I want you to know that there was actual thought preceding this — whatever this is (what is this?). Usually, I just start typing. As I have maybe or possibly never said in the past, I don’t really consider what it is I am going to say. There are so many dark and quiet thoughts rattling around in my head at any given moment that I am sure there is medical term for my existence. Is this bad, I don’t know! I’m listening to fantastic music. My computer screen is black and white. Goodness! It sounds like I’m ready to say something. Though, when I literally (literally!) sat down to think about whatever it is I’m about to say, here on my little bed of folded blankets and pillows at the foot of my very real, very large bed, I couldn’t really think of anything. The only thought that flashed across the big black nothing up there, amongst the static of storms, was Texas. I am as excited as I ever get on this night, because I know that as long as I am alive in a month in a half, I’ll be on a plane to Orlando, Florida to board another plane that will eventually swoop and swarm around towering translucent clouds and land in Austin, Texas where wonderful creatures live. Oh, them. Oh, me! We will be together again — la, la!

Right now, though, I’m afraid of spilling this glass of water all over this machine that lets me talk to the rest of the world (hello, world!). I should try to sleep, but I’m not going to. My cousin said of sleeping, once, I think, that he would rather live to be fifty-five and never have to sleep. It’s possible he said this. I guess I could go for some never-sleeping right about now. When I was younger and computers were enormous and capable of eating God, sitting on the floor with a glass of delicious, sub-zero temperature water was simply a vision of the distant future. Back then, hell, sleep was something else. I remember waking up and feeling like some crazy shit had just happened. Some crazy shit happens to me every night here in the present day, but it’s not good crazy shit. It’s crazy and it’s most assuredly shit. There used to be a lot of flying and believing in unbelievable things. I miss those things (I miss everything (seriously, help me)). Now — now, what even happens? People scream at me in my sleep, people die. I wake up and realize that screaming and dying sounds a whole hell of a lot better than sitting in a room someplace in this shit-pond of a city and learning things or making slave wages. To be sure, there is a lot of screaming and dying in my life, asleep or not, but at least I’m letting my body do what it is my body needs to do when I’m away from here and asleep. This is getting confusing.

What I’m trying to say, I think, is that I don’t want to spill water on my computer. Then what would I do! Probably scream and die — and not for nothing, either. I have a lot of great treasures on this little thing. I think I was maybe half-joking with that last sentence. I’m also trying to communicate that sleep doesn’t feel like a break in between days, anymore. Tomorrow may as well be right now, as far as I’m concerned (because it is already). Sleep, today, is a black-out period that eats time. And I can’t have it back. And I’d rather be doing creative and stupid things with that time (which explains my present actions).

I have just turned on a small light next to my little end-of-the-bed office. My eyes were starting to twitch. My God, am I aging? I certainly hope not. If I wake up tomorrow and I’m nine-years-old again, I wouldn’t complain one bit. At least there would be a whole lot of happy nothing to fill my day with instead of a lot of nothing-something. Does that make sense? Maybe. I have reread it and it makes perfect sense to me. Then again, I’m a fucking psychopath.

Recently I have been spending any spare time I have with a truly wonderful young man who I owe many breakfasts and dinners to (I’ll get around to this eventually, I think). We have been riding bicycles through toxic wastelands and it has been more fun than anything else I’ve done in the last four years. Because our thirst for action takes us out under the cover of darkness, we see some surreal and amazing things, as you can imagine. I wonder how close we’ve come to toying with death — what with all of the nighttime street-riding and friendly gestures and greetings we offer up to our fellow night owls, bike-mounted or not. Usually people are very receptive to this unexpected friendliness. We may appear crazy, I imagine, but there’s no way they’re less crazy than us, so they say hello back. Sometimes they don’t. Two weeks ago a I rode by a guy sitting on a small bicycle outside of a cemetery. He was just staring at the graves with his mouth wide open. I said sometime friendly to him, and he slowly turned his head to face mine, mouth gaping like he’d just swallowed a whole cantaloupe. Hell, this guy looked like he was into that sort of thing, so maybe I walked (biked) in on something insane and disturbed his trance.

And all the bars! We fill our water bottles up wherever possible. I’ve been using the McDonald’s drive-through window to fill up, but that didn’t pan out two nights ago because the employees were smoking pot on the roof or something. And when we peered through the window, the tile floors were covered in un-mopped brown, bubbly toxic water. Hey, I think I’ll get my water someplace else! We ended up at this tavern in Old Town where a red-faced fat man jokingly accused me of stealing the quarter that he’d dropped, which I bent down to retrieve for him. He screamed something in my face and smiled with yellow teeth and I just shrugged and waited for the stone-eating ogre-bartender to finish filling my bottle with chemical water (seriously, what the hell did he put in there?). Everyone smelled like rotten pineapple. We shrugged and left.

Earlier we’d seen a drunk man abandon his car on the railroad tracks after attempting to drive down them. The police were swarming the area. They didn’t mind us, so we kept on pedaling.

By the end of the night, we’d moved our legs in terrific unison for nearly twenty-two miles. I felt like the man with me was closer to being a brother than my actual brother ever will be. Our faces beamed with sweat and genuine smiles. We were tired. We drove home.

As we left, a large black man wearing a white sweatband around his naked forehead pedaled by at a ferocious speed and offered up a greeting. We didn’t feel like freaks after that (I felt sort of dejected for not being a freak any longer). We’d met drunk girls and chatty teenagers and strange beings, and here comes this dude. Maybe we’re still freaks — just freaks together. I’d ride with that guy. I’d take him with me to Austin, if he wanted to come with.

I’d let him sleep in my bed.

I think I’ll go there now, actually (I have finished my glass of water, so everything seems to be okay).

Well–

The foot of my bed, anyway. Well, well! Black-out-nothing time. Screaming and dying. Awake and alive somewhere, sometime. I can’t take much more of this.

Scream!

(Die.)

And the sound of strings, strings — somewhere, somewhere.