summertime begins.

whenever i see my friend agatha, which is no more than once a month, conversation with her always feels cathartic. we drank pints of hefeweizen at the coffee house down the street watching the sun set and the steady flow of cars and bicycles and scooters. the sky looked like an oil painting. pinks and purples streaked across clouds. the temperature was a perfect 75 degrees. whenever we meet up, we usually talk and drink for hours, catching up on the lost time, and i usually watch her smoke cigarettes classically across the table. cigarettes go so well with beer, and with coffee. i've been watching friends and strangers smoke cigarettes for the last six months now that i'm a non-smoker. "how do you do it?" i'm asked. "how do you not cave in ever?" usually i don't like to answer that question while someone is holding a glowing cigarette in mid air. for me, the temptation and the desire is probably always going to exist (i would be smoking like a sailor if cigarettes weren't harmful), but the choice behind why i do not want to light up is not hard for me. i think about my grandmother who died of lung cancer several years ago; i think about the phone calls i've had with people who were dying of stage 4 cancer because they smoked cigarettes for years back when i worked at the gawdawful american cancer society; i think about what smoking cigarettes on a regular basis does to your body over time. i could elaborate on the black lung visuals that come to mind. a cigarette here and there is not going to kill you, but smoking cigarettes for years can. plus, i've come to this place where i'm not living my reckless twenties and feel more conscientious about taking care of myself. inching closer to 30 has that affect on me. she gave me the final book files, and as soon as i upload them to the publishers on the computer, ta da, the book is available for order. i can't believe that 3 years of my life boil down to the contents of this book. and oh- how could i forget. this book is published to protest the laws that discriminate against glbt people in our nation, such as prop. 8 in california. the timing is eeriely dead on with the major protests and demonstrations happening. i didn't plan it like this at all. it organically happened.