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"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

-1 Corinthians 13:11

The air-conditioner is broken. We are in the exact middle of another Texas July and the air-conditioner is fucking broken.

Yesterday was my eighteenth birthday, so I can officially now drop f-bombs onto my own little Japanese cities of wordclumps without having to endure hours of curt reprimanding from one, or both, of my graying, bickering parents. I suppose it is one of those things that come with this new territory of fresh adulthood, tagging along behind the quick steppings of the draft, lotto tickets, and cigars. This is my new set of privileges, tangible examples of maturity.

But I am not a mature person. And I do not consider myself an adult.

As of twenty-four hours ago, I became a laminated-card-carrying-member of the generation of Peter-Pan businessmen, wearing clumsy sports jackets over sarcastic screened t-shirts, collecting mint-condition cereal boxes and basketball cards from past lives, trying to hold onto a familiar yesterday.  And it is into this mindset of self-centeredness, of astounding egotism, that I am thrust headfirst towards my future.

And it is into this mindset that I thrive, selfishly and solitarily; a mindset that I adopt without hesitation, now that I have been effectively baptized in the waters of cheap cake and nylon-trapped helium. My life begins again.

So here I am, trapped in this heat of self-created technological failure, a personal Hell, a steady ninety-six degrees of uncomfortable. So here I am, sweat or tears (sweat) dripping down my face, still pockmarked by the battle-scars caused by black-headed bombs of the Great Acne War of 2008. So here I am, changing literary styles four different times in six different paragraphs, quoting Scripture and then cursing unapologetically two lines afterwards, creating a paradox solely for the all-important comfort of my cynical, often-socially-inappropriate spirit.

So here I am.