The Russian Girl did not end up killing me the other night, but she did take this picture of me next to a lake in Grunewald. She also gave me a Marlboro Red, which I smoked out of my little plastic Hunter S. Thompson filter I always keep in my right breast pocket for some reason. (The reason is that I’m an embarrassing loser.)

Something happened to me about two hours later. It happened entirely in my mind. I was sitting with The Russian Girl in a park in Charlottenberg, and I felt what you might call ego death, even though I was stone-cold sober. It was a horrible feeling . . . like an absolute loathing or revulsion for everything. Some French philosophers might call this THE NAUSEA. Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out how to explain exactly what it is I felt, but I didn’t like it so much. It’s been difficult for me to really do anything since then to be honest. Which is to say I’m still feeling the hangover effect of it. I’m so exhausted and sad. I wonder what you’re supposed to do about that when everything else stops working . . .