A whale bone not unlike the one in my recurring dream.

I guess there comes a time in every person’s life in which you find yourself with no friends to call after midnight. I mean, I’ve got friends that live from coast to coast, and some even in farther lands, that will not answer the phone at 2 AM. I guess I need some friends in southeast asian islands, because that seems where my internal time zone is firmly planted in recent weeks. Asian whorehouses and guys dealing contraband western CDs and shit like that. I don’t really know what the deal is, but I just can’t seem to get a good night’s sleep even though I work a 9-to-5. Just as everyone else has start to spill back in from the streets of this lonely city, I seem ready to spill out. I make a call at 11 PM that keeps me in for awhile, but sooner or later those with kids and the wife and the dog, and 12 cats have to go to bed. There’s way too many mouths to feed in the morning, and for me it’s just the one, and I probably don’t feed it near enough, even though my gut might tell a different story.

I guess even as I have grown up, I haven’t really grown up too much. I rail against the bed and bath still. I do like feeling rested, and the clean feeling after bathing, it’s just the process that gets me down. Kind of like eating as of late as well. I like not being hungry, but the food finding and the consequent eating just doesn’t seem to appeal.

My therapist keeps telling me that these are all things that point toward a deep depression. He’s really a brilliant guy. I think he has read at least half of the books on the Self-Help Psychology shelf at the local Barnes & Noble. He even wrote a book about adolescent angst and depression entitled Mommy? Are You Listening to Me, Mommy?: Adolescent Angst & Depression, in which he goes into great detail about how most of the deviant behavior of children these days points to an underlying “angst and depression” that the contemporary adolescent feels, and that in turn points to the common feelings of abandonment that said adolescent feels upon beginning the transition into young adulthood. I haven’t read the book yet (all of the above was derived from reading the flap as I fell asleep one night) but I will just as soon as I have read Ulysses, the Bible and Don Quixote from cover to cover again. I am sure it really is an outstanding book, but back to the point.

My therapist says that my problems with growing up point to a depression (I am taking the medication in case you reading this, guy!), and I believe he is right because every time I make a call at 2AM and don’t get an answer, or even worse, get a groggy response on the other end, I do indeed fall into a depression that keeps me up for a while pondering all of the little things about myself that I don’t like, and reassuring myself that they are indeed issues by the fact that no body wants to talk to me. Everything from belly button lint to toenail fungus come under the mental knife. I lay awake listening to the morning birds, spanish speaking voices arriving on the job site next door, the sounds of cars cranking to warm and thaw the frost… the city coming to life. Then, and only then, do I drift off to dream the recurring dream of a whale bone descending.