Tampa is like a girlfriend I'm not necessarily excited by anymore, that nonetheless, gives me blowjobs before I go to work in the morning. The perks are hard to leave despite the dissatisfaction. I know that's a tasteless analogy, but I'll explain it's perfection later on.

Right now, Sunday morning, I drink a cup of coffee mixed with Guinness beer. Try it some time for breakfast, it clears your head.

I am smoking from a small glass pipe with a broken, glass chip rattling around inside. I could very feasibly, accidentally suck down the little jagged, broken-off piece while smoking and sucking on the end. That would be a very fitting way for me to go.

I just returned from visiting my friend Matt's. On the way out of his house, I interacted with his cat. She kept her ears up and leaned her wide forehead into my hand.

Petting a cat's head is so much like a handshake. Matt's cat reacted to my hand forthright and amiably, as opposed to my sister's Siamese cat, a little bitch named Gravy. Gravy's ears go down and back suspiciously and he sniffs every wrinkle in your hand before he'll let you touch him. But Matt's cat grabbed my hand firmly, so to speak, looked me in the eye and addressed me, "Good to meet you."

I sat on the floor and let her circle me and rub her body against me as she came around and around like a cuddly shark attack.

In the wake of Stone's death, my journal here has been dangerously close to falling in with the thousands of 'girl-journals' on the web that talk incessantly about their cats. I do have a little girl in me.

But I am a man. And Tampa is like a girlfriend I'm not necessarily excited by anymore, but there's this mutual understanding and love that takes years to build and it's hard to give up. It sometimes takes so long to build that mutual understanding, that you're not so physically attracted anymore once you've go it. I like Tampa so much.

Here in Tampa I get into shows for free, I open for my favorite bands when they come to town (I'll never get to do that in a big city), and if I feel like ditching my friends while we're out together on the town, I can always find another friend to drive me home. Like I did Friday night.

I was dressed and ready to go to my friend SKINNY'S hip-hop party. My hair was wet and the phone rang and I could feel the earpiece fill up with water as HORSE GIRL spoke:

"I know you're running out the door to that party," A mutual friend had told her about the party. "But I was wondering if you could leave my scanner outside on the patio so I can pick it up?" She'd loaned her computer scanner to me weeks ago.

"Yeah, sure." Pause.

"How are you doing?"

"Fine."

"O.K." Pause.

"O.K. See ya."

"Bye."

I left directly for the party without putting the scanner on the patio. No note. Just dick. It was a bitter thing to do but it felt good. I should grow up.

I drove across town and picked up MY DJ . When we arrived at SKINNY'S house via some horrible backwards-ass directions, SKINNY told us he had fucked up, "The party's next week, sorry, I told you guys the wrong date. But there's a party tonight at the Silver Meteor Gallery

Before heading to the Silver Meteor, MY DJ wanted me to turn my truck around and drive back four blocks to pick up his girl, who is also MY EX-GIRLFRIEND'S SISTER. MY EX'S SIS is so often an impedance on my social life that I felt justified bitching at MY DJ for my having to go out of my way for her again.

I bitched out of boredom more than anything else. It was fun and I was laughing between words but MY DJ wasn't amused. I told MY DJ I didn't want to pick her up. I fought the idea until he said "Fuck it, I'll walk then." I couldn't let the fake argument get that far, so I conceded.

On the way to pick her up I bitched and bitched. My voice is grating and annoying and, like my sister, I'm naturally two notches louder than everyone else in any given room. In the cab of my truck I was very loud until MY DJ put his mouth close to my ear and finally yelled something back. My ears rang and the mood and the argument got more serious.

We picked up his girl. The three of us argued about purchasing beer and where to park. It was cathartic. Madness is fun sometimes.

Things simmered down between us at Silver Meteor Gallery. We sat in the small main room: a theater with a stage. The floor slanted upward as it reached the back wall. No one sat in the three rows in front of us or three rows in back. MY EX'S SIS and MY DJ were in back of me, I was in a row by myself.

Having them out of my face lightened my mood. Eventually a bunch of cute boys in a really shitty punk band began playing and we jetted to The New World Brewery.

