As we're pulling out for destinations well known, I'm wondering about the way the world is starting to resemble the UHF television ghosts that Tim and Reina were talking about. With the lack of anything outside of the world passing by as opaque postcard fodder my mind is starting to stick in a sort of rut. Rut as in what you make driving in deep mud

Between whatever Reina's given me in the syringe and the methamphetamine I inhaled a few hours ago, I'm still turned on but am becoming increasingly more into just talking or thinking. It's a strange combination to be feeling in the warmth of the car where the air is filling up with the scent of Jasmine, Patchouli, and Reina's orgasm. What should be running through my mind is little images of Reina floating through the various positions I've seen in every bad porn movie poster on Tim and Karlie's walls.

Me, I'm not doing this just now. It's not that I'm sterile or gay so much as it is that I'm having one of those self-actualized moments that modern psychology calls introspection. This is quiet time in my head. This is where we wonder whether or not we're put together with phillips or flat tip or carbon fiber reinforced hex bolts.

I think it's mainly that I'm starting to get all the into myself enough that there's not enough remaining to poke out or stick into anyone else.

The smell that's in the car right now, it isn't any combination you're likely to find soaked into a pine tree soaked mirror mounted air freshener, but I'm thinking maybe it should be. This scent is way better than the normal fast food smell you'd find permeating the interior of my vehicle most days. It's an interesting scent to be bathing in, but after a few minutes it gets to be rather cloying. I can hear Reina talking beside me, asking if I'm doing ok. How do I feel. Am I noticing anything different.

"Mickey, do you see angels?"

Shit like that.

She's being so attentive and caring in her verbal way. Do I need a drink. Do I need to pee. Do I need her to find another men's room opening at some other convenience store.

Interesting questions all.

Interesting if I were, you know, listening.

You stop letting everything in the universe make sense for a moment to take stock of the self.

The little mosquito bite on your arm has puckered a tiny bit. It's a little sore, but not bad. There's a clear daub of fluid atop the injection site. My arm isn't hurting, despite the fact that raising my sleeve a little shows marks from the where Reina used her purse to strap off my arm. There's occasional moments of static as my arm turns transparent while I'm looking at it.

"Reina?"

"Yes?"

"What was it that you gave me?"

"Reality."

"No no no, I'm being realistic, not metaphoric. What was the actual chemical?"
While I'm no danger of being recruited to be the host of a science show on the Discovery Channel, I do know a bit about phamaceutical chemicals - especially those that tend to get used as recreational hobbies. I'm looking for a chemical name. Eukadol, Morphine, Heroin, maybe even some kind of mental hormone or hormone stimulant.

I'm waiting to hear that it's some sort of blend between Lysergic Acid and Cannibinol. This would explain the visual aspects of things. Or maybe some sort of hypnotic agent blended with some kind of central nervous system stimulant.

"So am I. Tim said it was called Reality. I'd never heard of it before tonight. He bought it from some girl at the place where you guys work."

This is definitely not the answer I'm looking for. No one wants to hear that they've just been injected with chemical X and that anything from extraneous hair growth to Power Puff Girl delusions may follow forthwith.

This answer is followed by a dissertation on what she's feeling and how it compares to past drug experiences. Being from a major city in Texas, Reina's had some experience with virtually every drug she could ever afford. Methamphetamine, Heroin, Coke, LSD, Hemp, you name it, this girl's done it. Inhaled gases and powders. Smoked powders and leaves. Injected freebase and fluidics. She's not so much a real junkie as just one of those spiritual explorers. Listening to her talk though, I'm thinking about how crazy it is to be this open to anything so extra-natural. Listening to her talk about all the shit she's self-medicated with via Insulin syringes, it hits me.

I just had my first needle experience. I've just shot up. Mainlined. Slammed. This is no longer coffin nails or train rails of long thick or thin lines of powder. I've transitioned from recreational abuser to full bore hardcore miami vice level stuff somewhere along this evening/morning's timeline. I am no longer a virgin. I broke my hymen, took it in, let something penetrate me - and yes mommy, what does he mean to do with that shafty looking thing?

