In Toronto and there's too much to say, except for to say that I shall say it all later, and I shall say it all ...

Differently.

Last night was a typical one, in the way that nights out are typically met with some level of inebriation. However, the present tense could hardly be described as such. Since waking, I have been getting progressively more drunk, as if I were partaking in some sort of morning drinkfest. And, you know, I'm not sure how to feel about this.

It reminds me of the resin, my first experience with it, and how we were quite disappointed to find that, contrary to Greg's phone instructions, we were not getting high. Until, of course, we found ourselves floating like party balloons.

If delayed reactions were to take over as common practice, why, we'd have an orgasm on the street from a sexual encounter three days prior. Imagine the chaos.

I may put it in letter to you. I should, really. You were in my pocket tonight, dear. I carried that polished stone you gave to me those years ago, on which you wrote "I WANT YOU FOR YOUR SOUL". I carried it in my pocket into the bar, and I reached down at it frequently to be sure you were still with me.

The shots had to be flowing on this night, didn't they? On this night, during the month of nights that I choose not to drink. Only on this night, that choice was just a little tougher. But I did it. I nursed my coke and, with clinched teeth, passed up the offers of free booze. Isn't it odd how a bar can be so relaxing when you wander in for a drink, while that very same establishment can make you quite anxious in sobriety? Well, that's what happened. I used to feed off of that bar attention like bird on seed, remember? Now I'd prefer not to be noticed at all.

The fairly attractive, well intentioned boy in the stripped green shirt took the gamble and sat next to me. He took my alcohol refusal as a personal rebuke, I believe, and I overheard the bartender say to him a few moments later, as if to reassure, "No, really, you were fine. He's just a little frigid sometimes." Was he really referring to me? In a bar I had not set foot in for over three months, I am known for being .. frigid? I suppose it's a better reputation than 'bar slut', but only by a yard.

But then, you told me the same thing about our first few times together. I was like an oyster, you said. Hard to pry open, but .. well, you know the rest.

I feel great. More on that later.

Joined a local gym yesterday and proceeded to sweat it out in their sauna for a notch over two hours. Sweat is orgasmic, I get off on release. It's a theme for me, really. Whether in words on paper, through sweat, or in eyes-rolled-back orgasm, it's the RELEASE that beckons. At any rate, four months into residency, I've secured my gym membership. Slow? Well, I was ten months into such tenancy in Milwaukee before I was able to evoke the energy for such a task.

It appears I'll be spending Labor Day weekend in Toronto, a possible late September weekend trip to the lifestyle defined Michigan beaches of Saugatuck, and a Red October visit to see an adolescent enduring instructor in DC. Busy patches of travel, I've found, keep my mind from going astray.

The world of writing goes well. A lad by the name of Richard Labonte has tasked on to assisting me with the final edit of my first manuscript, Fragments of One, before it goes into the machine that is publication. Also agreed to sign on with the National Coalition for the Homeless in a publication & press release editor capacity. Looks as though I'll be doing a couple of things for The Gay & Lesbian Review as well. I'm not as used to or familiar with the type of writing that this requires, which is, I suppose, why I'm doing it at all.

To any fellow fans of Andrew Holleran, his new book Grief: A Novel now graces the shelves of your local book store or library. Anyone who's read Dancer from the Dance will understand my great anticipation for his newest work.

And to close, my musical worship of Aimee Mann was sparked further this week when it was announced that she just completed a Christmas album, to be released this fall. Looking at her upcoming tour dates, it would almost be worth considering a trip back to my old stomping grounds, under the guise of a family visit, to catch her appearances in Charlotte, NC, Greenville, SC & Knoxville, TN. Her July concert at that small, intimate theatre in Madison still weighs strong in my mind. On her third encore, I found myself summoned onto the stage, playing a bongo while she experimented with a new song, Medicine Wheel.

[Me, stoned]

"My legs feel like people are playing ping pong inside of them."

Each release is different, is the answer. It's like attempting to solve the riddle of the owl, who asks of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. We all have our own judgment.

And with each thrust within the release, I noticed a separate and defined flashback to an event of the past. Like a scrapbook gone unturned, only messier of course, and with less time to focus on the circumstances of the flash. And yes, flash is indeed the most apropos term here. Flash like a camera, blink and you've missed it. Flash like a superhero, gone in an instant.

Sex - that is, an orgasm in itself - can act, even and especially unintended, as a portal to years gone by. I certainly didn't intend to recall that it happened like it did.

