Another Day In Hell

Dancing on Strawberry Hill

The first time I got drunk it was on wine coolers. I wanted something that tasted good. Strawberry wine coolers at the age of 13 on a small side street named 7th on the corner of St. Charles while the Krewe of Hermes rode by and High-School seniors who I looked up to sold alcohol from small ice chests they stood on to catch beads. I wanted to drink beer but couldn't stomach it and decided that it wasn't so bad, that I'd chug beer someday, and this small glass bottle of red 'juice' would be my real gateway drug. I spent about thirty dollars and bought six for myself, thinking it was a steal, and shared one with a girl I liked and we drank and our lips were red and when we kissed my friends cheered as they were equally girl-drink drunk and I remember the lights from the parade blurring and Mardi Gras music emanating from a marching band and everyone smiling and getting hit in the head by a large stack of plastic pearls and loving every minute of it. I remember thinking that I had missed out on so much and danced in the empty streets when the parade was over and the cops just looked at us and laughed and we were paranoid about being caught. We went to a house party that some girl from Sacred Heart was throwing since her parents fled the city because they didn't want to deal with Mardi Gras and we drank all night and this was before cell phones so I had to steal myself away to her parent's room to call my parents and make it sound like nothing was going on and that was also the first time I lied to my parents and actually felt that I was doing it in order to do something bad, whilst all the other times they were simply white lies. The girl, 'Missy', who's house this was, came in and laughed and told me she was wasted and she was sixteen and she grabbed me and asked me who I was and I lied and told her I was 'Alex' and she said she heard about me and kissed me. My eyes were wide open and she noticed and asked why I had kept them open so I immediately closed them and we kissed again and right when our tongues touched I felt her fall on the bed and she passed out. I left her there, after putting her head on a pillow and her feet on the bed and couldn't find anyone that cared and someone had broken into her father's liquor cabinet and, yes, things had gotten out of hand and my world was spinning. I found my friend, 'Nathan', and he had puked on his starched polo shirt and his dockers and since it was a deep shade of red he thought he puked up blood and freaked out and some high-school kids had to convince him it was wine cooler and we left. I took a street car home and my parents knew I was drunk but didn't say anything and I know now it was because they knew I'd be able to take care of myself. But sometimes I wish they had said something, not because of who I've become, but because maybe it would have made me feel they cared more about me more back then. Or maybe because the guilt of my lie had followed me home. I know I wasn't getting drunk to get my parent's attention, as a therapist would later try to make me believe. I was getting drunk because it was cool, and maybe that was the same thing, in relation to my peers, but it was a lot more fun than anything else people do to get attention. I don't see therapists anymore...I think I know about me more than they do.

