Well, that was interesting.

I got back to NYC last night (at 2am – thank you, Delta, for being a paragon of punctuality) after three weeks in Los Angeles.  And what I’d like to say is…wow.

What I’d also like to say is: I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for disappearing most of these past three weeks, but I assure that I was thinking about you the whole time.  At work, at home, in the bathroom, even during Uncle Jason’s Private Time, you were on my mind.  It’s just that, well, I was exhausted.

Whereas I spent my first week in LA spending my afternoons lackadaisically (and lovingly) loving myself through various lengthy self-love sessions (lot of love there), the last two weeks of my trip were pure chaos.  I moved out of my hotel early in the second week and into my buddy Dan’s place in Santa Monica.  Dan is a buddy who is a teacher and who returned to Philly over this summer break, so he let me crash in his bedroom and at his place with his roommates, Donnie and PJ.  This meant that my commute was no longer six minutes to and from work.  This also meant that my days of lying on a hotel bed, robed, spread eagle, grunting and spitting and tugging at my genitals, were over.  Which sucked.  Pretty bad. 

Another factor that stopped my seemingly unending tide of masturbation was that the number of meetings I had increased.  Remember, I went out there to pursue another entertainment industry-type thingee that I can’t really get into (lest I embarrass myself if/when it fails), but I worked out of my firm’s LA office every day from 6:30am to 2:30pm, so I could take meetings in the late afternoons/early evenings.  This allowed me to pursue my other interest while not burning a ton of vacation days to do so.  Sweet.

And for a while, it was pretty sweet.  Work was actually pretty intense and I was constantly groggy, but I could deal with that.  The main "problem" was that the number of meetings I took drastically increased over the length of my stay (and I realize this is not a bad problem to have had, but I am very big and tire easily).  For example, in my first week in LA, I had two meetings all week long; on my last Friday there, I had three meetings on that day alone.  As my number of meetings increased meaning I had longer days and less "me" time, even if I had been able to masturbate in peace, I probably would have been too tired to do so.

(Author’s Note: The previous sentence is kind of a lie.  Thank you.) 

And if you’ve ever even heard of LA, you know that it has a crapload of traffic.  So I’d wake up at 5:20am, work eight or nine hours, then spend several hours driving to all the corners of Los Angeles, sometimes back and forth into the Valley, sucking down diet cokes, fumbling with mapquest directions, grunting and spitting and tugging at my genitals.

(Hey, I was crunched for time; if a man can’t make time for him and his bird, he’s not a man at all.  And it was a rental anyway, so who cares?)

Leaving home when it’s dark and returning home when it’s dark really, really sucks.  I can’t stress this enough.  Not only did it wear me out, but it nearly destroyed my friendships.  The number of texts, emails and phone calls I did not return while I was in LA is not in the hundreds, but probably right around a hondo.  I couldn’t hang out with my LA friends during the week because I was often too tired to even wipe my own ass, let alone meet at 9pm for drinks halfway across town.  And I didn’t speak much to my friends back East because I was too worn out and basically didn’t feel like answering the multiple questions they’d have about how things were going/what I was doing in LA.  Of course, they’d ask these questions because, you know, they’re good at being a friend.  I’d not return their phone calls because I’d rather spend the hour I had between dinner and going to sleep lying in bed, listening to the sound of my own breathing and wishing I’d hit the lottery so I’d never have to wake up early again.  And I’m terrible at being a friend.

(Seriously, I was the worst friend ever over the past three weeks.  And I’m sorry for that.  So sorry I don’t even have a joke here.  So you know I’m for real.)

But this past weekend, my last in LA, was the time when I was to make it up to everyone, when I’d suck it up, drink as many vodka red bulls as I could fit in my belly, and rage, rage against the dying of the light.  I had completed three intense weeks in LA and now it was time to rock out with my cock out – no excuses.

Or at least that was the plan.

When I got home in the evening from meetings on Friday, I took a quick nap.  I woke up an hour later, shivering.  Because Dan and his roommates are hypochondriacs, they had a thermometer handy.  I took my temperature: 102.1. 

Crap.

So I wound up very nearly spending my last weekend in LA literally raging against the dying of the light, as I lay in bed, shivering, then sweating, then spitting up mucus (sorry, Dan , but I did wash your sheets really good before I left).  I had noticed during the day on Friday that my throat was sore, but I thought this was because I had been talking so goddamn much over the past few days.  I never thought it was a sign of something else; and anyway, what’s the big deal about a sore throat?  Didn’t they prescribe whiskey for sore throats until like 1977?  I was going to be fine.

But when I took my temperature, it was all downhill from there.  I shut it down big time on Friday night, loading up on acetaminophen and leaving bed only to go to the bathroom, hoping to crush my illness in one fell swoop so that I could salvage the weekend by going out on Saturday night.

Shortly after I woke up on Saturday morning, my temperature was 102.9.  That was about all she wrote.  I spent my entire Saturday in bed, sleeping for short spells, sweating and moaning.  I realize this sounds very sensual, but I assure you it was not.  Not at all, really.

I was scheduled to fly back on Sunday, but as I lay there on Saturday, I contemplated flying out on Monday.  There was no way I could take a 5.5 hour flight feeling like I did.  On the other hand, I need to get the F back home, back to NYC, back to my apartment and my stuff.  I feel asleep on Saturday night hoping that I’d wake up well enough to make the flight home.

Yesterday, Sunday morning, my temperature was just over 100, so I medically cleared myself to make the trip home.  I packed up my things and headed out to LAX, saying goodbye to Los Angeles on the way out.  I prayed to myself, God and Allah for a quick and painless flight home.

I don’t think I’d be able to pick my favorite part about my flight.  Maybe it was the 2.5 hour delay that meant I arrived in NYC at 2am.  Maybe it was the Arab gentleman who sat next to me and took his shoes off during the flight, nearly knocking me unconscious with the stink of his feet (I don’t claim to be an expert on Arab culture, so I ask: is it customary to carry decomposing mice in one’s loafers? I honestly will not be able to taste food for at least a week).  Or maybe it was the baby who not cried but shrieked from the moment we took off until the moment we landed.  This baby sat ten rows in front of me and I had headphones on the whole time and still it was arguably the most annoying noise I’ve ever heard in my life.  When the plane finally landed and the lights came on, I noticed that the people in the rows surrounding this baby looked like they wanted to kill themselves and one guy had tried to give himself a vasectomy using only a butterknife and the free Delta headphones (they hooked us up because of the delay – thanks guys).  I actually should have been more angry about the baby shrieking the entire time, but I felt like Ron Burgundy after Buster ate the whole wheel of cheese: I was too impressed to be mad.  How a child of twenty pounds could not only ruin a flight for two hundred people but also make noise at such a high volume level for such a long time…it was truly amazing. 

But the important thing is that I’m back.  I plan on eating a shitload of Thai food tonight, taking a long shower, and going to bed at 9pm, but I’m in NYC for the foreseeable future.  That means I will resume regularly scheduled posting.  I have two posts that I started but didn’t finish that I wrote while in LA, so maybe I’ll put those up on here and back-date them (though I usually don’t like doing that).  I will also dig through the emails that I’ve neglected over the past few weeks.  But all of this is just details.  The point: I’m committed to you.  I worked hard, suffered a Lindsay Lohan/Dave Chappelle bout of exhaustion, and spent three weeks out of my element, but I’m back.  And I promise Uncle Jason will make everything better.    

Now let’s never be apart again.