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It started as a cutesy story but I couldn't bring myself to create that kind of mock-up. It would have been a true story, too. I wouldn't have to make anything up but I don't know how to begin. Maybe with the jacket. She gave it to him. Oh, before I forget, I'm writing this from a casino travel plaza and I'm pretty sure that this guy that came up to me was on meth. It's just that it's awfully early to be drinking a F'real milkshake at 5:08 in the morning. Also, he said hi like someone who was stimulated. Maybe he's just gay. I mean, I'm stimulated myself. I drank two red bulls about an hour ago. Not one. Two. They upset my stomach so I'm burping and farting in discomfort.

She gave him the jacket and he always wore it.

Oh God, I think I'm racist now. I think all black people are threatening. I can't believe I'm admitting this. Well, I guess I find white people threatening too, so it's not all bad. But anyway, I didn't used to be racist. It happened last year when I developed a phobia of the Black Panthers, and now I think all black people are somehow connected to them. I feel like someone's going to attack me for being racist.

I hate it when people look like they can read your mind. I think I'm tripping right now.

She was the stimulus of his ongoing transformation. He said, "I'm sorry," but wasn't really apologizing for anything. This is what I'm talking about. And if it wasn't for her New World Order beliefs, he's even be afraid of her. She tempered extreme views with an enlightened perspective. Her actions were extreme, too. For example, right now she was giving him some extreme lovin'.

The red bulls made me super edgy. I'm clenching my teeth and paranoid and I know I wouldn't survive as a meth user like that other guy. I can only assume this sensation is just magnified with meth. That sounds horrible. I think I'm creeping everyone out by sitting here and writing. I look really uncomfortable and I keep burping. Just imagine that coupled with being extremely skinny from meth, or worse, include an angry element to my demeanor, because I've heard that meth makes you angry. Not that I ever got angry when I did it.

I don't know why I talk about meth so much. She didn't do it and neither did he. He wondered if everyone there was being fooled by some rogue deity. The he said he was sorry again.

"Why does that comfort you," she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You know, you don't have to say you're sorry. I want you to know that it's OK."

"OK."

I was really disappointed in the people here. I was like him, I wondered if they were being tricked somehow. I mean, I feel like I'm being tricked somehow, and I'm more intelligent than most of these people. It just seems like they should be more on the defense. And I'm talking about the other people in this gas station that I'm sitting inside, at a table, with all the other chairs upside down and on top of the table, because they mopped earlier. I met someone named Darryl her earlier.

He said, "I just don't want to hurt your feelings."

"Nothing you could say could hurt my feelings unless you said something really mean."

"I wouldn't do that."

I think I need to calm down. It wasn't that he was insecure, he was just down and, well, insecure.

She said, "Look, you've never hurt my feelings before and I don't expect you to start now. You're a respectful man and I know you have the highest regard for me. We're just going to wait in this parking lot for a little while longer and at 6:00 when we're allowed to we'll go in there and buy some beer. Then we'll go home and get wasted at 6 in the morning."

He laughed and it was a tingly, delicate laugh that made his whole body feel better. He was sick, like me. I think they started necking to pass the time but I don't remember too well. I know he was wearing his jacket.