Dear Neil,
I drink coffee; I’m an adult. It’s as simple as that.

Today, I talked to a hyper, sheltered, dorky thirteen-year-old. I told him I was from the future. I said the next four years of his life would be crazy. I said that he needed to get a car. That’s the best advice of which I could think.

Funny story: last night, I purposefully allowed myself to be locked into the library. I came an hour before closing time, with that in mind. It was a crazy night. I have a picture in which all of my clothes are piled at the bottom of a library staircase. I did most of my sleeping in a handicap bathroom. Around 6:30AM, a cleaning lady spotted me, I told her a bullshit story, and she let me out of the library. I came back to my room and found my roommate awake and on his computer. What a loser!

I met the thirteen-year-old, when I went with a friend to a Comfort Inn in Forest City, North Carolina, to see my friend’s brother. My friend’s brother was there on a school field trip, to see a Shakespeare presentation thing. My friend got internet driving directions and figured an hour each way wasn’t too far for his flesh and blood. I came along for no real reason. I had nothing better to do. I got to expose him to some of my musical propaganda. Ain’t Deltron 3030 the greatest!

Last night, I learned that it is hard to sleep under the following conditions: paranoia about being caught, cold hard ground, no pillow, and only semi-darkness. Hobo life, here I come!

One of my more recent thoughts has been a reevaluation of the sitcom gag, “I like my women like I like my coffee.” Typically, the person saying that is an African-American and goes on to state that he likes his coffee hot, black, and sweet. I’ve only found one non-sitcom human who claims to like his coffee like his women, and I believe he was humoring me. Me, my coffee preferences are unrelated to my women preferences, or so I like to think. I like my coffee warm but not hot, black, and bitter… Well, I will admit a weakness for bitter women.

It’s really hard to sleep like a hobo. You only get half sleep. It doesn’t satisfy. You’re awake, but not quite. Time moves slowly. My sleep time, supposedly from 3AM to 6AM, was so fitful. When I got back to my room, I managed to sleep until lunch. I could have gone longer, but I had a class at one. Alarm clocks are destiny.

In the hotel room along with my friend’s brother were a couple of middle school kids from the same small, Christian school. I try to hide my Christian school roots, around my hip, new friends. What I didn’t know then could fill a book, probably one of the “Tropic of...” books. So now, I make believe that I sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus or maybe Goodwill. Truth is though, that I came from a dogmatic Christian school, and I still see the world very much through the lenses, which they gave me.

My mom told me the other day that only someone stupid or amoral could vote for Gore. She doesn’t know that I did. I tried to argue with her, but I couldn’t break her logic and let her go. My twin thoughts that I’ve been kicking around for a couple days are one, you can’t really persuade someone of anything without them letting you do so, and two, even given the exact same set of data about the universe, reasonable people can draw different conclusions. So based on the data given by the world, some people choose Gore and some people choose Bush. Some crazy people even choose a third party candidate. Some people conclude that there is no such thing as coffee or anything else in the world. Of course, I can’t assume my two thoughts come naturally from experience. Nor do I expect to persuade you of them. I just submit them as something for you to consider. Maybe you will integrate it into your existing belief structure, maybe not.

Back in the hotel room, I made myself a pot of coffee, while we talked to the kids. Coffee proves I’m an adult, simple as that. I talked about things of which these kids had never heard, or at least the one thirteen-year-old kid, who reminded me of myself, hadn’t heard of them. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll were the topics of greatest interest. I told him stories about his future, about girls and whatnot. I was an old (practically ancient) college kid with loose morals. I swore about three times, but I think they didn’t hear any of them but “piss”. Which isn’t that bad.

Man, remember innocence? Wasn’t that crazy!? He’s got some wild times ahead of him…

When I was his age, I was still a year away from my first girlfriend and four years from my second. I thought I knew about a lot of stuff, but didn’t. I thought hormones had finished reworking my psyche, but I was only beginning to have my worldview shattered. “OK, so girls aren’t as bad as I thought, but all that thinking about sex stuff is still the domain of perverts alone. I’ve just learned to appreciate the beauty of women, but I shan’t become a ninny, mindlessly dreaming of naked girls.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Thank you, my many glands. I can’t think right anymore.

Coffee tastes bad. I drink coffee for that reason. Coffee burns your tongue I drink coffee for that reason. Coffee is the drink of grown-ups. I drink coffee for that reason. I love coffee because I hated coffee.

Besides, anything is better than Tang.