Last night, I was completely knackered and thrashed from two weeks of weirdness. Today, I never want to sleep again. Not because I’m afraid of nightmares or that I won’t wake up in the morning, although now that I say this I’m kind of afraid I won’t wake up from a nightmare and this would make the best movie about if you die in your sleep you die in real life and there’s a dude with horrible complexion (I would cast Emma Stone) who can enter your dreams and tickle you but not kill you unless you are prone to dying by tickling in which case you probably need removing from the gene pool anyway because the next stop is taking advantage of this flavor of neurological mishap to create fainting goats. It’s a slippery slope.

I’ve been snowboarding with a new friend who, by Samwise’s advice and the belated wisdom of my own heart, I’m keeping as my friend. A friend who is sharing my bed, a friend who I’m relegating as my teddy bear, and a friend I’m not turning into a romantic fling and/or misfire like so many before her. At this point in my life, I’ve had a lot of sex, and I have very few friends remaining to show for this intimacy. Even the girl who gave me my first kiss in fifth grade won’t accept my Facebook friend request. Get over it, Jenny. Braces get tangled sometimes and I said I would always love you even though you have half a lower lip now. Just let it go and don’t eat soup.

It’s telling Noah about the Flood, tender lumplings. When you need someone to inform you your face is on fire, I’m your guy. Never say I never listen because up until now I never listened. So I suppose you can say I never listen but I wouldn’t have been listening so I wouldn’t have heard your words. In order for me to have heeded your words, I would have had to been listening, and we’ve just established I don’t listen to you. What?

The “never want to sleep again” is hyperbole, of course. Hey! That’s a great name for an ADHD and/or bipolar football gig. The Hyper Bowl. Oh, for fook’s sake. I wrote a pun. I am such a hypocrite. Let’s check the nightstand… yes, they still offer Bibles in hotel rooms. Pardon me while I go in the corner and flog myself with the Bible in penance for offering the world an unnecessary and evil pun.

Anyhow, the “never want to sleep again” thing in part refers to this feeling that I’ve expended a good amount of my precious years jumping into romantic relationships that didn’t need jumping into. The friendship was more than just fine. Even better than fine. It was great. It was better than the romantic relationship. It’s kind of like the excitement I had watching Big Thunder Mountain Railroad being built at Disneyland, and it was so cool because it looked like the hoodoos at Bryce Canyon, and it was going to be a roller coaster, and then I rode the thing and it was a perfectly thrilling ride but they put a fooking gold mine on the ride as part of the attraction and anyone knows that there’s no gold to be found in the lacustrine formation of Bryce, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be a hard rock mine, at best it would be a placer mine. I would have been better never to have boarded that ride in the first place considering my moral outrage and disappointment now. It’s exactly like that.

There’s been a whole flock of epiphanies in the past week or so, and this realization that I don’t need to ride every ride that’s attractive is … fook, that is so misogynistic (unintentionally) that I’m going to backtrack.

There’s been a whole flock of epiphanies in the past week or so, and this realization that I don’t need to ride every ride that’s attractive is … DAMMIT!!!

There’s been a whole flock of epiphanies in the past week or so, and this realization that a friendship can be much more intimate than a romantic relationship is coming to bear, and it’s just the type of realization that’s like the warmth I would feel peeing in a rented scuba wetsuit. And, dude, who would ever want to sleep again after peeing in a rented scuba wetsuit?

Fook! How do I make my point? It hasn’t been wasted time, really, although it has been unnecessary lessons learned over and over again. Intimacy isn’t only romantic, as evidenced by my bestest buddy in the world Derek Wilson, bestest friends since third grade, and we have an intimacy unlike any romantic relationship I’ve ever had, although he did try to kiss me once and I threatened to never let him play with my Legos again if he tried that shit one more time … that didn’t really happen. Or did it? Maybe this is why I don’t want to ever sleep again. That is the shit of nightmares and fainting goats!

Fook! I suppose why I’m having such a hard time making my point is because this is a point I’ve never had to make. Let’s just say that this feels like the right thing to do, that it’s something I should have done thrice-fold over times now, and that I don’t want to miss anymore of healthy intimacy by making the same errors over and over.

You know what they say about madness, right? It’s making the same mistakes over and over expecting that the Mad Not Mad album will ever be a great album even though I got used to it. Madness, how could you do that to me? I didn’t even get past Uncle Sam before I took the album off the turntable and hid it in my closet (next to Tom Cruise) I was so disgusted (also, like how I feel about Tom Cruise). Eventually, I pulled the album out and gave it another chance, and it was good, but I could have …

Fook! I can’t get my head around this one.

Here’s the rub. Creating friendships that last is much more important than the bliss of romance with a shelf-life. And I don’t want to miss any more of these friendships, and if I close my eyes to sleep I’ll be giving over time I could be building friendships like ours instead.

And that’s the point I’m making.

For Samwise.