a spiritual experience in the west tower of the marriott during an industry conference

eventually you say you really must, seriously this time, please, you’ve gotta go back to your room, and inevitably a couple of the software guys will pull up some chairs and offer one more round, and you’ll stay for two because they’re more your speed anyway, and once the bar shuts down, you and the other closet degens are smoking on the patio overlooking the pool – nothing like this at home, someone says. you finally get away and bounce down the stairs and through the hallways to your door. you’re ally sheedy for the next hour, sliding around the hardwood floors in your socks, the same six songs on repeat in your earbuds, realizing that you have been so starved – famished! fallow! – for fun, you feel that you might like to fall into this delirium forever. sleep comes hard but you wake easy and are only reasonably late to your 8 a.m. session, which sounds a bit like white noise to your ears, but you’re starting to get it, that a little bit of bullshit is sometimes the price of…