I can hear Reina in the background still talking. She's become more like an amorphous transmission. Static, voices from beyond. None of it comes through in any instantly discernable fashion. None of it sounds like words at all. It's all long phonetics. Even from this side, with her hair hanging all wild and untamed around the side profile of her head, I'm getting numb to her presence. Numb to the smells in the car. She's a ghost lip synching to the sound of the wind as it reels past the side of the car.

All of a sudden, sitting here in my car as a passenger, this whole new experience of mine looks kind of different in retrospect. Less like something I'll want to brag about later.

All of a sudden, I'm not feeling like Reina, liquid sex or not, is much of a reason to have crossed this particular line in the sand. Imagine standing in a room full of people trying to reform their need for whatever addiction they've chosen to baptize the feeling of their lives in, standing at some pathetic pulpit. The room is a layer of all kinds of clouds. The clouds of stink from people going cold turkey off of booze. Thin wavy cirrus clouds of nicoteine smoke layering the room like little cotton monuments to some radically more dangerous addiction having been replaced with something legal. Imagine telling these people things. Hi, my name is Paul. Yes, I'm an addict. Yes, I know this was my choice, my fault, my own personal road trip away from any sort of useful manifest destiny. Yes, I acknowledge that I am powerless. How did I get here? Well, it all started in this convenience store with this really hot looking earth witch slash hippy girl on my lap. We'd just finished lying on the tile floor of the bathroom letting her have a few orgasms when she hops on my lap and starts seducing me into getting fucked with an inch long surgical steel penis. So yeah, I ended up trying the needle because I had a girl on my lap. What can I say but that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I'm thinking that this wasn't just a little bit crazy, as in licking a cold pole when there's ice outside.
As in running naked down a neighborhood street at ten p.m.
As in dating your best friend's little sister while he's away at college and you're still in the same old town..

No, we're not talking about something that's just a little bit wild.
Or just a moment of craziness.

This is mental retardation, as in sitting next to an open nuclear reactor.
In your underwear.
Smoking a Plutonium cigarette.
Filterless.

Me, right now I'm envisioning every hobo living on every nameless street corner I've ever seen. Trackmarks from asshole to elbow.
Giving head in shit smeared men's rooms for drug money.
This visual carries too far. I'm seeing me donig the woody woodpecker head bob back and forth. Flicking my tongue around and under the head of some guy's cock. His back is to the camera, so I can't see who it is. I can see saliva dripping off of my hands - both the one on the cock, and the one massaging the guy's testicles.

We're talking somersaults of the stomach.

Me moaning and rocking back and forth on my knees in torn up jeans and a Marilyn Manson t-shirt. Me stopping to touch myself as I do this. Me bending way over to run my tongue from the scum soaked hair of this cat's scrotum all the way back to the tip of his cock and swalling it whole. Gagging on semen as the guy throws his head to one side in the fit of a delicious looking orgasm. There's a resuonding grunt that echoes along the walls of this grotesque bathroom that looks like something from the pits of hell, or the side streets of some back alley Manhattan gas station.

The light makes the whole scene look blue. The walls have weird brown streaks everywhere. You know the kind. These are those streaks you see in truck stops and backwoods towns and wonder exactly how someone put them there. The ones that go almost to the damned ceiling, and you're standing there just sort of scratching your head and thinking, "Who in the hell shits like this, and how did they get it so far up there?"

The toilets are all cracked and laying in chunks everywhere. There's a pile of spent needles next to one of the stools that still has a functional seat.

This guy is standing in front of me is wearing loose dockers and a white shirt. Just like I wear at work. He's dropped a brown sailor's pea coat that looks just like mine on the floor at our feet. He's even got a damned brown Doc Marten's leather belt exactly like the one I wear daily. This is when I start to pay attention to the facial detail revealed as the cat has turned his head. The haircut and the shave look all too familiar.

This cat in the outfit, the guy I'm giving head to, is me.

There's a message on the wall that says that right now,
God is watching someone shit
and jacking off to it as pornography.

This was completely stupid.

The me that just came is rubbing his cock all over the face of the me that's sitting on the ground dirty and dribbling come out of the corner of his mouth. The me on the ground takes a twenty dollar bill from the me who's still standing. There's a brief pause before I see the me on the floor start gingerly sucking at the other me's balls, massaging a slowly shrinking penis with his other hand. I see this me that's on the floor grin, little bubbles showing up in the semen on his - on my - teeth. He says a single word:

"More?"