Follow Through

The day after the hurricane was one of the most beautiful days in New Orleans. Fortune had smiled upon us and the storm only clipped us at night, sending little debris around and causing no damage near me. But the streets were still empty that morning and I walk the empty street car tracks and no one was around and I felt all alone but a cool breeze blew through a cloudless sky and I felt a moment of inspiration pass. The next few days I laid low with my my parents and enjoyed their company as my Dad touted the features of his new Tivo and my Mom napalmed me with old photo albums of us in Europe, in Disneyland, in India, in Morrocco, in Venezuela and I try to make the pictures come alive as I stare at them and its not hard because the memories are seem so clear. Over the weekend I book a flight to return to L.A. and go out with 'Anthony'. We go see 'Nathan's' band play and he looks almost strung out and mascara runs down his cheeks and eyeliner is smudged and we don't know what he's saying as he sings and 'Jana' looks a wreak and eventually the band stops playing when the guitarist takes off his clothes and backstage we watch 'Nathan' shoot up with 'Jana' and someone thinks 'Jana' is ODing and they take off her shirt to pump her heart we see that a pentagram has been carved on her chest around her small breasts and 'Nathan' looks at us, fear in his eyes, and then 'Jana' starts to laugh and we breath a sigh of relief and I want to leave. I don't want my last nights in New Orleans spent watching a Grunge/Metal band pump the stomachs of their groupies and this isn't really my scene anyway and 'Anthony' is sweating so we leave. We go to Pat O'Brien's and sit at the piano bar and drink Hurricane's and four girls from Alabama are there because they fled Mobile and we drink and sing old Billy Joel songs with them and we go back to their Hotel room at Loews in the Warehouse District and I have sex with one of them while Anthony goes to the pool with the other three and she is pretty and has very long legs but she doesn't make a noise and it feels uncomfortable so I stop and get up and she looks at me like I'm crazy for not finishing and I leave. 'Anthony' doesn't want to go so I leave him and go to the 'Kingpin' where I meet a Tulane Law girl who hates New Orleans politics and spends an hour explaining to me how some crook woman who won a civil court judgship was completely unqualified compared to another candidate and how she's positive the election was fixed and I didn't even now New Orleans was holding elections still, after the Hurricane. The political talk leaves me weary and at 5am I come home and sleep. The next morning I go to Church again and the priest doesn't make any sense in his homily and I can barely hear him but I'm positive that a statue of Saint Anthony is staring at me. I spend the day with my parents and they tell me how proud they are and we eat dinner at home and they go to sleep and 'Allison' calls. I go to her place and we have another night of incredible sex and she wants to visit me and I ask her about her fiance and she doesn't answer but takes off her clothes again and lets me rub her soft taut skin and kiss her body and I forget my question and we have sex outside on her front porch at 4am and I think we've now done it in every area of her house. The next morning I slip out while she is asleep but she looks gorgeous in bed and I have to kiss her one more time and lose myself in her and I eventually get home while my parents are making breakfast. I take a shower and my parents go to work, hugging me a long time before they leave and my dad pats my shoulder and it seems like he wants to say something but all that comes out is 'well...' and the cab comes and I leave my home, watching the River pass under me as the plane pulls away...

New Blog

For those of you who have gone cold turkey, welcome to the drug. Sorry about the mix up, but blog.com doesn't have anyway to increase my bandwith, apparently, and sucks. So, here I am...posts will be up soon. Sorry again. I'll be transferring all my old posts here too...and I'll let you know when blog.com is cool again.

And The Sky Turned To Ash

I wake up early today to go on a run in the park that I used to play, that I learned to ride my bike in, that I won a 5k in at 16, that I had sex in with my first girlfriend, that I first broke someone else's nose in, and I noticed it empty. Over half this city has fled or moved to the hotels downtown and my run is calm and serene and there is an ominous quiet and I lose myself in the peace. I feel like this is my Vanilla Sky as memories pop in and out of my head and I wish, at one point, that I could be six all over again and start over but I love my life and I get too afraid that I may not follow the same path and end up somewhere else. I return home and 'Anthony' is still in town and we walk near Tulane campus where a fraternity house he used to be in is having a party. The streets are empty and the wind picks up and we see the clouds lazily crawl in wide arcs across our heads and the sun begins to dip in the west and the sky turns to an odd shade of pink and red and someone brings out a huge speaker and the twenty five of us in the entire neighborhood drink from a keg of Natural Ice and listen to the Doors "The End" over and over and over. 'Allison' calls me and wants me to come over but I tell her that I don't want to and she curses me out but I'm so into this weather and the largess of the moment that it doesn't affect me one bit. We talk about the history of a city like New Orleans, relating stories of Mardi Gras and drunken nights and debutante balls as kids and wonder how it will feel if tomorrow this is all washed away and our memories will only exist in our heads. I return home for a late dinner and my parents are watching a movie and generally unshaken and my Mom tells me that's because I'm here and I go to our second story patio and smoke a cigarette and watch the sky turn from pink to blood red to black. There is no light except for the few porch lamps and the wind blows heavy and trees quake and there is still no rain. A tree branch breaks off the tree across the street and bounces down the empty avenue to St. Charles. Something inside me wants to run the empty boulevards and scream against the wind and every fifteen minutes it seems like the clouds are coming closer and closer to the earth and not even one millimeter of the night sky can break through this spiraling blanket and my house doesn't creak but the trees bend with the wind as it dances through their branches and pushes at their trunks that pull on the earth under the concrete with their roots. I come inside and I've received an email from my Agent saying 'COME HOME' and an email from the Vegas girl saying 'hope all is well' and maybe she doesn't know I'm looking at what may appear to be the End of Days to some in what we've been conditioned to expect from Hollywood. And slowly the raindrops start to fall lightly, and the Doors "the End" hasn't stopped playing in my head.

