Freya called me from her father’s farm outside Copenhagen . . . we spoke for three whole hours. She insisted it be a video call. I relented. My hair was wild and I was hidden behind blackout curtains in my shadowy apartment, while Freya glowed beneath the Danish sun near a building she said formally housed horses. She told me she’s in Europe for a month. I said: “Freya, for God’s sake, you got to come to Berlin . . .” and 24 hours later she was trapped inside a bus and barreling through Germany, including Berlin, to get to the Czech Republic. And yet she could not stop here . . . she had to get to some rural village to visit her great-grandmother’s house. Or anyway, I think that’s what she said . . .

My sister and I are meeting our cousin Jack in Austria next week, and then I’m going to Italy with Bex and Nicole the week after that . . . but I have got to figure out a way to see Freya before she goes back to Rochester. I have not seen her since I was there a couple years ago, having come down from Toronto and Buffalo (where, as usual, I was interrogated at the US border). I began writing about that trip from my hotel room in downtown Rochester as it was unfolding but never finished it. As I recall, I was experiencing a sort of nervous breakdown for reasons that had nothing to do with Rochester.

HOWEVER . . .

I can see that I uploaded some photos I took back then, ones where Freya happily indulged my grandmotherly instinct to have her pose for pictures all over town (lol):

And here’s us at some fancy-ish bar:

How Tim Burton has not yet discovered Freya, I know not.

I believe my nervous breakdown began after I left Freya that night. I never told her so. It was well below freezing outside but I insisted on amplifying my misery by walking all the way back to my hotel, which was at least two miles away. The sidewalks were slicked with a sheet of rock-hard ice about three inches thick. It was a precarious situation. I think secretly I hoped something would kill me. And yet I live. Listen: no one has ever accused me of being a sensible person . . .

ANYWAY . . .

I’ve known Freya for nearly a decade. We met at the Fairyland sign in Oakland and for whatever reason, she trusted me immediately. I can’t really think of anyone else quite like her. I told her that on the phone. I said also, almost as a lark: “Freya, if you’re not doing anything in a year, do you wanna get married or something?” She did not say no. At her behest, we then spent an hour listing off all the pros and cons about ourselves to each other, and decided that taken altogether, it’d probably work.

I told her one of my cons is that I’m just smart enough to know how dumb I am, which is one of the worst psychic pains I know. However, this did not seem to bother her.

Thing is, we’ve both been emotionally annihilated too many times now. It can really wear on you, especially when, year after year, you keep discovering new ways someone can hurt you. You think you’ve been hurt in all the ways a person can be hurt, and then here comes some new unknown terror. I don’t like it. So why bother searching the wild world for a stranger who would, in all likelihood, just as soon leave you bleeding to death on the side of the road? I mean, here I am, and here’s Freya. Why not?? I’ll take good care of her, here at the end of all things.

MEANWHILE . . .

A thin beam of sunlight cut through my red velvet blackout curtains and shone upon my exposed forearm, which then began to smoke. And so saying: I need to close the curtains tightly and then eat a handful of valerian root and magnesium to hopefully sedate my malfunctioning body into a mild coma.

And if that doesn’t work? . . .