We interrupt your current programming to broadcast this special breaking news bulletin: The olympic sommersaultI trials going on in my belly have now finished. My stomach, being the sole contestant is a strong bet for the gold medal. In layman's terms, I am now about to vomit. Spew. Blow Chunks. Yark. You pick whatever colourful term for stomach content ejection you learned in high school or while drinking in college. It's still the same. I feel a strong need to create abstract art by using my body as a spray paint can.

I ask Reina to pull over, and have my head hanging out of the car door before she's even managed to comepletely stop the vehicle. I'm throwing up water, mainly. There's a few chunks of doritos left over. ll this chunky fluid has left a streak on the ashpalt that looks to be about fifteen feet long in a thin stream. I'm more than a little taken back by how similar this stream looks to the shapes that Karlie and Tim have fucked into their carpet. Somwhere in some distant part of my head I'm wondering if the fluid in both cases aren't actually identical.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm suddenly all woozy inside my head. Maybe it's the drop in blood pressure, the spinning gravitational center that's whirling out Milky Way dustbowl arms across the entire three block radius I seem to be seeing all at once. Maybe it's the way I'm dilating. Maybe, just maybe, it's the way I'm passing out.

I don't know if any of this has to do with what I'm seeing next, but maybe it does. Call it a lack of vision, poor grammar, no imagination....

Call it a shoddy upbringing. Call it whatever you want to.
Because when you're done calling it, I'm still laying with my head hanging out the door of my car, forehead touching cold asphalt as I start to pass out.

But while you're calling it, and while I'm drooling and slumped like this with my hair in the star streak comet's tail that my puke is making as it starts to fan out in response to gravity...while you're seeing this and I'm doing that, I want you to tell me something.

Do you see all the little kids out at this hour of the morning on the Big Wheels? Tassles flying in no wind and racing by where Reina and I are stopped? I'd ask Reina, but you see I can't seem to move just now, being as I'm now totally done passing out.

Hotels are a lot like visiting drive in theaters, but without any clever looking 50''s architecturally inspired speakers sticking in the windows. They're all sort of like the same gravel make out spot. Sort of like getting a hamburger at your favourite national drive through food chain in their continual failure to deviate from the norm by rising above your expectations.

The hamburger, it's always the same in Dallas as it is in New Orleans as it is in Lexington as it is in New York as it is in Miami. Same pickles, same mustard, same bread. It's more and more this way in anything you buy anywhere but Mexico. Some plant in some nameless faceless county is kicking out the components that are put into products sold by half a dozen competing corporations, each of which is claiming to be top rung compared to the other guy.

As long as you overlook the basics of location, this hotel room is no exception to the rule.

The back of the door, the part you see from the inside has a peephole, and two locks. One to keep you out until you've paid, and one to keep the cleaning lady out until you've showered. There's a little vinyl pocket on it to hold the rules that this particular state has set forth for how little you can do to a hotel in the event that they should screw you out of any worldly posessions you might be travelling with.

There's the same imitation wood dresser that you see in every other chain hotel in the United States. The same placard on top of the same wood grain finished television set. The same remote control you've always seen, and yes, if you look hard enough you're even likely to find that throughout the entire United States there's only about half a dozen different cable service providers shoving that bad hotel television down your throat.

This hotel, it's only about fifteen miles north of my apartment. A bit more than that from the University, but hey -today's my day off and I just can't seem to care about it.

I've been asleep off and on in bed for the last ten hours. Off and on as in the old middle school boyfriend to girlfriend kind of way. You spend a few hours with Reina, getting exhausted to the point of seeing stars. Over and over. Then you talk for awhile about things.

Art, philosophy. Will Genesis ever really hook back up with Peter Gabriel or not. Exactly what is with Tim and Reina. What did Reality make you feel like. Was it incredible, or is being sick all I really remember feeling.

We talk about generally weightless things because one of us is leaving tomorrow morning. And when one of the two people in bed is about to go leaving on a jet plane, the last thing you need is gravitationally intense conversation.

