Guys, I am really worried. As those closest to me know, I am fairly particular about what medications I allow in my body. Because I rarely take anything, something as minuscule as two ibuprofen or acetaminophen are actually very effective in helping me manage pain.

Today, I accidentally ingested FOUR BREATH MINTS at once. Spearmint ones. I know that I should probably seek out a desirologist, but can anyone on my friends list advise me on how long before it is safe to kiss someone with this high level of sugar-free sorbitol inside me?

Please don't lecture me on responsible mint use, this was an isolated incident and not reflective of my usually responsible breath regimen

I wasn't sure if this guy in the store was weirdly flirting with me or whether he was just really high.

Then he spent a couple of minutes talking about how much easier it would be to wander around the store if we flipped it upside down and let people walk on the ceiling.

I'm not saying I know for sure if he was high, I'm just saying that I no longer cared if he was flirting with me.

Random Idiot (not giving them credit even for being a loiterer): I wish you'd told me you wanted to buy comics when we were in JP. You shouldn't shop here.

Idiot's Friend: Why not? I shop here all the time.

RI: It's super corporate.

IF: What?

Me: I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt but this store is about as anti-corporate as you can get.

RI; No. It's owned by Wal-Mart.

IF laughs uproariously.

RI: It IS though.

Me: No. It's owned by a guy named Tony. He works in the store three days a week, you can meet him if you'd like. I assure you he does NOT work for Wal-Mart.

IF still laughing: Wal-Mart?

RI: One of my friends totally told me this was the Wal-mart of comics.

Me: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that's not us. I've heard some people say that about th place down the block because they're a chain. And they ARE a chain but they are totally not Wal-Mart. They are also owned by a pair of local guys. I don't think you can accurately call them corporate but I get why some people might accuse them. But us? We don't have uniforms, time clocks, a staff training manual. We're not corporate.

RI: But, like, are you sure you're not owned by Wal-Mart.

Me: I am SO certain that none of the comic book stores in Massachusetts are in any way associated with Wal-Mart.

IF still laughing: This is like that time you tried to convince me that The Garment District was run by Urban Outfitters. You need to stop smoking all that weed and listening to your idiot friends.

RI: Shut UP. They MIGHT be owned by Urban Outfitters. You don't know everything, Jason.

Me: I think you should listen to Jason.

They walk around for a bit, Jason occasionally laughing, RI scowling.

RI: OMG the new Lumberjanes! I'm going to buy it!

Me: Sorry, it doesn't come out until Wednesday. All the comics on that table are just out so I can count them and get them ready to put in subscribers' folders tomorrow.

RI: But you can sell it to me, right?

Me: Nope. Not until tomorrow. Sorry.

RI: But I want it. I'll just take it and leave three dollars on the counter, it won't be a thing.

Me: It will. It will be a stealing thing. Sorry, you can't get it until Tomorrow.

RI: This place sucks.

IF: Yea, totally. Want to wait for me at Peet's?

RI: Fine.

I resist mentioning that Peet's is TOTALLY a corporation and would probably be considered the Wal-Mart of coffeehouses if Starbuck's didn't exist.

IF: I am SO sorry. She's just really high right now.

Me: That's fine.

IF: For real, though, how much do I have to pay you to get that copy of Lumberjanes?

I woke up on Saturday to the same waist-high pile of snow that everyone else in Boston did.  I threw on my hat and gloves, picked up my shovel, and began digging out.  All around me, neighbors were digging.  Mostly it was three or four people with shovels taking care of the spot in front of their house, and their driveway.  I live in a corner house, and thus, had to dig out the front porch, the front walkway, the street in front of the house, the street to the left of the house, and the back porch.  No big.

Everyone in the neighborhood appeared to have woken up at the same time.  adults were digging, children were fwomping in the snow piles, plows were clearing out parking lots, and across the street, the group of guys who smoke so much weed that when I open the windows, you can smell it in my living room, were sitting on their porch (which was still covered in snow), drinking, and watching everyone else dig.

