longest. entry. ever. and this is only the first half.

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tuesday: the opposite of christopher reeves

arrive in toronto to the tune of doqz & dex, then domenika. have not slept in twenty-six hours. nauseous, trembling. would love to make conversation, say something, cannot focus energies. can only assure dex that I am dying and suggest blearily to doqz that a woman across the street might be walking a polar bear. lean heavily against suitcase. make it to apartment. lise & mel & rossi! mel's long gorgeous black hair. hugs. collapse onto mel's bed. chit-chat, nausea subsides. lise gives journals to doqz and al. dex brings two pieces of bacon.

doqz & lise go out for lunch, room empties so al can sleep. troubled dreams of uneasy afternoon sleep. wake up, stare at dark bedroom. sadness, loneliness, resignation.

peeps leave for pub, the yellow griffen, lise & doqz & al stay. read buffy fic while doqz watches the first fifteen minutes of movie, I Spy, then movie, The Two Towers. pebblin and jb arrive. more hugs!

go to the yellow griffen, recover appetite. go with pebs and doqz to restaurant, Bert & Ernie's. have delicious philly sandwich & spinach salad. discuss hip-hop likes and dislikes. am only one who likes jay-z. don't understand it. jay-z is big pimpin! doqz says he doesn't listen to lyrics. am skeptical. eat pebblin's french fries.

go back to apartment with pebs. lie in bed talking, then pretend to be asleep when others get back so that they won't kick us out of the bed. plan works. hahaahah. mortals.

*

wednesday: young thai

wake up to pebblin talking to her cell phone. grumpy! an excellent breakfast of hashbrowns prepared by dex and eggs prepared by mr. matt nute melts bad mood. am still tired. can't really remember whole day. lie around with lise & mel & pebs, formulate bad plan to sleep sideways across mattress.

purchase dry black-eyed peas for traditional new year's day supper. keep saying, "you can't lack the hog jowl!" make other people say it. end up, in fact, lacking the hog jowl. am maybe doomed.

party!

relax a little, finally. play cards with pebblin. chill on the couch while peeps make conversation. mel & doqz explain how suspenders are the defining characteristic of any victorious force, for one may not achieve victory whilst worrying about one's pants falling down. mel & al discuss the personalities of numbers. mel purports that even numbers have a smugness, al argues for their serenity. mel spills beer on al. on accident, not as part of the discussion. doqz is disturbed by all the mysticism.

doqz speaks in russian on the telephone. everyone in room stops to listen.

toast to the new year with a glass of champagne. pebblin spills beer on al. dex is very, very drunk. comes up and says, "nice shirt. if you were from Thailand and all you had was that shirt, you'd be alright." thank him. gracefully decline his offer to share his apartment. dex spills beer on al. twice.

feel good, but still can think of nothing interesting to say to anyone. am complete lame-ass. drink some more champagne, put black-eyed peas on to soak. enact horrible plan to sleep sideways across the mattress.

wake in the middle on the night in complete darkness, with headphones on, next to lise. cannot remember who I am or where I am or what's going on. take headphones off. kind of recover. troubled dreams.

*

thursday: wuss

am stationed in the hallway to guard the bathroom for pebblin's upcoming shower. admit to having no technique for safeguarding the bathroom. have no mechanism for telling someone they can't go into the bathroom. am called wuss. recoil. call pebblin wuss. am called wuss again. attack pebblin! wrestling in the hallway. would have won but doofus dripped snot onto my arm; screamed and let go. am called wuss again. make derisive gorilla noise.

am further insulted by all stores, as they are closed for new year's day. attempts to purchase hog jowl thwarted! scowl at sidewalk, muttering, "you can't lack the hog jowl."

go to nice restaurant called . . Big Top or Big Star or Star Band or something. maybe Hot Shot. go there. tables covered in paper for drawing on, cups full of crayons. draw picture of tree. doqz draws picture of snake in tree. draw picture of apple. order halibut. try to relate anecdotes but boy has no attention span. write notes to lise about justin + lance 4ever.

