Tag Archives: pop culture

Ranger Things

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I received a text from Maddy on Saturday morning, reminding me to watch the door to the auditorium when I worked the play without her that night. The reminder came not because she didn’t trust in my ability to remember, but because a woman almost got clocked on opening night.

They tried to warn her, but she didn’t listen (or hear at all), and she got lucky. With the first half of Maddy’s text, she was telling me that I might have to dive in slow motion to take the hit.

The second half hinted that the Olympic-level quick change at the end of act one almost failed. She put scissors on the prop table in case it came to that. I had a lot to look forward to in the evening.

I had a couple of awkward exchanges on the internet before I headed out for the rest of the day. I missed my Metro train, and I had to wait seven minutes for the next one, so I was almost on time to see my ex-roomie. This was bad.

A habit I had picked up from my Nebraskan ex-wife was to show up early. As they say on Letterkenny, “If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.” I was running late.

After I bought a coffee for the lone protestor at the Heritage Foundation, I became actually late. I became even later when I walked down the wrong street, several blocks past our meeting place. I had a missed call and a text from Nicole, who was worried something terrible had happened to me.

My ex-roomie was telling me that she hadn’t been to the Suffrage Museum, where she volunteered for years, in an age. She is worried, reasonably so, it will be shut down by the president’s boss. I suggested we go this weekend.

We were met by a ranger, a friend of ex-roomie, who took us through the building and showed us everything that had changed since ex-roomie had been there last. They even had her old name-tag.

They were catching up, so I was a third wheel and kind of bored through most of it. While we were hanging out in the gift shop. The ranger pointed at one of their displays and mentioned that no one ever bought the Suffragette Soap. I have a habit of purchasing interesting soaps, so I picked up a bar.

The other ranger, an unusual person with an unusual accent and unusual glasses, cashed me out. I told her that I was excited to smell like oranges, and oh, my god, she loves oranges! I picked up a mini equal rights pin and told her that I want to start a gift exchange with a crow and explained what that entailed. She asked if I like birds, and I told her that I liked owls, and oh, my god she loves owls. I told her that the only owls I’ve ever seen in real life were burrow owls, and oh, my god, she loves burrow owls. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was flirting with me. Her name was Jess

Upon the park rangers’ suggestions, ex-roomie and I went to the Folger Shakespeare Library across the street and looked over some amazing old manuscripts. They were always open to their illustrations. However, as with all medieval illustrations, I had no idea what was going on.

She and I tried to get lunch at the café, but it is apparently the most popular study place for college students. We found a seat, but she had to leave for an appointment before her food arrived, which meant I had to eat it.

Maddy had completely reset the props before she went home Friday, so there was nothing for me to do until it was time to relocate the weasel. I wasn’t needed until about a half-hour before curtain, so I sat in the Baxter Room with the cast, and I illustrated Jess.

Lisette and Lucille each breathlessly gave me their accounts of the costume-flip nail-biter. The issue wasn’t the corset, but rather the second dress. It had an extra layer, so Lisette and her petticoat kept getting caught in it. She hung up the dress in a way that she could step into it, and I asked her if she were going to practice. If she went down during the performance, it was all over.

What struck me about the exchange was that she was coming to me as an expert. I hadn’t done theater since early high school. I can barely dress myself. On the other hand, my façade of authority allowed me to talk her out of the hanger idea, which might kill her, and into something a little more reasonable, like safety pins.

That did the trick. At the end of the first act, after I rescued the weasel, Lucille and Lisette were a well-oiled machine. I got to hold the flashlight. Apparently, I did that well because Lucille gave me a double thumbs up as Lisette stepped onto the stage.

After the show, we had to break down the set and the seating so the Episcopalians could worship in their own damned church. Ernie from load-in directed us with military precision. Within forty-five minutes, the set was in the closet downstairs, the risers had been relocated, the prop table wrapped up, and the boulder put into a very large plastic bag. All the chairs and the piano had been restored to their original positions.

It was like we weren’t even there. It’s guerilla theater.

Also, it wasn’t until the fourth time I listened to this play that I heard Lisette say to Lucille, “All tits on deck!”

Despite All my Rage I’m Still Just a Weasel Onstage

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The end of Tech Week (https://jrmhmurphy.com/tag/theater/) started out with smarm. Specifically, I arrived at the church and stepped into the empty nave before a slick man in a suit appeared somehow without opening the door. He asked if he could help me. I said I was with the St. Mark’s Players and we were meeting at six. He said, and I quote, “It’s not six yet.” It was 5:57.