Calm Before The Storm

Sunday morning I was greeted by the sing songy voice of an angel, or so I thought. As my eyes blurred open, I saw it was my smiling mother, who had lost weight as she was seduced by 'the South Beach Diet' and she kept whispering : time to go to Church. If she only knew. . .and I'd prefer she never did. I could say no but something was pulling me so I slid myself out of bed and, just so I had a private joke for myself, I kept what I wore out Friday night and slept in Saturday night on and walked downstairs after a cologne bath and tooth swabbing. My father was sitting in front of the television and he smiled at me, which he didn't start doing until I started doing well in Hollywood, and we talked about my life and I lied a lot, painting it more innocent. We went to church and almost as if God intended, the Gospel was the story of the prodigal son. The priest, however, was not overly exciting to watch and I managed to close my eyes, like my dad, during the homily and never got his interpretation. My living one, however, seemed to suffice. Back home we talked about my sisters and how I was doing and how they were doing and my Mom was so happy to see me she wouldn't stop telling me so and I felt good that I had made them happy by doing so little. We spent the day watching television and reading the newspaper and they fell asleep early and I borrowed by dad's mercedes and went out. I met my friend 'Anthony', who was one of my best friends. In High School he would stand on his hands, upside down, and puke downwards and one time, in the French Quarter, he did this and a midget came out of a bar and cleaned it up and we were so stunned and so high that we had to leave. This night we sat around and drank Bud Lights and watched football highlights and he kept saying 'you should really see 'Nathan'' over and over again so we left. 'Nathan' was in a band that covered Rage Against the Machine songs but since they broke up he had fallen apart. His house looked like a mess from the outside and inside everything was draped in velvet and black and red candles that were burnt to the end. 'Nathan' was on the couch, wide eyed, pale, and rocking back and forth with some girl name 'Jana' who wore too much eye liner and they smiled at me and said that something was not right. Dishes, they said, 'were floating around the house' and they could 'sense evil'. 'Anthony' pointed out a thick leather book in front of them and I saw what it was : The Necronomicon. Devil worship, black magic, scary shit, as far as I knew. As I was asking him why the hell he was doing this I swear I saw a stack of tarot coins on the table stand up on their tip. They stared at it like nothing was happening and I almost pissed my pants as it fell off the table on its own. 'Anthony' said he needed a cigarette and left, tugging my sleeves. I tried to talk to 'Nathan' but he said nothing, pointing at a flyer, telling me to take one. His new band was playing this week and I told him I'd go and 'Jana' said she thought she could see through me and I left. It wasn't too late but the experience left me and 'Anthony' shaken and we went home. I tried to sleep but kept tossing and turning and felt, at one point, that 'Nathan' was in my room watching me sleep and I had to put a DVD on my laptop and fell asleep to it eventually. The next morning news of Hurrican Ivan was all over the place and I decided to ride the storm out at home instead of fllying back to Los Angeles. I figured it might be fun, and I knew it would make my parents happy. I worked on the script all day and sent pages to my Agent who pleaded for me to come home because if communications got cut off I could be screwed and I felt like my Agent was trapped in the '40s. That night I went to some college bars and everything was crazy as students knew that school was going to be cancelled. I went to Fat Harry's and Pat O'Brien's and it was at F&Ms that I ran into something unexpected. 'Allison'. I had dated 'Allison' in High School and she was one of those ugly ducklings that turned from an average chick into a big breasted bombshell by her Junior year. She still looked amazing, if not better, and when I told her I worked in Hollywood she smiled and said, 'that's what I heard' while rubbing my forearm. I bought her drink after drink and she got closer and closer and when some guy came up she kissed him and said goodbye and he looked at me but I walked away, looking for other old friends. Later, however, around four am 'Allison' grabbed me and we left and went back to her mother's place and went to the old Den bedroom we used to hook up in and we kissed and had an incredible round of sex. Her body was tanner than I remember and her muscles more taught and she told me she worked out and we had sex again and I had no problem getting it up. We had a cigarette and she told me her mother was out of town, left early because of the impending storm, and not to worry. I asked her who the guy was at the bar and she said, 'my fiance'. We go upstairs this time and have sex in the living room, the dining room, her parents room, the kitchen, and soon the sun is up and I'm finally getting tired and she asks me to spend the night. I do and we fall asleep for an hour and wake up because I have to get my Dad's car home before he has to go to work and we have sex one more time and I leave and get home right when my Dad wakes up. He makes me a cup of coffee and acts like nothing is wrong and we talk about the storm and he goes to work. I sleep most of the day today and when I wake up it is almost evening and me and my father, who's home from work, put plywood on the windows and bring all the potted plants and garden furniture into the garage and my mom comes home and we make dinner and go to a pre hurricane party one of the neighbor's is having. I get drunk and I swear one of the divorced mom's named 'Anne' is hitting on me. She won't stop telling me I'm so cute and it gets to the point of slightly embarrasing and so I leave the party early. My Dad is performing magic tricks for the kids and my Mom is relaxing with the other Moms and it feels like nothing has changed...and I like it that way. I walk home and 'Allison' calls and we talk and she tells me she doesn't want to get married and is crying and then tells me that 'I had nothing to do with it' and even though she thinks I feel bad I really don't. The sex was great and the fact that she did it makes me think that she's right : she isn't ready to get married. If anything she should be thanking me but I don't want to sound like a complete asshole so I don't say anything and she asks if we can get dinner and I say 'after the hurricane'. We laugh a bit and she feels better and I feel great because I'm getting stoned in my back yard and I come inside and check my email. Nothing but junk and I don't mind. No rain yet...but even though people are fleeing the city, I'm happy to go down with the ship with Mom and Dad.

