I may be setting a personal record today.

I am going to try to write about Burlington. I want to write about this because, to me, it encapsulates the miraculous state of being 16. In my own life, anyway.

Background is important here. That summer, the summer of '93, the summer I was 16, I was living with my friend S., about whom I have written extensively. One of my deep, deep teenage loves. We were living in our first apartment, a total and complete shithole in Boston. She was seeing D1, although "seeing" would imply "human interaction" which was largely impossible since he was in prison. Sometimes we would drive up to Burlington Vermont so she could visit him and I could wait in the car because I was under 18 and would have required a note from my parents to go in, and I was not about to ask for that note. I am still friends with D1, in fact, I officiated at his marriage to another friend, a couple months ago. I am no longer friends with S, for many, various, and strange reasons. He wasn't in prison for anything particularly bad, don't worry.

On the day he was to get out of jail, on house arrest, we drove up to see him. It was, coincidentally, also his 21st birthday. At the time I was abusing Dramamine (it's a far more potent hallucinogen than LSD, incidentally) terribly, and I had just swallowed a whole lot when S. emerged from her room, and her conversation with D1, to ask if I wanted to go up to Vermont with her (a 4-hour drive). I looked down at the ravaged Dramamine package in front of me, and said, "Well, I won't get motion sick."

That ride was really something else. I can still remember some of the totally remarkable hallucinations I experienced. I showed up with S. at D1's door very very fucked-up. That was okay. I went and laid down on the couch for a while while the two of them ... um, had a reunion, let's say.

Some more background, I forgot to mention. One of the criteria for his house arrest was that he had to have both a job and a place to live lined up for post-prison. Needless to say, this is kind of tricky while in jail. But he found something -- a close friend of his was a quadriplegic (the same quadriplegic I have described taking care of in earlier entries), who needed 24/7 care from a live-in person. Thus, he had both a job and a place to live in one shot.

The thing that will be hardest for me to adequately capture in trying to describe this is the magic. I will warn you now that it is likely that I will fall into some stylistic devices in the process.

I think it was that night that D1 and I started talking. We connected immediately. We understood each other immediately. His and my relationship has never been a romantic one, nor do I think either of us ever wanted it that way. It has always been much closer to brother and sister. It's a little harder for me these days, since I have changed so very much and he has not so much, but I am trying not to let that color these memories.

He and I used to joke that we would just make little signs that said "yes, I know" on them so we could simply hold them up instead of saying it over and over. I actually did make him a little sign, as a joke. We made each other mix tapes designed to drive the other insane, with songs that were not listed on the labels that we elaborately made. We both loved -- stupidly, deeply, crazily -- S. We both would've done anything for her, and for each other. In a strange way, it was as if he and I were the parents, and she the child, although it was they who were together.

Christ. I am not actually sure that I will be able to do this honestly and not feel very silly. But fuck it. Hell, I've already told you all that I have herpes and have had three abortions and all about my funky parents and this is the first little baby step into the deepdark strange places.

Anyway. My memories of that time are all a bit hallucinogenic. It was a strange apartment in a strange town with four strange people in it. We all slept through almost the whole day. S. and I drove back and forth between Boston and Vermont many, many times.

We had an odd family. This did not include Quadreplegic. It was myself, and D1, and S., and E. Although E. stayed in Boston the whole time except once. But he and D1 were and are old old friends. They two were my comfort when I thought no one could comfort me. S. was no good for comfort, really. I always had to take care of her, and I was more than happy to do it. But she could not be, was not capable of being there for me. E. and D1 took care of me, as best as I could let anybody then. E. in Boston and D1 in Vermont. They loved me, I know that now.

We -- mostly me and D1 and S. -- drank huge amounts of cough syrup. To the uninitiated, this sounds like an absurd, bottom-of-the-barrel sort of way to get fucked-up. But we actually did so by choice. And to this day, it remains the only drug I would ever really consider doing again. Whether it was us or the dextromethorphan hydrobromide I do not know. What I do know is that it opened things in myself that I had had closed since I was three or four.

I'm not sure how far I can go with this right now. I *do* know that I have become weepy in a way that I was not before I started this thing, meaning this diary. I wonder if it is just that I am opening floodgates that had been closed for a long long time, or if it is something else.

Burlington vermont looks like a very standard sort of new england town. Hills, shopping centers, residential areas. A long coastline against Lake Champlain, a lake so large one would think it was one of the great lakes, but it was not. A freezing, salty lake, as I discovered later on in this story.

CJ (the quadriplegic) had a specially-constructed condominium behind a crappy shopping center that held a Price Chopper and a Kmart. D1 and I would go and steal dozens and dozens of milk crates from behind that Price Chopper, which we used to build shelves with cable ties. Also 1 shopping cart, which we used to push S. around. There was a large lawny backyard to the condo. Somewhere back there was a child's playground set. Behind it was a road, like a highway almost. There was a ditch, I think a drainage ditch, a bit past the condo complex on that road. There was greenery there that one would not expect, and that in the dark under the influence looked like a jungle. There was sumac.

Bear with me. I am trying to describe something that is painted in my mind indelibly. And I doubt very much that I can possibly communicate it in its entirety, but I have to try.

There was a park. A big, wide, long park. It bordered on Lake Champlain, and it had many places. A place with rocks. A place with a playground, large playground and playset. A place that jutted out, sandy, into the lake. A place with tall, tall trees. It was closed after dark. Also a concrete place with benches and water fountains, I suppose a place where people could congregate together. I don't know because I never saw it in the day time.

There was a beach. Each of these places is individually important. The beach. Wait. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before I talk about the places. because they were all connected by the bike trail. We used the bike trail like a path. It went along the coast of the lake. It went through and to all of the places I will have to describe in order to have this make any sense at all. Each place was almost an island unto itself, with its own special meaning and sense and feeling. This will make almost no sense unless you give me a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.

I will finish this later. I am not sure how long it will take me to write the whole thing. There was a lot. If I wrote every part of my life the way this one needs to be written -- it would take me far longer than the time it has taken me to write what I have so far in this diary.

onehanded