 I'm going to read just a tiny bit from my novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly. Since it's a nonlinear novel, you'll know everything that's going on. A survey for the world. What do you think is making those scratching noises in my walls? Is it pigeons or rats, cats, mice, lice, rice, dice, or a floatation device? If it's rats or pigeons, well, we already know all about that. If it's cats, I hope they're not rabid. If it's mice, same old story. If it's rice, then when am I getting married? If it's dice, what's my lucky number? If my lucky number is seven, isn't that a cliche? And what do I win anyway? Decompression advice. I go to the Nob Hill Theater and eat more cum. It tastes good, but afterwards my throat feels raw and I start worrying about STDs again. Welcome back to gay life. This new going-to-bed-at 7 a.m. schedule is not working. All day long, I feel like I'm drifting inside of a wall. Chrissy wants to come over and cook a stir-fry. Sure, why not? This isn't show when I actually end up going to bed by 3. Of course, I'm awake at 9 a.m., ready to start a macrobiotic hair salon. I eat toast, get back in bed to wait for funding. At 10 a.m., I'm still awake, but more desperate. I get up to look at a postcard of the sea lions. They just sleep in any position at all. I take part of a sleeping pill, get back in bed for another hour of pounding on heavens. Or wait, it's knock knock knock in. Fuck it, just let me in. I swear I'll even become a Transaction Documentation Specialist. Or a hedge funds advisor. Or a Louis Vuitton attaché. Or just strange and blasé. Touche. Eutré. I get a few hours where I'm looking straight up at bright lights and thinking, how can I be dreaming when there's so much light? Aaron tells me there's a new anti-depressant coming out this summer. He figures he can ride out the paxil withdrawal long enough to try it, but not until after his mother visits. Rue tells his therapist he's having trouble staying awake for more than a few hours and the therapist gives him another bagastrotera, the new ADD medicine. I wonder if that's the same one they give US fighter pilots to stay up and shoot Iraqis. Here's what my life has come to. I need to get curtains so that I don't see the sun rising before I go to bed. Rue and I go to Jefferson Park to watch the sunset. It's pretty, but the five-block walk wears us both out. My back feels like it's going to crack off, and then there's no possible way to sit on the bench without hurting everything. We try sitting in the grass, but then my back hurts even more because there's nowhere to lean. Rue's day is coming to an end. 9 p.m. is almost bedtime, but I got up at 4. There's a state police officer patrolling the park to make sure no one's sleeping there. When we get back to my house, my whole neck hurts like I have bruises right up against the cartilage. Rallo says he had a trick last night, and it was like a whole year of working at Wells Fargo. Some tweaker who inherited his house from a cop who died of cancer and the tweaker needed to reinstall windows on his computer, which took six hours, and he was sweating so much that there were puddles on the floor and the dogs were licking it up. These were the dogs that the dead cop made his friend promise he'd take care of, but that was before he was dead. In the morning, the trick's shooting up. Vitamin C. He keeps saying over the course of the 12 romantic hours he and Rallo spend together in the sweat-drenched sheets of mystic memory. Wait, isn't that Meryl Streep over there and out of Africa? But don't get distracted. The trick's just doing Rallo a favor. That's what he keeps saying. News from the laboratory. Paxil might not work for children. News from the Southern Baptist Church. When you have a big tent with all different kinds of people in it, sometimes the tent collapses. News from Rallo. The cruising bathrooms at Macy's aren't as crowded as they used to be. News from the army. A new and improved battlefront uniform. Hits the racks in stores early next year. News from the hallway. Did you order pizza? News from the garbage chute. There are smart pigeons hanging out in the stairwell, and when I walk in, they fly right out the crack in the window. Benjamin visits the sea lions with her new boyfriend. Somehow I can't really picture that. She says, it was really beautiful. Well, actually, it was really beautiful seeing the way he reacted. The new mattress arrives, and I swear it's already caving in. Maybe it's some sort of scam. Selling caved-in mattresses to faggots with body drama. At least it's softer. What is this headache taking over both sides of my head like high-pressure headphones with sand blaster attached? I finally catch someone walking through the demolished building next door. I always suspected that it happened, but I never actually saw anyone doing it. I see this person because of their flashlight. They're looking for something and not finding it.