It is very easy to feel smaller, to feel less than, when you see people with an advantage walk where you struggle, who have ease of motion where you are constricted, it can be a real shot to your moral, like, it can be flummoxing to a degree where you’re almost paralytic. You’ve got to keep picking yourself up and reach for it. And that’s the long and short of it. ‘Cause if you don’t, it won’t get done.

I think it’s great for two people to be together. That is a good number. I think, that to keep it alive though, you can’t spend every day together. It wears out the magic, Love means nothing to me if it’s not fortified with fierce, painful longing, brief explosive instances of furious passion and intimacy and then a sad parting for a time. In that way, you can give your life to it and still have a life of your own. I think some couples spend too much time together. They flatten out the potential for experience by constant closeness. Passion builds over time like steam. Let it rage until it’s exhausted and then leave it alone to let it build up again. Why can’t love be insane and distorted? How can it be vital if it has the same threshold as normal day-to-day experience?

Why can’t you write burning letters and let your nocturnal self smolder with desire for one who is not there? Why not let the days before you see her be excruciating and ferment in your mind so on the day you go to the airport to pick her up, you’re nearly sick with anticipation? And then when desire shows the first sign of contentment, throw it back it its cage and let it slowly build itself back into a state of starved fury. Then when you are together, it all matters. So that when you look into her eyes, you lose your balance, so that when she touches you, it feels like you have never been touched before. When she says your name, you think it was she who named you. When she has gone, you bury your face in the pillow to smell her hair and you lie awake at night remembering your face in her neck, her breathing and the amazing smell of her skin. Your eyes go wet because you want her so bad and miss her so much. Now that is worth the miles and the time. That matches the inferno of life. Otherwise you poison each other with your presence day after day as you drag each other through the inevitable mundane aspects of your lives. That is the slow death that I see slapped on faces everywhere I go. It’s part of the world’s sadness that’s more empty than cold, poorly lit rooms in cities of the American night.

I get “Ya know I’m really depressed and I’ll never meet a girl like that again and I’m twenty-one.” Son, you’re twenty-one. It is a big world out there and you are going to have a really good time. You are gonna meet lots of women, and humans are complex tricky creatures. If only we were dogs then shit would work out better but humans are very complex. There are a lot of reasons that things don’t work so you don’t have to call the girl a bitch because everything a person does is coming from a real reason. She cheated on you? Well, she wasn’t getting what she needed from you. She is getting something she needed from this other fellow, or woman or whatever that she left you for, so you gotta move on. But don’t kill yourself. Don’t drink yourself into a stupor. Don’t drive to the guy’s house. None of that stuff is appropriate behavior. And believe it or not, you’re gonna be fine.

Basically, I am sick of the ignorance, hatred and all the bullshit. The truth that someone is gay is as odd as the fact that someone is straight. It is what it is, there’s nothing new about homosexuality and these people either need to evolve or get the fuck out of the way. If they want to hate, fine but they will have to keep it to themselves or expect complete turbulence from me. It’s insane to me that someone has that kind of time in their day to hate someone for what they can’t help and for what there is absolutely nothing wrong with.

My pen knows what to do. I close my eyes and I see this girl who glows. A girl who radiates. When she smiles, she beams. She warms my heart. I open my eyes with a feeling of floating past all the garbage around me. I will emerge unscathed because I will not endeavor to hide myself from whatever is coming. Bring on the worst. I welcome it with open arms.