I quickly found them in the Baxter room, which was the kind of place you could hold a wedding reception. We’d been using it as a dressing room and a place for the cast to hang out.

I want to give mad props to Arianna, the costume tech. I have a lot of respect for people who sew theater costumes (I dated one) because they are some of the craftiest people you’ll ever meet. Looking closely, you can see that the costumes were purchased off the rack, but they have been seriously altered.

Arianna sewed snaps on the petticoat and dress for Lisette. This was useful because Lisette, as I’ve mentioned in the past, has a quick-change out of a corset and into the royal dress. Tuesday night, Jane and Maddy struggled with the removal part, so Arianna reduced the size of the string holding it together and turned a few fasteners into snaps and that made all the difference in the world. She had a minute and forty-five seconds to switch it over, and after a few rounds, Maddy, Jane, Lisette, and I managed to do it in a minute fifteen.

Another area of improvisation I was stunned with was how she handled Damis’s jacket. Because Arianna had sewn a cape onto it, it kept falling off, so she added backpack straps to the inside, and it stayed together.

I know you were all (both of you) anxiously anticipated the arrival of the metal codpiece. I am happy to announce that it arrived, and it was glorious. I asked if it was bulletproof, but Arianna didn’t know.

I forgot to tell you this, but act one ends with a pair of cast members bursting out of the nave, swinging the door with gusto. It’s my responsibility to wait in the lobby to keep people from getting smacked in the face with it. I’ll be honest, though, I kind of want to see someone get walloped, so if I saw someone approaching the door, I’m not sure I’d rescue them.

Maddie gave me a spreadsheet of my duties, and one of the items was “Fluff the Weasel.” Since that sounds like a full sentence, I had to ask exactly how to fluff said weasel. No, its name is Fluff. That meant I was singing, “Fluff the magic weasel, lives on the stage …”

Wednesday’s rehearsal went off without a hitch, including Lisette’s big change. Maddie let me do the work because I’m going to be by myself on Saturday, which means I will have to help them strike the set for church Sunday.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting three or four hours of sleep, so I’m ready to collapse. I’ve been working, and with the help of my friend, Monsieur Adderall, I’ve been able to make it through, but I’ve hit a wall. I’ve had so much fun, I feel like a five-year-old after a day at the beach.

Metromaniacs opens Friday, 21 February, at St. Mark’s Church on Capitol Hill.

The Descent of Ryan

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As a Doctor Who fan, I enjoy multi-Doctor adventures, in which they bring back their former lead or leads to interact with the present star. “The Three Doctors,” in 1973, set the precedent that the Doctors squabble amongst themselves. The Doctor is played by different actors, so they were like different people, but what if they were all the same actor?

I thought about it in earnest one day, and I concluded that, if my past selves met me, they would hate me, or at least see me as a big disappointment. If there’s one thing I do with gusto is reinvent myself every few years. I change hairstyles, I change wardrobes, I change shape. Sometimes I have a beard. Sometimes I’m wearing glasses.

In parts of college, I was a condescending intellectual. In my mid-twenties, I was a miserable

dude who partied somewhat hard. When I was a kid, I could be downright feral. And then there was the polyamorous fitness buff.

I wrote a screenplay about it. I started working on it in Atlanta during my society’s ostentatious 2021 annual meeting. I remember this because I was thumbing through the program for names. I had no idea what I was doing, and it shows. It was proof that an idea is not enough.

I haven’t really been writing anything new lately, but I’m still being productive by finishing unfinished books or completely rewriting garbage drafts. I’m adapting the screenplay into a novel, which means adding a coherent plot and ton of new material.

It’s a sci-fi comedy about a middle-aged loser who is temping at an evil genius’s secret headquarters. A cute scientist flirts with him for a few days, then she lures him into a dangerous experiment. The result is that his past selves have materialized with him in the lab.

The polar opposites that were Ryan, at forty-five, thirty-six, twenty-seven, eighteen, and nine, must all work together, with the help of the cute scientist, to escape before they are disposed of.

Anyway, this is my movie poster.

Art Failure

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It’s been really cold here lately (Colorado people, shut up), and I’ve been working from home so I don’t have to walk a mile to my Metro stop through some Jack London nightmarescape with tundra temperatures (I said shut up, Colorado people).

