born 11.20.1982, Alta Bates Hospital, Berkeley, CA. Parents happy with a second son, raise him right, in a nice big house in the hills. Send him to private school, let him develop. I made decisions that I would come to regret. I made decisions I would never change. These were all the same decisions. I was a normal kid for maybe 10 years...

I sucked my thumb until I was 12. I have a scarred thumb to prove it. I kept 'blankie' (my blanket, mum made it for me when I was a baby) until it went up in smoke like the rest of the Oakland and Berkeley hills when I was 9 or 10. I saved nothing. Mum looked out the window, up the hill, and remarked, rather casually considering the circumstances, "Look! That house is on fire." The house was six houses from ours. We saved nothing. M got a Dali sketch that they owned.

I have no childhood pictures. They are all ash, dirt in my parents back yard, in the house they built to replace the firestormed home they were married in 28 years ago.

I don't know what I looked like.

I got really sick, in the fourth grade. Mr. Meadows was my teacher. I became diabetic, a disease that has nearly killed me dozens of times, and which will undoubtedly kill me eventually, a fact I neither cherish nor disdain.

I wanted more than anything in the fifth grade to look like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. I bought prescription glasses, as similar to aviator glasses as I could find. (I ignored the fact that aviator glasses are sun glasses, not thick as fuck non-shiny kids' vision correcting, clear glasses.) Tom Cruise I was not. A geeky math-obsessed child I was. I now know I only wanted to fuck him, a realisation that came to me mid-masturbation in my middle school's bathroom a year later. I came out of the bathroom, white lattice of semen between my thumb and index finger, and sat next to Nick in French class.

I went to his house, spent every minute of every day, any time I was able, playing with him. We spent the nights in his basement.

We watched Bevis and Butthead (a show my parents would never let me watch at home). I led a shelterred life.

We fucked.

He hated me midway through eighth grade. He was no 'fag'. And I was the only one who knew.

All my friends hated me.

I wanted to fuck them all (only the guys, of course).

I jerked off a lot.

I discovered injectable drugs in eighth grade. Speed. Ketamine.

High school was a blur. Walking down sixteenth street to Bay Area Rapid Transit train station, I was asked if I wanted some "chiva".

"Some what?"

"Chiva!"

"Huh?"

"Heronnnnn."

"Oh..... Sure. How much?"

I spent hundreds, thousands.

Then I went to 'The Camp.' I was sixteen. I kicked dope for the first time. It wasn't that bad.

I didn't have a habit, not really.

I stopped. And started. And stopped. And started. And stopped. And started. You get the idea.

I graduated high school two years later. Accepted to NYU in early admission. I was the student speaker at graduation. My parents were so proud.

I met a boy. His name is Scott. We dated. We committed. Long distance would be a trial to overcome. So I moved to New York.

One week later, my new roommate found me face down in a pool of vomit, a syringe still in my hand, a bag of what I had thought was coke in my pocket. The heroin in NYC is a lot stronger than it is around here. I didn't die. I thought it was coke. No one believed me, but it was true.

I was suspended for the year, so I moved to Santa Cruz, working full time to support myself and live close to Scott. I think I loved him. He said he loved me. It lasted for a year and a few months. I thought I was happy. I was happy. I wanted sex often. I wanted companionship constantly. I smothered him until he wanted freedom. Affection was given grudgingly to the point that I was sure he didn't love me.

I moved back to New York. I wanted to stay together, but I knew the time was up. He didn't want that commitment anymore. It entailed to much. We broke up mutually, but it was only because he didn't want to try.

And once I left, he finally realized he wanted me back.

...But it was too late.

The city was beautiful. It was new. It was a blur. A rush. An adrenaline filled and fuelled experience.

I got a 3.85 my first semester in college, at a prestigious university. I came home for Christmas, and met a boy. A beautiful, astounding, smart and smart-mouthed man. He is four years younger than I am, but he is better than me in every way possible. I went back to school in the midst of a powerful relationship that we committed to keep up....

No matter what.

Then I passed out. Pancreatitis. There was no foul play, no heroin, no suicide. But there was a coma for three and a half days. I woke up in a room with my parents.

I was confused. I had no idea how I got there. I couldn't understand why they were there, when I was in NYC and they were in Berekeley. I was massively sedated, and my foot looked like a blimp.

I had a tube in my chest drip, drip, dripping fentanyl into my bloodstream. I had a button I could press every ten minutes for dilaudid in addition to the regular D and F drip drip drips.

I had pneumonia.

My liver and kidneys had failed.

I had a tube in my dick that hurt so bad I wanted to never get hard again.

I thought about death.

And then Dexter called. And I thought about him.

I tried to do school. I failed.

I came home. I tried to live with my parents. I failed.

I moved out, in with Dexter. And we fought, regularly.

I grew, and I grew, and my heart grew with every nerve that started tingling in my foot.

A patch of hair fell out on the back of my scalp, and cortisone injections have started to bring it back.

Having your hair fall out in a day is scary. Mortifying.

I am addicted to morphine. At this point it does nothing to control my pain. It merely keeps me from vomiting, shitting seven times a day, twitching and retching, unable to sleep but too weak to move, impossible to swallow food but hungrier than ever, horny for sexual relief, but too dead to perform. And I ween myself off. And my foot starts to hurt again. It tingles again. Like when an extremity falls asleep, but with a knife smashed into it, and sand paper grating across my ankle, sending sparks down my leg to the toes that I can't feel but hurt like the Sodomite's pain when fire reigned down from above. (I am trying to implement more Biblical references into my writing.)

And Dexter and I are in love. Like never before, and like I will never have again. This will last forever.

If I have anything to say about it.

Some days I want to die. I think about death a lot. And I'm too much of a coward to do it.

I love too much. I would miss too many people.

I am too selfish to do it.

I trap my boyfriend into a relationship neither of us can abandon. I provide for him. He yells at me, and I yell back, and he tells me that the only reason I am dating him (we are basically married: we live together, spend all our time together, sleep together every night) is to get in his pants.

He didn't mean it. But he said it. And I cried.

I took out my pharmacy bag filled with prescription bottles of drugs to take my pain away. And they didn't work.

But he took the pain away. He said, 'I love you.'

I realized, last night, lying in bed, naked with my arms around him, that I never wanted to move. His back and my belly were stuck together, sweat gluing us together, me spooning him like the binding of my favorite book around it's brilliant pages. The book could have been my life's story.

And we slept.

'Once he gets a mystic call. Jump into his motorcar. Once we're rolling down the road he's forgotten where to go. Travelling with Charlie, my detective darling. My agent hasn't solved a case. My agent never finds a trace. But Charlie has always style. Charlie is always nice. Poor Charlie, he would be nothing without me. Once I clear his memory. But he'll crash into a tree. Once we're getting to the place. Someone else has solved the case. Travelling with Charlie, my detective darling. My agent hasn't solved a case. My agent never finds a trace. But Charlie has always style. Charlie is always nice. Poor Charlie. He would be nothing without me. But I do love him.' ----'Travelling With Charlie' by The Cardigans