Unless I am sitting on my balcony or taking out the trash, I generally never leave my apartment building before six or seven in the evening. I can think of only a few times in the past six months that I did anything outside during the day, and almost all of those rare daytime sightings were me doing Official Business or else getting an old filling replaced at my dentist’s office. If I can help it, I always go out at night . . . what can I say: I’m a Nighttime Guy.

And yet lately even going out at night feels oppressive to me on account of there being PEOPLE out there. At sundown I walked to the grocery store to get some fruit, and I felt this intense desire to be completely invisible. It is not as though I walk around thinking everyone is looking at me, but if I did happen to make eye contact with someone sitting outside a cafe or walking their dog across the street, I felt this intense dread grow inside me. I remember during the pandemic Laura had said she wished she could just wear a mask forever because she never wants to be perceived. I get that. I think I have been so alone for so long now that I have accidentally developed a thing you might say is a cousin to agoraphobia. I am not afraid of crowds or groups of people, I just don’t wanna be around them . . .

Still: it is good then that I am flying to the US in two weeks so that I do not become a permanent invalid in that way. There I will be traveling around and staying with my friends again, and thus it will not be possible for me to go on in this sad way. I feel as though I am too young to completely shut myself away from the whole wide world and all of God’s little creatures who walk upon it . . . if I live long enough, I suppose such a thing is an inevitability. But while I still have the song in me, I ought to at least bear witness to it all, whatever it is . . .

This is how I have been doing it: for the now third year in a row, I leave Europe towards the end of August and go to the East Coast. Using all modes of transportation available to a fine American like myself, I travel from one city to the next, from coast to coast, staying in as many safehouses as I can along the way. Since I am a beloved celebrity with millions of fans all over the world, I always have a place to sleep. I carry on in this way for about six months, until I miss solitude and my own bed and my own bathtub and getting stoned and watching movies every night at midnight on my own couch, and then I fly back to Berlin to be a friendless loser again. So in exchange for half a year of relative discomfort and very little privacy, I get an all-you-can-eat buffet of Hanging Out and Remembering That Life Can Be Beautiful. This cycle seems to sustain me . . . I fear the day it stops working!

Many years ago now, when I first read A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES and the whole sad history behind it, I came to identify with the doomed author John Kennedy Toole . . . I even visited his grave in New Orleans once, may he rest in peace. But I always remember the quote from one of his close friends:

Ken Toole was a strange person. He was extroverted and private. And that’s very difficult. He had a strong . . . desire to be recognized . . . but also a strong sense of alienation. . . .

This is how I have always felt, that I’m both extroverted and private. And it is difficult to have this strong urge to be around people and also to be alone. If there is a simple solution to overcome being this type of person, I am sure I don’t know it. For now I shall balance my humours, shall drive off the spleen and regulate the circulation, by living as the snake which eats its own tail. I SHALL VACILLATE BETWEEN TWO EXTREMES OF LIVING, HAVING NO HOME BETWEEN THEM, TO STAVE OFF RUIN AND DESPAIR . . . Oh! if only I could have it all! Too bad the particulars of my godforsaken illness necessitate getting on an airplane and flying to the other side of the fuckin planet in order to keep the noose from my neck!

Maybe you all think I’m joking when I post screenshots of Leo from THE AVIATOR where he, as Howard Hughes, has locked himself in a movie theater to watch movies all day for six months while slowly going completely insane, and my saying, “This is me.” I mean . . . it ain’t exactly untrue. And now my own solitary lifestyle reminds me of the scene from Warren Beatty’s underrated masterpiece RULES DON’T APPLY, where my dad Warren Beatty, as an elderly Howard Hughes, reveals himself to be controlling his vast empire in seclusion from behind a curtain in a hotel room, not unlike the Wizard of Oz:

Sorry, but this is also me. I recently even thought about building a bed desk like that before abandoning the idea, believing that it would only encourage my terminal loneliness. And anyway, I’m leaving soon . . . I won’t see my bed again until winter, if we as a species even make it that long . . .

It is three in the morning and I’m going to make coffee and watch a movie. I took a gummy about an hour ago AND THUS I sail upon its cosmic winds. Tonight I am not alone on account of I am once again the guardian of my nephew young Gego the cat. Look at this deadbeat:

When my friend Isabella / Gego’s mom brought him over last night, she said he started freaking out from inside his carrier as soon as they entered the building, and him trying to escape to climb the stairs himself. He knew where he was! He knew he was in the high tower of his old friend Ryan. When he was set free in my living room, he immediately went around the room rubbing his head on all my furniture in order to strengthen his own lingering scent from the last time. I like having Gego here because it’s always a good day when you’re with a cat. We talk to each other and sometimes he sleeps next to me. His presence reminds me that an outside world exists, and that time is flowing . . . without him, I often feel I am living alone in a space station and no one is coming to take me back to Earth. You can only endure that sort of dread and loneliness for so long or else it does irreversible damage. If you want to know how that damage manifests itself in a living organism, you need only endure my company for five minutes (lol)~