Because the top foot and half or so of snow was the nice powdery kind, it only took me about an hour and a half to dig all the way from front door to the back.  Adults were still shoveling, kids were still fwomping, and the guys across the street appeared to be laughing (I had headphones on).  As I headed back around the house toward the front door, I saw them waving at me.

I walked across the street, pulling out my earbuds.

"Hey, man."  said the most drunk/stoned looking one.  "Can you dig out our car?"

I laughed because, of course, they’re kidding, and being high and neighborly.

"No, for real." said the one who walks out to the street at 2 AM to talk to people who drive by the house.  I’m sure he’s just complimenting people on their rides and not selling them any of the copious amounts of weed that he burns…for warmth.  "We’ll give you ten bucks."

I laughed again.  ”A hundred.”

Two laughed.  The one who offered me ten bucks did not.  ”Ten bucks.”

I shook my head.  ”I sold my car when I moved to Boston so I wouldn’t have to deal with parking or snow emergencies.  And I don’t need ten dollars.  Try one of the kids that lives” and, here, I had to look up and down the street because I had no idea where the kids in the neighborhood lived, “there.”

The dude stared at me.  ”I asked you.”

"I said no."  I laughed.  "Good luck."  And I put my headphones back in, and walked back toward my house.  My headphones are the lovely, noise-canceling variety, so, while I could see he was still talking to me, I have no idea what he was saying.  I’m guessing it wasn’t "Have a nice day."

As of this morning, his car was still completely covered in the, now wet and therefore impossible to shovel, snow.

Last night, on my way home from work, I was on the T, properly headphoned, when I noticed a person appeared to be talking in my direction. I removed my headphones, but the T was making the same noise peacocks make when they catch their wings in a paper shredder halfway through their Diamanda Galas medley, so I couldn’t hear him.

I moved closer to him, and he pulled a joint out from behind his ear and said “I just need to go somewhere and bang tonight.”

"Hang?" I asked.

"Bang." He smiled.

I then moved further away from him, and decided to get off a stop early and go grocery shopping. He did not follow.

Kid: Look, Dad, they’ve got a Wolverine #1.

Dad: *Sigh* Yea, I had the full set of Wolverine when I was in college, but I sold it for heroin and ramen noodles.

Kid: What?

Dad: Don’t do drugs.

Yes, I'm vanishing. Yes, life is more complicated than explaining calculus to someone who doesn't speak the same language as you. Yes, Asscat scratched the blood out of my hand last night. Yes, taking three hits of acid on your first time is an incredibly stupid idea.  Yes, I'm fine now, thanks for not asking.  When Ben asked me to feed Rufus while he went back to New York, he said "And this time, I promise the power won't go out." 

Celeste, who I called to keep me company while Lissabelle torments Ben, smiles at me through thirty-seven coats of lipgloss. "The whole arrangement is just decidedly weird." Ben and Lissabelle are in his apartment, packing, unpacking, repacking for their return trip.  The acid was so good, Ben's going back to buy one hundred hits. Celeste and I are in the hallway, passing one of Ben's Gauloises between us. 

I inhale and then try to flick the cigarette, but the filter catches under my nail. "How so?" Twitchingly. 

"Well...." And I hate the way that word hangs between us, as though I'm going to tell you something you already know, but don't really want to hear right now is sandwiched between the e and the first l. And I know what she's trying to say, it's weird how I met and fell in love with Ben so quickly, and then unceremoniously moved into his apartment, even though he doesn't really love me. And it's weird how Ben, who doesn't love me, and who hasn't even known me for very long would let me move in with him. "You know, the whole, uh...living situation." 

I know. 

In the reflection of Celeste's lip gloss, I see Ben open the door. "Hey, hun, you're gonna want to get your shit off my bed, because everything that's on my bed in three minutes, gets put in my bag and taken to New York." 

