Nine at Night

She is everything I am not, and she is about to beat me at canasta.

She rearranges her cards and prepares for my execution, looking up from her hand at my apprehensive face. "Sorry," she says, "but I'm too drunk not to smile," and she puts on a small, perfectly satisfied smile.

"How much have you had to drink? Like, how many shots?" I ask.

She lets out an exhale and puts down her cards.
"Well," she says, looking up as she thinks, "I had a G and T with dinner..." She puts up two fingers.
"...wine..." Three fingers.
"...a margarita..." Four fingers.
"...wait, two margaritas..." Five fingers.
"...I think I took a vodka shot at some point..."Six fingers.
"...more wine..." Seven fingers.
"...and then this," she says, gesturing to her drink on the table, "is another G and T."
She looks down at her fingers and smiles a different smile. "Nine shots," she says, looking back up at me, and picks her hand back up.

What I know about nine shots is kissing my best friend and puking twice into a Tupperware. I give up trying to calculate how many points are counting against me as I watch her deftly begin to lay down her cards.

She shows me red canastas, nary a wild card in sight, pure and true.

There You Go

I'm kind of drunk now and I was high earlier and my teenage summer is grand, rich, teeming with possibility.

I'm putting a terrible metaphor for why I've never liked alcohol together in my head. I've always felt like being high on weed was like growing a pair of weak stubby wings, whereas being drunk is like falling into a hole. I'm guessing now that what matters is what you find in the hole.

My Little Dream Book is Put to the Test

J.D. and Elliot of Scrubs sit, fully clothed in doctors' garb, on my toilet. They are talking.

J.D. then fiddles with his nether regions for a bit before relinquishing a bloody tampon. He holds it up by its tail to examine it. Two drops of brownish blood fall onto the linoleum tiles.

Elliot wrinkles her nose. "Gross," she says.

J.D. laughs. "Yeah," he says, and puts it in the toilet.

After they have left, a hand wipes away the blood on the floor with toilet paper.

Love Sweet Love

The movie left me sick, my flesh saturated with disease. It was sweet like marshmallow and honey sandwiches, like brown sugar milkshakes, like cotton candy topped with chocolate syrup; it left me staring into the eyes of a diabetic coma.

Sugar is like that. You will crave it and fill yourself to the brim with it again and again until you're left with your insides rotting, obese and wondering how all that ugliness fit under your skin.

Diabetics have to wear special shoes; they have to accomodate their disease up from the very soles of their feet.

Hook

I spent a couple of hours making a bag today and it looks like shit. That's what amazes me about crafting; no matter how long you spend making something, it always has the potential to look like shit.

I had never appreciated Pulp Fiction more than when I watched it today. There were some points at which I was overwhelmed by its genius (one of these was not when someone said two different things during two different scenes featuring the same event).

Can you imagine Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in high school?
God, I bet they were nerdy.

Here is a poem that could very easily be about a closeted gay relationship, but isn't.

I imagined summer:
drawing our initials in wet cement,
flowers in pinks and yellows and reds

but the harsh light of the sun still offends, so we
sit and grow mold in the shadows,
watching our reflections in each other’s eyes

he took my hand and it was
chivalry,
formality

Big Fuckin' Deal

You see a lot of interesting people at BFD. Pierced people, dyed people, naive people, jaded people, old people, fat people sitting and smoking on the lawn with their bellies in their laps. However, you see the most of people in tight pants. I saw tight pants in a rainbow of colors, a whole scale of rips and tears.

I laid in the grass amidst plastic cups and wrappers and Bacardi bottles and bottles filled with cigarette butts, and I remember thinking, looking up into the stars while Social Distortion played: "This is fun, but also kind of horrifying."

Reflex

The end is near. The end of an era, of infinite time under constant supervision. Finity is approaching.

It's not approaching me, but it's descending on people one year older than me and I can see it swallow them from here. It envelops them in a smoky vortex and casts a glance to me out the corner of its eye.

Hey, it says to me, smiling a little.
You like this?
This will happen to you soon.

NBP To You From Me, <3

the future is white bright and loud:
im strting 2-b smthrd, stop me before I become
my mother, I find comfort in
cold cookies/
warm wombs

pastries...
good people, I guess,
climb to the top of the cake make
snow angels in the vanilla frosting.
I know we wouldn't. my brother is killing
my mother, I find comfort in
cold cookies/
warm wombs

Oh, Me

Walking the Bay to Breakers somewhat restored my faith in humanity. The fact that thousands of people could all be so happy together was such a nice surprise. Everyone was having fun and getting along with one another; it was wonderful.

Then someone stole my bike today and my faith in humanity went down the crapper.

Stealing from someone can only ever be malicious or grossly inconsiderate. What an awful thing to do.