Just as an aside, my job is awesome.

The temperature Saturday got as high as 42, which is the answer to life, the universe, and getting the hell out of the house. It’s a three-day weekend, and I thought it would be nice to go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Chinatown.

I forgot what was happening Monday.

My train pulled into the Chinatown station, and quite a few people exited, which was unusual for this time of day on a Sunday. I listened to my podcast and kept moving. One of the exits takes you right to the steps of the gallery, but it was gated off. The other exit was two blocks away, which meant I had to walk two blocks to get to it and two blocks back to the museum. However, those exits were gated off too, and transit workers were yelling at us to go away.

A worker stood near the stairs and told us we needed to get on a train and take it to the next stop to get out. Emboldened by the injustice of it all, I asked her why they didn’t just shut the station down. She said, “I don’t make the rules, I just tell you what to do.”

I took a train to the closest stop and realized I didn’t know which way to get to Chinatown. The National Mall was straight ahead, so I went in the other direction. I wasn’t 100 percent, though, so I stopped at a corner to get my bearings.

A smug, condescending douchebag walked by me, smirked, and said, “I’m from here, and we don’t pay attention to those things.”

I looked up from my phone and said, “I’m from here, and I don’t either. I’m just a little disoriented.”

“Sure.” He strode off.

With surer footing, I headed for Chinatown, weaving between National Guardsmen and their rifles, emergency fencing, and a thick crowd of white people. I saw a long line of red hats, and I couldn’t imagine where they might be going. As I walked past, I searched for the destination, but I couldn’t see one, nor could I see the end. It wrapped around a whole block, then crossed the street, then turned a corner, and disappeared.

Two blocks later, the museum was surrounded by guardsmen who weren’t going to let me in. I normally don’t eat lunch, but there was a Nando’s here, so I stopped in. The host asked me how many. I said one. He looked me up and down and narrowed his eyes, “I see.”

It was about noon that the MAGAs started coming in. I knew they were MAGAs for two reasons. One, there was nobody else in this part of town today; the locals know to stay clear. Two, they were wearing red hats, even the toddler, which I consider to be child abuse. Next, several tables of really hot people showed up. I was hit with the dilemma of admiring them while finding their entire worldview to be nauseating.

The worst part about the entire situation was that people thought I was one of them, especially because I was wearing my lumberjack shirt. On the other hand, blending in allowed me to enjoy my chicken in peace, live blogging the entire experience to my friend Emilie, who I picture reading it in a luxurious bath, sipping cava and shaking her head at my antics.

The only time I felt nervous were when the wannabes moseyed in and took a seat. If you’ve ever been in a Nandos before, you’d know to let the host seat you. If you could read, there is a large sign that says, “Please wait for the host to seat you.”

They wore black T-shirts, black sweats, black boots, black gloves, and black trench coats. Their glasses matched, and they both wore their thinning hair tightly clipped. I checked them for weapons when they pulled off their jackets because I didn’t want to be in the middle of a shooting when I was right across from them.

Most of the patrons got up and left when they realized Nandos was foreign food. I’m just relieved they didn’t stick around long enough to find this:

Reel Talk

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(Trigger Warning: It took a lot of work to keep this PG-13. I had to take a shower after the events of this brief adventure, and not in a fun way.)

I hate it when Facebook recommends stuff to me, based on my “interests,” including the reels. At one point, I was only getting clips from 2 Broke Girls, even though I am not remotely interested in that show.

The algorithm decided that, if Kat Dennings wasn’t enough, it would send me all the big boobs they had. Even though I didn’t click on them, the algorithm decided I needed to see more uncomfortable-looking breasts. It sent me reel upon reel of buxom women, mostly dancing.

When that phase passed, it switched to end-to-end Taylor Tomlinson clips, which finally got me clicking on them. (Her comedy connects with me.) However, the batch I actually engaged with didn’t last long.

Now it’s kind of crazy. Mostly, it’s gone back to big boobs, but they’re uncomfortably huge now, and I’m not turned on. I feel bad for the girls. Also there are the occasional clips from 2 Broke Girls and Taylor Tomlinson.

Today, I made a huge mistake. I saw a preview for a reel that featured an inhumanly pretty ginger in a corset. Her boobs were average-sized, so I don’t know what she was doing here.