We sat around New World for hours devoid of memorable moments. I had my tape recorder and MY EX'S SIS had her sweet digital camera. We took turns taking pictures of different combinations of friends. The camera lightened the mood and the friendship drama passed.

Eventually SKINNY showed up at New World. After a drink or two, he and his friend, an MC who used to work with my friend Achilles, wanted to go back to The Silver Meteor Gallery. We were all nice and drunk by then and I told MY DJ and MY EX'S SIS that I'd get a ride home from SKINNY and his friend.

We arrived at The Silver Meteor to a gaggle of actors, gay guys, some USF professors and a handful of hyper-dramatic females all celebrating a play they'd just finished performing. Some of the girls and women were cute.

We walked past lines of them on the outside patio, black nighttime, Florida. As we passed them, one guy broke into spontaneous song and another girl rose from her seat dramatically, gesticulation wildly with her hands while explaining something to a friend.

Theater majors.

I refer to them as 'theater majors,' though some of the kids at Silver Meteor were older and others of them might never have been to college. That phrasing, 'theater major,' suggests a bit less than 'actors and actresses'. But the theater majors at the Silver Meteor, though dramatic, were cooler. Especially as we all got shitfaced.

I turned on my tape recorder and asked several of the theater kids what they thought of Eminem. They willingly addressed the issue.

Other times I snuck into the middle of a group of them as they conversed, put my finger over the little red 'record' indicator light to hide it, and taped their dramatic conversations, unbeknownst to them.

The drama kids, it turns out, were from the local Jobsite Theater crew. That night, they'd performed the opening night of a play called 'The Ruins' at the Performing Arts Center. After we found out their affiliation; whenever one of them spontaneously combusted in a dramatic flourish, SKINNY and I would say to each other, "Uh oh, they're getting Jobsite up in this motherfucker."

Back inside the dark little theater, some of the drama kids danced in that slow, expressive, dramatic way that theater majors do. Free form dance as weird music pumped loudly through the shitty PA in the small, dark theater.

As the kids writhed around not-quite-self-seriously, I thought about how THE LITTLE RED-HAIRED GIRL would have loved the scene. I often find myself in situations that have me thinking to myself, "She would feel very comfortable in my world": the places I wind up, the challenges I take on, the people I accidentally meet. She would have especially liked the goofy, but endearing drama nerds at The Silver Meteor (as opposed to the 'pretentious drama nerds, who are less annoying, but never as much fun). She is very much like them in all her drama.

I tried to kiss one of the Jobsite girls as she passed me on her way out of the gallery: a very smart women I shouldn't have tried to kiss. She laughed at my out-of-nowhere, clumsy attempt: belly flop. Every time I remember it I cringe, but it's good for me to feel that way. I need to remember the feeling next time I get the urge to pull shit like that. I read an Ernest Hemingway quote the other day: "If you actually do everything you say you're going to do when you're drunk; that will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

The woman I foolishly tried to kiss was actually someone I've wanted to talk to and get to know for some time. We've been acquaintances for years and she used to respect me, I think. Maybe she still does. But now I have to live down trying to kiss her without provocation. Which actually sounds fun.

Another girl at Silver Meteor spun hip-hop records on the stage. It is still rare here in Tampa to see a girl DJ, and she spun great hip-hop, so I stuck my tape recorder in her face and asked her who she was.

Her name was "Eighty." Her parents hadn't given her that name, but it was legal, a.k.a. DJ 80-bug. "I love, music, I love singing, I love life," she said. DJ EarthMother. DJ ToriAmos. DJ Lilith. DJ Dreamcatcher. She was a damn good DJ though.

We sat down together in the empty theater with the loud PA blaring. Most of the Jobsite people were out on the patio.

When she draped her legs across some empty chairs I noticed her bare feet were dirty. I was fucked up drunk and started telling her about a girl with dirty feet that I'd seen on my favorite internet porn site, EASYPIC.COM, that morning. I thought it was very interesting to see a girl with dirty feet on a porn site and was drunkenly enthusiastic to talk about it.

I yelled to her over the music. "Today I was looking at porn on the internet!" I yelled. "And I saw this girl with…."

