1

One night I was running and screaming because I was about to explode. I was running and my arms and legs and hair were on fire. This situation was insane, not something I could control. I was screaming so loud I thought my vocal cords would snap or suddenly burst into flames. I was pressing buttons frantically trying to enter in the right code: the right sequence of letters or numbers or symbols of a language I could no longer comprehend assuming I ever could. The world was no longer there. A void had opened up and was swallowing me into its dark empty swamp of nothingness. I was screaming, fighting, biting, tearing, struggling and I knew with absolute certainty that my struggling meant nothing and yet I could not stop struggling. I needed to grip something, to clasp something in my hand and shake it and maybe throttle and choke it and scream and bleed and bite and twist and jump through a window. This situation was like nothing I had ever seen or experienced before and so it is impossible for me now to describe it with much coherence or detail because I hadn't even gotten to the big picture by the time it happened. I pulled a knife, I pulled a gun, I pulled a cannon, I pulled my dick, I don't know what I pulled. I pulled all kinds of shit on myself and I ended up feeling betrayed and yet I'm still screaming and struggling and fighting and biting and kicking against these phantoms and these ghosts and against the past and not just the things I regret but the injustices I resent and the things that threaten my present and my future like these ghosts that haunt me that are not ghosts of my experience but ghosts of the entire human experience in this world that is not a place I feel that I can be any longer.

I am screaming at you, yelling at you, crying, sobbing tears and jumping up and down in my frustration and my painful agonizing sadness and incoherent frenzy of psychotic pathological paranoia connecting these bones with my blood after it has solidified and hanging out with these pigs and vampires and going blind and I'm screaming at the world and I am a screaming wind yelling in my blind rage at the world at the top of my lungs and spinning around and twisting and yelling and screaming and raging and jumping and laughing at my own stupidity and inane senseless chattering and blind fury and swinging around this knife, and, in the other hand, this gun and drinking from this bottle and beating my chest and howling at the moon and running into other people's lawns and jumping into their pools and setting off their house and car alarms and making them call the police and ordering pizzas from their phones and teaching curse words to their children and plotting to blow up their televisions and their shopping malls and jacking off on their Victoria's Secret catalogues and slinking around in their alleyways in the night when they are afraid to come and meet me and see me because I will most certainly scream at them and they will hear only the ghost wind.

I'm not writing these words because I want you to think of me and remember me. I'm writing them because I want you to beat me to death with a metal hammer or an aluminum baseball bat. I want you to kill me to burn me at the stake to stalk me down and hunt me out and hang me and electrocute me in your fucking electric chairs and fill me full of your drugs and chemicals with your lethal injections and poison me with car exhaust and radioactive waste and blow out my eardrums and blind my eyes and lobotomize my brain and sever my limbs and chop off my head and my balls and melt me down and burn me out and up so I can smoke your crack and eat my own fingers and bleed on your freshly cut grass and your freshly pruned cherry trees and be taken up in the air by your swooping hawks and eagles and ospreys and dropped into an ocean of battery acid and covered in lipstick and perfume and given a perm and fucked in the ass with your mean retro leather tattoo dykes on motorcycles and shaved and eaten by dogs and burned and burned and burned with cheap smelly lighter fluid and tortured with insults and the heels of boots and broken or rather shattered into pieces with a medieval weapon and then finally rubbed into the ashes and razor blades and broken glass on the cement while being force-fed LSD and corndogs.

I was bleeding and screaming at my friends. I was trying to run away, struggling to get up and escape and hide and pray to God and lash out at all the insects swarming around me biting and stinging me and I was stinging something and hunting something and chasing it down and suddenly I was howling like a dog. I didn't know where I was. I didn't feel like anything. Nothing had already been decided. I had nowhere to sit, nowhere to fuck, nowhere to piss. I wanted to go to school and learn something but all my teachers hated me and none of the students wanted me around because I had fucked their mothers or their girlfriends or their sisters. I didn't have any property real or personal and I was naked and my hair was unwashed and greasy and I smelled bad and my toenails had not been clipped and I had the worst reeking breath and my face was dehydrated and blotchy and unshaven and I had athlete's foot that itched horribly and I was constipated and didn't know who had won the World Series or the Stanley Cup or Wimbledon or the Grammys or what day it was or what year it was and I didn't feel like a person and I was not a person.

I heard drums beating and they were so loud they shook my eardrums and my head. I yelled "Hi!" in too loud a voice at the people walking past me on the sidewalk and at times I would suddenly start running and jumping and running out into traffic. Not only were the police chasing me and shooting at me with machine guns but the National Guard had been called in with tanks and helicopters and NASA was building a special space missile that would literally shoot me into the sun and even an icecream truck that played a cheesy version of "Pop Goes the Itsy Bitsy Spider" was following me and shooting sugar cones filled with rock candy at me with a pitching machine. It has not yet occurred to me that I was no longer a person or that I could no longer think. I didn't remember anything and I wanted desperately to go to the bathroom but I didn't know how.

