I ain’t gonna lie.  I love kids.  I love them because they make me laugh…I love how they approach the world, all that cheesy bullshit about a fresh perspective and everything is new and exciting, etc, etc… here’s the thing…if I’m having a horrible day, full of bills I can’t pay and a fresh zit on my chin and a nationwide recession…well, seeing a kid having fun will make me forget all about it for a little while.

Anyway, here is your Adorable Child of The Day:

Some crazy shit goes down in the dumpster behind  our parking lot.  Here are some abandoned crackpipes:

Today I met this kid digging in our dumpster.  He was amazingly quick and dexterous.  He let me interview him as he worked.  A couple of timew I gasped thinking he might fall, but part of me knew he wouldn’t.  This kid is scrappy.  He knew exactly what he was doing

I think he’s cute, too.  If I was sixteen, I would totally have the hots for him ’cause he is completely inappropriate for a relationship and it would piss my parents off…at sixteen, those were my two things I looked for in possible boyfriends. (whatever happened to D—–who worked at the gas station?)

ME: So how long you been doing this for?

KID: Bout two weeks ‘cause I got kicked outta foster care and I had nowhere to go, so I started selling dope ‘cause I had no money and got caught with it..I went to jail, now I’m‘bout to go to rehab, gonna be a patient soon…just out here trying to make some money.

ME: How old are you?

KID: 20.

ME: how much you make a day doing this?

KID: I usually make about fifteen dollars in a couple of hours…when I sold dope, make four, five, six hundred dollars a day…sometimes 700 depending…like around when everyone got paid…I was in foster care since I was five.  My mama and daddy was drug addicts, like, my dad right now is doing rehab, my mom passed away…he was on heroin.  (there is a horrible smell) I just had to empty piss from a bottle.

ME: I smelled it…I was just glad you weren’t just pissing.

KID:  Oh, no, no,no,no,no….I just emptied it…I got these gloves and stuff.

ME: Well, at least someone pissed in a bottle and not on the street, that’s good manners I guess…I’m worried you’re gonna fall, but I know you know what you’re doing…hey, look at this fork.  We got the craziest shit in our parking lot.

Then the kid left…but I’ll look out for him to do a follow-up.

Just curious, but is a bent fork some sort of drug paraphernalia?  Tell me if you know.

1997, I think.  Sent to me the year I dropped out of college (I went back eventually).  The stomach in the picture is, of course, Emily’s.

My two best friends from high school (and to this day) are Margaret and Emily.  This is us in high school:

And this is us at my a few years ago at New Years:

This is us in high school on a Saturday night:

That night, we were so bored we decided to put on pajamas and hang out at Oklahoma’s one gay hotel (there are probably more now…that was the year the OKC gay pride parade had eleven people marching…I heard last year it had over 2,000 people attend).  Things change.  Even Oklahoma.

Jungle Red’s, the hotel gift shop:

Note the hot guy with us (not the Drag Queen, the other one).  Michael.  My prom date (see May 1st).  Like I said, he didn’t like me in that way. Michael is incredibly loving and goodhearted.  Growing up in a community where so many people spent the majority of their time trying to be what is expected of them, Michael was always himself, and for that he was fucking brave.

On this night we were trying to make our own fun by putting on pajamas and trolling the gay hotel….but we did shit like this on a regular basis.

We were really bored.  And weird.  I mean, what do you do when you are an artistic, freethinking kid in a place like Oklahoma? (read my book, High Before Homeroom, Simon & Schuster Summer 2010, and you’ll see the worst case scenario).  You do shit like put on pajamas, go to the local gay hook-up hotel, and hang out with the bored security guards.

More on Margaret later (if she lets me).  She’s the “classy lady” of our group.  Now for Emily…

I can truly be myself around Emily.  I can be crazy and neurotic and weird.  She has seen me fat.  She has seen me drunk.  She has taken pictures of me inebriated  and sent then to me in the mail:

Emily has seen me hysterically crying.  She has seen me fall in love for the first time, and get dumped for the first time (by R—, the Long Island Israeli model whose dad owned a car dealership…wonder what happened to him?  You out there, R—?)

Emily has seen me be completely inappropriate more times than I can remember (I probably couldn’t remember them the day after they happened.)  Yet, she never judges me.

If Emily needed a kidney, I would give her mine in a minute…though, considering the shit I’ve done to my body, she might not want it.

Emily also sends me stuff.  She has for years. And I’ve kept it all, because she is an extraordinary artist.  Though she’ll cringe when she reads that…she would call herself an artist.   Self-promotion goes against everything she stands for.  Obviously, we are different in that way (High Before Homeroom, Simon & Schuster, Summer 2010)

Emily doesn’t remember half the shit she has sent me over the years.  And you’d be amazed what you can send through the mail. I’ve kept it all.  Except for the severed head of a black Cabbage Patch kid sent in a stapled Chanel bag.  I threw that away because a. it wasn’t actually something from Chanel  and b. it scared the shit out of me and c. she sent it to me when I was a camp counselor, and we got our mail at lunch, and all the kids got excited by the bag so I opened it in front of them and they were horrified.

Man, I wish I still had it now.

I told Emily I was going to put her stuff on my website.  She’s still not quite okay with the idea.  Too fucking bad. I love you, Emily, but too fucking bad.