dispatch from chucktown

So much has been going on that I don't know where to start, so let's just say that I'm in Charleston, South Carolina, and that I kind of never want to come back to New York. Cigarettes are cheap, booze is cheap, I'm not wearing a jacket, and all the boys have that sexy, slow, southern air about them. Well, not all of them.

This is my first time truly traveling alone and I love it. I made the mistake of sleeping with my host here the first night (okay and the next day too), and he has been clingy and I've had to be alternatively diplomatic, aloof and selfish in order to get away from him to do what I intended to do here in town: see fucking everything. I also just had to get out of The NY for a minute and away from all the talk about boys and school and therapists who think I need more therapy and more drugs. In this latter respect it's been very successful and I feel good. I think that you can only really know who you are when you remove yourself from any defining context--the place you live, the people you love, the things you do. When all of those things fall away, who are you? It's too easy to define yourself by these things, and these are things that may say things about you, they're just hints at the real thing.

Of course I lost my phone Friday night, as I'm wont to do about every three months now. When I realized it was gone I was pretty excited because it meant I could wander about town without relation to anything, and it would be difficult for my host to catch up with me. He [oh Love Affair just IMd me. My heart always freaks out when he does that] got arrested Friday night and was in a bad mood. I felt sorry for him.

I was so liberated to be without phone, without contacts, and without a plan that I went a good two hours without food or coffee or nicotine. I think that being alone is good for me.

Oh god, Love Affair, why do you torture me? All right, now I'm totally distracted and can't concentrate on what I was thinking, where I was going with this. I guess this proves my point completely. I need to move to the woods.