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test my dissatisfaction. She had gone east so I went west. I got a job in a ski resort, bartending on top of a mountain. I learned how to board, and disappeared in the snow.
    That was another time. I’ve been in San Francisco nine years. I’m suffering side effects from the Adderall. There are always side effects. Insomnia, loss of appetite, headaches, obsession, erratic decision-making. Inconsistency. I took my pill early in the day but I’m still awake and full of thoughts. So I lie in bed with my windows open, glad to be alone. It’s the middle of the week. I haven’t been sleeping and I’m missing appointments. My nails are bitten down and bleeding. All I can do is document it all and see where it leads me. I’m taking my meds and the world will be a different place for a while.
    I have a self-published book I wrote when I was with Josie, and another book of unpublished poems. I never show them to anyone. The poems are so full of anger. Anger at Josie for being better than me, for always having the upper hand. For loving her family and being loved by them in return. For being someone who got over things and not recognizing that I was a person who didn’t get over anything. But I read that book and those poems and I see something else. I see who I was then.
    This is who I am now.
    1 . Michelle P. Kraus,
Allen Ginsberg: An Annotated Bibliography, 1969–1977
(Scarecrow Press, 1980), 66.
    2 . Josh Davis,
Wired,
June 26, 2007.

CHAPTER 2
    Late May; Tom Takes the Ball; Once Upon a Time in the Mental Hospital; Hans Reiser at Alameda County Courthouse; Sean Sturgeon in Oakland; In Bed with Miranda
    On a warm Sunday afternoon I meet some friends at a court above the Castro. We run three on three, protected from the wind by Buena Vista Hill. We play a soft game. No one wants to be injured. From the court we can see the next hill rising before Noe Valley and east to the long flat space of the Mission District before Portero Hill and the piers.
    “I can score on you at will,” Doug says, which is mostly true. I’m not a good player. For some reason I’ve always been drawn to basketball, even though I was more talented at other sports. Doug grabs my shirt and I threaten to start a blog about him, dougcheats.blogspot.com. My team wins every game.
    After, Tom asks if I would like a ride to my bicycle, which is down at the intersection. I say sure, just to put off being alone. I tell him about an email I came across while searching for an old girlfriend’s phone number. In the email she said she was angry. She said I only called her when my “needs” were acting up. That I didn’t think of her as a person.
    “We’re all like that at times,” Tom says. “You shouldn’t worry about it. I think you’re one of the most well-adjusted people I know. I mean, outside of your love life.”
    “Really?” I say. “You think that?”
    “Sure,” he says. “Considering the life you’ve led. Don’t you think so?”
    I shake my head and smile, then get up and walk him back to his car. I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.
    When I was fourteen I slept on a couch in my old house. It was the house I grew up in, a yellow stucco corner home with a magnolia tree in the backyard. The house was mostly empty. My father was selling it. He had already moved to a new place in the suburbs somewhere. I had been on the streets for almost a year, sleeping in hallways and on rooftops. On particularly cold nights I had broken into boiler rooms. I knew it was dangerous to sleep in my old house.
    I dreamed of footsteps, then screams, then something hitting my face. I woke trying to hide from my father’s fists. He pulled me by my hair into the kitchen where he had a set of clippers waiting. He forced me to kneel at the cabinets while he shaved my head. It was the second time he had shaved my head. There wasn’t any reason for it, except perhaps control through humiliation. He didn’t know what else to do. I had put a cigarette out