I met a friend of mine named Violet Rucker and I was trying to talk with her but everything I said came out about too loud.

"Do you know who Francis Vee is?" I shouted.

"No!" she shouted back and I was surprised that she was shouting at the same decibel and then I heard the thumping techno and realized we were in a club but I immediately forget again because the darkness and the smoke began to choke me and torture me and I pulled out my gun and started flinging my arms wildly and randomly and screaming and jumping and someone handed me a cigarette and a cup of poison and I was swallowing something and then coconuts started to drop from the ceiling or maybe balloons.

Outside I was walking down the street along the sidewalk and everything was moving even the things not supposed to be moving. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. I tried to look around and orient myself to my surroundings. I did not want to walk anymore but I also did not want to sit and rest either. I started running along the sidewalk screaming at the top of my lungs that I was going to murder the next person I saw. But at the same time I was also screaming that I was only joking but that I would at least try to my best to kill everyone in any case. "Sign on the dotted line and agree with me when I ask you questions," I was thinking. "I want to listen to you and help you. I want to protect you and defend you. I want to understand you and sympathize with you. I want you to love me and remember me. I want you to go by the name I call you. I don't want to have you or possess you. I want only to be you. I want to relax with you on cold and hot days and in the sunshine and moonlight. I want to run with you on the sand and the grass, and I want to drive with you in the cities and through the countryside. Please think about me. Please feel something for me. I am nothing and I want to be something. I want to be you. I want to be you. I want to be you. I want to be you. I want to be with you and of you and for you. I want to fly and never fall and die and be reborn and love and sing and dance and I want you to join me and be happy and never sad in love without pain or hurt and so please jump on me and kill me if you must. I want to be. I want to be you."

That's when I pulled out a sword and cut off my own head with it and fired a cannon that was already in France in the middle of Paris and planes crashed and people were dying everywhere suddenly. Suddenly I was walking again then sitting on a bench by the side of the street wondering where my car was trying to calm down and get ahold of myself. I didn't want to murder anyone. I didn't want to scream and shout and break things and burn the world up in a single nuclear blast. All I wanted to do was dance and fuck and read something that would blow out the gunk from my mind and sleep for several weeks and stop feeling these burning cutting slicing feelings all over my body crawling on me like spiders.

"Who am I?" I thought. "What do I want? What am I doing? Where am I? What do I have? Why do I want what I have? Why am I? Why am I doing what I'm doing? What is this thing that is killing me and sucking the life out of me? What is this vampire? How can I escape? What is the plan? What is this thing that is robbing and raping me? What is this thing that is taking everything I own and stealing me freedom? Where is this thief? I am being robbed blind by an invisible thief!"

I knew I wasn't going anywhere and that I wasn't finding anything and that I wasn't gathering anything to bring back home. I knew I was in trouble and in danger and that I didn't have sufficient resources to handle this problem and that I didn't have time or life or friends or money or influence or power or a reputation or enough clout in any capacity to help me survive and manage whatever invisible thing that was destroying me. I wanted to be protected and loved and shielded from all the horrors around me and I wanted safety and warmth and something pure and real and reliable and true and sweet and nice and strong and free and happy and I wanted to be happy and I wanted to be holy and happy and pure and full of love and life and meaning and I wanted pleasure and health and goodness and musical harmony and I didn't want disease or illness or desolation or poverty and blindness, deafness or ignorance and corruption and I did not know or feel certain or feel secure or happy or confident or anything.

Then I saw someone dark and beautiful coming down the street in my direction. What did she want and what was she doing and where was she going? What did she have in her bag in her pockets in her mind and where was her car? How comfortable were her black shoes and how warm was her black coat? Would I make eye contact with her green eyes and greet her in some way? Perhaps I could avert my black eyes and walk by quickly and pretend I had never seen her.

"I will tell you how to get rid of Melvin Baker and Francis Vee," she said with a charming smile and took me in her arms. I saw her teeth when her mouth opened and the deep endless ocean of green in her eyes was an interesting contrast to her white teeth and her grip was too strong but her face was still so pale and beautiful. "Are you cool?" I asked as she sunk her teeth into my neck.

2

The next day the trees were swaying in the cool breeze and the sun was shining. I was sitting in my condo with the windows open listening to the cars go by outside. It is good to have a little down time and relax. I was trying to think about things in the big picture and figure out what life means in some larger sense. I was trying to find meaning in my life instead of just all this disconnection. I was thinking that maybe I could get some insight into things if I tried hard enough and thought long enough. But I knew that maybe I was deluding myself because maybe all attempts at a rational understanding of the world are futile. The world sometimes seems to be nothing more than a big mess. The strands of everything are wound so tightly that the individuality of the strands disappear and all that is left is darkness. It is impossible to separate anything out or purify anything and everything just rots into one big disgusting swampy mess and nothing makes any sense.