Home Cooked Meal

Last Friday night is spent on a final binge before going to my parents. 'George' picks me up and we go to our friend, 'Chris's' house where we take too many shots and play with prop swords that 'Chris' uses because he is a production designer and we break one as they slam into each other and feel bad but 'Chris' doesn't care and we all go to another bar on Melrose to meet a friend of 'Chris's'. It is a girl's birthday and the room the party is in is filled with the sweat of almost 100 men. That's because, since it's a girl's birthday, there are almost eight guys to every girl. I leave this room and go to the main bar and have a few drinks and watch replays of college football and 'Erin's' friend, 'Ashley', calls me and tells me it is her birthday tonight, too, and she wants me to come to Bar Marmont for dinner and drinks. We lag but eventually get there because there are more girls and we've missed dinner but Dexter the doorman lets us walk through easily and we run into the girls who are all very pretty there and 'Ashley' keeps holding my hand and dragging me around to meet all her friends and 'Erin' isn't around and she tells me 'Erin' is on a shoot in Hawaii and then she kisses my cheek and 'George' looks jealous. As the night comes to a close we all leave and go to the Argyle on Sunset where the girl's have a huge room and we tear open the locks on the mini bar and dive in and someone orders three large bottles of champagne and me and 'Ashley' disappear to the bathroom. On the counter is a small pile of cocaine and before we do a line she starts to kiss me, locks the door, and says 'It's my birthday, we won't tell 'Erin', and we fall into the empty bathtub and she takes off her clothes and we have sex and it's spontaneous and good and part of me knows that I can probably never go back to 'Erin' again and it makes me slightly sad as I climax. We stay at the hotel till 5am and then I have to leave and 'George' is wired and won't stop talking and I have no idea what happened to 'Chris' but I do know my flight leaves in an hour and a half. I take a cab home, toss the contents of my closet into a bag and jump back into the cab which has been waiting for me. On the way to the airport the Cab Driver tells me how his two kids are going to high school and how he's proud of them and wants them to have a better life, which is why he works so hard and I'm genuinely interested because I'm so awake and I tip him VERY well and he gives me his card so I'll never want for a cab again in L.A.. Security goes quick at six in the morning on a Saturday and the flight to Saint Louis is freezing, an ice box. I can't sleep, even if I wanted to, and I end up writing on my laptop as an overweight Asian man snores directly in my ear and they only have four blankets and a million packets of peanuts on the flight and it drives me nuts. The lay over is three hours in St. Louis and I wish I had actually looked at the flight plan before I purchased my tickets and I watch 'Secret Window' while I wait and feel that maybe I have a dual personality that's eating at me. I drink gin and tonics on the flight home and take a cab to my family's house when I finally arrive. My parents aren't home from a dinner event so I go to my room and drop my bags and stare for a long time. Pictures of me as a child, high-school friends, news clippings from sports championships, etc... all still on the walls. The ancient computer I used to use is still sitting on my old desk and it doesn't start when I hit the power button. I walk around my house, looking through old photo albums, drinking water, happy that it always smells the same and I look for the house cat but he's nowhere to be found. The air is humid, and I haven't slept yet, so I lay down in my bed, still wearing what I'm wearing, and close my eyes on Saturday Night...