halibut is mediocre, forget to order salad sans vinegar dressing. bread is good.

mel & pebs & al stay behind for coffee and dessert while others go back to apartment, but on way back pick up a big jar of apple juice from convenience store. am declared Best Person In Universe for my trouble. humbly accept.

meet jb's rats, hold them and brush my knuckles against them. love them! like big mice.

am bumbling around in the kitchen and knock something onto IndieJ's leg, or step on her foot or something-- apologize and swear fealty to her to repair my debt of honor. call her 'my liege' for the rest of the night.

sleep in dex's bed between jb and pebblin. much hottie appeal, no room to manuever. sleep poorly. (but get to spoon pebblin.)

*

friday: you give me fever

make first ever trip to butcher's. friendly, posh, good smell. discover a well-trained butcher can make upwards of twenty dollars an hour. would apprentice self to butcher in a heartbeat. note to all butchers out there.

ultimately, lack the hog jowl. throw out the black-eyed peas, per dr. benway's suggestion. gather ingredients for cobbler instead.

peeps go out for thai, doqz & al & sarah go to Bert & Ernie's because, ew, thai. sarah mentions that she knows elizabeth ferguson of atlanta! talk about elizabeth and comics and library science. get back into groove, have actual conversation with actual whole thoughts coming out of mouth. talk about fanfic theory and online journals.

counting crows comes on radio, then REM. talk about lise. love lise.

eat doqz's french fries. feel good.

lie in mel's bed with lise, who has a fever. work on quilt, sing angel band to her. leave her sleeping, go into living room, peeps are playing video games. finish some beta work, fatigue catches up. nap in dex's room. troubled dreams. the loneliness and resignation. get up. start work on cobbler.

make two cobblers, one cherry, one apple. work alongside dex, who's making meat pot pies. whole apartment smells like garlic. love dex. dex leaves kitchen, am lonely. canned apples smell weird.

peeps watch australian movie, He Died With A Falafel In His Hand. from kitchen movie sounds too hip, too artsy and faux-tarantino and slick. am sitting on kitchen floor trying not to have a breakdown, so am biased. need to calm the fuck down. check cobblers, not done. close eyes. this kind of sadness is like lise's fever: burning away the sickness but clinging to the skin like a sickness of its own. burns away anxiety, loneliness, doubt, hurt. survive it. open eyes. am okay, everything is okay. feel shakey but completely self-sufficient.

mean this when distinguishing between erin and alestar. nothing sinister, nothing divided or tortured. erin is erin. alestar is erin who is absolutely certain.

check cobbler, still not done.

pebblin comes in, sits on kitchen floor. chill, flirt. express concern over not-doneness of cobbler. instructions say to cook for twenty-five minutes, has been cooking for over an hour. rossi comes in. express concerns to her. lise wanders out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. take her hand. she says that electric stoves are just crazy, so it's okay. movie ends and doqz shows up, dr. benway, then mel and dex, until all these peeps are crowded around in the kitchen, talking, al looking up at their faces.

cobbler is done! dished out and noisily enjoyed. apples no longer smell weird. southern heart quakes.

go out to the yellow griffin with everyone, have a smirnoff ice. build condiment and table accessory castle with doqz, embarass lise. she leaves. make comments to gerg about what a shame-based society america has, which spurs a heated political discussion between gerg & doqz & mel which pebs & al have a hard time following. listen for a while, get sleepy, then leave.

lie in bed with lise. chat, talk about own comedy fics but mess up all the punchlines. try to explain something about jack kerouac but can't express it right. keep offering to fetch her water or juice. so-- emotionally intact but still socially retarded. baby steps.

others come back, try to convince lise to fake sleep so we'll get the bed, fail. have conversation with doqz: "come watch a knight's tale." "I'm really tired." "no, come watch a knight's tale." "okay." watch a knight's tale. fun. supporting characters make the movie, fairly sopping with the sexy slashy. doqz sleeps through it beside me.

sleep in mel's bed with pebblin & mel. lise sleeps on the floor because the bed is too hot, her fever is still burning.