"What?!" She yelled back.

She was looking in my bleary eyes, waiting for me to repeat myself. "I said, I saw this girl today on internet porn today…"

In the middle of my sentence she got up and walked away. I felt like the Bugs Bunny cartoons where a character says or does something stupid and their head morphs into a donkey head with the word "JACKASS" inscribed on the side. I bray for a second, then slowly my head turns back to normal.

I sat alone in the loud dark theater, SKINNY on stage, DJing to only me.

I was drunk and thinking about internet porn as a side door to the theater flew open about 30 feet away from where I sat. For a second, out the door, I saw two blurry women under the patio lights and they looked exquisite.

Then I realized that, from far away, the women looked to be the same size as the thumbnail pictures on EASYPIC.COM. The tiny, blurry pictures of the girls all look beautiful. But when you "click to enlarge" the women are rough sometimes.

I had drank so much that I experienced what I have since deemed: "EASYPIC Vision".

'Beer goggles';

'good from far, far from good';

'EASYPIC Vision'.

I went to the bathroom and, upon washing my hands, noticed my shirt was unbuttoned too low; little red chest hairs poking out. Gross. When I reached up to button it, I made big wet handprints all over my collar like a slob.

I came back into the darkened theater and sat way in the back, up close to the ceiling, with my wet collared shirt.

Skinny's friend had the microphone on stage and contemplated a freestyle. I over-enthusiastically screamed encouragement at him, tough love, drunk love, "Fuckin do it! What the fuck are you waiting for?!" Like an ass.

He eventually spit some good rhymes but I was ready to leave. I was in Paradise City. "Oh won't you please take me home," I asked SKINNY when his friend ended the freestyle session.

As SKINNY packed up he showed me a tube of eardrops he'd bought from an Ybor City beggar in lieu of a straight donation to the poor man.

"This homeless dude asked me for some money, and I was like, 'no man, I ain't got no money'," SKINNY said, curling up patch cords and putting away records. SKINNY smokes those awful Indian beady cigarettes that hip-hop kids smoke and Charles Bukowski used to smoke and as he yelled over his own music you could hear the damage the beedies had done to SKINNY'S lungs and throat. His scratchy voice continued, "And the homeless dude was like, 'yo man, I got these ear drops' and I was like, 'I don't know what I'd ever use these for' but it seemed like a good deal so I gave him a dollar for the ear drops.

The music finally stopped as SKINNY unplugged the last cord and DJ 80bug came over to talk to me again.

"I'm sorry I got up and ran off before," she said. "My records looked like they were falling over. I needed to go save them. What were you saying?"

"Oh, uh… " I stumbled. "I was just telling you about how I was looking at internet porn today and…uh…then I got really embarrassed."

"Why," she said. "I look at it all the time."

"That's horrible!" I joked. "Yeah, I was just gonna say that I saw a girl on there who had dirty feet. It was sexy"

She smiled and nodded.

I came home to a six-pack of Guinness sitting outside my front door and an answering machine message from HORSE GIRL: "I've thought about it…and I want you to keep the scanner. Alright. I'll see you around."

She sounded irritated and I thought she was bluffing to make me feel guilty for not leaving the scanner outside. But when I called her the next day she was very sweet. She pressed the issue. "You will use it so much more than I will," she implored. I told her she was being ridiculous but she kept telling me to keep the scanner.

I think she's going out of her way, sacrificing, trying to prove that she really cares about me despite dumping me. I should take that into consideration and be mature to her. Try to understand. I need to give her back the scanner though, before I leave Tampa.

I am moving to San Francisco at the first of the year. I will see to fruition the Tampa reading I've set up for Neal Pollack and Jonathan Ames in November, then spend Christmas with my parents, New Years with my tight boys and then I will move away. Not necessarily because I want to, but because I should.

On the surface that sounds like bleak reasoning. I am thoroughly against doing anything because 'I feel like I should' ?. But it's not like I'm moving to Gary, Indiana. I should move to San Francisco because I'm sure I'll be happier there, eventually, when I'm settled.

But I am currently very happy here in Tampa.