(For continuities sake, I included the last paragraph from the last post)
Rolling, I walked into the apartment as the unfamiliar effects began to take hold. My shoes felt foreign and uncomfortable, so I yanked them off. Unexpectedly, the bottoms of my feet felt incredible on the cold tiles. Icy jolts of pleasure shot from my heels up through my body until a violent shiver erupted from my shoulders. I stood curling my toes, over and over. Then I felt the heat. Directly across from the door was a small vent, emitting a stream of glorious, never-ending warmth. Entranced, I bounded over and slid down the wall onto the carpet, my back pressed against the erupting vent. I yelled for Bentley, a rambunctious little pup, who trotted over and jumped on my lap. He was soft, really soft. Heat permeated every inch of my back and oozed orgasmically throughout the rest of my body. It was a thermodynamic massage from God, and only the beginning...
As the four of us embraced a newfound love chemically coursing through our veins, Alicia, a friend's girlfriend, asked if I wanted a massage, which was bafflingly sensical at the time. Like butter in a microwave, my back melted away. After a few minutes, I turned entirely into a puddle, and we switched. The touch of my hands on her skin was electric, mesmerizing. For some reason, the fact that I could help make someone else so briefly happy filled me with near indescribable joy. We were all in ecstasy. Weird, warm love for these near strangers seeped uncontrollably from every pore in my body and I felt I couldn't express this fact enough. "Fucking California," I kept repeating, "God damn I love this place", as I chewed my gum with a fury. Then someone put on the Thizzle Dance. The mediocre beat had turned utterly hypnotic. Dancing along to it felt like the most natural thing I'd done in my life. After it ended I sat back down, curled my toes on the carpet and continued petting Bentley with a strange, infinite enthusiasm.
After a few hours, the bright new world faded away. We returned to a place of dim noises and dull lights. All of my innate loathing, which had dissipated with that vent's glorious heat, came rumbling back to life. "Fuck these people" I thought to myself. Ahh yes, normalcy had returned. I won't say outright what we took, which you ought to be able to surmise from what I've written, but I can say that there's no way to adequately write how great of a thing it was without also being conflicted about how much of a love gushing douchebag you sound like. It was what it was.
That was last weekend, and now its Wednesday the 23rd. I left Orange County last Monday, my new perspective in tow and headed back to my Aunt's house in Venice. I was motivated, intending to spend last week making some crucial Life progress. But ultimately I let the days wither away. After my last post, I wrote nothing and spent my time rocking back and forth, sucking my thumb, and fretting over a mild case of existential anxiety. It's almost funny how absurd laziness is, and how acting like a piece of garbage just builds on itself. Why and how the fuck did I spend so much time watching the same seasons of Arrested Development I'd already seen 10 times before? Or simply nonstop flipping through the Netflix menus, which provided me with a bizarre and inexplicable sense of comfort?
After a few days this irrational, anxiety induced inaction and after I finished another bout of quiet, masturbatory weeping, I wiped away my tears and got the fuck out of bed. It was Thursday evening and I texted Heather, the pale blue eyed friend of Esme's, asking advice on potential good hikes in the area. She invited me to go with her and a friend hers, Sahara, for a hike behind her house in Topanga the next day. So I woke Friday morning, climbed in Esme's conveniently unused Honda Civic, and headed North up "the 10" towards the Pacific Coast Highway and Topanga Canyon. I arrived as they were finishing breakfast and chatted with Heather's awesomely Australian mom, while they got ready. Traversing up a narrow trail behind Heather's house, we made our way up the canyon to a point called Eagles Rock and had ridiculous views of the desert mountains, canyons, Pacific Ocean and of Catalina Island, just visible off the coast. The simple, few hours of hiking proved invaluable to my mental state and I drove back to LA refreshed and ready again to begin the existence of a productive human being.
Despite my shitty timing and lack of consistent blog writing, I'm going to write about the rest of the weekend in a separate post, which will be up tomorrow evening or Friday morning. It was fucking absurd and will be worth the excessive detail I plan on describing it in. I am quite aware this post should have been up days ago, but like I said before, I still battle with these unwanted doses of the Fear. At this age we're all at a point where the long term oriented and fucking irritating Pressure, will simply overpower and shit upon anything you have any passion for. There has been an obvious, illuminated path laid out for most of us, which was the unquestionable, never ending and hellish schooling we endure from the ages of 5 till 20 something... But what now? For the first time in our lives no one knows what the hell is going to happen, and it's a massive bitch of an inobvious hassle to figure it out. One mustn't forget though, me especially, that the struggle, the lack of money, the loneliness, the distance from home, and the Great Unknown are the things that make this whole fucking experience worth it. Fighting through the hard parts of each of our respective endeavors, however neverendingly shitty or horrifying they may appear, are what turn us into the Badasses of the Future. One of the best and most comforting quotes I constantly remind myself of, and believe to be true - "You are exactly where you're supposed to be".