I head into the apartment, collect the notebooks Celeste and I have been writing in, place them on the piano, and then lay across his bed. 

"No. I'm not taking you. Nice try." He pushes me off the bed, and begins throwing things from the bed into his bag. "Oh, check these out." He picks up a pair of argyle knee socks. 

"Hot." I say, because they are. 

"You are sooooo gay." Lissabelle says. And I'm not sure whether she's talking to me or Ben. Sure, Ben is the one who has pink hair, eyeliner, and knee socks, but I'm the one who's attracted to him. 

"He didn't used to be gay." Celeste says. So they're talking about me. "You know, apart from the whole sleeping with men thing." 

I should be saying something clever and catty, but I have been abusing my brain and body for the past week or so, and they are both decidedly unhappy with me. 

"Fascinating as your socks are," Lissabelle says, "we are way late right now, so you need to pack so we can get out of here." 

"Bitch, we're only late because you forgot to pack." Ben says, fluffing his hair. "So, no more from you. Shhhh. Shhhh." 

And then they are packed and gone. And it is Celeste and I alone in Ben's apartment. She is standing in front of the mirror, "Adam, do my lips look puffy?" 

"No." They look varnished like the hardwood floor in a sports arena, but they don't look puffy. 

"Ok." But she continues to look at her face in the mirror. This is Ben's apartment. There are mirrors everywhere. "We should go out for a walk. Moving would be really good." 

Yes, yes it would. "Where should we go?" 

"Outside." 

So we head out to the streets of Allston, where the colors are vivid and the wind is a word I can't come up with. We don't go anywhere exciting. An ATM and the ice cream shop. Then we are back in the apartment, and it is time for Celeste to go home. "Bye, Adam. See you later." And she smiles, again. I can see myself in her lips, alone in Ben's apartment, looking at the calendar, trying to figure out how long it will be before Ben comes home.

I am Contrast. Do gooder nice guy does what told.  Folds blankets for sleeping guests.  Buys presents for friends and loves and loves and would do anything for and is supremely talkative.  Give me a topic and yes, I'll listen too.  Tell me a story.  That's fabulous.  I love you but don't you piss me off.  I disappear.  Give me a new haircut and I'll be silent forever.  You can give away everything I don't own.  I'm a packrat who doesn't care anymore.  Take everything.  We'll call it even but it's not balanced and certainly not fair. I'm a flying fish on land with a papercut tongue. Come kiss me. 

It's morning and I wake up alone in a haunt of ghosts. I wronged that one and that one and that one and that one, but that one took off in the night with my discman and the last fleck of trust, that one strapped wings on my back, kicked me, and had the nerve to act pissed when I flew away, and that one is Princess Thundercloud and she wouldn't have been happy if I hadn't left her crying. 

I part my ghosts with morning breath and mint leaves. Stand still. Let the room cross me. I want and am wanted and am wanted dead. 

This is every morning before I go to sleep. I can't sleep for all the dreams and guilt I'm not having. Fuck you all, I'm sorry. 

I can't even decide whether to use punctuation today. It's noon now and so dark outside I am snowblind. 

Celeste is having a party. It's not her birthday or Halloween, but it is somewhere between and around both. I have forgotten we are supposed to dress up naked insecurity costumes. And when she reminds me, I have no clue what I will be but instinctively know it will be conflicted like my determination to be something but my resingedness as to what. 

I spend my day laying on this bed that isn't mine running around town collecting ideas and ending up with nothing. I don't want to go to a party, I want to be alone with all these ghosts figuring out who is who and then blending them all into some forgettable mass and flinging them from the apartment. I want to be surrounded by people who love me and will tell me I'm imperfect and kiss me on the flaw and say fuck you don't leave me ever. 

I am Contrast but this is a gray day. I don't know where my thoughts begin or end or rest comfortably in the middle drifting off and around but still tethered to my vagrant mind. This is a gray day and I want something immediately but I don't know what it is except not gray. 

