This isn't going to be writing, it's going to be rambling.

I don't even know what threw the switch in my head tonight, but I remember when it happened.

Why don't you come along? I'm sure it's more interesting than whatever you're doing right now. Some of it's really boring, and some of it's really interesting.

It's a microcosm of life. See?

I remember having a snowball fight on that parking platform by Loew's theatre in Wayne.

It's the only memory I have that I consider a perfect moment. It's not tarnished by any little thing. It could well have been in a movie, and people would have been enamored with it.

It's pure.

It's clear.

It's clean like animated ice.

I crudely carved my initials in the painted metal of the parking platform with a big lockblade knife I used to carry with me at 15, in case my stepfather tried to kill me. I think I figured that some day I could come back and look at my initials and remember what it felt like to be there, but they painted over it.

It all would've been directed by Ang Lee.

My stepfather found the knife (Which his mother, of all people, gave me.) when he was searching my room, and took it.

A day or two later I was searched by the police. I would've had my knife with me.

Imagine some Southern belle telling you "The lawd works in mysterious ways!"

I remember the FedEx Box that got torched and the burn marks it left against the side of the building.

Pat waded in the fountain at Willowbrook Mall collecting change. He used to do things like that.

I used to blow things up, vandalize, and steal.

When the cop harassed us for loitering, Sean yelled at him in Japanese.

Sean blew up far more things than I did. His mailbox count was also significantly higher.

Marigrace comes into the bookstore carrying a little black casket. Beavis may or may not have been with her. I ask her what's in it, and she opens it up. She removes something, and dangles it in front of me by its tail. It's the stiff body of her dead white mouse.

Around us, people munch on biscotti and drink their whateverchinos. I guess they didn't know what to do.

We buried it in the parking lot in one of those "tree island" areas. We fashioned a cross out of two pencils.

Some friend of a kid we didn't like came up to us at a bookstore. Damien pulled out a knife and held it to his throat. He ran away and we all laughed.

We weren't bad kids or thugs or anything.

We were dorks. Really.

I guess you had to be there.

Damien put his knife to my throat as a joke, and I told him if he did it again I was going to choke the shit out of him. He did it again and I choked the shit out of him.

I don't remember us being angry about it, though.

No, violence wasn't our M.O.

I was playing Marigrace in FMaze, and she kept releasing the people I jailed.

"WHY THE HELL DO YOU LET THEM BACK IN THE GAME?" I said.

"I feel bad for them," she said.

She was a cruel girl playing at being kind, and I was a kind guy playing at being cruel.

So, we come to my first girlfriend.

We never even kissed. We just held hands and walked around the mall. I didn't trust her. I thought it must be a trap to embarass me, because I couldn't understand how a girl could like me.

We were walking in the mall, she was wearing a camouflage tank top, and she had this Egyptian thing drawn around one of her eyes. Some people from my school walked by, and they said "ooOoOo Jordan has a girlfriend."

I ignored them. I was really good at ignoring people. All I did was keep repeating my mantra "I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care."

It worked. One day I didn't care about anything anymore. But that was years in the future. The future could still be bright, at this point in my life, when I still believed everything had a soul.

My girlfriend lied to me all the time about her father beating her and going to the hospital for bulimia. The bulimia hospitalization thing was a test to see if I really loved her.

I guess we were both really fucked up people. It's too bad we didn't have any extended, fucked-up make out sessions, which is the norm for that age.

Eventually she stopped calling me and hanging out at the mall with me. It faded away and I don't remember caring much about it. (Because I didn't care. I didn't care. I didn't care.)

She had a falling out with her friend.

Her friend left her a note in a box on her doorstep, along with a pig's heart pierced with nails and barbed wire. At least that's what Chief Animal Control Officer John DeCando said in the newspaper clipping.

It's funny the specific details that I can recall sometimes. (The other night on Lexx Kai mentioned having to kill 2,807 of someone's personal guards, I believe.)

We were out on Halloween, and Beavis, brandishing a machete, asked if she could drink my blood.

I said no, but Warren said yes. I believe he still has the scars on his arm.

I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I think Pat grabbed her machete at one point, and threw it into someone's front yard. When I think back on this, it's very funny.

They couldn't find it, and they rung the person's doorbell and asked for assistance in finding the machete.

Sean and I went home because it wasn't our kind of trouble.

Those two girls ran away. They were going to New Orleans to find vampires.

We all watched Interview with the Vampire a lot.

Some authorities noticed the obvious runaways halfway there, and they were returned to their families.

So I heard...So I heard...

At one point, Sarah loved me. She had crooked teeth, blond hair, and she sent me letters from Egypt and Saudi Arabia when she was visiting her family. I loved all three of those things. I love air mail envelopes with the nice blue and red border. I love exotic stamps from foreign countries.

Sarah couldn't see any boys who weren't Islamic.

So it goes, so it goes.

I remember the joy of snow days, and it's twisted up in my mind with the dance music I would hear on z100 while I waited for them to announce my school was closed.

If I hear any of those songs to this day, I experience a brief moment of brisk elation.

Now snow just means shoveling.

It's no longer crisp in my mind.

It's no longer pure.

And this year the colors of autumn leaves and football uniforms and the smell of it all isn't going to be back, and I don't know what to do about that.