Just got off the phone with Hec. I’m confused. The conversation boiled up a stew of emotions. He tells me about his trip to LA, how crazy it was. Clubbing, friends DJing, playing congas in the warehouse, back to British guy’s four-level house on the hill with balcony, Ketel and champagne, “pharmaceutical grade” E (a meaningless phrase), wee hours, two hours sleep before hitting it again, other clubs, girlfriends named Foxy with treehouses and ’shrooms, harsh eight-hour drive back to Sac.

Every item in that list but the last seem so much fun. I miss it and will miss it. I remind myself of the cost of those items, how I don’t miss that and won’t. Heck reminds me of that yuck, too, with his “oh no” at wake-up. He didn’t mention the sun but it glared bright and hot in my imagination. I felt that oh-no. So I pine and wax prematurely nostalgic and self-righteous by turns.

Hector’s forty-four and still carrying on like that. It can be done. He can be proud of it. He can be pitied, too. He’s selling mortgages now. Cold calling. Cold calling sucks donkeys. We met because he broke bones in the cold, rigor-mortised bodies below the morgue two doors down from me in Brooklyn. That fascinated me. He cold calls now. He’s sold three loans, bought his first computer, and wants to show me trip photos on Myspace. Good for him. He tells me he wants to go back to school. Get his real estate license and shit. A degree in sociology. Why sociology? He nods to his age and says fuck it, he’s going to keep trucking on. Good for him.

Not counting any prenatal chickens, but how does he reconcile/manage/stand the tension of partydown nights and getting ahead in the world. He may or may not in the end, but already he’s wrapped his head around the concept. I can’t even do that. Is it my personality. Am I a one-extreme-or-the-other person? He also told me about how his sister was doing too much heroin and how he and his brother were going to sit her down and talk to her about that next time they saw her. Intervention Puerto Rican style. Now, yes, shooting junk everyday like an addict and munching on hallucinagins on a trip to LA are two very different things. There’s some rational part of me that makes sense of a guy who’s shared a lot of coke with me and gets on his sister for horse. (Good old fashioned terms…) But there’s an emotional side of me that can’t put those two in the same room. It’s like tough love and free love at the same time. Both having and eating the cake.

Thinking about it, I theorize that it’s because drugs for me are pure abandon and limitless fun. Anything goes. You don’t worry about anything, but what works and keeping it going, and that’s very different than drawing lines and establishing boundaries. It kind of spoils it for me. And therein lies the danger. The addict in me.

Do I like to hear his stories or do they make me uncomfortable? Do I want to see him (very much) or avoid a reunion (like the plague)? If I see him, will that nagging whispery rationale that once on a special occasion in particular and unrepeatable places, people, opportunities, and other miscellaneous circumstances, is okay? That’s some quicksand, there. But I stubbornly feel that how ever inadvisable and not for me it is, it is also possible, that juggling chainsaws on a tightrope. Likely? Not. Feasible? Must be. Do I go everywhere and do everything with him except for the tobacco, alcohol, and drugs? Just except the drugs? Is that fun? Do I plan other activities? Daylight drives, funky dinners, fishing, chillin’ & conversatin’? Is that fun?

Part (how much, I’m not sure) of my all-or-nothing tendency on this issue is the result of ambitions in areas I’m not particularly talented in. If I’m to be satisfied with myself on my terms, it’s going to take some damn hard work, focus, discipline, and sacrifice. I think. If it’s even possible. I may be wasting my time. Let’s factor the yearn for grandiosity out of the equation. Without that big hard thing (ahem) to achieve you have lots of time to entertain yourself and be social, which is naturally what one would want to do if not tick-tapping away on a laptop. What do you do? Watch TV, sit and talk with your friends? Sounds so boring to say it. Feels so blah to consider it. Or is it fulfilling? I once seriously planned (but not exactly executed) a strategy that would have me substituting all that energy, time and desire into sex, girls, even women, and relationships. Softball leagues?

I’m totally confused. Bewildered. I’ve always thought that this—a healthy balance in life—comes easy for a lot of people. To a lot of other people it doesn’t. I’m one of those.

Do I try to learn how to pull that stunt or do I not even go there? Do I trust your advice on the subject or my own gut feeling and well considered thoughts? What is my gut feeling? Do I have any fully formed, let alone considered, thoughts?

Big questions. But even down on the detail level: I don’t even want to have to say, much less explain why, I’m not drinking (or popping, smoking, snorting, or injecting). Not that it’s a huge hard thing (sorry) or an embarrassment. It’s just a hassle. It kills things slightly. Things become slightly dead. Slightly enough.

Makes me want to just wrap myself up in some snuggly, lofty goals that need constant attention and nurturing. Then I won’t have to worry about any of it. And I’ll have something to show for it at the end, whenever that is. If I make it that far. A surer route would be to get hitched and have a handful of kids to keep me busy and feeling good about my contribution to the world and where my energy is squandered. That just might be the way to go. It really might. But I’m not sure.

I’m confused.

And I don’t know how to feel about it.