Sometimes, the skin comes off in sex. The people merge, skinless. The body loses its boundaries. We are each in these separate bodies; and then, with someone and not with someone else, the skin dissolves altogether, and what touches is unspeakably, grotesquely visceral, not inside language or conceptualization, not inside time; raw, blood and fat and muscle and bone, unmediated by form or formal limits. There is no physical distance, no consciousness, nothing withdrawn or private or alienated, no existence outside physical touch. The skin collapses as a boundary—it has no meaning; time is gone—it too has no meaning; there is no outside. Instead, there is necessity, nothing else—being driven, physical immersion in each other but with no experience of "each other" as separate entities coming together. There is only touch, no boundaries; there is only the nameless experience of physical contact, which is life; there is no solace, except in this contact; without it, there is unbearable physical pain, absolute, not lessened by distraction, unreached by normalcy—nearly an amputation, the skin hacked off, slashed open; violent hurt.

Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse

love just so easily falls into some people's laps, don't it?

but i'm done wondering if there's something wrong with me

all i can really do is keep my head up. keep it moving

in the face of absurdity, i smile with all my teeth.

i miss how it felt smoking weed with you in the back of your house

listening to king krule

back when it was illegal – i was anxious and scared

but i felt so safe in your arms

your arms, expanded

it never occured to me that things would change

but they didn't really. we planted the seeds that would come into fruition

+ i'm older now, munching that perennial fruit

you really had me worried for a moment there...

today i am awake but asleep. yesterday i was asleep but awake. it's 7:54 AM, and it feels far too early to be this bright. that cyan blue fresco beams down on me with smug indignation. too much. my right knee throbs with a dull ache. my patella is framed by a lopsided 'C' made of black kinesiology tape.

good morning. i present to you a cautionary tale about the perils of medicalizing your circadian rhythm. moral of the story: pay attention to what you put into your mouth.

it all starts tuesday night (today is thursday morning). i went with tony to see fabiana palladino perform at my least favourite bar in the city. despite the venue, she put on a fantastic show: a cool falsetto, crooning over reverb pedals, bass rippling in a warm staccato, bodies sway under blue light and fog. a real moody affair. after the show we went back to my place and drank wine while tony played me songs through his iphone speaker. i took my prescribed 150mg seroquel xr and waited for my eyelids to get heavy. we went up to bed and slept erratically in fits and starts, waking up every hour to the other person writhing around, or to the sound of my cats sprinting across my 600 sq ft. apartment and knocking shit over, meow meow, noises i typically sleep through but that tony's presence made me cognizant of. around 7am he gave up and drove home, and i slept soundly for another two hours, until my alarm went off and i clocked into the time-tracking app on my phone.

after snoozing a few more times i got up, half-rested, put the kettle on the stove, ground some decaf beans. i was splitting in two again, neither here nor there. pretty often i get the sense that my mind and body are operating independently. sometimes my body acts without permission, meanwhile my brain does that hamster wheel thing where the fat neurotic rodent living inside my brain hijacks my synapses. while waiting for the water to boil i absently grabbed the bottle of seroquel xr left on the counter from the night before and palmed 3 x 50mg, put it in my mouth, and swallowed. moments later realizing that it was not, in fact, vyvanse. shit.

i turned off the stove and immediately went into the bathroom to try and puke it up. i shoved fingers down my throat, retching slightly, and managed to produce around a tablespoon of liquid bile. i watched it congeal into cloudy blobs on the surface of the toilet water. like frothy pond scum. i tried a few more times, but there was not enough food in my stomach to trigger a meaningful upchuck. i pulled my hand out of my mouth in defeat, fingers covered in caustic slime, knuckles bright red from stomach acid seeping into abrasions. i don't think i'd make a very good bulimic.

my only remaining option was to ride the wave. i decided to stack 40mg vyvanse for good measure. who knows, maybe they would cancel each other out in a dopamine antagonist vs reuptake inhibitor deathmatch. in my head i decided it would be a fun little science experiment: who would win the eepyness wars? in one corner we have the two time heavyweight champ, quetiapine xr, in the other — rising underdog, lisdexamfetamine. lets fucking gooo

i made a normal cup of caffeinated coffee and sat at my desk to begin my shift at the spreadsheet factory. within 30 mins the seroquel hit me hard. eyes drooping again. i struggled to maintain focus on SKUs, my eyes crossing as i filtered products with names like Zoo Friends Toddler Backpack and Modern Mama Meal Box. eventually the vyvanse did kick in, but it made me feel even more like a zombie, straddling the border of stimulation and sedation. it felt strange and artificial. it kind of reminded me of the one time i tried a calvin klein, just to see what all the fuss was about, but the coke ended up cancelling out the ket and vice versa, and all i was left with was the worst of both worlds. i dont get it.

i made it through the work day and spent a few hours lying on the couch, completely destitute, i nipped out to get some indian food, felt like a freak on the streets, tried to watch an episode of angel but kept getting distracted, then spent the next several hours in a hyperfixation spiral researching memantine, an ndma antagonist and dementia medication that's prescribed off-label for various mental illnesses. also a fan-favourite in r/nootropics. it has a similar mechanism of action to ketamine, my favourite drug that i can't enjoy responsibly. god i love dissos...

by the time 11pm rolled around, the seroquel had completely dissipated from my body, leaving me wide awake and slightly agitated. it was the inevitable consequence of living in a 24hr cycle of consecutive 6-hour half-lives.

