I have no idea how I'm up this early. It's 11:41 p.m. on Sunday and I am in such a state that I cannot bring a small tub of butter down one flight of stairs to my MY OLDEST AND DEAREST FRIEND DOWNSTAIRS who is in desperate need of butter: not even after he made me breakfast can I drag my heavy body out into the sun and through the hot-ass THE FRIENDSHIP GARDEN
.

Last night, on the way to the Kash N' Karry liquor store, we stopped halfway and turned around: "I've got some mushrooms." He said, "We should eat them before we get liquor."

Rum and mushrooms. And he just reminded me, as he fed me my second egg breakfast of the morning, that I repeatedly yelled, loudly, in the parking lot on the way to the car, "This is a nightmare!" I was very, miserably sincere in my declaration: I was washed out and falling down and everyone else still wanted to party. I slept out on the hood of MY OLDEST AND DEAREST FRIEND's Volvo waiting for their party clocks to run out. I wanted to pass out until they were ready to leave as badly as was, when I crawled up on the hood. But I woke up with a fear of being rolled.

"You were kookin' out," he said over eggs, not looking too good himself. I found someone else to drive me home. I don't remember who.

But still, I woke at 10:15 a.m.? There must still be mushrooms tensing up my brain. I'm still, somewhere in the nightmare. I was still in the nightmare when I cooked my first eggs at 10:30 a.m. STONE cried for food but I couldn't bring myself to bend over, under the sink to get his 9-Lives, because I was afraid my head would hurt even worse when all the blood rushed down into it. So I just let him outside instead: that takes his mind off eating.

I thought about cooking extra eggs for MY OLDEST AND DEAREST FRIEND DOWNSTAIRS but when I called him there was no answer and I couldn't imagine myself walking down the stairs to knock on his door. And, I thought, rationalizing my lazy selfishness to myself, 'There is no way he could be awake as early as I am, after last night.' So I ate alone, a foot away from the stinky cat box in the kitchen.

30 minutes later the sweet kid comes upstairs to me, "There's eggs and toast downstairs if you want it!" So I ate again. He gave me 7-Up and Tylenol, just like my mom used to, whenever I was hungover as a child.

My second breakfast got me feeling a wee better. Now I sit, typing, smoking grass, thinking about taking another shower: I feel like if I took enough showers it would cure me.

I'm suppose to go visit HORSE GIRL at her farm in Lithia today. I tell her I'm afraid that when I get there I'll have to take a nap, "I don't trust the fact that my body chose to wake up this early," I told her. "We'll just float on our backs and take a nap in the pool." She said when I called her just now, between sips of coffee that only compound my headache. She says she'd love to join me in a nap. And she tells me about her new bed in her new apartment and how it's the most comfortable bed she's ever experienced and now I REALLY wanna get to her but I am stoned and full of eggs and sick with mushrooms and rum and beer and frozen to the spot.

I have never been to HORSE GIRL'S house, nor have I met her parents before. And I will meet them today with mushrooms in my brain. I will be subtly tripping when I meet them and I will laugh at inappropriate moments and make jokes with weak foundations. And then we'll go out to the farm and I will meet all the animals HORSE GIRL has been talking about when we've laid in bed together these past few weeks.

Her mouth is like a flower and she has huge, magnificent teeth and she tells me I'm beautiful at least once per time I see her in the flesh, and suddenly, I feel beautiful. Beautiful. She rarely spends the night because she has early morning farm chores. So she stays until 4 a.m. and then dresses in front of me before leaving to go tend to the farm. It's a treat to watch her dress: she's a half an inch taller than me (5' 11") and as white and skinny and beautiful as any white, skinny, beautiful Greek statue. The other night we all went out drinking: her and I and my EX-GIRLFRIEND'S SISTER . HORSEGIRL wore my sunglasses all evening and grabbed my friend's (whom she'd never met before) butts and they couldn't figure out what her deal was from behind her shades. I adore her and writing this makes me adore her even more.

But I can't get out the door.

I have effectively smoked all the pot I had when I started writing this. I feel a lot better. But my arm still hurts from a punch delivered to me last evening by MY OWN PRIVATE DJ , who is a big guy. Those around us at the time of the punching accused MY DJ of not putting his weight into the punch. But I feel it now with every key I stroke. I felt it as soon as I woke up this morning and I called him and left a message for his mushroom-hangover ass:

"Hello, it's me. I had a really good time last night. Yep, we were getting crazy, man. I was just calling to tell you that no matter what happens when we're hanging out and being silly: NEVER EVER EVER EVER PUNCH ME IN THE ARM OR ANYWHERE ELSE EVERY AGAIN." I got really into it because I was still buzzing. "I am fragile and I do not want to be punched. So no matter how fun it seems like it might be don't ever ever ever punch me ever again."

And now, with a limp arm and a mushroom buzz and a headache and a half an erection: I gather up the courage to drive to HORSE GIRL'S farm and take a nap.