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The sermon for May. 12, 2003 is: and that's unreality
12:14 a.m. ...oh my god, I forgot the whole reason why I wanted to write here in the first place. Earlier tonight my friend Stephen called me, his voice seemed tremulous, as if he were shy to speak. He wanted to know if I had tickets to this baseball game tomorrow, which I did. I kept asking him what was wrong and finally he just started crying. I told him I'd drop off the tickets after dinner, so I came round. His girlfriend Katey answered the door wearing a bikini, which struck me as an ominous choice of wardrobe for 10pm. Wilbur, one of the more friendlier gangsters who regularly haunt their apartment, was there as well, eyeing my warily. I went up to Stephen and he was lying on his bed, fully clothed, convulsing gently. I asked Katey what was going on and she told me, or rather she let loose with a sibilant river of almost-English sounding words strung seamlessly and senselessly together, it sounded like Welsh, or what I imagine Welsh would sound like. I picked out "Wild Turkey" and "black tar," and this made me very sad, diary, because Stephen had very painfully kicked heroin four or five years ago when his baby boy died. One of Stephen's convulsions made his leg jerk into the air, and Katey said, "Oh, I think he's awake. Do you want to say hi to Jonathan, Steve? He brought the tickets!" Stephen turned to his side and murmured something drunkenly. I wanted to touch him, I wanted to rub his back and just croon to him; but the fact that he and Katey were on drugs frankly scared the shit out of me, primarily because once he asked me to help him with his computer and to explain what I was doing so he'd understand. But he didn't understand, possibly because (though I didn't know it) he was on speed and PCP, so he kept shouting at me to explain it to him, he wasn't an idiot, and I told him he was scaring me, and he said, Are you scared? and he pulled a gun from his drawer and said, I wouldn't even bother with trying to scare you, motherfucker. You wouldn't have time to be scared. This came to me while I was standing in his bedroom, watching him convulse and watching Katey jerk involuntarily back and forth while she tried to complete a sentence. Stephen had apologised about the gun, I was fucked up man, he said, I'm so sorry, you know that. I know that. So tonight, in his bedroom, I wanted to sit beside him, I wanted to help him, make sure he was okay. But I also wanted to get out of that apartment very fast. So I did, I came home and I tried calling Valerie and Stephanie because I was unhappy and upset. And it occurred to me that there's no real reason why they should care that I'm unhappy and upset. So that's all.
 
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