Life spilling into dreams. Dreams falling from narcoleptic sleep down to the reality that is my life. It's been feeling sort of strange lately. Maybe it's not my sleep that's narcoleptic but my life. Who knows. I'm not actually, but I sure feel like it sometimes. Where I just sit up and can't quite figure out how I got here. I don't mean here, like Santa Cruz, I mean here like at this point in my life. Am I really a fuckup? Am I hopeless? I don't usually think that. But sometimes I feel so frustrated. Like my life is just destined for a fatal drug overdose, for a fucking breakup that will get me over the edge, for a fucking friend to tell me he hates me AGAIN. It seems so circular. I am doing well, for the place I'm in: suspended from school, working hard but too busy to reasonably take classes at community college, living on my own and trying to save money but having it disappear before that next paycheck comes two weeks later. It doesn't feel rough. It's not bad. I'm fucking happy. I'm supporting myself: Independent for the first fucking time in my life. But at the same time it sort of feels like this is all I can be. I feel like I'm on the edge of some precipice. Ready to jump. But what am I jumping into? Is it the happy, intellectual, sexy, fun, fucking insane world that I think it will be? Or am I jumping just to fall. Just to hit the water and what? Sink? Swim? I'm really not depressed like this surely makes me sound. I just want to move on.

My boyfriend makes it all better.

So do books. Is that bad? Is it just deluding myself, getting lost in some other alternative narrative reality where there is always a conclusion and an ending (unless I'm reading Paul Auster, with no fucking ending)? But I'm reading a really good book now. I'm reading 'The World Of Normal Boys' bu K.M. Soehnlein. It's fascinating, with a character I can relate to in such a personal way. It makes me feel good, and bad at the same time. It makes me remember the first time I kissed a boy. Remembering Nick in 7th or 8th grade. Remembering that party where I gave him a blow job for the first time. The party that followed that play we put on, for drama class. That was the only play I was ever in. We were at Pat's house. We kissed. We went up to the couch in the living room and we thought no one was there. We did our business (actually I just did him that first time) and then we looked over and noticed for the first time, out of our pubescent sexual frenzy, that Emmett was asleep on the floor next to us in a sleeping bad between the couch and the coffee table. Wow. I've never said that before. I've never told anyone any of this stuff. This book makes me think about how Nick hated me after the middle of 8th grade. How he decided he was straight and he and everyone else hated me for listening to punk rock and not rap. And he hated me for knowing about him. And maybe for doing it to him. I didn't, but he may have thought that. Nick played such an integral part in who I am today. And now what? I don't know anything about him. His dad is still my dad's doctor, but I haven't seen him or talked to him in 5 years. It's sad, really. I'd like to see him.

But in the less metaphysical realm I am doing quite well. I am trying not to spend any more money before I get paid on Friday. I spent about $50 on books at the book reading on Friday. This book I'm reading is signed. I also got a new copy of Kavalier and Klay, signed, and another book by Chabon. And Scotty and I paid for a polaroid of us and Dave Eggers together, and I got one of Michael Chabon and I. It's great. I also have been working (not particularly) hard. I work a lot anyway. My bosses are both gone at a shoe show in L.A. so I am alone in the office and it is super tempting to sit and listen to whatever music I want and read. I got all the work I had to do today in about 4 hours, so I had a few hours to do exactly that. I don't know whether to feel guilty or not. I only feel guilty because this book made me so horny, and so in touch with the character. I just got lost in it. Whatever, I got all the work I had to do done. I just didn't do anything extra. And that's cool for the day or two my bosses are gone.

Anyway, I am going to try and finish this book tonight and see my boyfriend and maybe have dinner and actually cook a real meal for once in my fucking life.

'He was a sweet and tender hooligan. And he said that he'd never, never do it again. And of course he won't (oh, not until the next time). ----'Sweet And Tender Hooligan' by The Smiths