Today is a day of self-reflection. I’ve been on a two day bender now. Maybe longer, I can’t remember. I’ll probably drink tonight too, though I really have no intention. But I’m hanging out with Rick. And that usually ends up in us drinking the night away. It seems Rick’s presence results in procrastination. He’s a good person but he doesn’t like to get anything done. All day today we’ve been doing everything we can to avoid doing what we should . . . my book, his studies . . . we’ve been busy. Then to finish off the day and to further our ends we settle down for a night’s worth of Red at the Hole in the Wall. All night and usually after closing. We’re such regulars that they invite us to stay and drink in the back room. I don’t like the moods that I get in when I’m drinking a lot. I like getting drunk, I just hate the languor that consumes me the days following. When I’m not on one of my binges I am filled with the energy and hate of a thousand religious wars. I want everything dead; everything that is cute, everything that is precious, everything that is intolerably stupid, everything that defines your idle happiness. And I gear myself towards an energy that is capable of destroying all that is around me. When I am drinking, I am in a state of apathy. A state overwhelming, keeping me at bay that much longer, for the benefit of society, I suppose, and I am forced to stew in my own hostility and immerse myself in the idiocy of the maddening crowd and realize that in an attempt to wash away the cancer of your company with alcohol, I only end up in deeper regret and a slave to my apathy and thus to you.