I’m making huge strides in my artwork, and I’m trying to spend more time on faces. She was a beautiful model. And not because she was in a corset. Honest. In that two-second preview, she became a muse to me, and I needed to see more. I knew not to click on it, but I did anyway.

The video lasted about thirty seconds, and it was on a loop. The entire show featured this beautiful woman digitally stimulating the camera, as if it had male parts.

She could have been playing with a cat. She could have been banging on a silent bongo. She could have been painting. She could have been using a shake weight. But she wasn’t. She had the smug look and rhythm people have when they’re engaged in this kind of activity. Or so I’ve heard.

I closed my laptop and thought about my choices. I feel really gross now. I know I’m a vulgar person. I own this about myself. However, there’s a time and a place, and I don’t think Facebook is it. It’s not even sexy, it’s icky. Never again will I click on—ooh! Taylor Tomlinson video!

All-American Gallery

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My favorite artist is John Singer Sargent, and I think that, ultimately, Impressionism is my favorite movement. The classical, non-portrait art galleries in Washington, D.C. have plenty of Impressionist pieces, but it’s the National Gallery West Wing that has the most massive collection.

I hadn’t been there since the pandemic, when I went to see my favorite painting. (Nonchaloir (Repose), by Sargent.) I think it’s with this painting that the impression Impressionism has left on me is apparent. It’s a picture of a woman with a floofy dress relaxing on a couch, and it looks like it was thrown together in twenty minutes. But that’s not true at all. If you look at her hands, you can see sharp detail and precision that only looks sloppy. It’s an amazing piece of art.

And on that day, four years ago, the entire that whole section of the museum was closed off. No Sargent. No Whistler. No Monet. No girl in yellow reading a book. And I hadn’t been back since.

Because I’ve hit a steady routine of drawing in cafes on Saturdays and/or Sundays, and because you can’t spell routine without rut, I gave the museum another shot. And it hit the target. I got to see my favorites, I got to see new, exciting pieces, and I got to see the same people over again.

This is normal. Depending on which entrance they use, the gallery herds you through the maze of rooms, and certain pieces demand a certain amount of attention from different people, which averages out, and boom, there they are.

Usually, I’d only see them in a couple of rooms, especially when I would sit down and draw a painting that grabbed my attention. I divided my attention between the canvas and the eyes surreptitiously peeking over my shoulder to watch what I was doing. My rough sketches, as you can see, put the rough in rough. There’s a reason I color and ink these pieces as fast as I can.

Normally, most the fun of coming to a museum is people-watching, but I didn’t do that this time because I was so focused on capturing the figures in my style, and quickly. Also, the crowd was really dull. Hair was dark brown, black, and white. Parkas were black or navy blue. There weren’t patrons there I’d describe as bright or notable.

Then there was the woman who interrupted my work by being really striking. Her hair was a very red shade of auburn, and her sweater was white with blue stripes. She was petite and middle-aged, and I watched her do a bored circuit of the room and leave. When she wasn’t distracting me anymore, I finished my drawing.

Later, I was looking for another painting to sketch out, and there she was again, sprawled out on a bench, playing with her phone like a teenager. I just kept seeing her. It took fifteen-to-twenty minutes to finish a sketch, and I did five of them, so she was going through these rooms incredibly slowly. And she wasn’t looking at the art.

Between the first and second time I saw the striking woman, I zeroed in on a great painting of a clown at exactly the same time as an old woman. She was bell-shaped, with a shawl draped over her round, hunched shoulders. She wore a fishing hat and glasses that are so thick, if you rub them you can see the future.

She started talking to me, and I responded, and she gasped and staggered back in shock, as if I’d forgotten to tuck after using a urinal. (I hadn’t forgotten.) What followed was incoherent jabbering, until she said slowly and deliberately, “I thought you were my husband. But you look nothing like him.”

We chatted about the painting for a minute, and she laughed at her antics and left the room. A few minutes later, I too exited the room, and there she was, pointing at me gleefully and whispering to a man who did not look a thing like me, in the slightest. Our clothes were completely different. We were different heights. I had a beard. I was wearing an orange beanie, and he was not.

The man chuckled. “You must be my doppelganger.”

“I’m the World’s Worst Doppelganger,” I said and got the hell out of there, where I ran into a guard.

“Excuse me, sir,” he asked, “is that a sketchbook?”