Long Way Home

I wake up with a slight hangover after spending last night driving around the entire city of Los Angeles looking for a party that me and 'George' just couldn't find. First it was to Santa Monica where a pre-party involved watching six USC grads do beer bongs till they couldn't stand, then to Brentwood where we watched a young UCLA girls puke on herself in the bathroom as none of her girls would help her, and then on to a house party in Silverlake where we arrived half an hour too late, and finally to a weird apartment on top of an old ice cream parlor in Hollywood. Most of the night was spent in a car listening to 'George' describe to me, in detail, the sexual positions he's managed to hit with some friend of 'Erin's' and I ask him to stop but he doesn't seem to want to. The streets of Los Angeles were unusually quite and I watched maids wait for busses to go to East Los Angeles apartments and their faces made me sad and I wondered why I was so lucky and I ask 'George' and he can't comprehend what I'm talking about. This morning is spent writing all I can so I my Agent doesn't forget I exist and stops returning my calls. While sitting outside, by my pool, the reds of a sunset remind me of home again and I make a last second decision. I buy a ticket back home. I call my Mom and she sounds tired at first, but I can almost feel her warmth as she recognizes my voice and my Dad is still at work and for fifteen minutes I'm twelve again. I swim a few laps and try to call old friends again but no one picks up and I wonder who I'll run into back home. 'George' calls and tells me that 'Chris' knows of a girl who's partying at Chateau Marmont so we decide to go there tonight and I need a haircut but I have a really cool Hilfiger beenie so I'll wait and I start to drink a Corona and watch the sun dip into the horizon. The Vegas girl emails me and tells me she wants to see me soon and I remind myself I'll see her in a few weeks and I forgot to call the Script Girl but I'll call her while I'm in New Orleans and for some reason I think of the Texas girl and remember how fun she was. She had an unforgettable smile, is what I remember. I took that night for granted, is what I think. I should have gotten her number, is what I wish. As I get off the internet I get a call from 'Erin'. I stare at her name on my cell phone as it blinks and then fades. 'one new message'. I turn my phone off and stare out into the horizon out my window and wonder why I'm up here and someone is waiting for a bus home somewhere after doing someone else's chores. I want to be home right now. . .my life seems out of balance.

Marketing Blitz

Sometimes it makes me feel like cracking. All our lives we are attacked, carpet bombed, by advertising outlets that place slogans and characters that dance in our heads and sing their songs. I can spend days driving around and almost go mad as I look from one franchise to another and commercials are pulled from my memory banks as they've been burned in. It can drive someone completely insane. Hearing the words or sounds of SNAP and CRACKLE and not helping yourself to fill in the POP. Why! Why do I have three fucking elves stuck in my head but I can barely remember what it looked like from the highest point on the Eiffel Tower, or what the Twin Towers looked like when I was a child as I stood in their shadow, or how the jungle felt as I sat on a train going through the west coast of India. These are memories I want to relive over and over. These are point in life that I want to be reminded of. These jingles, these incessant attacks that melt our core and staple themselves to our memories as we tack on products to fond memories instead of places or songs or smells. This is what would drive me to violence: the gnomes in my head, the tigers hawking the theeeeyyy'rrre grrrreat slogans, the orgasm noises of herbal essences, the sound of an old bell reminding me of tacos. It is this that pushes violence out of us. This sick media blitz of buy buy buy that zombiefies us into purchasing useless crap in exchange for money that we spent our lives honing our talents and sweating with effort for. It's not violence on tv in the form of guns and murder. That's what makes me calm down. Watching my angst be pulverized through the frustrations and quick violent decisions manifested by Rambo or Tyler Durden or any number of mindless blood letting 'heroes' and 'villians'. By watching, it comes out of my system. If it weren't for violence on tv and in the movies the little elves that tell me to buy their magical crap cookies would invade my soul and the only way out would be through madness. I understand that ads pay for the entertainment, but don't take away the violence on tv when it's the Geico Gecko or the Aflac Duck that will push me to violent insanity when they replace my first memory of my mother holding me with countless replays of their witless insurance ads.

