2:52 a. m. » Day 49

Honestly things have just gone beyond descriptable.

3:04 a. m. » Day 45

What I failed to mention yesterday was that I'd been made victim of a partially just character assessment by a female I'd never met, in and outside of whose presence I want to refuse to use the proper name of. I just about quote, and word for word, "You've been in a small handful of relationships, most of which were long and serious. All of the girls were beautiful and you probably fucked the shit out of them. You like to dress preppie. [Extensive Pause]. Oh, and you probably walk by lots of women thinking you're better than them." One of the two of about-to-be-said friends absolutely lost it. Tonight, entering an unfamiliar small-town apartment, before making it through the door, my name was called out by someone inside who'd had me recognized. I have no idea who the kid was; he'd known my sisters. This -- all after a night with a friend who not only first admitted that he'd been bribed by his parents with $100 to vote republican, but who later broke down, cheeks beyond moist, voice repetitively cracking, recounting an untellabley depressing story concerning a mutual friend of ours (whom I've known for a decade and a half), and involving the dusk of a piteous relationship -- plus watching a laughing 19 year-old girl rip an Indian woman's pride, emotions, and trust to shreds was not how I'd expected to spend my night.

7:04 a. m. » Day 44

Turns out trying to retain a civilized conversation while two girls roll about the floor, ripping the clothes off one another in a drunken attention starvation is easier than you might think. Doing the same while they press their naked bodies against the cold glass of a sliding door while you stand on the other side happens to be just as. Your offensively questioning the better looking of the two on whether or not she typically achieves that which she seeks by employing this method -- that being shooting inquiries meant to make you feel awkward in a sexual sense, constantly talking about and showing her body, then summing it up with, "Do I intimidate you?" -- and her then trying to make herself cry, explaining that she wants her father to die because he says, for example, that she has lips for blowjobs; is it wrong to willingly and consciously feed off this sort of material for the avoidance of your own boredom? And why these people wrap themselves around your finger, you do not know.

1:37 a. m. » Day 43

I agreed to invest a favor in an old sort of friend. At the end of it, I wasn't able to help with her computer, there were too many unknowns, and, seeing as it was some character I did not know who brought the state upon her in the first place, there really wasn't a great deal that I could do without a series of answered questions. A telephone conversation was initiated on her part, and after not even grazing the subject of the computer, the pair moved on to a session of hostile argument. As I sat there trying to ignore what I could not avoid listening to (which proved to be difficult being that I was seated directly next to her), I learned that a week prior this man had moved out of that very apartment, claiming to need SPACE, that he'd taken all sorts of her THINGS (including the lease), and that he still had a KEY. Within twenty minutes she'd accomplished cornering him into breaking up with her because she couldn't stand the time he needed to think. She then made his doing this over the phone an issue. It all was just too reminiscint of a seperate occurance, dated 1999. The bawling 22 year-old was evidently then to be left in my care. What an ass. I made the comment that I doubted we had time to finish our Scrabble game. Her sister then called which was when I made it obvious that it was time to leave.

Alas, after exactly five weeks arrive the short temper and disgust. It's like there's nothing left to feel.

2:16 a. m. » Day 42

After stumbling upon a hotel while exploring the skyways in our precious downtown area, a friend of mine swiped two chicken strips, one half eaten, off a room-service trash cart. He also went back for condiments. Shortly thereafter he took me into the city's adult bookstore to make sure that the DVD he'd ordered was still being held. He promised the clerk that he'd be back to pay for it the next day, pay day. The man accused him of having been saying this for an entire month. It appeared to be a kind of running joke, while their cracking lewd comments about the exploitation of pregnant redheads seemed to be a habitual cue for saying goodbye. I'm beginning to feel bitter.

3:40 a. m. » Day 39

Tonight I was dragged out of the comfort of my home by a friend who was excessively excited about wanting to show me an album of lost Toadies tracks. He ended up bringing his 17 year-old sister and me to a house where they did drugs, listened to Danzig, and told stories of a friend who's been responsible for four girls' abortions, one baby named Jude, and the spreading of at least two STDs (which he originally claimed was cancer). I don't want to give away too much, but a yearbook may have been used as a tool of reference. Later the two's father called, accusatorily demanding to know what I wanted with his daughter at 1 in the morning on a school night. We listened to Joy Division on the way home. The most saddening moment of the night however was that during which I came to accept the fact that when I thought I'd bought an iPod with that several hundred dollars, it's actually turned out to be nothing more than a garbage bag.

4:05 p. m. » Day 37

The next evening, after being shown the scars, I was badgered into feeling up an acquaintance-like younger girl's newly implanted chest at a public bar, even skin to skin, her trying to show me a mysterious air-bubble -- which I pretended to notice. The entire thing was almost awkward. Later I found out she'd paid for them with her retro-pay child-support checks that the court had just finally forced the father of her child to pay after months and months of his needing the cash to support a Meth-amphetamine habit. The answer is no, that father was not Shari.

2:33 a. m. » Day 36

Tonight truly concreted my being back. I had a twenty minute conversation with --wait, no -- a guy I once didn't really know talked to me for twenty minutes about how he now resides in a township, population: 0, in a trailer, working in a junkyard with this amazing dog named MAX, and, above all, how fucking happy he is. Everyone kept asking me why I was dressed up. Later I went outside and my saliva froze.