I spend my sleep time dreaming in technicolour. I keep seeing that nightmare vision of myself in the bathroom. I see myself travelling from airport to airport picking up subliminal messages from God. I see myself licking that telephone from Claire's desk. I see myself asleep in this room, only the walls are transparent from both sides and people are walking by the rooms on their way to check out of the hotel. They see me there going down on myself and just stop and stare. Some people laugh, some shield their children's eyes.

One dude taped a ten dollar bill to the door.

So, as Tank Girl says, 'it ain't all bad'.

Waking up from vomitting out the passenger side of your car to find that your car door has mysteriously transformed itself into a multicolour paisley pillow can be a little disquieting. Finding out that you traded in leatherette dashboards for slutty imatition marble bathroom countertops leaves you with a few questions.

Like why it is that you're here. Here in the hotel room, not here in the universe.

Reina told me that Tim and Karlie are next door, and based on the noises coming through the walls I believe her.

Apparently, while we were out travelling abroad, Tim and Karlie got into a hefty fight about Tim's choice in drug assimilation. As predicted, Karlie was beyond displeased with the fact that he was shooting up again. Tim, high as a ten minutes released helium weather balloon in Antartica couldn't care less how Karlie felt. This produced a screaming and shoving match that went on until a neighbor beat on the door, releasing proclamation after proclamation about the joys of living in their immediate vicinity.

One of the proclamations included a prophecy that the police would be arriving soon. Karlie, mad as she was, was worried about how much the prophecy sounded more like a statement of fact than a potential outcome.

Karlie may hate Tim's guts for going junkie this late in their mutual gameplay, but she's not mad enough at him to watch the police wheel them both off on felony charges.

You have to give her some credit for this. Despite being totally experiential in how she runs from situation to situation, Karlie is still somewhat realistic. No matter how new the experience of being in an all girls dorm for a few years might be, it's not something that holds more appeal than a life on the run moving from town to town on waitressing job tips. I think it's good to know your limits.

Especially if you're Tim and Karlie.

They loaded into the car about as quick as we got back to the apartment complex. Karlie had loaded a duffel bag with whatever drugs remained in the house, but nothing else.

My cell phone is still laying on some horizontal surface in their house, desperately trying to get the ceiling to have some level of concern for the fact that there are still "4 NEW VOICE MESSAGES" in my voice mailbox. If I were this ceiling, I'd take some notice. My phone does, after all, use a really cool font for displaying such nonsense.

It's right about then that everyone decides to talk about what a cool guy I am for being in a position to save them. We're driving around town in my car, TIm and Reina are up front basking in the lovely combination of scents that waft about so strongly up there. Me, I'm laying in the back totally passed out with my head in Karlie's lap. This is the smart move on my part, given that Karlie is now basically explaining the sheer magnitude of character desecration that we've all laid upon ourselves by injecting this weird new drug of ours.

Sex.
Jasmine.
Patchouli.
BIle.

Lovely smells like that. Again, this isn't something you can find in just any air freshener. Overall the smell of sex and incense might be a little too dreamy. One of those "don't you wish the car smelled like this instead of french fries" kind of aromatic fantasies.

The smell of the bile that's lept up from my gullet to join humanity is what adds that whole old school "keepin' it real" factor to the interior.

During this conversation about what a great guy I am for being an unconscious saviour, Karlie suggests we get a hotel. Being the super nice guy that everyone has decided they know me to be, I naturally am given the gift of paying for this on my credit card.

Normally, they're right to do this because I wouldn't care. As long as it keeps people calm and out of jail a hotel is a far more cost efficient alternative. Given that the general total cost for bailing someone out of jail who's in on drug charges is...oh, let's say it's well into the five digit market. I'd do this eight days out of any given week. Even for someone as prone to needing help as Tim.

Today, however, would probably be a little bit different exercise if I were awake.

If I were awake, my paranoia would be in full bloom and incited to Atlantian depths as Karlie ranted on and on about what we'd done. Check into a hotel. Sure. Great idea. Check into a hotel with drugs? Not so great. Most drug dealers get caught in hotels. Especially when they're pushing each other and fighting loudly about such trivial things as the injection of some big new product. Add to this the convenient tracking options that modern law enforcement has at their disposal once they get a credit card receipt, and you have me stuck in jail next to Tim.