I went into the kitchen and washed some strawberries and cut open a cantaloupe. It was pleasant not to be starving. I had plenty to eat and drink and this fact was good and meaningful even if I could not ultimately give a reason for continuing to eat and drink. It was good just to enjoy the food in the moment: to taste the sweetness and feel the nutrition and energy waking up my body. I went and sat on the couch and watched television for a few moments but everything seemed stupid and so I turned it off. I thought about making a phone call but I wasn't sure I wanted to have a conversation with anyone. I looked down at my boots but I found no answers there. I thought about the pleasures of sex and drugs and crime and wondered whether these pleasures would give me the deep sense of meaning that I sought. Maybe I needed to go to church or see my therapist or get some exercise or listen to music or read a book or take a nap. Maybe it would be best simply to go into my bathroom and slash my wrists. There were too many options, too many choices, too much complexity, multiplicity and ambiguity. All the unity in my psychological perspective was being exploded into pieces that were themselves exploding into smaller pieces. It was impossible to keep track of them all or keep things organized. It was impossible to have a sense of certainty or confidence about anything. And yet was it not true that a man is supposed to be confident? "Maybe being confident is just pretending to be confident," I thought. I could not escape the feeling that things were meaningless, empty and fading away into nothingness. This emotion kept hitting me again and again and again. "What should I do?" I thought. "Sometimes I have energy and feel good but this is definitely a lull time. Things are not feeling good like they sometimes do." I thought about all the happy times in my life and wondered what I had lost. "Where am I going?" I thought. "Where will I end up?" The answer was unclear, although I could remember times in my life when it seemed at least clearer. "There may have been people who thought they found all the major answers to life," I thought. "But to me right now there does not seem to be an answer to anything."

I am relaxed. I am cool. I am taking a deep breath. I am smoking a cigarette. I am just sitting here not thinking of anything in particular. I refuse to torture myself with futile philosophical nonsense. There is no way to write one's problems away. It is no use wishing for things to be better. The only thing to do is just sit there and chill out and not upset oneself. In this way we can disconnect from the modern world with its ceaseless drive toward more and more efficient technology. Other people may respond to this relaxation by getting angry at us for being lazy. Everyone will seem to want us to be part of something. It is not easy to force people to see us as individuals. There is too much of a desire to compare one person to the next. Prejudice is very efficient in the short term.

I am wearing black pants, a black shirt, black boots and a black hat. I really don't want to die soon and yet I don't want to grow old either. I am constantly slamming my skull up against this existential wall. I know I am never going to find God. All I want to do is find God and yet God seems like an illusion when I look at this world and see nothing perfect. I want to cry when I think these thoughts. I am so sick and tired of the heavy weight of the existential that is always weighing down my mind. I am trying to find God and God is nowhere. As a logician or talker I can speak as if God were here even if God is not here. So, just because we have a word for God does not mean God really exists in any meaningful way. I just want to kill myself when I think these thoughts. I want to scream at the top of my lungs and then slash my wrists. I am lighting another cigarette. I am touching myself: staring at a photograph of a woman playing volleyball in a swimsuit. I am looking around the room at my black furniture: looking at the sunlight coming through the black shades. I am listening to the cars outside. The rain has started and so I hear it coming down. I want to talk with someone right now but everyone I talk to either says I'm cool or says I'm not cool and I don't want to risk someone saying I'm not cool right now. I can't agree with anything that is happening in this world. I'm tired of being beaten down and melted down and insulted and abused and broken-hearted. "Everyone just stop hurting me," I'm thinking. "Sign on the dotted line. Let me get your signature and your assent. I will sue you if you hurt me. I will take you to court and I will make the judge throw you in jail. I will make the bailiffs take you away in handcuffs. I will publicly humiliate you. You have to be nice to me or else I will have you thrown in jail and I will make sure no one is allowed to visit you. So, you have to be nice and polite and civilized and stop being so mean to me."

I'm not sure of anything because everything is existential and nothing is absolute. Or, nothing is absolute except things that don't matter from a moral point of view such as mathematical propositions. I'm eating a hard peppermint candy to make sure I don't get bad breath from smoking. I'm thinking that I can't know for sure that the FBI doesn't have a file on me. Maybe they have bugged my condo and are talking about me behind my back. Maybe they realize that I just watched Killing Zoe and they are talking about my taste in movies. Maybe they think I'm going to get stoned and rob someone. It is slowly dawning on me that a proposition is not possibly not true if it is necessarily true. I think I can hear people chattering about me calling me an asshole. I want to put on gloves and a coat but suddenly it is very hot in here even though it's raining out. I'm tired of doing things and having things. I'm tired of bringing and taking and making and listening and looking around. I just want to sit here and relax. I don't want to smoke or drink or eat. I don't want to think right now. I don't even want to breath for a while. I just want to be. I just want people to stop calling me names and being mean to me and just let me be. I want people to stop trying to entertain me with their ceaseless abuse. I want to ask myself a single question. Who am I? Stop breathing and looking around for a moment and doing things and making things and just ask this question. Who am I?

