North on Mills Avenue

We're all taking off our clothes. We're all sitting around talking about it over coffee. It's all very straightforward. The nurse has left for the day and she won't be coming back for months, she'll be watching television balancing a Mike's Hard on her stomach while her cats slowly starve underneath her bed. My best friends are waiting in car. Carlo Marx doesn't give a shit about any of this. He's got someplace to be.

Not everything has lost its novelty. There are a few parts of all of you I haven't discovered yet, right down to your collared necks, your hairpins, your odd striped sweaters. I don't want to know what you're reading or why you're covering your mouth like some sort of perpetual yawn, because there are more interesting things to see. See, we do it all over again with different names and maybe more or less facial hair, but nothing's really changed, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

The nurse left a note on the door, as she usually does. This time it reads: "WELL, WHERE ARE YOU? I DEMAND ANSWERS TOO." Her letters are huge and hurried.

Farewell to the most fucking bizarre year of my life. It ended nicely and I will start right up again. The bottles in the vending machine will never run out. I'm turning it all over like engines in my mind. I'm letting myself think about it for a little while.