A few years ago I met this woman on the internet. She lived in the Bay Area, in San Francisco. She said she liked talking to people on the phone and asked me if she could call me. I said hell, why not, so I gave her my phone number.

She called me right away. As I recall she was sort of young . . . maybe 21 or 22. I figured you call someone right away when you’re 21 or 22 years old because what the hell else are you going to do.

Anyway: As far as I could tell she was real cool. We talked for a long time. I remember it was nighttime and I was sort of drunk. I was outside chopping firewood in the dark and drinking this awful bottle of wine, and she was just sort of telling me about her life. I liked talking to her. For some reason she liked talking to me too.

She called me every single day for two weeks. Again, I just figured maybe she was young and didn’t have a whole lot going on. I mean if I’m going to be honest I didn’t have a whole lot going on either. All I did back then was get drunk and chop firewood. So it was nice to talk to someone every now and then. We were only eight miles away from each other but the idea of hanging out never even came up. I don’t know, I thought that was sort of cool.

In June I was sent down to Los Angeles on a writing assignment. It didn’t go well. I did way too many drugs and slept in the trunk of my car. I didn’t even get into the LA Convention Center to write the story. The story ended up being me not being able to get the story and doing way too many drugs and sleeping in the trunk of my car.

One night I got a call from the woman in San Francisco. I was brooding and walking down Sunset Boulevard when she called. It had been three or four days since I’d spoken to her. I had been busy, you see, with drugs and insomnia and hack writing. Now on the phone she sounded very upset, like maybe she’d been crying even. She told me that because we hadn’t talked to each other in a few days, she was concerned about our “relationship.” When she used that word my blood began flowing in reverse. There was a sort of noisy scramble in my brain, like when a spoon is grinding in a garbage disposal. I felt like throwing up on any one of the ten guys around me who looked like Jared Leto.

I said the only thing a human can say in a situation like that, which was: “Um.”

“I thought you liked me. . . .”

“I’ve been so lonely. . . .”

“It’s like you hate me. . . .”

“I’ve met someone in New York and he said he loves me and I’m seriously considering telling him I love him too. . . .”

Good lord! I’d known this person for half a god dang month! Man oh man, I thought. I listened to her talk. I had absolutely no idea what she was saying. I was terrified. I was waiting for her to tell me that she’d killed my roommates in Oakland and had taken my cat hostage.

And the thing is: nothing we talked about ever even remotely dipped into that godforsaken “romantic” territory. For God’s sake, I didn’t even know this person. She’d asked for my phone number to talk to me, I gave it to her, and we talked sometimes. Now I felt like I had a stalker on my hands. I’d had one before in Austin (which, hell, maybe I will write about tomorrow), who had been truly insane and scary, so I didn’t rule that the heck out just then.

She started screaming at me. She said her heart was broken and that she would never love again. I didn’t really say anything. I just listened to this bad craziness. It probably didn’t help that I was stoned as hell too.

Somehow I was able to fall backwards out of the conversation (“I’m doing very important work right now, yes, for the New York Times. . . .”), and managed to never talked to her again. She would occasionally send me pictures of herself in New York. She’d be wearing a dress and standing next to some twerp. I didn’t trust that she was in New York. It seemed like a good diversion tactic, so I would get up and make sure all the doors and windows were locked.

To this day, maybe once every five or six months, I get a message from her that says: “Miss our talks.”

And I scream a little, and I dart my eyes around nervously, and I wonder what object I could use to defend myself if she rocketed down the chimney or burst through the window. And I wonder if I’ll ever know for sure if my entire life is actually just one of those hidden-camera shows where they fuck with some idiot who doesn’t know any better.

hey for real what do you do when a part of your body won’t stop bleeding (which in my case is my lip)

this might sound kind of dumb, but then so is just about everything else i’ve ever written on this website, so hey (lol)

so uh: the reason i shaved my head was because i had always thought of myself a certain way, and part of that had to do with, uh, my body and the stuff on it. as many of us do, i thought i had a clear idea of what i was because of how i looked. that’s real misguided if you ask me. that stuff doesn’t mean a god darn thing whatsoever.

so i shaved all my hair off. for starters i had no idea what my own head looked like. i didn’t know if i had scars or dents or whatever hiding under my hair. and you know i was standing there at 4 a.m. with those clippers in my hand and i saw myself like that and i thought, “hell, that’s me right there. that’s what i actually am.” i looked like a sad, skinny mammal. i looked like myself!

which is not to say that i am opposed to returning to the way i looked before! but at least now i’ll know for sure that, for the most part, it’s all a bunch of bullshit.

I was not long in coming to myself; everything came back to my mind at once, without an effort, as though it had been in ambush to pounce upon me again. And, indeed, even while I was unconscious a point seemed continually to remain in my memory unforgotten, and round it my dreams moved drearily. But strange to say, everything that had happened to me in that day seemed to me now, on waking, to be in the far, far away past, as though I had long, long ago lived all that down.

(notes from underground)

this is exactly what it feels like every single time i wake up

two weeks ago i somehow split my lip open on the right side and the air is so dry and cold here that it has still not healed and i guess it probably never will.

. . . but then i reckon i could say the same thing about my heart and soul!!!!!

“listen baby don’t you dare try to catch me because you never will . . . i am very fast and cool.”
—ryan starsailor, single and unemployed 28-year-old man

god dang it laura rokas

At Donut Farm we got a free staff meal on the weekends. This was very good because you could basically have as much food as you wanted and you could ask the people in the kitchen to make you custom stuff. This sort of thing kept me alive one summer because I was essentially starving for a month or two.

Anyway: The best thing to get was the burrito because it was the most filling. I would always upgrade it to the point of having the tortilla burst. It ruled. I ate a bunch of those things. Generally on Saturday I would get something lighter, and then on Sunday I would get a super-packed burrito because Sundays were busy and exhausting.

I started doing this thing where I made my order tickets insane and abrasive. I would walk into the kitchen and slam the ticket down on the prep counter and walk out. There were only five or six of us working there so we were all friends and of course they knew I was joking. But anyway I took pictures of them for awhile and here they are (I accidentally spelled “burrito” wrong in the fourth one):

i don’t know what sort of deranged individual would ever have children with me, but i will say this: i would rather have ten daughters before i ever had one son

it’s matt stites!