I have no explanation for it, but a day of my life is missing. I’ve searched endlessly through my folders and files and an entire day of photos is gone. Nowhere to be found. And the worst of it was that it was the one day in a long time that I sat on Lincoln Road.

And along came a girl. And she smiled. And she had a beautiful smile. And she walked into the Starbucks behind me. And then she left.

People came and went. There was someone on a bicycle, I’m sure. I can’t remember who else exactly, but then she appeared again, on the other side of the street. I ran up and asked her for her picture. She told me her name. I told her mine, told her where she could see her photo. And she remembered the address.

And now, that day is gone. It’s as if I only imagined it.

I.

“It wouldn’t be a lot of work. I’d provide you with the raw video, give general direction on what I want, then we can work it out together online.”

“Who is this? Do you have photos of her?”

I direct him to ipanemic. I tell him that it’s mostly one and one-half minutes of porn we’ll be throwing together. Teasers. Trailers. For her site. “I have to go, though, because I only have limited minutes on my phone and I’m trying to not burn them up before the first.”
The conversation echoes through my head as I toss and turn. I have anxiety over my minutes.

II.
Sunlight is coming through the window above my bed. Coffee. Mayday left coffee for me. There was only enough last night to make one small pot and he didn’t use it this morning. I realize again I have an awesome roommate. I picture Mayday going to a market this morning and grabbing a coffee on his way to work.

I brew espresso. It overflows. Must have been water already inside the tank. I picture Mayday realizing, after filling the espresso maker, there’s only enough for one pot and leaves it for me. Such a nice guy. Coffee is now everywhere. I shut off the machine.

Outside, I reach for my cigarettes. An empty pack. There were ten here last night when I went to sleep. I step inside and see a pack of Marlboro Lights on the table. (I switched to Camel Lights a few weeks back to help Mayday and I identify whose cigarettes were whose.) I open the pack. Three inside. I step outside and, under the already blazing sun of South Beach, the sun that hits our side of the breezeway throughout the morning and throughout the day, I smoke a Marlboro Light. I finish it and light a second. I should empty Penelope and Alejandro’s ashtray; I’ve put enough cigarettes in it.

III.
The world begins to come into focus. My head begins to wake.

“Last night was a good night, bro.”

“You smoked all of my cigarettes. You woke up Mayday at 3am to find out where his cigarettes were and you smoked nearly all of them. I smoked two of his last three this morning and drank the last of the coffee, thinking he wasn’t here. Then I watched him stumble from the bedroom into the kitchen. You took my keys and took my scooter last night. This morning, after Mayday stood over the sink with his head down (presumably taking stock of the situation), he walked to the store to get more smokes because I didn’t have my keys to the scooter. Last night was a good night, bro, up until I went to bed.”

This conversation never happens, at least my end of it. And I’m not really mad at Chaz. At all. How could I be? He’s one of my best friends. And he spotted me a twenty this morning to buy smokes. But I like to have my coffee and cigarettes in the morning.

He tells me about what happened last night after I went to bed; he tells me this as I’m working my way through Choke. I wonder which is more important: our conversation or the book. Probably neither. But I’m content engulfing myself in either.

IV.
At the buoy, Giselle says, “Let’s swim farther out.” The buoy, I note, has a little sticker on it. With a website address. The buoy in the middle of the ocean.

Chaz, Giselle, and I swim past the buoy.

“Do you think I could swim to that boat,” I ask Chaz.
“Sure, bro. With your side-stroke, you could make that.”

The boat is a tanker that is easily three miles off of the coast. It looks like a toy boat from where we are. I think about the swim and decide that I won’t. I don’t want to be eaten by sharks. That’s not how I want to go.

Yesterday, the water was like glass. Like glass for an ocean, anyway. Like glass before a storm, anyway. And I stood there watching as lightning cracked in the distance, sending bolts of white light down to the water.

Utterly calm. Utterly serene. Utterly peaceful. I got out of the water, put my headphones on, and laid on the beach. When the first drops of rain came, I left.

Giselle and Chaz are still swimming. I see Eugene on the beach and walk my way through the waist-deep water to the beach. Low tide. I dry off and go to talk to him. He tells me about trans-fats or something. Eugene is a mumbler. I wonder how different my life will be from his at that age. I wonder how different my life really is from his now. The only real difference between us is that he buries his possessions in the sand by the volleyball courts in Lummus Park and I keep mine in cabinets. I ask him about vitamins. And then he begins to talk. And talk. And talk. Maybe he was talking about something else before I asked him about vitamins. Maybe he wasn’t talking about anything at all health-related. And I wasn’t really looking to him for health advice, just conversation.

