Birds, Daylight

I was walking back to my room at 6:30 this morning, after a long night of getting drunk and hooking up, and the weather was fucking beautiful. It'd been miserable here for four days, but when I started walking, the sky was perfectly clear, bright blue. Birds were chirping, everything was vivid - it was the first time in a while that I wasn't pissed off or depressed to see the sun that early.

Instead of just passing out, since I was probably still pretty drunk, I left my shade wide open and let the sun pour in. I was listening to old punk and metal on my iPod, and started remembering my teenage years. I remembered a time when I was fourteen and me and some friends went to Jones Beach after being up all night. I remembered getting caught in riptides but escaping, laughing, and a burning blue sky. I remembered secretly checking out the gay guys in tight bathing suits who seemed to congregate at the edge of the beach...I guess that's the feeling I was remembering - how being fourteen, but sexually deviant, is listening to Giorgio Moroder alone in your bedroom. It's something that gets to you at that age, but as you come to terms with it and start acting on the impulses, you realize that life is more complex than you imagined, and it'll keep surprising you. Nowadays, I can't even relate to the kid I was growing up who was afraid of being gay.

This is starting to sound pretty emo, but I guess the point is that when I finally closed my shade and tried to get some sleep, I realized that my life has only gotten more exciting and better. I thought about the people I used to know who say they lived the best years of their lives in high school, and felt bad for them. I'm turning 21 in three weeks - I'm just getting started...