Now I am in my car driving around without purpose and a lot of people are looking at me and some are even waving because in the South people sometimes wave at you even if they don't know you. I am thankful that I'm not stoned or drunk because it's stupid to drive intoxicated even though everyone says so. There is a map and a fresh newspaper in the car with me and I am tempted to pull into a parking lot somewhere and just stare at the map or read the newspaper. I'm not really doing anything with a purpose right now and I can feel my confidence draining out of me. I am thinking of a woman I fell in love with once who hated me and called me names and said mean things to me and made me feel inadequate and jealous. For some reason the most hurtful thing she called me was "disgusting." It's easy to handle being called a fool or evil or something but it's hard when someone you love calls you "disgusting." They may still love you if they think you are evil or they think you are a fool but it's much clearer that they will never love you if they call you "disgusting."

I don't want to do what I'm doing. I don't want to be driving around in the rain playing the Butthole Surfers as loud as my radio will allow and weeping to myself about the pain of loving someone who despised me. I don't want to feel so old. I wish there was a place around here I could stop and get a cup of coffee. I wish I could pull out an Uzi and some grenades and just go around killing people and blowing things up. I feel my blood sugar is low and I'm going to have to drink an entire three-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper and maybe go buy a movie about people who talk with each other and fuck each other and kill each other. It's starting to occur to me that I'm never going to understand my life or the world or why I was here or why I will die. I think I may really overdo it on the sugar and buy a berry pie and some ice pops to go along with the Dr. Pepper. I will also buy a giant bag of gum and I will just eat more and more sugar until I'm satisfied at last.

I am thinking that I need to go shopping. I need to buy things: clothes, toiletries, food, etc. I need to go to Sam's Club. I need to go to the mall. I need to go buy ten or fifteen CDs. I need to buy a small notepad and write little poems in it whenever the inclination hits me. I need to talk with a woman or a group of women about the things I buy. I need someone to tell me I'm not crazy and that maybe I'm a nice person and maybe even attractive. Maybe I will get lucky and get completely smashed by a bus or a plane will come crashing down and slam into my car or I will get run over by a train or someone will shoot me with a heat seeking missile from close range. Maybe some huge sharp object will go flying through the air and suddenly chop off my head while everyone looks on and feels completely stunned. Perhaps the finger of God will descend from Heaven and squash me like a bug. But wait a moment. That question has suddenly occurred to me once again. Who am I?

I am thinking, "I really need coffee. I really need cigarettes. I really need drugs. I really need to stop this car and jack off maybe into that newspaper." I can smell the rain and hear it thumping on the roof. I am wishing for contradictions. The existential nature of the world is slowly eroding my health and sanity. "Why doesn't God save me?" I'm thinking. "You cannot reason from what something is to what something does," I'm thinking. "You cannot reason from what something does to what something is." I am tired of having things. I'm wondering what it would be like to go to India and wear rags and be a beggar. I'm wondering what it would be like to cut my throat and give up the life burning inside me. "Just be cool," I'm thinking. "Take it easy. Just relax baby boy." I take the Butthole Surfers out of the stereo and put in the Violent Femmes. I see a fat girl standing at a bus stop holding a pink umbrella and she is looking at me through the window. I imagine her thinking a single word: "asshole."

"I want to fuck this world. I want to eat this world. I want to drain the life out of this world like a vampire sucking on this world," I'm thinking. I'm having a difficult time getting any awareness or insight or wisdom. I have seven hundred dollars in cash in my pocket and six or seven credit cards. I don't have a plan. I'm being spontaneous and creative. I'm taking a risk. I'm acting randomly and irrationally. I'm flying blind and deaf and dumb. Nothing seems certain and yet it seems plausible that people will always need to eat and spend money and breathe the air. "If I must move, then I am unable not to move," I'm thinking. "Nothing really makes sense because everything is ultimately imperfect," I'm thinking. I'm wondering whether I should bite off my tongue or scratch out my eyes. "You sick fuck," I'm thinking. It's starting to get dark and the rain is coming down harder. "I really need to pick up my clothes from the dry cleaners," I'm thinking. "I need to stop somewhere and get a cup of coffee."

I did not want to know where anything was or why anything was. I did not want to know what anything was. I didn't want to know anything. I wanted to solve my problems and I wanted to know exactly how to solve my problems. I didn't want general information. I wanted only precise answers. Where everything was located did not seem to matter. "I will tell you what to do. You will not tell me what to do," I said. I was born on Long Island. I did not live there at present. I was planning on moving back one day. My mother and father had died. I still had people in my family alive. I didn't really care to have close relationships with them. I had done lots of drugs in my life. I had done a lot of drinking. I had committed many crimes. I had shot people, stabbed people. I didn't know whether I wanted to continue being a criminal. Everything seemed to be fitting together at that moment. "I am a wise man," I said. "I am a wizard."