Fighting In A Sack

I feel unusually anxious today, like my world is about to crumble under me and I won't have anywhere to live, anyone to turn to, anywhere to go. As the film comes to wraps and projects float around with nothing getting anywhere and I see the bills and I stop getting calls from 'Erin' and I don't hear from 'George' and no one has returned my calls because they are all sitting in their cubicles late making up for work they all missed on Monday I feel almost too alone and cooped up. But Los Angeles's size seems intimidating so I rock back and forth all day on my leather couch in my living room and try to let in as much sunlight and air as I can and I try to write but everytime I get on the internet to send out the new pages I waste hours searching all kinds of porn and I wonder how fast kids must grow up, sexually, with all this so easily available to them. I try to swim in my pool but I just float and stare up at the sky and it is so hot and no one is calling the the girl from Vegas sends me a three word email : 'life is chaotic'. Mine seems far from that, almost listlessly floating around among the hills and riding some unseen wind that seems to be subsiding and I feel like I'm going to fall any minute and I try to microwave a burritto but the porn gets my attention and I forget about it and when I find it later it's cold again. I try to eat but feel sick and I wonder if its the mushrooms and I call the Script Girl. She sounds surprised that I call and she wants to talk but is busy on the set and tells me that the 'Star' is acting really weird and I figure he feels the same way I do and I want to go to the set to hang out with him but I don't think I can leave my place. I tell the Script Girl that we'll do lunch sometime soon and she sounds excited and tells me : 'we miss you on the Set'. And by 'we' I wonder if she means 'I'. I thank her and hang up and then call the 'Star' and he is in his trailer and doesn't want to leave and I tell him my walls are crumbling and he tells me he's going to come over tonight to get baked because his hotel room is too small and I say that's cool and we hang up. The sun sets and I almost feel better at night, the cool air blowing, the lights of the city soothing and I realize life is going on and my foundations, even though slightly rubbery, are still solid. I come across a picture of my family and realize that I haven't been home since last Christmas and I look up plane flights and think about going home for a few days. I fish out phone numbers of old friends who might still be around the hometown. Being from the South, nothing changes much, and a lot of people come to take over where their parents left off. I make some calls but no one picks up and some of the numbers are now disconnected and I decide to wait on buying a ticket. I get a call from 'George' and he is going to come over and I'm happy that I'll have guests and that I didn't have to leave my house but I promise myself I'll get out tommorrow. I call my Agent and leave him a nasty message about 'where are my premiere tickets' because I can and I sit down and stare at Bill O'Reilly on mute as I listen to David Gray and it doesn't make sense but the anxiety is gone and I don't get any new emails but I don't look at porn and I consider that a small success for the day.

