Gram Parsons overdosed in a room at the Joshua Tree Inn. His road manager Phil Kaufman and a friend, Michael Martin, got very drunk, borrowed a broken down hearse and drove to LAX to retrieve the body, which was being prepaired to be flown to Louisiana for burial. Following Gram’s wishes, they set his body ablaze in the desert. The two were arrested several days later and fined $700 for stealing and burning the coffin—it was not against California law to steal a dead body.
 
Riding my bike home drunk from a party, I’m hit by a car and wake up in the emergency room. A doctor tells me that I have a subarachnoid hemorrhage. My brain was bleeding, but it stopped. They are just holding me for observation. To make sure the swelling goes down. A week later I turn 26.
 
I’m discharged from the hospital and catch a cab home. I’m afraid that I will receive a ticket for biking while intoxicated or for riding a bike without brakes. At the police station, a cop gives me back my bike without saying a word. For weeks I’m afraid I’ll receive a summons or a ticket in the mail. All I get are bills from SF General for a CAT scan and from the Fire Department for the ambulance ride, which I forward to my insurance carrier. Two weeks later I lose my coverage when I quit my job. All told, I owe SF General $50.
 
Keith Moon overdosed on Heminevrin, an anti-seizure medication he was taking to wean himself off alcohol. The flat that he died in had been loaned to him by Harry Nilsson. A few years earlier, Mama Cass died in the same bed in the same room (of heart failure not, as rumor would have it, from choking on a ham sandwich). Distraught over these two deaths, Nilsson sold the flat to his friend Pete Townshend.
 
Every time I stand up, I get lightheaded and stumble. On my birthday I drink a vodka tonic and get so dizzy I can’t stand. Later that night I drink a beer and feel fine. I’m relieved that I can start drinking again. My last birthday in San Francisco. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you dizzy.
 
Don’t you wonder sometimes about sound and vision? “The birds there above the lake sound the way the lights look.” The lights strung above the water were alight, black wire connecting each to the next. The way thinking of you connects me to you. The way thinking I’m Jesus makes me Jesus. For a moment at least. A bird was bathing near the curb. The current carrying trash towards a sewer grate that read “EMPTIES INTO THE BAY.” Each thought was straining to be thought through one Percocet, one Valium, pseudoephedrine, two Heinekens. Each pill is a pep talk. The light emptied into the water. The sky darkened. I tasted aluminum rising in my throat.
 
There are times when talking to someone in a bar and you can only see her mouth. You’re telling her things you would never tell someone you know. Too drunk to hide. Not what you’re thinking. You are afraid that your mother is dying. If my mother dies, I will be totally alone. Her mother died three years ago—of the same type of cancer that your mother has. And all I can think is: why does she have to have a boyfriend? How can you keep living when no one knows you are there? Her father is dead too, she has told you. Her voice drowned out by the jukebox. She is 22, three years younger than you.
 
In late December 1983, just after his 39th birthday, Dennis Wilson drowned while drunk.
 
And why as she talks do you just want to kiss her? It is almost 2 a.m. I can’t remember my name. She says she’s an alcoholic. She wears it well. A weak smile. Lips too red, slight gap between her front teeth.
 
At some point your life becomes a b-side. You’re just singing along. “Lookin’ for a party, some action.” The city loops back onto itself like a memory. That’s beside the point. I can’t tell if I’m remembering something that already happened or if I’m dreaming. To be lost can become a relief. To be purposeless, to be implausible. I’ve spent most of my life trying to make up my mind.
 
I swear I saw a New Orleans streetcar riding down Church street the other day. “Desire” printed above the driver’s window.
 
From New Orleans to Missoula. I’d never walked through snow before. From Missoula to Oakland. I never wanted to see snow again. From Oakland to San Francisco. Waking up to move the car to the other side of the street. From San Francisco to Albany. The day before Thanksgiving, snow was just starting to fall as I left. From Albany to Brooklyn. There is no snow in Brooklyn, only piles of dirt flecked white.
 
For the first time in months, no one told me what to do today. So I skimmed over the hours like a paragraph without punctuation. Joe gave me a handful of Xanax; I will save them for a day when Sunday’s best is hopeless (tomorrow).
 
Traffic is a tone poem to a city planner. Van Ness to Mission is only a line about love and death. Its iambic lurch connecting two ideas I’ve never thought before and won’t remember because I don’t have anything to write with. Every other block, another ping means a stop has been requested. The loneliest sound I’ve ever heard until I step off the bus and hear a woman singing softly to herself in Spanish. Glass scattered across the sidewalk shimmers beneath Doc’s Clock’s neon north star.