"What is the problem? Why did you confuse me?" I asked.

"You should have been here earlier," said Melvin.

"Why are you wearing a trenchcoat?"

"Because it's raining."

"I don't care if I get wet," I said.

"A trenchcoat has style," said Melvin.

"A gun has style," I said.

"A cell phone has style."

"Do you have a job? A regular job?" I asked.

"Yes but I'd rather not say what it is."

"You don't trust me?"

"No."

"Do you think I would kill you?"

"You might try," he said.

"We need to talk."

"Yes, we do."

3

Melvin was wearing a trenchcoat. He was bald on the top of his head even though he was only in his thirties. Almost certainly he was carrying a pistol and perhaps some other weapons. Melvin was a dangerous man. He knew many people and he had many secrets. He seemed out of shape and unhealthy but he had power in his own way. He was connected. He may even have had supernatural powers and connections. Melvin had found out about my drug activity and was worried. I worried Melvin. I was a cause of anxiety in his life. I was a danger to him. He didn't like what I was doing and he didn't like what I knew. I didn't like the fact that I was meeting people and finding out things. He didn't need the pressure. He didn't need to be threatened. Melvin was certain I was capable of killing people. Melvin had a bad feeling about me.

"I need a cup of coffee," I said.

"I know a pancake house where we can go where no one will bother us," he said.

"In New York people go to diners, not pancake houses," I said.

"This is the South," he replied simply.

"You have to let my organization have a cut of the profits if you want us to leave you alone," he said when we were seated at the pancake house with our coffees.

"Stealing," I said. "Robbery."

"Call it what you want. I don't like it any more than you do. I don't want to be involved. It's none of my business. But I'm just telling you what I'm told to tell you. Those are my orders."

"I don't care," I said. "I'm tired. I don't like being told what to do. I don't like groups and organizations. I don't like brokers or jobbers. I rule myself. I order myself. I don't like people commanding me."

"Do whatever you want to do. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just following orders. I'm telling you what I was told to tell you. What you do with that information is your business."

"This coffee is good," I said, sighing. "I don't want anything from you. I'm not going to do anything to you. But I'm not going to listen to you either."

"Do what you like," said Melvin. "What happens to you is not my decision."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'd rather not say," he said. "Besides, it's not relevant."

"Relevant to what?"

"To the task I was to fulfill in seeing you and talking with you."

"Do you have a wife and kids?"

"I'd rather not say."

"You don't think I could find out?"

"Of course you could. But I'd still rather not say."

"You should probably go," I said. "I want to sit alone for a while and drink my coffee. I've got things I need to think over. I'll be in touch with you later."

"Don't make it too much later," he said, getting up.

"I won't do anything without letting you know," I said.

That night I was back in my condo sitting on my black couch not doing anything but looking at my black python I kept in a glass box. I wasn't thinking about anything in particular. I didn't feel like making a fuss over the situation with Melvin and the people he was working for. I closed my eyes and let the air flow out of my lungs. "This problem," I thought, "is not something I'm going to make an issue about. "I'm not going to go crazy about this problem," I thought. And I was not making an issue of it. I was very relaxed at that point. I was not happy but I was not particularly sad either. I was just a person sitting on the couch with his eyes closed. "I'm not going anywhere," I thought. "I'm not moving."

But then it occurred to me that the situation was not good no matter how relaxed I felt. "Yes," I thought. "This situation really is not good. But then again it's also not bad. In fact, it's not anything at all. It's nothing. It's meaningless like everything else. I am not going to make an issue of it. I'm going to murder Melvin to begin with. And then I will murder the rest of them. They had better not try anything with me or they will die. It's extraordinarily simple. I don't know why I even had a problem with it to begin with. I'm just not going to let them fuck with me."

I was not sitting on the couch anymore. I was pacing to and fro in my living room. There were a few candles sparkling on tables. I had let my pet snake out to crawl around on the rugs and furniture. I took a cigarette out of a pack in my pocket and lit it and then immediately stubbed it out. "I'm not dead yet," I was thinking. "Not dead yet."

Spring was coming and the world was exploding into color. Everything around me seemed exotic and blown full of life and the perfume of life. The world was an orgy of orgasmic extremes. I did not want anything but to look around and smell the sweetness in the air. There were times when it seemed I had never seen such beauty. I felt extremely alive and full of energy. I was happy in the insanity of happiness. Not only was I not going anywhere, I didn't even know where I was not going. I drifted around like a lunatic village idiot and basked in the riots of newborn life. I was deliberately not going anywhere. I didn't eat much but drank water and fruit juice constantly. This life was not ordinary. It was superlife. I was metalife: overlife. The spring world is a metaworld: a super-reality. It was a metaworld filled with metatruths and metamorality.