Come Down

A drive from a metropolis like Los Angeles to the barren deserts that existed before concrete spilled on the unspoilt land is, in a way, like taking a step back in time, in that the future of this world, as manifested in the granite jungles of suburbia, will eventually spill here. We get to our camp point by midday and prepare for our psychadelic journey, as one of the 'Star's' friends pulls out a large zip loc bag containing six eighth's of mushrooms. Some of the guys groan that an eighth each may not be enough, but it's been so long for me that I don't complain. We each pull out a smaller baggie containing our own personal eighth and the 'Star' gets wary as a couple sets up camp near us as he doesn't want to be recognized. We place the mushrooms in our pre made peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches and the sick taste of poison takes a while to get used to by my stomach and I feel like puking but don't because I don't want to seem like I have to be taken care of and I know this will be nothing like a night of cocaine and I'm genuinely excited. We watch the sun start to set, light a fire, and the 'Star' pulls out a guitar and tries to play some James Taylor songs and the New York guys reminisce about their days growing up in Upstate and sit and listen and eventually they turn to me and get to know me and I can feel the drugs working. The colors shift, the 'Star' strums unconsciously away at his six-string and for the first time people seem to listen to me for who I am. I tell stories of girls I dated, of college, of my first time on mushrooms, and I slowly begin to feel like these guys are my friends. Suddenly the 'Star' stands, says he thinks a photographer for People is around and his friends laugh at him and he laughs, nervously, and we decide to take a hike. I fill my backpack with a few bottles of water and we take off. The red rocks glow as we climb higher and, at the apex of a formation we pause as the red sun blankets the earth in a psychadelic hue and my eyes can't seem to adjust to the colors and I love it. My emotions feel more pronounced and when one of the New York guys smiles at me and says 'awesome' he describes how I feel and we nod knowingly and push deeper. The moon eventually rises and our way is lit in a pale blue light,slight yet powerful. At one point, as the 'Star' jumps from boulder to boulder, I feel like I'm on the moon and me and 'William' talk about the emotions of plants and I remember hating hippies but never felt better as one. We climb an enormous mountain and, at the top, far ahead of us, 'Steve' screams. We run up and are frozen just like him. In a valley, in the desert, in front of us, is an Oasis. Palm trees and rocks and a small stream and we run down, dropping our backpacks and falling in the water. I lay against a rock with the 'Star' and he tells me how he can't stand relationships and is truly afraid of never being able to know if a girl really loves him because of what he's become and I tell him I don't think I'm capable of love and he smiles at me and says 'I don't know which is worse' and he calls me by my real name and says that it's been fun working with me and wants to consider me a friend and I tell him I feel like a friend and his buddies come over and we slide amongst the rocks and 'Gary' pulls out a secret stash of mushrooms and we eat more and spread out. Now I'm alone staring at the stars and there are no voices an I feel so small, so insignificant, and so lonely and I get up and run to the others who seem to feel the same way and we join hands and decide to never seperate like some lost 'Band of Brothers' and we march back to our camp. We stoke the fire back to life and I don't feel tired at all and someone tries to play guitar but we all fall silent and stare at the fire until 'Steve' says 'cool' and we laugh. Time passes and the sun starts to come up and I don't remember closing my eyes but I fall asleep. I wake up to 'Arthur' puking, but he won't stop drinking beer between bouts of regugitation and eventually we're all drinking beers, feeling like shit, but apparantly this weekend isn't over as we pass around a large bong and get extremely stoned and I feel like I'm tripping again and apparently that's what's supposed to happen, until I find out that angel dust has been sprinkled on the weed and we sit around all day in the hot sun laughing about nothing, watching catuses talk to us, sand dance for us, fire rise and fall with our emotions and day quickly turns into night and I can't keep my eyes open anymore and we pass out early again and I wonder what happened to my Sunday but don't care. The next morning we are all broken down and I get a ride back home and exhange phone numbers and promise to keep in touch and the 'Star' comes over to my house and we sit in the jacuzzi for a little while and laugh about nothing and he thanks me for coming and I thank him for inviting me and he leaves and I spend the rest of Labor Day on the couch. I stare at the TV but I'm not listening to anything, thinking about the weekend wishing my body could continue like that, but I know it's not possible. So I appreciate it more, I think, in the uniqueness of the adventure. I crawl to bed, feeling my body sweating out the poisons in the hot weather of Los Angeles. This morning I feel much better, get a call from my Agent, work on the horror script, send pages, get sent tapes of pilots that failed from nameless messengers and get a call from 'Erin'. My life is back to where it was...but I can close my eyes and I'm in that Oasis and I'm glad I have that, now. I'm not going to call 'Erin'. I need to call the Script Girl. I need to finish my script. God, my mouth is so dry. I need water.