Color comes home. Rather, Color comes to his home and I am already here. "We'll go as ourselves" he says and the floor turns luminous wood wherever he stands. The mirror explodes. And this apartment is vibrant and alive and humming electric and I think the whole world must be reacting to him and everything beauty and everything colorful but outside is still gray and wet and we have three hours until the party. 

Color says "Paint me." And I am Contrast. He is feeling creative so I am flat piece of wood without texture or design. I paint because he wants me to and the colors on his arm clash brilliantly like him and my perception of him and me and my perception of myself. His arm is bright green dark blue painful yellow soothing purple and then fleck red and spit orange and he is blissfully unhappy with the results. The party is two hours away and we start over. River of purple splotches of yellow red leaves footprints like a soccer player in a marshmallow field and there are other colors there I can't name but can paint and yes that's it entirely. Color is acid and giggly. I adore Color but stay gray until I look myself in the mirror. I am Contrast I see things in contrast. My face whitens with black lines sectioning things off the part of my hair I like turns black the rest white and my hands only comfortable when cracking knuckles paint themselves in contrast but not really color. Soon I'm wearing a coat and it appears that wings have sprouted from my back but more likely I pulled them off someone else and tied them around my body. My wings are black. Color's are white. So we are both contrasting, but we are not both colorful. 

We are late to the party and giggly and depressed and frantically apathetic about being late. The outside gray has turned darker but still gray and it is of course raining and I envision all the color in his face and hair and arms swimming away from him and my contrast sludging into this gray day night. We make tepid jokes and Color says "I think I like you most because you're decidedly not crazy though everything in your life right now is." 

I say "It's because I've grown to realize that I'm never going to be stable if I keep reacting to things around me so I just stopped reacting outwardly and now I seem serene though really what the fuck am I doing with my life?" As if to explicate this, a car passes too close splashes water all over me but it is raining anyway so what the fuck do I care if I get any wetter I just keep walking and spouting philosophy about how happy I am these days but really I'm so full of shit that I'm wasting away to nothing.

I'm standing outside of The Anorexic, waiting for Ben, who is half an hour late, to show up.  On my way here, I ran into a poetry acquaintance who'd recorded one of my spoken word shows a few months before.  While most of the tracks are fairly mecentric, there's a couple of tracks I did with Ben, Celeste, and Wiz.  I am in the midst of listening to Ben sing, via my headphones, when my cellphone rings.  "You need to come home right away."  He says.  "The cat is pink." 

I go home to his apartment right away.  Sure enough, Rufus the Asscat is pink.  "It's an organic, non-poisonous hair dye."  Ben's friend, who is sporting blue hair, says.  Ben's hair is green.  Ben's other friend's hair matches Asscat's fur. 

"So, is this a good trip?"  I ask Ben. 

"Oh, yes!"  All three of them say at once. 

"Great.  I'm gonna get some Cherry Coke."  And when I open the refrigerator, in the place where my Cherry Coke usually sits, is my industrial sized stapler.  "Why is my stapler in the fridge?" 

"Oh, the places it has been."  Blue hair says. 

Pink hair chimes in, "The things it has stapled." 

"You really have to try some of this."  Ben says.  "We each took just one hit.  It took a while to kick in, but it's...I mean, wow." 

So I open up the freezer, and take out one of the sugar cubes.  And, what the hell, I have a high tolerance, I pull out another one and suck them both into nothingness.  I open a box of Cheez-Itz while the three already high members of the room torment the cat. 

"Cheez-Itz?"  Ben inquires.  "Might I have some."  And he swoops a monstrous hand full of Cheez-Itz and begins slowly crunching them.  "It's like I'm crushing entire civilizations with my mouth.  Desert civilizations.  These Cheez-Itz taste like sand.  Delicious, delicious sand." 

I laugh, and begin to pet Asscat, who has wandered away from the freak contingency, and has approached me for, perhaps, solace.  I take a sip of Cherry Coke, put it down, pet Asscat, then go to pick the bottle up again.  It's not there.  It's not anywhere near me on the floor. 

