The smell of warm hair in the sunlight, musty and carnal, drawing you towards it, drawing you in. Soft touch of strands on your mouth, brushing in a brown flow against your nose and cheek. Salt taste on skin, hot from sunlight, moist warmth flowing into your mouth, filling you with its scent, with its fleshy savor. Gentle sound of a quiet voice. Dainty morsel of flesh, O my angel. Pure human finery, veiled with a piece of silk, which slides over the skin tripping all the tiny hairs, rousing the senses, bringing the pliant flesh alive under its touch.

A man in the coffeeshop with bare legs covered in curling golden hair. Legs haloed in sunlight. Tough meat, sculpted muscle under brown skin effused with gold, obscured by this terrible, beautiful wash of hair. Sudden glimpse of intimate masculine form in a public place, legs that should be reclining on a velvet cushion still hot from battle, legs that should be standing hard and immobile in the green of a field, still clean with skin unbroken in the moment before the clash. My hands tingle as if the hairs ran soft - my prize, my tribute - beneath them.

The machines are slowly being pulled from my body. This wire, plucked from my flesh, that cable, drawn from its long home in my skin. Left naked, exposed, fragile and weak. My armor, my support. Can my bones bear the weight without the direct lan tap and the whirring input of electricity? Can my nervous system continue to pick up the senses of the world without the cables, tapped in at the base of the spine, snaking up and over the ribcage, through the spine and up into the brain? Can I live without my machines? Do I want to?

My skin, my skin. My skin has gone brown, my hairs gone yellow. I use my stiff fiber brushes over my skin, daily, rough, brilliant stimulation, red and hot tingle in the skin. Speeded replacement of skin, luxury of new skin, regular freshness and softness. The harsh sanding scraping grinding, the warm water flow and splash, to receive the unguent, to be anointed by the pale cream and the holy oil, touched with gentle scent. Lilies of the valley after lemon and lavender splashed away, on the skin. In the fabric, roses and gardenias. White flowers with glossy green leaves.

Hands thick and long, grasping a laptop in a bookstore. Hands that throw the soul into reverie, my own narrow long fingers on them, grasping a meaty palm, strong thumbs, wide fingers with joints heavy and refined. Feeling the beat of the veins raised in strong relief on the backs of the hands, a few negligent hairs in a patch below the pinky, holdovers of brutal nature long past. Nails thick and striated, ridged but clean underneath, taste of nothing, nothing but flesh as my tongue probes between the fingers, over the tips, into the tiny crevice under the nail.

What is all this "We're still friends" crap? You're not friends. If you liked each other, you'd still be together. You show me a couple who's broken up that's still friends, and I'll show you a couple that's broken up where at least one party wants to get back together. Loyalty? Some people, guys mostly, call it loyalty, like I'm supposed to be really impressed. Well, it's certainly loyal to your ex. To your new love interest, it's just crap, that's what it is. People, dump the old one already. You owe it to the new one. Jesus, it's over.

There was this boy, or possibly girl, outside the video store in the market. Dressed all in black, black-dyed hair. It's hard to pull off this look without looking like you're trying too hard. But this boy, or possibly girl, had it down. It looked casual, as if he, or possibly she, just got out of bed that way. A comfortable, non-shiny head-to-toe black, like he, or possibly she, happened to have a lot of black clothes but was otherwise a high-functioning member of society. And needless to say, this guy, or possibly girl, made the androgyny thing look easy.

I should explain certain idiosyncrasies. If we were together, looking at the same object, you'd be able to draw your own conclusions. But as it is you might not know I'm using color unless I point it out, and I don't want to waste large chunks of my hundreds setting up scenes. When I say boy, or girl, or even little boy, I mean someone roughly in age between sixteen and thirty five. The under tens will probably be referred to as loathsome children, and the young teens will be referred to as repellent adolescents. Unless I change my mind.

Dizzy, and sick. What the heck did I eat? Maybe it's a virus. But I haven't been getting out much, and I don't recall anyone who seemed to have one they might share. Regardless, my stomach is conducting manouvers with a goal of secession from the body. It's predictably trying to leave by one of the regular orifices, but word has come in that it's not above herniating a new one, maybe out the navel, in cahoots with the intestines, which have launched their own campaign of insurrection. The usual weapons, salts, sodas, preemptive expulsions, don't seem to be working.

I have read recently: Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler, William S Burroughs, Charles Bukowski (Oh, shut UP! Why is there always some whiny girl who wants to make a big deal out of this? It's not like I'm in the mood every day, so I'd better seize it when it happens), Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, in addition to the usual medical nonfiction. No, I just like it. Like Lady Bracknell, I like to have something sensational to read on the train. It's a fictional train. And I read over my own stuff too but so far nothing suitable for human consumption.