The guard is an artist, but he’s hit a low point with his art. He’s second-guessing himself, his output has been low and crappy. I’ve been there. I stopped drawing for five years because of it. He wondered if I had any advice about getting back on the horse.

I couldn’t give any advice because I don’t know what I’m doing, but I told him what broke my empty streak: go back to basics. Get rid of everything and start with a pencil and an eraser. Use a sketchpad you don’t care about and go and make mistakes. Draw often. And remember, your art is better than you think it is.

Wisdom. I got it.

That was my outing. People being weird, and some beautiful art. And some sketches. I hope you had a good weekend.

A Day in the Life

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I don’t know if it’s ADHD or a symptom of our society, but I hate the quiet. For most of the day, I’m listening to something. While I work on art, it’s a movie or a YouTube video. While I work at work, I put on a podcast I don’t need to listen to. On the weekends, I like to cozy up in a cafe and get swept up in the busy lives of others.

The main reason I always like to have something on is because the earworms nestle in otherwise. Sometimes they’re fun songs, but usually they’re not.

Today, I’m not plugging into noise, and I’m paying the price for it. I’m hearing my favorite Beatles song, the one I can never listen to anymore, “A Day in the Life,” from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is one of those rare songs ascribed to Lennon/McCartney that actually had contributions from both. If you know their style, you can pick which parts are theirs.

The numbness of the John Lennon part (“I read the news today, oh boy”) is how I feel having sacrificed passion for my sanity, and the McCartney part (“Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head”) is the result of that, i.e. going through the motions because you have to.

It’s a heavy song, and it never fails to bring me to tears. I found out when Newcastle died that it also described how I was processing my grief. Today, I found myself sitting on my bed, unmoving and unthinking, for ten minutes.

The only way I can feel anything right now is by writing about it.

 I read the news today, oh boy.

Rational Lampoon’s Vacation

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From October 25 through November 2, I was on a mandatory vacation. In September, I had run the vacation calculator, and I found out I had about sixty hours of use-or-lose vacation, so at the end of last month, I went to Colorado to see my friend Emilie. She was kind enough to show me some cool art galleries.

There were also some inspirational diners and cafes.

None captured my imagination quite like Corvus. So many colorful people came into that establishment for caffeinated refreshment.

For a couple of days, my sister and I hung out, including our hajj to Mile High Comics, one of the largest comic book stores in the country, possibly the world (not counting those perverts in Japan). It’s in a warehouse. A warehouse. The distance between me and bulbs overhead could be measured in light years. Most of the warehouse was actually a warehouse, storing and shipping comics all over the planet at marked up prices.

            They had rows upon rows of older comics, including a separate series of bins for variant covers. They had comic book toys, in their packaging, going back to the toys I collected in high school. Do any Xers remember The Power of the Force? The pre-prequel action figure line with really buff biceps? They had those. They had a bit of everything, including long out-of-print trade paperbacks.

I spent *cough, cough* dollars and started conversations with two strangers, the latter of which is a huge deal for me.

Emily and I spent Halloween together, and the first person we saw outside of each other was a waitress in bunny ears. It bode well for us, and we spent the morning in the mall, goofing off like teenagers whose joints weren’t cooperating anymore.

There were plenty of costumes on the retail workers as we went into an enormous bookstore, a comic store, game and toy stores, the Lego store, the knife store, jewelry stores, and Spencer’s gifts, the latter of which always gives me a giggle.

After retreating to our corners for naps, Emily had dressed up in a sexy medieval (sexy, not skanky) dress, and we wandered the neighborhood, looking for the coolest Halloween decorations, and we were sorely disappointed. Some people went all out, but most either ignored the holiday altogether, or just slapped a couple of pumpkins and a fake spider web and call it done. Some people had eight- or twelve-foot skeletons and expected their game would be judged based entirely on that. Oh, trust me, Alan: we’re judging you.

Emilie and I didn’t spend every waking moment together, even if I had inadvertently booked an Airbnb a block from her house. And honestly, that was for the best. She’s got her way of doing things, I have my way of doing things. She has errands, I have a muse.

When I had dinner without her, I had it shipped to me. However, since guests and hosts prefer to keep as far apart as possible, I had to intercept the drivers before they could ring the doorbell. This is despite that I specifically asked them to go out back. On one occasion, I ordered the food then went on a brief constitutional, taking a wrong turn that led me so far from home base that I had to sprint to catch the driver only moments before she reached the front door.