I love Tim to death on the right days, but let's be serious for a moment here. I am not even remotely into the idea of spending the next six Stanley Cup playoffs betting ciggarettes and pound cake on who'll be in the finals.

This is all academic at this point. In the end, nothing bad happens. In the end Karlie just tries Reality to show Tim what it's like to watch someone you love shoot up. She hopes he's happy now. Hopes he's really fucking happy about seeing her come to this.

Maybe it's just me, but judging from the ferocious sounds of them all but shredding the bed next door, I'd say that Tim couldn't be any more pleased with himself if he tried.

Me, I'm sitting here waiting for everyone to be ready to go home. The methamphetamine is starting to wear off, and the Reality has been out of my system for a few hours now.

Coming down from Methamphetamine can be a real crapshoot as to what you might want to be prepared for. Depending on what it's made from, who made it, how many people cut the drug down to make more money before you came into posession - you never really know how much of what household cleaning chemical you've managed to snort. I vividly remember one occasion where the speed had been cut with laundry detergent.

It took several bottles of nasal saline solution to wash all the damn bubble making monsters out of my sinus cavity. We are talking hour upon pounding hour of smelling nothing but the strong side of a coin operated laundromat. And let's face it - the only time this is good is when you're busy trying to impress your mom with the fact that should an accident occur that you will indeed be racing stripe free when the county medical examiner starts using trauma shears to remove the blood stained carapace of your clothing.

Right now, I'm starting to feel a fairly common set of side effects. I am tired, grumpy, and my throat is as raw as a recently paddled choir boy's ass. You stay up long enough and you exhaust every single major vitamin and energy store in your system. This leaves your body running on a chemical called Glycogen for awhile. Problem with Glycogen is that you've got to have some pretty decent levels of L-Lysine left in you to make much more without some sleep or a serious improvement in your eating habits.

The real bitch of this is that you can't sleep. You couldn't if you tried. There are lots of little chemical receptors in your head that are having entirely too much fun to be concerned with your lysine and glycogen problems. You could show them the end of a nice fat glycogen molecule right now, and all you'd get in return was a closed electron cloud. This is molar speak for "No Dice Chino." So, no sleep means you now need to conquer a drug to get back the eating habits of a roman foot soldier - all just to get by enough to feel human in a few hours. This is where bitch number two comes into play.

One of the single most hazardous things that meth does to your body is rob you of any interest in eating. It does this by completely removing the ears that your central nervous system has to hear the good old hunger call of a nutrient starved body. You aren't hungry. You have no real interest in food. Should you be blessed with a temporary hunger pain, you're going to find that your system is now so dehydrated that there's not a snowball's chance in hades of you being able to make anything slide down your throat.

Being as your throat has officially become as lubricity laden as the more southerly portions of the Saharan desert.

Swallowing bites of food is a lot like trying to conjure strands of gold from a nice fat pile of hay.
Sure, it looks like it might work if you're drunk enough.
But the two are just mutually incompatible at a structural level.

The final net effect is that you wind up drinking water till you're bloated enough to think you might not need to eat at all. This whole fatigue deal must just be a false alarm.

This is another global proxy effect that's going on in your head this whole time. This whole time you're up and still under the influence of this wonderfully destructive binge of yours, having fun doing whatever it is your monkey brain gets fixated on for hours at a time. You spend this time doing your deals and wheeling about on all fours and basically making like a train car on a super speed electromagnetic track. Problem is that the human brain doesn't really function that well during extended periods of more than 48 hours continual consciousness.

This means that you're running around town giving the soliloquoy of your career, which is good in your mind.

Unfortunately you eventually lose the ability to speak any semblance of english that a sober person can understand, which is bad.

I'm laying in bed with my mental gears all sticky, just waiting for whatever needs to happen to happen so that everyone can calm the fuck down and go home for some real sleep. Quality sleep. My bed. My pillows. My fan on high emitting the debutante level white noise curtain over the world that it casts in droves.

Reina is snoring like a seven foot tall four hundred pound lumberjack. It's a funny contrast. I'm awake and in the growing realization of what sort of misery my body is in from yet another weekend spent forcing it to abandon all sense of time and reason.