Things that would be worse than this: Being chased by lions. Bathing in a mountain stream and putting your clothes back on after drying in the warm sun only to discover that you've been infected by genital chiggers. Being successfully framed for a rape/murder. Falling down a really big hole. Being trapped in a caved-in mine slowly being filled with water. Being attacked by a pack of wild dogs. Flesh-eating streptococci. Ebola virus. Twenty years of untreated syphilis. Living on a cold, wet sidewalk. Being mistaken for a very wicked person by an angry mob. Being kicked in the ankles.

More things that would be worse than this: Holding the last item in the super triple sale while surrounded by greedy women shoppers. Being devoured by piranhas. Eating arsenic by mistake. Falling into a vat of raw sewage and being forced to swallow a few mouthfuls before escaping. Having a really bad case of uncontrollable diarrhea during a meeting. Accidentally eating human flesh. Really looking forward to a dish of ice cream late at night in your pajamas after the stores are closed only to discover the last of it has gone all gummy and is covered in ice fuzz.

I get cramps these days in my hands and feet, as well as my calves. Seriously, the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet. This is what I've come to. If you've never had a charley horse, don't. This is the most extraordinary pain, that will wake you up out of a dead sleep and crank you upright in bed, clutching at your wrongly extended limb, grimacing in agony and pinching your upper lip half off your face because you once read somewhere that it was a sure-fire cure for a charley horse. It is breathtaking torture.

I'd make a terrible junkie, because I'm afraid of needles. More than you. It's a phobia. I've got a mouthful of fillings and one crown, all of which I had done without novocaine because I'm more afraid of needles than dental pain. Speaking of which, if you want a really good description of dental pain, read Huysmans' La Bas, and his wicked toothache problem. Anyway, if drugs aren't oral, I pretty much don't take them. I gave blood regularly to work through this (taking out is less awful than putting in) until I got anemic and fainted in a supermarket.

What exactly is a suicide girl? Is it something like a suicide blonde (dyed by her own hand)? Is my new roommate going to be okay or am I going to come home to a trashed apartment and a dead cat? Is my crappy attitude the result of internal attribution (bad) or learning from experience (good)? Will I find happiness in love? Does the answer really lie in avoiding Catholics? If I get a nipple pierced, will it make that tit bigger than the other? Is it me, or is it them? What's that noise? Oh, God, what's that smell?

Darkness sighs in heavy footfalls. You see, see what happens when we are without our machines? Even for the shortest period. Millions of years of evolution, and we can't go three days without electricity. Well, of course we can, we do every winter, but then we're expecting it, and someone's still got power, and you can always burn something for heat. If you're already hot there's not a damned thing you can do to get cool. Heat is a special torture, far worse than freezing. That's why they made hell hot. Embrace the technological gods. Nature is not your friend.

Let me reiterate: nature is not your friend. There's always some halfwit willing to buy anything if somebody slaps "All-Natural" on it. Nature doesn't care if you live or die. Nature doesn't care if anyone loves you or if you have a nice place to live or your food has gone bad. In fact, botulism and bread mold are natural. So are the intestinal flora which cause your body to swell to explosion after death. The human animal in its natural state stinks, gives birth at thirteen, and plays with its own excrement. There's something to be said for civilization.

Suicide is a funny thing. If somebody else would be better off without you, then why doesn't that person die instead? The "this town ain't big enough for the two of us" argument can only stalemate. But what if your argument is that things suck and aren't going to get any better, the "quality of life" gambit? If death is preferable to life, then it is, that's a tautology and not open to argument. So we're left with the messy business of deciding under what circumstances the tautology would apply. Chronic severe pain? Chronic lack of booty? Chronic bad hair?

And who decides? Who says whether your life is worth living or not? Certainly nobody besides you. But can even you make this decision, emotional variability being what it is? We have no memory of pain. We remember the unpleasant things related to it, but when the pain itself is gone, it's just gone. This knowledge of past pain coupled with the lack of current suffering from that particular pain is enough to prove that pain is temporary. God, I gave my heart to know wisdom and folly, and it turns out it's really all about the wine after all.

I mean, when we're feeling pain, we'd do just about anything to get rid of it. But once it's gone it's gone. So if your argument for suicide is freedom from pain, then to be sure it is a logically correct solution. But it's not the only logically correct solution, and all other solutions guarantee some portion of happiness in addition to freedom from pain. Worst case scenario, sheer entropy will take over. Prisoners trend to a middle ground of emotional stability. Things go up and down. The filthy rich trend towards stability. It's stagnation, actually, that can't be avoided.

That therapist friend of mine hobbles from pleasure to pleasure with the admonition, "I can't kill myself until after February when I get back from Italy," or something like it. She's nearing seventy and has wrestled with all the angels herself all those years, so it seems to be working. I'm not sure it's advisable for a person with any clarity of judgement to examine the case more closely than that. Cold logic is a little too likely to give you the thumbs up. Better to make procrastination work for you for a change. Also, have a glass of wine.