For our last day together, we went to Golden, the former home of my sister, which has a beautiful downtown. Unfortunately, for the second day in a row, we were disappointed. Golden has a whole lot of restaurants and cafes, but very few quaint shops to roam around in while discussing things of no real importance to anyone but us. We went to a coffee shop instead.

But Saturday, I had to go through that hellhole of airports to return home and to my life, and my Oscar, who is currently punishing me for not being Nicole.

Costume Drama

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It’s seven thirty in the evening. I’m usually in bed by eight. I took an Adderall at ten a.m., and I think it’s still going. This could be bad. Last night, I slept like Santa Claus after an exhausting Christmas Eve. The night before, I slept like a little kid waiting on Santa Claus. I’m worried I’m going to sleep like the latter tonight. I am in a state where marijuana is legal, so I’ve taken steps to ward off the tossing and the turning, but they may not be enough.

Emilie did not take the entire time I am here off from work. I would be kind of upset if she had. We have dinners together on work days, and she is a phenomenal … Doo doo, doo-doo doo! Phenomenal! Doo-doo doo-doo!

Sorry. That got out of control.

Emilie is a really good cook. We talk, I fondle her ceramic flowers, we tell stories, I confessed something, and we call it a night. It’s good to do this in person.

Today was the first workday while I was here, so I needed to entertain myself. I started by sleeping in for an hour and a half. I sleepwalked through getting up, making coffee, and getting clean, and I went to breakfast at the same diner as yesterday. I overheard some fun conversations, though everyone was quieter with a smaller crowd of customers.

“I’m not a boat fan. I been on a few boats. I don’t like ‘em.” I also heard my waitress call out, in the tone of voice of a fed-up mom, “Tell him to stop bein’ such a tree-hugger!” (Shortly after this, a guy entered, wearing a hoodie that said, “I’m voting for the prosecutor, not the convict.” My waitress and him did not have a violent confrontation over this because we, as human beings, are capable of treating each other with respect.)

The most baffling one was, “How do you want your eggs, scrambled?” In a strangely erotic voice, she continued, “You got it. You gooooootttttt it.”

After breakfast, I went back to Corvus, the coffee roaster with a remarkable grift, and I ordered an iced coffee. The barista asked, “What kind of cold brew would you like? There’s Nitro, N’awlins, and Tokyo.”

Ninety seconds passed before I said, “Huh?” She explained the differences in the way that aficionados do. (“It has just a little nitro in it, so it goes down smooth.”) I went with Tokyo because they brewed it with the machine.

I took my Adderall, and I got to work, drawing up a storm for hours, until I realized I should probably go to the bathroom, but only after I finished doing one bit, then while I was here, another bit, and I wouldn’t want to stop when I have this bit to do, and another hour passed. When I had been in there four hours, I decided to move on, and I went to the bathroom finally.

I drove around a bit. The area around my airBnB is loaded with shopping centers, and one of them had a store called Disguises. Emilie had told me about an amazing costume shop we weren’t going to visit because it was Halloween. I was going in. This is the biggest costume shop I’ve ever been in. I’d stroll along, enjoying things like the Kenny Rogers wig and beard called “Gambler Costume,” and wander into separate rooms selling more intricate costumes. I turned right into an aisle, turned right at the end of the aisle, turned right at the next aisle, then right again. But instead of walking in a circle, I stumbled into a section of the store devoted only to tutus.

The store is some kind of tesseract.

I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since 2002, when I shaved off my mustache and went as Norville Rogers, with the nom de guerre of Shaggy. That was a repeat of my 2000 costume, with which I broke a haunted house with a well-timed “Zoinks.” I thought about maybe getting something and half-assing it (“You can see by the eyepatch that I am a bohemian pirate.”), but I saw nothing that grabbed my attention.

Overwhelmed by the fact that there was always someone behind me, and exhausted by not looking at the shopgirl’s cleavage, I somehow found my way to the exit. By the time I made it to home base, the Adderall would have left my system. I had no problem sleeping for an hour. But I woke up clear-headed and focused, finishing a drawing before Emilie could invite me over for dinner.

She made butter chicken with Indian cayenne pepper. The conversation was very funny (the story of my hubris meeting a Thai ghost pepper) and very personal (a bad thing I’d done that I don’t talk about). And we called it a night.

After writing this, I can feel the crackling potential energy fade, and I think I’m going to sleep well.