Once I met a woman over the internet. We spent a few nights on IRC chatting frantically, and several hours at work dashing off comprehensively titillating e-mails. We spoke a couple of times on the phone, and after 3 or 4 days of this prodigiously revealing outpouring it was decided that we should have sex as soon as possible.

So I got up early on a Saturday morning, hauled myself and a bag full of underwear, pants, condoms, and one t-shirt into a cab to Penn Station, where an Amtrak train would take me north for the long weekend.

It seemed like all the way to Penn Station the radio in the cab played this song, and I still remember hearing it because for the 4th or 5th time that year I was getting what I thought I wanted: To know what happened when one of those Bruce Hornsby or Rod Stewart songs comes true and you wake up in a ratty bed in some asshole city gaping at the ceiling and studying the seconds as they pass through the stranger's clock radio and you ask yourself "What the fuck am I doing here?" at just the moment when you will not be able to think about it for a while.

The first time I had these "How did I get here?" thoughts was in 1992, 2 years after moving to New York, while walking along Central Park South wearing cheap work shoes, a $13 sport coat, a $6 shirt, and whatever other garments escape my steel trap of a mind right now.

This morning, and yesterday morning, and the morning before that, and the morning before that I've woken up from dreams in which "How did I get here" and "What the hell am I doing?" flood my mind. I just want to lie under the sheets and burp all day.

I might go do that right now.

Remind me to tell about the day I spent in north Manhattan last weekend. I finally made it inside the caves of Manhattan.

Now if you don't mind I'm going to listen in to Bruce Williams on the RealAudio from WFLA in Tampa.