Chronic drug use probably looks like a copout to a lot of people, but like a famous writer once said it's a lot more work than it looks like. You have to be committed in the most non-chalant sort of way.

A lot of people, they have trouble doing this.
Our little group of friends, we're too busy dodging the questions to recognize trouble in anything.

You bring the grace.

I'll dodge the answer.

She's breathing in, some part dangling in her throat like a rescue worker bent on lifting air out of it's poor confined trappings in the back of her throat. There's a long low frequency (I'm talking vibration not hertz) sound as the danglies batter some part of her throat - nasal passages. Who cares. It's a nasty noise. Judging from how dry she must be inside and out, she'll have one hell of a sore throat when she wakes up.

I take this remote - you know the one, it's the McDonald's Cheeseburger of remote controls - and I tune in on the local news channels. I surf from face to face.

Most people, they watch the lips moving, they hear the words. Me, I'm watching these people and wondering who's doing who backstage. Is it the anchor girl doing the weather guy, or is it the weather guy doing the sports guy. That's just one of those things. Most people, they see dignification and training and hard work. Me, I see monkeys doing whatever it takes not to focus on their libidos and addiction. The entire world is one big amusement park designed to keep you from going blind and getting hair growth on your palms.

You see life as you know it.
I see you wandering around with your head on the dashboard trying not to read the road signs as they flit by in blur time.

Brunette. Bald guy. Black suit. Some chick in a live motor accident scene wearing something entirely too cleavage oriented to be appropriate. She'll cause more wrecks than she can possibly coevr in one sitting wearing shit like this to do the news.

My wreck, the one I passed going into work, it's all the rage on the local stations. Still no one knows what the hell happened. There's other news that's a little off center as well. Some kids found a body laying in a dumpster near a relatively well to do neighborhood. This body belongs to a 20 something white female. So far all they seem to know is that she was married. Had a taste for Victoria's Secret. This is all they know because the remains in the garbage bin were covered with crows. Crows had torn most of the flesh from her body.

In modern times this sort of deal is only good for a couple of days play. Who is she. How'd she get here. Have the authorities received enough dental information to do some kind of identity search. Fact is, that the weird part is she's only been dead a few hours. They think she was attacked by the birds and then sought cover in the dumpster. Only maybe she's not in good enough shape to get the both lids unhooked from their bungee tethers and closed before the crows have taken the softest parts of her they can get their beaks into.

Eyes.
Tongue.
Lips.

Things like that.

Once in awhile when she's asleep, you here these not so feminine snores.

You boys watching this on pay per view know the ones I'm talking about.

Softly in.

<i>"Sources at CNN remain mystified about the recent disapearances of key UN figures..."</i>

Softly out.

Ratchety snore. Ratchety Snore.

Static flip
Static flip

I am a rattan misognynous god with this elongated piece of plastic in my hand. Wonder of solid state engineering, creator of countless living room fights across the nation.

I am the entertainment god of this $39.95 a night temple of me. One day, archaeologists will dig up statues of me with fine bristled brushes. They will marvel over the significance of the religious symbols R-C-A. They will wonder how I made my underwear. They will wonder how many worshipped me. They will find the body of a girl at my feet. This girl will not be known to them. They will do computer mock-ups of her 3-dimensional fate to determine how she was sacrificed to me.

The Weather Channel. There's an emergency advisory showing I bring the television off mute. A menagerie of little picture frames with talking people superimposed over a background of night time heavy surf. Some shore I'm supposed to care about but will never be capable of affording transportation to.

In one picture a cute blonde is talking and pointing ardently at a weather map.
In another picture a sporty looking guy is standing in winds that could only come from a well raised storm.
In another picture is an older guy with the words "Tropical Weather Expert". He's a doctor of something. They never tell you what. This cat could be a doctor of proctology for all I know.

<i>"....Hurricane Grace appeared in the early morning hours today, beginning as a deepening low pressure system, and moving from Tropical Storm to category 3 Hurricane status before the Tropical Storm advisory could be properly broadcast and updated on the National Weather Service warning systems..."</i>

Cut to a shot of a hurricane several hundred miles southeast of Florida. Cut to the expert guy being worried about something like this ocurring so late in the season. Cut to the blonde nodding a lot and asking the occasional dumbass question.