Day three of alcohol celibacy, and I'm doing fine. No single glass of wine allotment this time around, and I'm finding that it isn't necessary to increase other variables to compensate for its absence. Of course, I've had a vicious cold that hasn't had me interested in much other than cough syrup and the television screen, and perhaps it's good timing for such an ailment.

Running this organization from a debilitated state on my couch is quite another matter, however. In the midst of a Nyquil haze, I was called by a least favorite employee who felt the need to go on and on about whatever minuscule issues she was having with other staff. I cut her off in mid-sentence, saying, as lucidly as I could muster:

"You know, I was watching the British Parliament on TV recently .. Tony Blair was responding to an inquiry from a member of the House of Commons. In his response, he said that the issue at hand 'was a very difficult one'. 'Prime Minister, life is difficult,' the member replied. Do you see what I'm saying?"

It didn't matter. I clicked off the phone.

The cold that now afflicts me is pretty fucking miserable. I'll call Dr. Rebecca tomorrow and have her call in some codeine syrup. Codeine makes things bearable, both inside of and separate from this current condition.

It's 454am, by the way, and the fact that I am still up, staring blankly at NewsRadio, is something that I sadly cannot control.

Two things I'm finding in relation: 1) I eat a lot of the most ferocious salsa you'll ever taste, and not much else. It removes me from the grip of haze, and opens up the sinuses. 2) Orgasms come in ebbs & flows. Five at once, then no more for a day or two. I'm granted a window of time to release on this level, after which the function is removed promptly.

It's so quiet here. I'm in and out of delusion. Thinking of chicken soup, and how I don't care for it at all, really, but even Greg Kinnear's character had Jack Nicholson to care enough to bring it to him. Maybe that's all I want.

This has to end. The insomnia. The mind fucks of illness and medications and, well, yes: life.

I have a feeling that if any of this makes sense tomorrow, or whenever I make a return, if only a brief one, to lucidity, I'll be in great trouble.

Only dorms remain. Dorms with no air conditioning and six ephemeral roommates. It's ninety degrees. We'll take it now and suffer later. Twenty eight dollars each purchases a key and a finger pointing to the basement. I try to remember if heat rises or falls. Somehow, it must have relation to the stop, drop, & roll routine that we were taught as children, and I decide it should be the former. That's reassuring, at least, in a way that evading death in puddles of your own sweat can be reassuring. "Your linens!" the clerk calls from behind. Ah, yes, we can't forget those.

Dancing on water. Sweat covers the faces, covers the bodies of its drunk, eager, horny inhabitants. It floods the floor where feet move with three parts slip and a splash of intention.

It's quickly unbearable and I have to push his soaking hair from his forehead repeatedly. I have to push my fresh whiskey drink to my mouth repeatedly. "Let's go."

A left and two rights later, libido leads us down an alley and into a structure that isn't completely formed yet - that is, bereft of a door to secure it from orgasm driven blokes. I surprise myself in my ability to release in this manner - I mean that it was able to happen, considering the 'I hear someone coming' anxiety coupled with my general difficulty to do so in a standing position.

He offered a slip of paper with a phone number. I declined. Not on my usual grounds of it being a gesture both calculated and artificial, the way "We'll talk soon" has become as trite and empty as the host of other things we say to the people we don't care about.

"If I take this, it will give a tangible representation to the night. And this night has been only a figment of my imagination."

I have made a temporary - though, for how temporary, one cannot be sure - abode of a friend's home in Rockford, IL. I am quite perplexed as to just how or why the chemicals in my brain affect reason in such a way that I must, almost immediately after returning from a vacation, embark on another excursion. There is no practicality or logic behind these motives - it is simply necessary. And, by no means is Rockford a top ten vacation spot, but it's not important at all that I am here, but rather, it is essential that I am not there.

This has been the pattern since Memorial Day, and perhaps .. no, likely well before, but very visible indeed since the late May holiday, after which, having an absolutely splendid series of days with friends at their beach cottage, I returned to Appleton and simply could not function. And instead of trying, I left again. A weeklong trip through Missouri that was bereft of any plan or trajectory. Why Missouri? Well, it was there.

At a nearby gas station, I retrieve my coffee for free each morning because I remind her of someone, though she doesn't know quite who, but they must have left a favorable impression on her at some point on the roadmap of life. "It's your eyes," she told me this morning. "You may be here, standing right in front of me, but you're not really here at all, are you?"

"Oh, my, no. I've been gone for some time."