I am sitting at home not doing anything but drinking coffee. I got knocked off line, but I was planning to get off anyway because I was bored. I am thinking it might be a good thing to cook some chicken even though I'm normally a vegetarian. I seem to remember that I was worried about something but I cannot think of what it was. I suppose it will come to me if it is really important. I wonder if in the future I will be able to look back on this time in my life and make anything the slightest bit meaningful of it. I may be a very ashamed old man if I ever become an old man, because I may feel that I had wasted my life and my youth. These thoughts make me want to cry. In fact, I have started crying but not from that thought. However, that thought did not help slow down the tears.

I think I always knew I was going to end up like I am even when I was a boy. I never expected to have a normal life. I always had the feeling that there was something very different about me if not necessarily special. I do not think I'm worse or better than other people but everyone admits that I'm very different. In the future I can look back on this moment in my memory and see myself sitting here at this computer trying to work out some kind of solution to the crushing existential situation in which I find myself. I can look back at myself as a man trying to get some glimpse of God in a decidedly ungodly world. I'm noticing that I have a large cut or burn or bruise on my leg and I have no idea where it came from. I am desperately hoping that I do not have the AIDS virus. "No one who has even kissed another person can know absolutely for sure," I tell myself, thinking of the woman with the black hair, green eyes and pale skin on the street the other night.

I am fighting the urge to pull out my gun, to pull out my butterfly knife, to pull out a wad of cash. I know that none of these symbols of power are really going to change the ultimate and essential powerlessness of my situation. I'm thinking how good a cigarette would be with this coffee but I'm fighting the urge to smoke for health reasons. Perhaps I should masturbate or get dressed in nice clothes and go take a drive in the night air. I am a free person. Everything is open and uncertain. Nothing but the most mundane mathematics is absolute. There is an exception to every rule. There is nothing to rest on or rely on. Everything is falling apart. My whole psychological life is disintegrating. I am left with a feeling of sadness: pity not only for myself but also for everyone trapped in the jaws of time. I am just sitting here minding my own business and I want to be left alone. But my thoughts will not leave me alone. They invade my privacy and my repose. I believed in God so strongly as a child and I never thought that I would end up with so little faith in the order and purpose of the universe. But I didn't really understand getting old when I was a child. I knew I was going to get old but I didn't understand the nature of getting old. I didn't understand that getting old is disappearing and not being able to reclaim what you have lost because it's gone forever. Getting old is seeing always the disconnection between what is and what you want to be. It is seeing that reality has no human plan to it. The world does not care what I want. The order that I want to be in the world is simply not there. There may be some kind of order to the world, but it not an order that could possibly concern me in a personally meaningful way. I'm going to die, and I can pretend that the world is my friend all I want. But I'm still going to die. I can pretend I want to die and that I'm not going to die in vain. But I'm still going to die. And, if I'm ever an old man and I look back at this time, if I even remember this time, I will remember that I was just the passive object of an uncontrollable force, and that I could not remain young no matter how many plots I devised. The world is my enemy.

Moreover, the battle is rigged in its favor. I am helpless and passive, and my lot in life is to suffer everything and control nothing. I am never going to get any command or control over this situation. I am already old. I am already dead. I just don't know it yet.

I'm not wishing for anything to be different, not because I don't want things to be different, but just because I've given up on wishing for things that seem impossible. I can sit here and wish that I were God. I could wish for any contradiction to be true somehow. But it does not make sense to do so. I've already done it to no result but endless frustration. I am a man. Again, I am a man. Again, I am a man. I am not a man in some other sense. I do not know what I cannot know. I do not wish for air, fire, water or earth at this moment. At this moment I am just sitting here thinking or at least trying to think. I am trying to have an honest moment. I am trying not to pretend anymore. I can already see where this line of thought is going to take me. I saw what I now see when I began. I am a man but I was not always a man. I do not know the shape of my face before I was born. I did try to be a good person. I did want to please my teachers and my friends. I wanted to be good and successful. I wanted people to love me. But I do not want people to love me now unless they want to love me themselves. It became too exhausting to try and please everyone.

I am fucking myself, fucking myself, fucking myself, and I feel the pleasure of fucking myself and coming on my stomach and my chest. I love to fuck myself: to fuck myself again and again and again. It seems that fucking myself feels better than any feeling I have ever felt. God, I want someone to fuck me so badly. Just fuck me again and again and again. Don't stop fucking me once you fucked me. Fuck me more and more. Keep fucking me. Fuck me. Please fuck me I'm begging you fuck me.

I don't need pornography to fuck myself. I don't need to grease my dick with anything to fuck myself. I just grab my dick and fuck and fuck and fuck. My dick gets so hard and it comes again and again and again. I don't need to look at pictures or hear voices. I just lie on my bed and fuck myself and then I go into the shower and fuck myself some more. I am fucking myself and fucking myself and fucking myself. I fuck myself. I fuck myself. I fuck me.

