Two days now of gloom. I hate myself when I get this way. I become unable to function. Energy flows away from me and all I can do is lie in a dark room buried under covers. I am emotionally starved. It is not just a physical need for sex. It’s so much larger and much more desperate than that. I need to be loved— and I need to love. I feel loveless. Empty. Miserable.

There is no god— no higher power. We are the result of cosmic accidents and chance. There is no design to all this. Our pain is random and meaningless. I want to die. I want to float in a warm tub and let this pain slip red into the water.

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It is now nearly 2:00 am— and I’ve just settled into bed after an adventure with a bunch of AA people. After the meeting, Ed asked me to go for coffee with him and a friend, Tony. Tony moved today— and the van he rented had a busted hose that he needed to get fixed. He said there was a gas station just up the road— and it should only take a couple of minutes. So we rode with him. The station didn’t have the hose— so we got sent to another station. By now we are driving through rainy New York streets in a cloud of steam bellowing from under the hood.The second station did not have the part. By now, Tom, had joined us— and the four of us went in search of an all-night taxi repair place at 12th and 23rd. We found it— and waited in the rain. It felt great to be out— doing something unexpected and unplanned. I found Tony very attractive. A few days growth of beard. Straightforward. A masculine hesitancy about him. Finally they tell us to drive into the garage and onto the electric lift. Tony does— but doesn’t stop and rams the car into a mesh cage— knocking down supplies and hitting the oil lube can. It is like a scene from a movie. tom jumping out of the way. They charged him $125 for the oil can— and insisted that someone else drive the car out. We all wound up back in the Village at Tiffany’s for coffee and dessert. Little did anyone know that a night of riding around New York in a van— crashing into walls— and getting a crush on a scruffy bearded man named Tony was just what whining Laredo needed tonight. My Higher Power is a strange cowboy who loves me dearly. Even when I do no love myself.

The Last Hundred Miles

November 15th, 1981