Well, I've got one answer anyway: I've just watched Chasing Amy, and the answer really does lie in avoiding Catholics. Jesus, can't we hang bells around these people's necks or something so we can see them coming? More questions: Where did my spectacular drunken entry from late last night about delicious, nutritious Raisin Bran go? How am I going to fix these holes my roommate's cockatiel chewed into the pile of my outrageously expensive rug? What does roasted cockatiel taste like? Why doesn't my cat solve this bird problem for me, isn't that what cats are supposed to be for?

Hallucinating again. I spent thirty seconds chasing a moth that turned out to be a reflection on my glasses. You don't know you're hallucinating. Lying in bed trying to sleep, you may not notice your perception is going, because your point of view and everything is stable and there's not much opportunity for things to go odd. But get up and walk to the kitchen for some lemon flavored fizzy dextromethorphan in a cup, and Whoa, Nelly! The reflections of the kitchen appliance lights on the window look for all the world like a new condominium you'd somehow never noticed.

Lying in bed, late at night, drugged, but not sleeping. Flipping channels, occasionally laughing, but sometimes finding something that makes you want to pull the covers over your head and tremble. Commercials, mostly. I go for days without being able to watch commercials. I restrict myself to PBS and premium movie channels, just so there will be no one yelling at me. If there's nothing on those, I'll rent movies or watch dvd's I own. Sometimes I go a few weeks without being able to watch any live, commercialed tv at all. Some harrowing news story pulls me back in.

Dark, dark and warm. Alone here in the close warmth, swaddled in this womb of a bed, layers of cotton muscle weight you down. Run a hand in your hair. Soft, smells sweet, long hair, long strands. Alone, barely clothed, protected here. The days grow darker. They grow shorter. Darkness walks the land for an extra hour every night. At the end of the day, such tiredness, and then like a great relief, darkness comes. Blinding out the light, dulling the colors and blunting the harsh edges. The cold light will have no sanctuary here, here alone with the darkness.

Darkness sighs in heavy footfalls. The summer is nearly over. It takes longer now, for the mist to raise over Puget Sound in the mornings. The nights get too cold to leave the balcony door open. I have opened the doors of my world to chaos, taken a scorched earth policy on my life, love, work. I waited too long, and no other option was left to me. I'm not sorry, mind you. There's something satisfyingly dramatic to this blowtorch approach to self actualization. But maybe in future I should pay closer attention and head this kind of rupture off.

Waves of nausea. Salt water fills the mouth, fills the throat. Waves of nausea, wrack your form. It's coming, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Maybe if you keep swallowing and walk fast, you can make it home before it hits? You start looking around for likely locations on the way – someplace with a little privacy? Someplace with a receptacle, at least? Christ, it's the middle of the day on a weekend and you haven't had so much as a Mimosa and you have no reason to be throwing up in public. Waves, waves of nausea.

Waves of nausea. I don't think it's the alcohol, mixed with the mild narcotic that does this, but the food. Normally you'd just have no appetite, but if you take your pill right after a meal, before the food's had a chance to leave the stomach, I suspect you're asking for trouble. Maybe it's the way it slows down all physical processes. Maybe now you're stuck with a belly full of stuff that can't digest, can't leave, can only sit there and go rancid, until it simply has to be expelled the same way it came. Must take better care.

As I sit here in the wee hours, the beat still echoing in my ears, I realize this is what's missing: more dancing. I do not care to drink when I am dancing. Drink deadens the senses, and enhances all unpleasant emotions. Marijuana is worse; it dulls the senses and makes me very clumsy. I don't mind a mild codeine, but only one; it makes me happy with everything without reducing my drives otherwise. I'm not interested in sex when I dance. It's just beautiful, glorious motion, red nails and and flashing lights and trippy music and happy bodies together.

It's here, it's almost here. I leave at the beginning of next month. My anonymous ramblings will be on hiatus of sorts. Or who knows. Maybe I'll be itching, burning to write more than ever, having a plethora of new experiences interspersed with long stretches of absolute boredom without opportunities for less wholesome entertainment. Speaking of which I seem to be going through one of my can't drink periods. A small glass of wine makes me sick-drunk. Sigh. Well, it's cheaper this way. There is some fear. I'd be a fool if there was no fear, but don't tell anyone.

And the last day, the ending. Raze the fundaments, fire the shelters, put the populace to the knife. Scorch the earth and sow salt into the ashes so nothing shall grow again. Sometimes you have to do the strong thing. Sometimes your future depends on your having made the hard choices. You walk out on the end of that plank, you smile at the pirates begging you to stay, you raise your arms wide and arc high, backwards into the water, to consign your soul to the wisdom of the deep and your body to the bosom of its embrace.