5-16 7:04 PM F

Alan Benes just lost his no-hitter with two out in the ninth. I screamed when it happened. And the game is still zero-zero. Life can be cruel. The Knicks and Heat are tied in the fourth despite the ludicrous suspension of three key Knick players for coming off the bench when PJ Anderson threw Charlie Ward into the stands.

Sports sports sports. My life is empty. Shirelle and I saw the horror movie "Scream" at a smelly, bum-filled Fairfax cinema. I ate lunch at the Bear Pit BBQ in Mission Hills. Place of wood, sawdust on the floor, the sign said, "Missouri Style". I had the "Combearnation" lunch with a sandwich and a rib. Now I have Jeopardy on. Who is Nelson? Got it. Who is Franco? This college tourny is too easy. Who is Bradbury?

I just went to the washer to switch my clothes to the dryer and they were covered--I mean COVERED--with lint. I pulled the shirts out and the wire spiral from one of my little notebooks fell to the linoleum. I killed it. All the little notes that I was burning to write in bars, in the car, all those lines that had to be writen immediately--obliterated. It feels as bad as when I left that journal in the taxi when I got out of jail. It's possible that one's still alive in a lost-and-found box at some cabbie station, but clearly there's no hope for this one.

You know what though? There was sixty bucks in the washer, too. I don't remember losing that. So I lost a journal, but I gained sixty bucks. Can I consider it a sale?

I just jerked to the notorious Playboy of my first orgasm all those years ago. Carlin invited me to a reggae cruise tomorrow night. Raquel's sending me some seductive e-mails. Carlin also asked to go to Versaille, the Cuban joint down Pico. I just smoked. Maybe I'll play chess or Space Ace. Maybe we can go out for pool. Shirelle's supposed to be coming over. Shit to do, lots of shit to do.

My mom and dad say that I used to say "hel-i-cop-ter" when I was just learning to talk, and "leedleleedleleedleleedle" and "ap-ple sauce". That I could name all the animals in a Noah's Ark set. Stupid Kid Tricks. Remember the circus train. The change on the floor. The night they went to see "Earthquake". The first foreign language I ever heard? Isn't your first language foreign when you first hear it?