*

saturday: fool for love

wake feeling rested.

dress and walk down to the coffee shop on the corner, buy a large coffee, bring it back to the apartment and dress it with milk and sugar, drink it with a bit of cherry cobbler. is good.

mr. matt nute and my liege head back to virginia. in the din of hugs and farewells, hear doqz say, "everything in this house is done vaguely." write it down. is true.

help my liege with her luggage. am relieved of my bond.

walk with everyone to Hot Shot or Star Boy or whatever that restaurant is. en route, doqz runs over a little old lady. cackle for, like, twenty minutes.

this time, draw picture of duck wearing t-shirt. doqz draws . . a fly-thing dropping a nail onto duck's head. draw caption. order medium rare steak and a salad with no dressing, olive oil on the side. is best salad ever. is not best steak ever but is pretty goddamned good. salty pools of cow blood-juice, pink and brown, baked potato, sauteed vegetables, warm bread with butter. order cup of coffee. could not be any more content. doqz starts talking about jack kerouac.

try to defend jack to doqz, then dex, who believe that jack's ideas and techniques were sound, but execution flawed. can't, really. cannot explain that kerouac is like nsync, nothing, human, stupid, but holy, crazy holied, whose holiness is in phrases or old shirts or leg movements-- unflawed in the sense that who decides flaws in the holy human too-huge world? who can defend nsync? cannot be explained. lapse into silence, swell of feeling at the dinner table. more coffee.

dinner ends, peeps go back to the aparment, finish my drink while gerg and pebblin wait. gerg suggests game of pool downstairs. jump on that. play worst game of pool ever. is okay, am jazzed on coffee and a sense of miracles. hot waitress walks by, wish al were wearing cuter shirt. ah, life.

walk back to apartment. peeps head down to the yellow griffin; mel & pebs & lise & al & doqz remain for ostensible clubbing purposes, later, though lise is still too sick to go out and doqz insists that he will not be clubbing, ever, anywhere. mel downs seven shots of vodka, puts on glitter and a christina aguilera cd. scuffle around apartment floor. put hair up, put on cutest available shirt, which is not very cute. is same shirt which would be alright if sole possession of Thai native.

take the subway downtown. doqz to left, pebs & mel to right, strange dejavu. nudge doqz, ask him, "you feel good?"

doqz looks askance. "did you just say, 'you feel good.'?"

laugh.

walk down the awake lit-up toronto downtown, huge buildings and people in sleek long winter coats. "Swiss" written in red neon cursive at the top of a building. red letters in the sky! a big human english word against the cloudline. Swiss.

go to Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, an excellently put-together but still comfortable and laid-back gay club. are the first people there. get one of only four tables. rum & coke for pebs, water for doqz, smirnoff ice for al, something for mel, don't remember. people arrive. have another smirnoff ice. move through the crowd to fetch drinks, touches from strangers moving past. when dancing finally commences, it lasts for three hours. never stop stupid wild pleased grinning. fool for love.

stop at small steak joint on the way home. get chocolate milkshake, steal some of doqz's rice. doqz tears a strip off the top of his coke can and mel & pebs & al all screech at him to be careful; he barks to leave him alone and stop acting like a bunch of jewish mothers. even though he was totally endangering his life, as aluminum doesn't even wear pants and therefore cleverly sidesteps the whole matter of suspenders, making it completely superior to humanity. but whatever. yark.

grab a cab ride back to the apartment, mel in the front seat, pebs between al & doqz. settle pebblin in lap, she falls asleep. mel's slumps against her seat, unconcious, and doqz dozes. am wide awake, eyes are wide open and all my blood is moving. still bother to wake up doqz to make sure taxi is going the right way.

get everyone upstairs. mel & pebblin, drunk. lise on the couch, doqz on the floor. everyone else at the pub. collapse onto mel's bed achy, exhausted, perfect.

*

sunday, monday, tuesday: coming.