Chaz and Giselle come up. Eugene continues to talk as if two more people have simply wandered into class. The toenail on his left foot, beneath the sand covering it, is pulled back. Eventually, Eugene begins to walk down the beach again, cardboard signs in hand. Still talking. He stops a few feet down and has left a sign behind. I don’t think he dropped it. But maybe he did.

My diet is killing me. I can’t live like this. My mind is in shambles. My body is weak. I’m exhausted. And I’m crazy. My mind is a chemical wasteland.

The facts, please.
I wake up and 5 minutes into my day, it’s a pot of caffeine. Six to seven pots more through the day.
Cigarettes start once the caffeine hits. Two or so packs of those through the day.
And, of course, the overly powdered chocolate milk, two or three heaping spoonfuls. Six to seven times through the day. Or two or three.
Or none and I feel it.

Every day.

There is no food. Not until I’m really, really hungry. That might be tomorrow. It could be 10 minutes from now. It’s usually once a day, though. Maybe almonds. Maybe a microwaveable meal. Maybe vegetables. Maybe dumplings. Maybe nothing.

Until that hunger comes or that feeling that I probably should eat because I know my body needs it… until that thought registers in my brain, the nicotine, the caffeine, the sugar…. these are my nutrients. These are my dietary supplements.

I’m wired, I’m tired. I’m dead. I’m wildly alive and here for your everything. For my everything.

My body can’t take much more. My mind certainly can’t. I juggle thirty items at once. One window to the next, everything gets done. Then nothing gets done. Then my mind drifts into a sea of crap. Too many thoughts, and most of them worthless.

But before I forget (because this train I rode was most certainly a worthwhile trip), the subject of 2012 has been coming up a lot lately. And the whole end of the world happening then. Mayans. Nostradamus. Whatever. I’d like to go ahead and throw my name in the hat as an End-Of-World Leader. I’ll make a great one. Plus, I’ve got the early start advantage. Just in case something happens, or you begin to think it might be real, keep me in mind. I’ll be right here. If the diet doesn’t kill me.

This Saturday night, the 2nd floor residents of Club Meridian (that would include me and the other people up here with the exclusion of the very douchey Brian from #204) will be throwing an Around The World Party.

All of the neighbors are inviting friends and so I am here to invite you. My friends. The ones I know. And I’d reaaaallly like you to come if you’re one of my friends. If we’ve never met, though, um… uh…***[UPDATE]

I’m not sending out email invites beyond what I did on Facebook, so if you’re reading this, consider it your invite. As an added bonus, you get to meet all the “stars” of South Beach Social and go behind-the-scenes into our very ordinary lives!

Here’s the nifty flier that one o’ the neighbors made. It provides more info.

***[UPDATE]
Yeah, I need to clarify this a little. My invite here is to people I have physically met previously and we’re on friendly terms. Or even really friends. This isn’t an invite to the residents of South Beach or Miami. Each of the residents (at least on the second floor) have sent out invites to friends (or are getting to it); I put my invite here because, well, I’m lazy. There are a subset of people who come to ipanemic who meet the criteria of friends for this party. YOU are who I am inviting. Nothing against the rest of you. But I only have one toaster oven in which to cook up pastries. And I don’t think any of my neighbors are planning on being short-order cooks for the night. The Around the World party is an excuse for us to have friends over for a night of food and drink and partying at Club Meridian.

Too, I would never hear the end of it from my neighbors if random strangers starting coming. Or the homeless. Or all the sex offenders under the Julia Tuttle Bridge. “Remember that time that you posted that invite on ipanemic? You dork.”

I.
We lean against the white poles outside of the theater. The lettering on the marquee brings a smile to my face. A child begins to play in the fountain, her mother kneeling behind her. Did I ever do that? I must have but I can’t recall. Jets of white water shooting into the air. The pool has a green tint. She plays at the edge in her yellow dress.

II.
It’s nice here. I don’t mind that the fans are advertising what I suspect to be a vodka. Very Stoic. Very Russian. And vodka is the drink to drink today. So I’m comfortable with it. And it’s so hot here tonight. I’m grateful to Stoic Russian Vodka company for making the fans. I should drink more. Maybe I’ll order a martini.