"It's on top of the bookshelf."  Blue hair laughs. 

"Oh, the places it's gone." Ben says. 

And I"m not sure if what he's saying is funny, but I laugh anyway, because the cat is pink, and my stapler should, perhaps, be writing postcards, and I'm starting to think maybe this is acid is hitting me just a little bit faster than I thought it would. 

"Ben?"  Ben, the cat is pink. You've turned safety light green and god I want to touch your hair. Your friends are blue and neanderthal. please help me Ben help me please I shouldn't have taken two tabs at once. Everything was fine until the lights came on and Ben, the fucken cat looks pink to me. 

"What?" He asks. 

Ben, your Neanderthal friend tripping face and talking close needs to leave, but the door is a jar of mayonnaise that I can't open with arthritic hands. 

"I'm gonna go to the Sleven.  The Sleven.  The Seveneeeeleven.  Do you want anything?" 

"Yes." 

Ben, help me please me help I love this feeling of shifting time and rubbing the little Communist cat under your bed but I have to get out of the room and away from your friend and get cigarettes for you because stop waving me away I love you and the room keeps shifting and the cat is pink and Neanderthal. and I am hungry and thirsty still can't find missing Cherry Coke so off I go to the inconvenience store and maybe also get cigarettes 

"Ben."  I say, hugging myself in the elevator.  I put my headphones on, and start listening to the track I recorded with Ben and Wiz.  "Ben."  I say. 

Ben, the man in front of me in line is trying to buy cigarettes with a pile of nickles. The agitated man behind the counter scratching dandruff over counter waves me over because he probably thinks I am in a hurry but the thing is I am swimming and forgot cigarettes, left the store with more Cheez-Itz and Cherry Coke and some sort of god it was awesome candy bar. 

Ben, if the opportunity ever comes to do two tabs of acid, go outside on a cold autumn night, and listen to a CD of yourself performing a poem about schizophrenia, take it. It was so awesome I forgot how to chew. 

When I get back to the apartment, everyone is either asleep or not there anymore or both.  I make my way over to my van seat, flop down on it and stare at him.  At some point I heard myself whispering "Ben, help me.  Please.  Ben." 

Ben, when your Neanderthal friend left us it was it was it was time is broken and sometime morning and I was in the bathroom making faces in the mirror. How could you ever love someone so ugly? And morning is coming and light and I look ugly in light but it's dark and I could kiss you now but won't because that would be ugly and imperfect and instead I go to the freezer and take out a third sugar cube and mmmmmmmmm gone. 

Ben, in retrospect, the third hit was a bad idea. 

The wall over Ben's bed has the costume angel of death that I'm supposed to wear to Celeste's party on the left side, a poster of a beautiful boy with the word Never written all over it on the right side, and inbetween is a gigantic American flag. I am seizing angel of death side and Ben is never and beautiful and America is the bed between us. And Ben, wake up, don't let Safey trip lonely no more. When you're awake everything smile fuzzy and petting pretty poor pink Asscat under your bed and everything mostly okay moving furniture compulsive cleaning Ben continuing to tackle the ever expanding mess of my life and we were all awake together and "Wake up please Ben wake up I'm lonely" Ben is sleeping America. Can't wake him because Safey, Ben needs to be sleeping now, has ten a.m. job up by seven shower smile dress hello wash out green hair cat isn't pink Good Morning This is Ben how may I help you? 

Ben, I really hope you were sleeping when my face went all "Please me Ben help please me."Fear and Loathing and breath seizing cracking fear out of joints and the hallway beckoned and I answered and why aren't you looking for me? 

Ben, these Cheez-Itz taste like sand. 

Ben, I don't think I've ever articulated how much your Never poster scares the fuck out of me. I stare at him and dark angel and the clouds are advancing morning purple and bright eyes and it's cold here and the clouds platoon of dreams that will never rain fruition advance and unfuck clouds and unfuck you getting up for work but I won't let you oversleep I'm a responsible friend waving and never oversleeping and never sleeping and never scares me Ben. 

