There aren't enough hours in the day. I feel like it was another person, someone I knew peripherally years ago, who spent days in her bed, shifting only to stick her head in her bong and deeply inhale. It's as if I was a bystander when her friend's brother unexpectably blew into her blacked out bedroom, whipping up the shades and drapes and pulling down the covers, demanding, "What day is it?!"as the girl replied, "Sunday?" from her fog, only to learn it was Tuesday or Wednesday, a week later than she had remembered.

You can hide from yourself, but not forever.

My life today is some type of sick karmic payback for the wasted days and years. Like going from Jay and Silent Bob to Mighty Mouse.

I work at high speed, for huge lengths of time. And then it's like a game, to get everything else done.

I ran an hour late from work, which made me an hour late to get waxed. I laid there and sweat on the white vinyl table, laying on butcher paper, as a woman ruthlessly ripped the blond hair from my body. And then I ran out, a month and 1 hour late to meet MyfriendJen to celebrate her birthday.

I flagged yet another bizarre Taxi - this one with an interior covered in faux flowers - and headed down to her sweet new pad in the West Village. I ran up 5 flights of stairs in this foul heat and finally, arrived.

MrfriendJen looks fantastic. I mean, she always looked fantastic, but she looks especially great right now and I suspect it has something to do with her rad boyfriend. The two of them are sober and vegetarians, yet they are still totally rock 'n roll. It's somewhat baffling.

I get distracted in the summer, flying around town during the week, working long hours and trying to see everyone the 4 days I am in town. What's great is that my friends get it. They know the drill. They know that if I have even a couple of hours, I will swing it to see them. And so, two months later, we finally got together and it was great to catch up. Seeing MyfriendJen reminds me of why I live here. She reminds me of the quality friends I made on my own as an adult in this City, which isn't easy. She has urban flair and fantastic style and it's like a breathe of fresh air to see her again after spending weeks with my tie-die, rock t-shirt clad summer friends.

And they are great too. But in a different way. So I finally gave her a long-overdo b-day gift, and we hit the West Village for a late dinner, al fresco. A summer breeze picked up and it was great soak in the city again. The people who stop to ask us how our food is, what we are eating, as their dogs sniff our legs and lick my hands.

I don't even like dogs, but I am coming around, getting more accustomed to their ways as everyone I know seems to have acquired some type of beast or another of late.

After dinner, we hit the local beauty supply store, to get a quick fix for my roots, which are heinous but I have no time for a touch up. And I have fashion meetings all week. Fingers crossed that I can pull off some type of home remedy to mask my faux pas.

After explaining my schedule this week, including that tonight is my laundry night, she looked at me, and said, you are crazy; you are going to be up all night. She was right. How are you going to get home, she asked? Taxi, I said. Taxi, she laughed, of course you are.

Public transportation is for people who have time and patience and those are two things that were not included in my packaging. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing I'd rather do than sit on an air conditioned bus and read my paper or magazine for a leisurely ride. But I don't have that kind of time.

I have laundry to be done and roots to be attended to and a mask to be applied and a room to be cleaned. So a taxi pulled over and this young driver pulled over and said, I'm going off duty - are you going far? Yes, I said and told him my address on the other end of the island, expecting him to drive off into the skyline. But I guess he reconsidered because he told me to jump in.

And so I did. The young driver satrted making excuses about keeping his window open with promises to turn the air on when he finished his smoke. Air, I said? Forget that - can I smoke? Smoke your lungs out, he said, I'll join you, and so we did. Him driving and me as passenger, generating our own clouds of cancer as we raced up the anterior of the island in a yellow cab with rock music blasting.

And then he did this weird thing that I do when I'm in a car with the windows open, he extended his arm out the window and cupped his hand, using it to ride an imaginary roller coaster against the air. I choked a little bit as I observed him do this and for a split second, I thought about asking this young guy if he wanted to throw it all to the wind and go for a real ride. To go to the end of the island and then to the end of the country. To drive with me in the yellow cab and see the country. To just drive and drive. Two strangers, smoking and seeing America in a yellow cab with New York plates.

Maybe calling our families and friends when we crossed the Mason Dixon line. Playing it by ear, two strangers exploring Graceland and the Grande Old Opry. Two strangers wandering into small blues shacks with no names along the Mississippi and strolling down Bourban Street. Crossing the border into Tijuana for tequila benders with no knowledge of each other. Clean slates to move forward into unchartered territory together. Hitting State Fairs and Old Time Photo shops.

And as I raced across the landscape of America with this stranger, we pulled up to my apartment building, our cigarettes long extinguished. I paid him and left the taxi, he pulled away and the dream was over.

I was back in my life to face my reality and left with the realization that I'm just a dreamer, after all.

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