Cut to me, Lord of the solid state infrared control module pressing the power off button. As I push the button, little waves of invisible light set out to do my bidding, smothering a receptor across the room in pulse emissions.

Cut to Reina snoring but still looking beautiful in her way. Hair a mess - just like it should be. Lips pink and swollen from too much fun hours before. Nostrils flared and red at the ends from chemical exposure.

Cut to me lying next to her. Cut to me smelling her skin and wondering why it is that despite the fact that every drug user claims that they can smell drugs in other users sweat you really aren't smelling dope at all. To the point that you're sure you could get high just from licking the small of their backs.

Cut to the experts saying this is impossible. That the only thing coming out of your sweat glands is urea. Your body's cooling system isn't overly impressed with drugs. Drug use just makes it think you need to chill out a little bit. You can not sweat meth, heroin, or E.

Note to self, spend at least ten minutes licking Reina's back next time I wake up stone cold sober so that a solution to this enigma can be found.

Cut to me trying to sleep, but getting restless every time she makes that rare spaced out clogged sinus snore of hers.

Insert Ratchety snore here.

Insert pillow over her head.

Seriously consider inserting little balls of toilet paper into her nostrils and mouth.

This is how it always goes for me with beautiful girls. They look pristine, sometimes they are Venus herself in the bedroom. But later, beauty wears off, and you find yourself spending an increasing amount of time up late watching cable television and wondering what brand of underwear the girls on the Weather Channel invest in.

Gorgeous. Beautiful. Bombshell. Erotic. These all wear off. You end up wishing for ear muffs and ball gags. You might just find that you really wish you could find stronger Colonopin to slip into her drinks before parties.

Give me the cute girl next door every day of the week. Let her suck in bed and talk about boring romance novels. Let her not be a witch of anything spiritual that I lust for. Let her be like my mother, and spend all day wandering around in a housecoat that hasn't been washed in months until right before my father comes home. Let her wear clothes from low-rent chain stores. Let her live in a small town that I've never heard of.

Let her be just like me, but you know, without the penis and all.

You can grow to love a cute person, because cute doesn't go away. It can weather a thousand haircuts and make-up fads and still be alluring. A cute girl can wake up with all of her make-up worn off from hours of passion and still look ravishing. A cute girl won't leave you wondering what became of the teenager you went to prom with back when you still worried whether or not Acne Statin really worked.

Beautiful girls? These tend to be like those fashionable little stamps you get when you visit a dance club. They look cool on your arm for awhile and make people think you belong. You feel cooler, more interesting and handsome. You feel like you've probably got that whole hunting and gathering act down. You tend to make believe that you are not you, but an evolved thing.

News flash dear - those stamps wear off. I have to wonder what Cindy Crawford does when whoever wherever becomes numb to the drop dead look. Because this is what happens. You get numb to the amazing. It's the everyday extraordinary that prevails.

Note to self - tell her she doesn't love me.
Over a cup of coffee.
Just to see if she looks away.
Write Shirley Manson and give her the outcome to see if I end up in a radio single

Cut to me wishing she was not here. Never had been. That we'd never fucking heard of her. That I hadn't sucked on her clit until it was swollen beyond belief in a gas station bathroom on tiles that I wouldn't want to touch with my bare hands.

Cut to me falling asleep, dreaming of archaeologists licking pure crystal from the bones of a dark curly headed personal sacrifice while a hurricane bears down on the Florida coast.

I turn the television off. You can only stand so much of this kind of news before you start watching the hotel window for the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock. Maybe I'm not really me. Maybe I'm just Jimmy Stewart playing me in some spinoff movie.

You take a deep breath. You get up and go get yourself a drink of water.
You pass the water as fast as you can drink it.
You vow never to touch meth again.
You wonder if there's enough of it left to get you through tomorrow.
You can always quit tomorrow.
Or maybe when you run out.
Or maybe when everyone you know runs out. Then you can all be miserable together.
Or something.

You take another deep breath.
Drink some more water.
You take a shower.
You turn the room's air conditioner on it's highest setting and lie down.
You close your eyes.

Cut to me.

Asleep.