Draft from 5/16/11

I'm almost thirty years old. It's hard to believe or even admit that, even though it's fairly common knowledge. Fortunately my genetics have been good to me, for the most part, after a decade of cigarette smoking and substance abuse. Almost every time someone asks my age they're genuinely taken back. Maybe it's because I inadvertently avoid the sunlight most days.

For the past two years, however, I have been slowly losing my hair. I've tried numerous ways of covering it up--minoxidil, powdery brown stuff to fill in the gaps, and hats. I've become famous for my hats--or hat, rather. It once belonged to Dr. Safer, the crack-smoking Jewish millionaire who owned the farm on which I spent one of the most magical summers of my life. A perfectly fitting brown conductor hat made of hemp, appropriately, with a hole torn by Anthony the night we had a threesome with his girlfriend--the night I discovered, in amazement, the insane amount of fluid such a tiny girl can produce when brought to the pinnacle of ecstasy by two strapping young lads.

I last wore it two days ago, the night of Cassey's party. I'm not sure if I will ever wear it again.

It all started after I got a phone call from Heather, or "Tits" as I affectionately refer to her. She begged me to come out, even though Lane was there and we weren't speaking. She was inebriated on whiskey and alprazolam. I'm still not entirely sure how she ended up staying up until the next afternoon, although I'm not surprised at all that three cops had to be summoned to help find her passed out laying against a tree in the middle of the woods.

As I said, I was severely anxious about seeing Lane, as we hadn't spoken to each other in a month, since I found out he was running his mouth about me after I left him and his now ex-girlfriend stranded in Macon after they ran out of gas. Mind you, I gave them my last ten dollars, so he had absolutely no reason to be pissed, although he did bring up the numerous times I have ditched him before. But anyone who is close to me knows that's just my style, and it's nothing personal. Sometimes I just have to run away for my own sanity's sake.

So I got to the party, after downing several swigs of whiskey along the way to calm my nerves, and stumbled out of my car to the sounds of Lane strumming and whaling one of my favorite tunes--