III.
I look at the empty chair beside me and I wonder where she is. I thought she would be here by now. I begin to worry that she won’t show. Then I remember that we’ve never met. Or have we? Perhaps she is here already.

I wonder.

IV.
It’s nice to be with friends, to have a cocktail in the early hours of the evening. It’s nice.

V.
Maybe she isn’t coming tonight.

Donnie.
Donnie Darko.
Donnie.

I was going to say that Donnie is the bane of my existence but that’s really not the case. He’s just a dog. And I actually like him. I think he has an eating disorder, though, because every time I come inside, he looks at me, wags his tail and then goes to eat some little crunchy nuggets of dog food.

Donnie is living with me right now. I don’t know how long it’s been exactly, how long Donnie has been here. Two, maybe three weeks. He’s Luciana’s dog. Mayday and I are keeping Donnie for her while Vegas (the pit bull) is staying with her. Both Vegas and Donnie belong to Luciana’s uncle and he’s out of the country for a bit. They can’t stay together so we’re keeping Donnie. Luciana lives next door.

Luci is, of course, the girl who took a swing at me and ripped skin from my upper lip. That happened a day or two after Donnie moved in, I think. Luci and I have since “made up”. It was sufficiently awkward here in Melrose Place for the first couple of days after our little fight. I joked with her, she cut me evil glares. I would ignore her, she would walk by. One of my neighbors suggested that I play the fear card and just go running inside every time she came out. That would’ve been kind of funny, but I was feeling that was more effort than I wanted to put into it.

So we’re friends now. Donnie and I have been friends throughout. When we first got him, Mayday and I called him “Sh#thead” (paying our respects to Steve Martin’s dog in The Jerk). Then, I had a happy moment when I realized Donnie gave me the perfect excuse to exclaim (and in a loud manner) “Shut the f#ck up, Donnie!” And I could (and did) say it with the exact same tone as Walter Sobchack in The Big Lebowski. That joke wore a little thin. After a couple of days.

Good times. Donnie and I, we’ve had fun.

…bit of an update. If you have my phone number and you’ve been texting me, please don’t do so any longer. (By the way, I think “texting” should be allowed verb status here since it’s everyday vernacular, and who knows, maybe it’s already in the dictionary with double-definitions. Are we cool? Cool.)

About a week ago now(?), my phone stopped delivering my text messages. No message comes in and, no little message symbol shows up on my phone telling me a message came in, no little bing (alerting me that, “Hey, you’ve got a message from someone! It’s probably super-important!”) comes in, either. All I get is a little notification telling me I’ve been charged 20 cents. Whoopee.

So I don’t know who texts me, so I’m asking that if you’re reading (which you are) don’t text for now. I know a few people who have done it and we’ve talked (so you could probably just ignore this long-winded blathering right now), but there’s still at least one of you out there. The boys down at the lab are working on it; triangulating positions, watching the airwaves. They’re working in shifts. Much like Terry’s determination to find Hopkin, I will get to the bottom of this if I looking for them. (Who took my text messages? Who found them?)

Seems like I had something I wanted to say, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was. HeadlessBuddha (NSFW) has been keeping me occupado. I think I’ll be fully launched by the first of next week. Three weeks late, but still. I’m hoping tonight to bring out the general layout onto the front page.

Hm. Just noticed that the checkout girl at Walgreen’s gave me Camel Lights Wides. I walked out of Walgreen’s and looked in my bag, too. I had a donut in there for the guy outside. He also asked if I could give him change on the way out, too. I gave him a couple of dollars. I don’t think he’s homeless, but he kinda looks it. Really needs to do something with that hair of his.

He’s an interesting guy. Kept seeing him around from almost the day I moved to South Beach, and then one day I asked him for his portrait. Actually, I think he asked me to take it. Yeah, he did. Outside Meridian Market on 6th. Anyway, we talk whenever we see each other, which is usually outside of Walgreen’s when I go. He’s just standing there, waiting for something. Or money. He asked me once how much I would charge for a photoshoot of him. I think I gave him a low estimate. It would be interesting. He’s… what’s the term I’m looking for… a trannie? Or maybe just a cross-dresser, although he’s never cross-dressed. But he wanted to shoot in gowns.

If I remember correctly, anyway. My memory is just shot for remembering things any longer.

The Camel Lights Wides look like very manly cigarettes to smoke. I think I’ll smoke one now.

PS, I’ll find my frog.