You find out things when you leave your place of work at 8pm. I, for example, almost had a heart attack when I exited the elevator at the ground floor, turned into the lobby toward the front glass doors, and saw that the doors were chained closed with handcuffs. When did they start doing that?! Luckily, the side door was unchained so I was able to escape into the cool night air. Ah, night. You haven’t greeted me upon my daily prisonbreak for a long time.

Driving home past 8p, I felt a twinge of hunger. My mind’s eye explored my empty refrigerator. Maybe I just shouldn’t eat. But not eating would lower my metabolism, so I should get something light. Grabbing my cell phone, I called James. “You should definitely eat,” he advised. I wailed something about eating alone. So he agreed to meet me for a bite. We grabbed a quick sushi at nearby Miyako Sushi & Sashimi, a place he’d been harassing me about not taking him to when Vanessa and I ate there. This marks my 3rd straight night of eating raw fish, which I’m gonna miss when I’m in China. Eating cooked fish. Yech.

Dinner conversation led to my expressing a grave concern that had occurred to me earlier this evening, while I finished packing and doing laundry. What if my plane crashes, and my parents are forced to tearfully clear out my house? The task is difficult enough without them finding my porn and various, uh, physical pleasure paraphernalia. None of which I purchased, of course; they were from people who bought them as (gag) gifts for me and from others who just sorta left stuff at my house. There was only one obvious solution to this dilemma at this point. I begged James to take my schtuff for safekeeping until I got back safe and sound. He was hesitant at first, and I could see his brain was reeling with the possibilities of being in possession of something that he may have to explain to someone else. I told him he could just keep the collection in his trunk and never take it out, and even if someone DID happen upon it, he could tell them the truth. And if I die, he can either keep it or dump it, I don’t care.

Being a good friend, he reluctantly agreed. I double-bagged the schtuff in an opaque red bag. As I handed it to him and he started to leave my house, he said, “You better come back alive.” That’s a good friend, man. I wonder if he’ll ever be curious enough to look in the bag. Maybe that’s a TMI line even James won’t cross.