"What did you learn from the solitary cell of your mind?"

"What did you say?"

I heard someone call me faggot on Saturday night in the East Village as I was walking from one party where I had done a bit of coke and talked to cute boys to another house in the East Village where I was planning to do some Adderall.

"What did you say?" I flew back around and got in this guy's face and was ready to kill him. There is a lot of anger in me. I didn't stand up for myself enough in elementary school, enough in middle school, enough in high school, enough in earlier parts of my life. There were too many moments in my life where I allowed people to call me a faggot, to be hateful, to marginalize me, to diminish me. Those days are over and I am taking that bottled anger of never saying anything in those moments and putting them into these moments, particularly when I am a bit drunk and a little high and feeling alive and happy.

His friends apologized for him and we eventually went on our way, on to do some Adderall and talk about boys, pop music, and apartments, to be (in a word) faggots. I danced throughout the night in Brooklyn, talked to people, marveled at the beauty of certain people, imagined what it would be to have sex with them, tried to plot out the necessary steps in my mind that would allow that to happen, what charming thing I would need to say, and then I danced some more, saying things and not saying things. Endless dancing. We left as the cops came in to break up the party. The sun was coming up.

I slept most of the day yesterday or spent it hungover either in bed or on my couch looking at various social media platforms on my phone, knowing that there was a sunny world outside, a world encompassing beaches, parks, pools, and barbecues. I ordered a burrito and a taco and continued to look at my phone, knowing that all of those places lacked something as comfortable as the couch I was then reclined on.

Last evening, a bit more alive after eating and resting all day, I went over to the place Jacob is staying at and hung out with him. There is an amazing view from the apartment he is house-sitting at. It's up on the 17th or 18th floor and it has sweeping views of Manhattan. We drank wine, watched the sun throw light in cool ways across brick buildings until the sun and the light it cast against buildings both eventually faded, until we had to put on a lamp. We watched twerking videos. We watched Xtube videos. I sucked his dick, kissed his body. It felt really nice, was a release I needed. The combination of work and school occupying pretty much all of my time leaves little time for the pursuit of boys, for the pursuit of skin, of people to touch and feel things with.

I wandered through North Chelsea afterward, taking photos of 7-11s. I came home and I wrote a country song that I am performing tonight for a class. Belle and Sebastian is blasting on my stereo, one particular song on repeat, "The Boy With the Arab Strap," and I don't know what anything means, don't know if it does any good to even pose the question asking what this life or this interaction or this comment means, that I am learning it is often more worthwhile to just drink some coffee (or wine, depending on the time of day), blast that song you like, and put one foot in front of the other, to live your fucking life.