Since growing older, I avoid fluorescent light while on hallucinogens. It’s unflattering. Also redundant.

But right now it's 1982 in San Francisco. The Castro. Church Street Station Diner. 4:00 am. Earlier, some guy in some bar has given me something small and white to swallow before changing his mind and finding someone sexier to go home with, leaving me in chemically enhanced despair.

So now I'm 22, wearing a lot of black leather, and eating pancakes alone. My saved-for vacation to Sodom by the Bay is not working out as advertised. The woman at the next table is wearing a yellow nightie and shooting smack, similarly unaccompanied. I can see the world isn't meeting her expectations either. I feel a great wash of brotherly affection toward her, my co-fucked-up co-human being, sharing this greasily provisioned, garishly lit lifeboat adrift in a vast, cold ocean of not getting laid.

Still, I note several differences. I have things like butter and syrup and frustrated hormones. Nightie Lady has a syringe, a little baggie of white powder, and what is clearly neurochemistry far more advanced than mine. True, my pancakes are flapping gently on the plate, like rays negotiating calm seas, but this strikes me as delicious: animated flapjacks chirping “Eat me! Eat me!” I giggle out loud and stroke them sensually with my fork. Nightie Lady is quietly talking to several people who aren't present, and at least one of them isn't being very nice to her. “Stop hating at me,” she mutters darkly, swatting at the empty air. And while I began to suspect awhile back that I look like an overdressed idiot, unlike her outfit, mine is at least warm. I'm sure I'll be able to try again tomorrow whereas Nightie Lady's prospects strike me as uncertain at best.

The waitress comes. She says to me, “More coffee, hon? Where you been tonight? You’re all dressed up! You look so cute I can't believe you're here all by yourself.” Then she turns and sees the Nightie Lady with her spoon and Bic lighter. She says, much louder, “I have told you not to do that in my section! I have told you before that I am sensitive and that you are depressing me! You are in a restaurant wearing your night gown. Do you think that's right? And look, now you’ve gone made this nice boy in all this leather nervous.”

I'm not actually nervous, but it's true I can't stop staring. As the drug has its way with me, Nightie Lady's face has assumed all the portentous qualities of a telegram from the Oracle Planet. Given time, I feel sure I could read the map of my destiny in the ruined veins on the backs of her hands. I am waiting for a Sign.

And indeed, all this attention seems to have gotten through. Nightie Lady glances up and squints at the chandelier, perhaps under the impression it has spoken to her. Then she goes back to trying to find a vein and whispers, “I was disappointed in life.”

My pancakes become Sad Faces, pockmarked with experience, weeping cheap butter. In sympathy, my eyes fill with tears. The waitress sighs, pats my hand and says, “Well you know she's got that right. But you just get on home now honey and rest and don't worry. Those pancakes are on me.”