After I get through fucking myself I get my pistol and aim it at my head. I'm wondering whether I can kill myself now that I have fucked myself. However, even though I can fuck myself, I cannot seem to kill myself. So, instead I drink some Gatorade and eat some organic carrots and take a vitamin pill. I am now thinking or trying to think. I am thinking the government may be watching me. I'm thinking aliens may be watching me. I'm thinking my neighbors may be watching me. I'm thinking there may be a vast network of people out to get me. But none of these thoughts really move me or excite me. It is almost impossible to impose paranoia upon oneself deliberately out of sheer boredom. It is almost impossible deliberately to take refuge in paranoia. Paranoia is something that has to come naturally.

I think I am ill. I think I am sick. I think I need some chicken now. I think I should hire a sexy maid and watch her ass hang in the air as she bends over to clean my floors. "Would she let me masturbate while I watched her as long as I didn't touch her?" I'm thinking. I am alive now and I cannot delay these thoughts. Things are happening to me. I'm turning into something. I can see hair growing on my legs and arms. I can see thick furry hair growing all over my body. I am suddenly certain beyond any doubt that I am turning into a werewolf.

"Please God save me," I'm thinking, weeping silently while my nose fills with snot. "Steven King, Robert Smith, Perry Farrell and Jello Biafra were my only father figures in the eighties," I was thinking, still crying. "I don't want to be a mass murderer, I only want to rob banks. Why can't I rob people and have them appreciate it as a tax dodge or something? How come I fell in love with James Spader just because I watched Tough Turf one time?" I'm asking myself, pleading with myself. "It was a dumb movie. Why did I have to fall in love with him?"

I am making my own house: building this sandcastle, building this house of cards. I am now making my own history, swooping down on the past like a Proustian buzzard and trying to tear some bit of flesh from its corpse before it fades away into nothing forever. Do you realize how ultra-important this stupid and futile project is to someone out there not yet born? What am I making? What am I doing? I am going to regret that I was ever born one day. I am going to become a hideous, evil and disgusting madman or a little prince and fuck someone and not just anyone: someone like Rimbaud. "Where are my leather pants?" I'm asking myself. Suddenly my leather pants become oppressively important to me. I am now making something. I am now doing something. I take a cigarette from the little box and finally light one. "I've got to jack off again," I'm thinking. "Someone please fuck me anyone fuck me fuck me fuck me please fuck me."

I'm pacing back and forth in my living room. I'm looking at the black furniture, the black and red walls, the black shades. I'm staring at the glass ashtray taking long drags from the cigarette. "Where do I go?" I'm asking. "Where is she? How do I find her? I need her now."

I think about fucking for the next twenty minutes and finally pull down my pants and masturbate again. It is the fourth time I've masturbated today. The orgasmic moment forces me to feel that life is worth all the suffering people must endure. Then I go into the kitchen and drink the contents of a big plastic bottle of Dr. Pepper. "Sugar vampire," I'm thinking. "Le vampire du sucre." Suddenly it occurs to me that the only thing that really matters is sugar. The older I get the more I will eat sugar. I will just keep eating more and more sugar. I will smoke heroin and eat sugar. I really don't care if no one wants to fuck me. I don't care if I'm starving to death and that I have not eaten anything this week except sugar. I grab the chicken breasts from the refrigerator and I start to cook them in a large wok. "This is bad karma," I'm thinking. "This world is ignorance and suffering. Come on baby, do the twist."

I'm on the phone with my friend Jesse Levine and I'm saying, "There is nothing wrong, Jesse. There is nothing wrong."

"I know there's something wrong, Elly," she said. "Everything is getting weird."

"Everything was always weird, Jesse. Maybe you just never noticed until now."

"I didn't know it was going to get this weird."

"Surprising but true."

"Sad but true."

"If it is relatively true that you didn't know things were going to get this weird," I said, "then it is not absolutely true that you did not know things were going to get this weird."

"What? What the hell are you talking about, Elly?"

"I just want to know what you are trying to convince me of. What are you trying to say to me?"

"I'm trying to say that things have to change."

"What things?"

"Everything, Elly. All of this whole little world we have created from smoke and mirrors."

"You want out of our agreement?"

"I will if these problems keep happening."

"They haven't become problems yet."

"They will, though."

"They might."

"Look," I said, "the fact of the matter is that these problems do not exist. We're talking about possible problems here: ghosts and phantoms and paranoid hobgoblins."

"Don't be stupid, Elly. We're in a lot of danger."

"But don't forget that we too are dangerous."

"That's true," she admitted.

"We just have to stick together, Jesse."

"I don't know, Elly. This situation seems to be getting out of hand. All these drugs, so much of the stuff, so much more than before. And these phone calls I'm getting in the middle of the night. I feel like people are following me."

"The situation is getting out of hand. But we're out of hand too. Don't you see that this way of solving things works?"

"Elly, you may be able to disappear. You may be able to turn into a ghost. But I have a family here. I've lived here for the last six years. I have a home. I have a dog. This place is my home now, Elly. You can just get up and go but I want to stay here. I have to stay here. I belong here."

"Just do what I say and you won't get hurt, Jesse. I promise. Just follow my lead."

