Can’t keep this up

I stayed up with Amy into the wee hours again last night, for the third night in a row. She works until late to start with, and when she gets home she is filled with stories and adrenaline. I laugh and tingle and share stories of my own, and we drink wine. I’m tired now; she must be beat. I don’t sleep a whole lot more than she does, but that little bit can make a big difference. I also don’t have two jobs to hold down.

I’m going to have to leave soon, whether or not I have taken care of all my stuff here in town. I’m not making much progress at it anyway, and the road is calling. Sharing a small apartment with an attractive woman who just got herself a new boyfriend (Cute Boy is mentioned frequently and explicitly) doesn’t help. Sure, it’s fun, but… you know. Last night was the toughest, even while it was the most fun. I hauled out the camera and we took pictures. Most of the pictures suffer either from a harsh flash or long, long exposures without a tripod. The wine didn’t help, either. I’ll go through them later and see if there are any worth trying to rescue. A very few of them look really good on the camera’s little screen, so we’ll see.

Amy wants me to stay longer, and she can be persuasive. She wants me to meet some of her new coworkers. They sound like a good bunch. Also I think she enjoys having me around. I’ve agreed to stay through the weekend to help her steam-clean her upholstery, which doesn’t even begin to repay her for the use of her couch for so many more nights than I had intended. After that it’s time for me to go. Best to be gone before the welcome mat is revoked.

Next stop: Vegas. A world of its own; the place to overwhelm dark thoughts with sensory overload. Among the braying lights and churning music and honest graft exhaustion is natural and the equation of life is easily simplified. It is a contest of physical endurance and losing the battle is preordained. Brain cells die. The ties from my past, reasserting themselves while I am in San Diego, will be burned away. I will emerge from the desert crucible purified and unbound, so light I won’t leave footprints as I trek across the desert sand.

That’s the plan, anyway.

3 thoughts on “Can’t keep this up

  1. Yikes. There seems to be a lot of When Harry Met Sally going on here. It will probably be good for you to take a stint of sensory overload in Vegas, followed by purgative period someplace so isolated that the nearest Wal-Mart is 70 miles away.

  2. Not many people can get away with describing vegas as a cleansing ritual. There should be some obscure literary award for that. “The Obscuro.” “The Fern d’Or.” “The scratching quill.” “The Opel Kaddett Award for Odd Pairings and Amusing Comparitives.” “The Vegas Colonic.”

    Anyway, that last paragraph is some good writin’, Tex.

  3. Oh yeah, that’s you – the Moses of Vegas – wandering through the Strip-mall Sinai. I believe the part about trekking lightly refers to your wallet. Take my advice – hookers are the manna to sustain you on your wanderings.

    Don’t talk to any burning bushes.

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