**I updated a lot today and yesterday.**
In the cab ride ("Two stops") from a bar to my hotel, the Hyatt Regency in the Financial District, courtesy of my sainted mum, I sighed deeply enough for my brother to snap out of his self-pity coma and ask me what was wrong. I said something that was not sad or upsetting, even though it is, but it made both of us cry anyway, just in the beauty of its perfect truth:
I am going to be alone for a long time.
On this particular trip to San Francisco, I ate eggs scrambled with truffles and caviar, raw oysters on the half shell, and tournedos. I drank bellinis for breakfast, had a glass of champagne fifty floors up, took whiskey shots in a dive bar in front of my mother. I spent hundreds of dollars on linen shirts. I smoked pot in a very public park at midnight with my brother and my very best friend before we hit up the hotel bar for kir royales and berries and whipped cream. I danced to northern soul with girls with beehives up to there in vintage 60s dresses in a place so packed my friends had to wait an hour to get in, which they did just so they could see me.
Tonight, I stole a Wittkerke from the bar and drove to the beach. I rolled down the windows and propped up my feet on the passenger's seat and stuck my head out the window to watch the stars. I asked for the courage to desire something. I found the moon, with its cheshire grin, and we had a great laugh at the cyclical reality of it all. It was six years ago at around this time that I decided to drop out of school and see what life is all about. I'm happy now, I told the moon. It took a lot to get here, and it won't ever be this way again, but right now, here, with you, alone, I am grateful, I am loved, I am happy, and I look forward to being alone with you for a very long time.