutely Joey and I butt heads,...because we have a lot in common... But we are not the same person." (emphasis added).

And why would it be necessary to stress this? Well, because "many of the contestants would actually confuse the two [Joey and Howie] when talking about one of them."

Take a moment, possums, to ponder the import of this. If people who lived with you for several weeks can't tell you apart from your vociferous Doppelgänger, what hope is there for you? When things have reached that point, when your life has turned into a paella whipped up by Philip K. Dick and Andrew Sullivan, it's time to abandon the leather bars and beer busts, and move to the suburbs with a pair of chocolate Labs, therein to restore a crumbling Victorian and hold barbecues for the other sets of burly twins.