I get off the van seat, all twitchy and stoplight.  I've got a notebook on the desk, which I pick up and start writing in.  Blue ink overlaps red ink.  And there is no time to process.  See, some mornings the pen moves so fast it bends to your will bleeding words and those are the good mornings when the radiator only clinks when it's time to get up and the neighbors don't mind the singing but would you mind so terribly much turning down the volume of your dreams And words and thoughts sometimes get lost in the margins of notebooks Well to make a proper omelot you must first lean to crack, then collect the best that remains scramble scramble add some ham salsa tomato bacon where are my fingers? this pen is so shiny right now and yes i could return to help me Ben please but that's so overlydependentgay and my voice is lower scramble scramble voila ohmlet omlit Omelet is not an early morning word Who on Earth would invent a breakfast word so imfuckenpossible to spell Unfuck not being able to spell Awmlette egg dish within which other things are folded I may not be able to spell you but I can spell desideras and omniscient and other words that are way more important than some stupid breakfast words This is why I only eat sane people things for breakfast like Lobster Benedict which turns lobster in your stomach and he's never loved you 

Ben, every time I close my eyes the room goes precise and geometric patterns of darkness and never angel and someone is screaming perfectly ordered someone is screaming and I think it's me the most horrific gyroscope ever 

Ben, see that meteor coming toward Earth? See how it's shaped like your face and smiling? 

Ben, the third hit, on my all time list of good ideas, not so much on it. That third hit is Elvis. Clarissa. Arifuckenzona.  Your beautiful pink cat has been tethering me sane for broken time now and he thinks my writing of this journal is bad and he keeps knocking it out of my hands as though this book were responsible for rancid farts, Jimmy Fallon movies, the Serbian genocide, and holding his cat mother hostage and doing unspeakable non-cat things to her 

Ben, the colors of this morning are roof worthy and decidedly matching this book and ink and even the cat Brava If every morning were so youtiful and vivid I'd be a morning alarm not necessarily clock morning person gazing out on Allston at first light watching college urchins and homeless students and vagrant businessmen knowing my morning even alone without you caring is so much more Interesting and worth living than theirs and this is not the greatest place in the world to say kiss me but please do it will stop me making silly scary mirror faces while you sleep 

Ben, beautiful green safety traffic light hair go gently into this no doubt for you seizure inducing i'm sorry day 

Ben, writing loud again no good music Safey think like vacuum and every stupid and every honest and every insafemode line and love line and frustration is sand The real geometry is smiling while your face melts 

I hope this wears off soon I'm losing my language and i can't kiss him figure out how best to kiss him get over this and his sweaterfish is breathing on the desk while he is sleeping quietly and the pink cat is licking my feet and the chirruping where's the chirruping coming from oh yes alarm 

Ben, if this is rebuilding I am wholly fuck all you ain't kidding wrecked but the thing is, I was wrong. Most people let their substances their addictions wreck their lives. Big pink neanderthal balls schtupping large puzzle pieces they'll never get back, allowing them to feel more comfortable traveling from "Hi, nice to meet you" to "That was subpar, be a dear and lock the door behind you when you leave." Me however I am for some godawfullythoughtnotwellout reason using substances to build elaborate but shit looking spiderweb bridges to people who are so close, the only things between us are these unnecessary rebuilt bridges 

I wake you up on time good wifey infagmode You smirk pink kitten I did that sorry and washout green you go au natural work I sit sentry in your bed You tired excuse want call in sick so I sit sentry knowing that with me in your bed you won't go anywhere near it and this is either hilarious how awful that revelation is or awful how hilarious it is 

Ben, I'm thinking that third hit is your sour face regarding pink puss you slam door shut between us There is waaaaaaay too much light in this room now Kiss Kiss Good morning