"That Will Be 5 Cents, Please."

My thoughts have been a coaster ride. The cresting is the worst. Muscles tighten preparing for the drop, for the stomach to lurch, then seconds of gripping fear, loss of control, and finally elation sweeps through and calms each nerve ending, and I laugh at the lingering sense of foolishness.

I try to determine what brings on these feelings of desperation, depression. It does not make sense.

I blame too much information. Too many internet news items that snag me like the glistening end of a shiny sharp hook. Just yesterday, there was news of the virus that links oral sex to throat cancer. The report on remote Afghan villages where snakes, mice, children, adults are addicted to opium. The interview with the journalist who warns that dependence on coal will eradicate our sustainable environment much sooner than anyone cares to know.

I blame my own stifling perception. Last night, as I watched an episode of the IFC's Freaks and Geeks, I fixated on the Lindsay character. She was me in high school. Exactly. It spooked me. It upset me to the point of crying. I am not sure what of Lindsay's persona struck my most sensitive nerve. The awkwardness of 16 year old virginity? Or not realizing until many years later that the one you thought was so the one was so not worth it. But what young woman has not been there, and so why do I carry that around like a scarlet letter?

Maybe the only thing to blame is hormones. Or the cold rain and snow. No matter, I want to disembark and not get back on line for a long while. I want to drive my car and crank up the volume of The Beastie Boys, not wallow in the repetition of my Jackson Browne cds.  I don't like going to the market and thinking that those frown-faced 50 somethings with the reading glasses and the coupons will be me pretty soon. I want to have sex at night against a car in a deserted parking lot, blindfolded, while listening to Zeppelin's Trampled Under Foot. I want to bury my tendency to offer a soft "sorry" to the honker behind me when I did not accelerate immediately as the light switched from red to green. I want to stop staring at other people's houses and wondering what the hell is going on inside. And although I wish not even my worst enemy cancer, when you give me a dirty look because in your opinion I held up the ATM line putting my bills away, I want to look you in the eyes and say Eat Me.