"But how are you going to protect me if they come after me?"

"You are already protected. They won't come after you. I'm in the process of negotiating with them."

"Jesus, what the fuck do they want?"

"They want to remain powerful. That's all."

"They want a piece of the action?"

"More than that. They want me to be an employee in their firm."

"Are you going to do it?"

"I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'm crazy. I've become so irrational and erratic that I can't even predict what I'm going to do." "Thanks, Elly. That's very comforting."

"You should be comforted by what I'm saying, Jesse. The fact that I'm crazy is the only thing that will keep you alive if something goes down."

"But something isn't going to go down, right?"

"Life is crazy: irrational and unpredictable. I honestly don't know what's going to happen. But one thing I do know is that I'm ready for anything."

"Well, I guess that's comforting. Sort of."

"Look, we're talking about phantoms here. Mere possibilities. It's best not to dwell on ghosts. The reality of the matter is that there is just what things are and then there are an infinite number of possibilities. There is no point in dwelling on a small sub-set of those possibilities just because they are more scary than the others."

"I don't want to just fly blind on this thing anymore, Elly. I may have been having fun at one point, but things aren't fun for me now. I'm worried about my safety. I'm scared. Can't you understand that?"

"I'm glad you're scared. You should be scared. Only a stupid person wouldn't be scared in your position. But you have to understand that things are not threatening to get out of hand. They are already out of hand and always were. You have to understand that one crucial fact about this situation. Just because you didn't notice things were crazy before does not mean they weren't. Things are not going anywhere. There is no movement here. Things were always totally insane. That's all. You are never going to understand this situation until you understand that simple fact."

"Well, then I was stupid to get involved. I was stupid to smuggle your drugs for you in the first place. I was stupid ever to have said Hi to you. I should have avoided you like the plague or something. I brought all this bad luck on myself. I brought all this pain and suffering on myself."

"You can't escape chaos in normalcy. Things would have presented themselves to you as insane eventually anyway."

"Yes, but not when I was 24 years old!"

"Look, Jesse. I realize these problems are happening or they might happen. I can't change the fact that this firm has found out about us and is getting on our ass. I can't change the fact that this situation is inherently insane. All I can do is respond in the here and now. I can understand that you are feeling some regret. Feeling regret is normal. I do all the time. But right now we don't really have time for regret. We should save the regret for later."

"I'm just afraid they're going to maim us or kill us."

"You're supposed to be afraid they're going to kill us. You could not have a more normal feeling. You are simply paying the price for the good times and all the money we brought in. Nothing is for free."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Just relax as much as possible and wait. I will call you when there's something more to be done."

"I don't want to be passive and just allow things to happen. I want to be doing something about these people. I want to be doing something right now."

"Sitting tight and relaxing is doing something about them right now. You are waiting them out. You have to lie low. To do more is sheer stupidity. Why play into their hands? The worst thing to do when someone intimidates you is to be intimidated."

"You're asking me to do the hardest possible thing."

"Yes, of course. Whatever. Just do it."

"Whatever," she said and hung up.

"They are a problem for me and I am a problem for them," I thought, hanging the phone up on my end. "They are killers and I am a killer. They are involved in illegal activities and I am involved in illegal activities. Yes, they are more connected than I am and more organized and bigger. But these advantages are not always as useful as they seem. They have to do everything as a group, but I am the sole king of my world and I can make decisions spontaneously. I can change my mind at any time. I can move and flow and react and respond. I can be passive and wait for them. I don't have to move to stay cohesive."

I sat down quickly and deliberately on the couch. I smiled and stroked my hair softly. I took out my butterfly knife and started twirling it between my fingers. I got up and then suddenly sat back down again. "Fuck it," I said aloud, putting my knife back in my pocket. Then I balled my hand into a fist and punched one of the black pillows. I closed my eyes and sighed. "I wish I knew..." I was thinking.

I remembered being a kid in middle school and eating soy burgers, pizza and chicken fried steak. I remembered eating mashed potatoes and worrying about math assignments. I felt the blood draining from my face. "Someone is going to murder me," I thought. "I am going to throw up. Wrinkles are going to form in my skin and my bones are going to become hollow and brittle."

I tried to think of the people I had known who had betrayed me but I couldn't muster up any anger. I noticed a little drool escaping from the corner of my mouth but just let it go. I suddenly opened my eyes and started looking around the room and looking out the windows to see if anyone was watching me. "I have to think," I was thinking, "I have to think..."

"Everything is melting," I was thinking. "Everything is falling apart." I noticed there was some paint peeling off part of the wall. I thought about getting a mallet from the kitchen and beating myself over the head with it. Then I stared at my hands as if they held a secret that would help me and make me feel better. "How many people in the world have I ever done anything for? How many people in the world have I ever really helped?" I thought. "And how many other people have I hurt and ruined?" I thought. "How much misery have I brought into the world?"

"It sucks when things go wrong," I was thinking.