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2001-07-23 | 11:44 p.m.

I finally found the missing itinerary. Oh shit oh dear, as my mother would say.

I'm thinking about another diarist tonight, and what I wish I could say to her is this: Please remember that being fucked-up is not the most interesting thing about you. It might seem like it sometimes, because people always slow down when they're driving past a car wreck, but that is not what you have to offer the world.

Okay, I'm going to stop because I'm starting to sound like fucking Oprah magazine.

I'm also thinking about my sister's friend Amelia, whom she met in rehab last year. Twenty-two years old, gorgeous, smart and full of ideas about changing the world---she borrowed all my Emma Goldman books and read them in a couple of nights. She is in an awful hurry to learn about the world because she has hepatitis and is HIV+ from being a heroin junkie and a prostitute. She is the kind of person who lights up a room, but these bad things---which are a part of her, yes, but they are not her---may still get the best of her. I mean of course they will---she's going to get AIDS, and there's no cure for AIDS. She doesn't have any money, so she may not be in a position to get the designer drugs that can extend your life if you are one of the 25 percent of HIV infecteds whose immune systems respond positively. What can you say? It's a sad situation. I respect her enormously for trying to change the circumstances of her life. Who knows how much time she has left? All I know is that the last time I saw her, she was captain of her fate and master of her destiny. I hope it stays that way.

I'll wait for another night to tell you about Olivia, who died for love (unrequited) at twenty-three, and Kristine, who didn't believe in love at twenty-three, and Dora, who dissolved into madness at twenty-three, and Juliet the brave, who checked herself into rehab at twenty-three. And even me---I kicked a bad habit when I was twenty-three. Goodnight, sweetheart, from July Twenty-Three to you. Adieu.

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