davidgould101

01:41 pm: Friends like these . . .
Bryce, quit fooling around man. If you're out there, get in touch. It's not like you to ignore my phone calls (and texts and etc.). That's like me. Don't be like me, buddy!

Whatever it is you were looking for in LA, I hope you found it. And I hope, whatever it was (animal, mineral, vegetable, or chemical) that you didn't lose yourself in it. Only one of us should get lost per year. That's got to be re-written into our friend charter.

In other news, I got finished copies of the book today. It looks good. It feels good. Well, scratch that -- it feels weird. But it's nice to see my name in big type as if someone might think it's important. The cover is good too. Book tour coming up. Questions to answer. Answers to question. The big rollercoaster starts again.

Seriously, dude. The tour gets to LA this fall. I'd better see you there. I don't like being worried. But even Amy is worried this time.

Oh, and Lo -- if you read this, please call. I don't have your number. I need to know the big fellow is ok!

02:55 am: Get More Lost
Sometimes -- on nights like tonight when I'm so drunk/stoned/high/gone that I feel like I'm looking at the city from above like a game board and I know all my moves in advance -- I like to think about the way I was before this summer, before I started going out, before I started living like this. And really, what I like to think is that I was pathetic -- sitting at home, always pining for something or other, always complaining. Living like an old person in these last few years of youth that I have left.

Living here and ignoring the nighttime is like going to a movie with a blindfold on -- what's the point? There are so many women, so many bars, so many songs, so many mistakes. What's the point of worrying about things before you've done them? Go, go, go. Hangovers are for tomorrows, and if you never stop, you never have to reach tomorrow.

Tonight I DJed again at a bar on the LES -- one of those secret ones that doesn't have a name or a sign. Free drinks and free phone numbers. Making out with girls in the bathroom whose names I never caught. Soundtracking my own descent.

I never could have had any of this before. It never could have happened. If I ran into the me I used to be on the subway -- before any of this, before the drinking and the drugging and the DJing, before shre left -- I doubt I'd ever recognize him. He'd be introverted, sad, pale, and disappearing. And if he stopped me to chat I know what I'd say to him: Everything is terrific. Everything is free. Everything is finally happening.

Is it possible to be having the time of your life and not remember any of it the next day?

12:25 am: Mr. Superlove Strikes Out
There are 5 empty Sapporo bottles on my desk right now and I'm playing the Afghan Whigs on my headphones so loudly that I'm afraid I'm going to start forgetting key parts of my childhood (or, worse, my subconscious might start forgetting the tiny little tricks that I don't usually have to remind it to do: like breathing, heartbeating, and regretting). I wish I could tell you that there were more things spread out on my desk -- cigarette butts, perhaps, or a giant Def Leppard novelty mirror streaked with female fingerprints and white residue -- but I would be lying. Not that you'd have any way of knowing for sure. So let's agree to leave things vague. Vague seems to work for me.

I tried to write again tonight but it wasn't the right sort of writing. I have higher wordcounts in most emails I send than I do in my actual "work" file. This was a story -- or at least I think it was a story -- something I've been trying to write since college. It's about a guy -- a writer, a romantic, a bored idiot a lot like me, really -- who lives all alone in Brooklyn, grieving the death of his girlfriend. And then a ghost shows up, an immaculately dressed Japanese guy who doesn't do much but smoke Lucky Strikes and listen to the main character's CDs with him. It's sort of a weird idea really -- this idea that we're haunted not by the ones we miss but by the ones we need -- but there's something to it. Maybe I'll start posting it on here. Maybe not.

And yes I know: it doesn't take a psychiatric degree to point out the deep-seeded problems in a seriously girlfriended twentysomething writing a short story featuring a dead girlfriend.

Words have a stupid way of coming true. At least figuratively.

It's been almost three weeks. I'm running out of parties to (not) go to, people to (not) meet.

I'm terribly thirsty. I'm terribly overdramatic.

Happy birthday to me.