(maybe the memantine will fix me)

i turned off all the lights and laid in bed with eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, feeling obligated to at least give it a shot, but i just knew it wasn't happening, not without my sweet sweet 'queluudes. i listened to drunk people on their way home from the bar, screaming and laughing in a chorus of frenzied frenglish. it didn't take me long to succumb to the comforting glow of the macbook screen. i scrolled various reddit posts and read stories about people getting caught cheating in leetcode interviews until the sky went from black to blue.

i got up and took another 40mg vyvanse. sat on the couch and read a chapter of tony tulathimutte's private citizens, waiting for the amphetamines to kick in. and now i'm back on the borderline, a drug-induced nothing, head buzzing, listening to normal people start their day while i wait for mine to be over.

i guess the seroquel won that round — K.O.

i said goodbye to maize yesterday

after a year of watching him speedrun homelessness, he told me that he finally accepted his family's offer of help.

i felt immense relief, mostly for selfish reasons.

he also told me that he got arrested and fined $5000 for trying to kill himself on the train tracks last week. grim, but after multiple attempts, not very shocking. i don't think i'll ever be able to forget the smell of his blood, pooling into tiny rivers between bathroom tiles.

i've long braced myself for the seeming inevitability of his early death, the daily possibility of receiving the phone call while doing something completely mundane, like washing the dishes, or browsing imageboards, or whatever fucking stupid shit i do all day. or worse, the possibility of not hearing anything at all, anxiety mounting with each day of no contact, eventually having to make phone calls to family members, hospitals, police stations. and then i feel guilty for even having these thoughts, as if my anxiety and dread takes precedence over my friend's life.

and then i feel guilty for feeling guilty, as if my guilt absolves me of selfishness.

and then i think about how, practically speaking, fining a suicidal person $5000 would probably only drive them closer to suicide.

-

we drank beer in my apartment and then walked to the lesbian bar to drink more beer. maize bought me two gin and tonics. we played pool - i lost - i always lose (lowkey hate pool but all of my friends seem to like it, so i will begrudgingly hit ball with stick). we sat back down, talked about:

- panic at the disco

- music theory

- whether we've ever had sex with a really fat person

at some point maize looked around and said, "is this really a lesbian bar?"

"of course, don't you see the sign?" i responded, pointing to the sign - in large red neon letters: LESBIANS.

"oh, right"

we finished our drinks, and maize walked me home, and we hugged, said our goodbyes and i love you's and i'll miss you's. it had been a while since we hugged, it felt nice. i watched him walk off into the night, and i went upstairs, a little more drunk than i wanted to be.

goodbye, my sweet friend. i hope to see you again, happier, healthier.

so i wonder, who invented ketamine and for what purpose?

i rolled around on the floor after inhaling two very large lines of ketamine, i suppose my tolerance went down after all this time. i put the tray in the cupboard above the stove and walked over to the couch. tried to watch skins, couldn’t do it, not right now, so i listened to Oli XL and layed on the ground, fetal position, i think my cats could tell there was something seriously wrong with me. i thought about how crazy it is that we are humans here on earthand we;ve come this far, and for what? for me to be too high on the carpet?

intense closed eye hallucination of a fuzzy red wall, dithered and distorted, flickering, i thought about a story i wanted to write, and had a vision of pink pixel guardian angel, out of the corner of my eye, she was floating above the steel beam, looking at me, when i blinked she disappeared, i thought ‘i should write that down’ but then i forgot, and then i remembered. i’m too afraid to take risks, and i lack the commitment and confidence and follow-through, i think that’s what’s wrong with me. but that’s not even true, i do risky shit all the time, but it’s stupid shit, all destructive, nothing worth saving, i guess what i mean is that i’m too scared to put effort in and actually try in case i fail, or even worse, if i succeed, and have to take myself seriously, and it’s really quite silly if i put it that way. i am typing this with one eye shut, my right eye, for some reason it seems so bright in my apartment, even though it’s definitely not, any way i feel blinded and disoriented or maybe it’s the drugs. i wonder if anyone would even care about what i had to say, ever. maybe i should start a blog. but you’ve had this idea before, hundreds of times, are you ever actually going to do anything?