[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey calling out from…somewhere in Utah.  

I don’t expect anyone to call back. I haven’t heard from you in days, Birdie, and you missed our date, so I’m assuming the worst. That you’ve decided you want nothing to do with me, or that—

Well, I don’t think anything happened to you. You’ve survived this long, so unless you had a heart attack and dropped dead—

[click static]

Shit, I really hope you didn’t have a heart attack and die. I’m gonna feel like a real asshole if you had a heart attack and died. 

[click, static]

That’s what killed my dad, you know. A heart attack. Dad died of a heart attack, mom died of cancer, which I think makes my family the most statistically average it’s possible to be. 

I think it’s fifty-fifty the way I’ll end up going. My life isn’t exactly stress-free and lord knows I’ve smoked enough in life to warrant lung cancer. At least I’ve had the goddamn pleasure of cigarettes. My mom, poor thing, just got fucking unlucky. She should’ve picked up smoking the moment she was diagnosed if you ask me. Enjoyed those last few months. 

I used to think I’d die from sheer stupidity. By doing something dumb and reckless. A car accident, getting killed in the course of a robbery, doing the wrong drug. 

Not that my drug phase was particularly long. Calling it a phase is probably even a stretch. I think I’ve done exactly two drugs. I prefer booze. 

But even being drunk is…I’ve never liked having my objective perception of the world changed. My life has always had too many secrets and too few trusted confidantes, that letting myself get out of control, or slip into a different state of mind always felt too risky. 

And now…well, I’m sharing every secret and stray thought I have with the entire world. And my perception of the world has been plenty challenged. Who needs drugs when you can just hallucinate ordinary men in hotel rooms?

[click, static] 

I turn thirty-five next week. And it feels young. I mean, when I entered this whole new weird world back in ’68, I wasn’t even thirty yet. Thirty-five felt unfathomably far away. And now here it is, both like I blinked and woke up six years later and also like I’ve lived several decades in that time. 

I could have a good thirty years left at minimum. I used to worry that I wouldn’t have enough time to soak up every little bit of the world that I wanted to, that I’d run out of time, die before I was full satiated. 

Now I’m not sure what the best case scenario is. I have nothing but time to fill and what used to be an all-you-can-eat buffet is now an empty table. The only food on it is imaginary, the phantom tastes and smells of a world that no longer exists.  That’s the thing about being so alone—you just stagnate. We need other people to provide variety, unpredictability. Otherwise we atrophy. 

I’ve gotten unpredictability on the road, it’s true. Weird feelings, unexpected roadside attractions, tornado warnings. But I can’t rely on tourist traps and automated weather warning systems to provide all my life’s variety. 

That’s what you were giving me, Birdie—one of the things, anyway. Unpredictability. The thrill of not knowing what you were going to say or when you were going to say it. You surprised me. Please keep surprising me. 

[click, static]

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