In the movies, God is an actor just like everyone else.

If I told you that I imagine love to be a two-way mirror, which side of the mirror would you imagine me standing on?

Beauty is biased, brainless. It says little to nothing about anybody as far as ethics are concerned, so why not monetize it? Give it some value, pin it with a price point. Otherwise, it’s worthless.

And confessions of love have always seemed out of place when you’re gasping for air, when you’re begging for pain,when you’re missing something, unable to change the channel.

I haven’t felt the full weightof the world on my shoulders,and I haven’t experienceda fraction of the painand embarrassment I’ve put out into this great bigwhite world.

I think of drug dealers like I think of my father— never really there when you want them to be.

My desire to self-destruct is a one-night standon Groundhog Day.Fucking repetitive. Repetitively fucking.

I talk too much, but there's a lot unsaid. I've slept in a lot of beds.

You grow bored of these shrines, and you abandon thembecause you know for a fact that you will worshipanything you kneel before.Like God.Like cock.Like porcelain.

There's stranger sex than sex with strangers.

I've come to realize that hunger feels more like home than any tangible structure ever has, or probably ever will. I know now that creating absence is my way of coping with absence.

There is stability in self-destruction, in prolonging sadness as a means of escaping abstractions like happiness. Rock bottom is a surprisingly comfortable place to lay your head. Looking up from the depths of another low often seems a lot safer than wondering when you'll fall again. Falling feels awful.I'd rather fucking fly.

Coming down for the thousandth time, I'm perched on the precipice of a billion broken promises. I'm speeding through the intersections of my own broken heartstrings, blowing red lights and ignoring red flags. I'm thinking, 'history repeats itself.' I'm wondering why. The world outside is still happening also.

Regret, albeit raw and relentless, is almost always unremarkable.

I’ve always wanted to be the sort of boy who does the right thing without having to think about it first, the kind of boy who makes his bed every morning and wears his mouth like a vase for words of kindness and simplicity. My agents keep telling me I’m too bruised to play the part. They have no idea how hard it is to make my bed when I’m constantly sleeping in yours, how difficult it is to keep my body from bruising when I’m almost always on my knees, making room in my vase for you, and watching while you text all the boys who are up for the role.

Crashing through windows I thought were open doors. Apologizing for the mess. Rationalizing my behavior in metaphors you’ll simply never understand. Learning to accept defeat. Watching you walk away from me, from us, from all of this, using every door I missed. Begging, "Please don’t leave me now, I killed those boys to make you love me.

Fucking fixes nothing, but certain feelings are unavoidable.

I just want to get away from me.

There are rules you've gotta follow when you fuck to forget. A body's only a temple if and when you treat it like one, but a heart can still break even if you never put it together properly in the first place.

A drop in the bucket, a tear in the ocean, you’ve been treading cold water, memorizing the motion just to stay afloat.

And I guess at the end of the day, you’re just amazed that I can still stand, and I’m just amazed that I can stand still.

It’s so hard not to be fascinated by the broken, to remember that a boy with a sad smile and a pretty face is not the boy that you should fall in love with.

Then I drop to my knees because I can't find a decent enough reason not to, because reluctance rarely stands a chance against repeated behavior.

Two sad eyes and one skanky smile, I practically pulse with the promise of promiscuity. I'm easy to catch, but too slippery to hold onto. Men love a challenge if the prize is guaranteed. I know how to start a fight while deepthroating a white flag.

Sometimes, when I'm chain-smoking and feeling like shit (which happens more often than I'd like to admit), I let go of a lit cigarette just to see if the ember will outlast the fall.It rarely does.

Another piano falls, but this time it's me— or my lascivious loneliness, or my grab bag of mental instabilities and emotional shortcomings, or whatever.

There's a weight in the room now, a remembrance of childhood. It sinks like a stone, or a heart, or my weight on a good day.

My desperation is deliberate. Despondency's a pheromone.

And then he's somewhere inside of me, each thrust rattling my ribcage like a bottle of pills. I'm somewhere outside of myself, thinking about lust— about my slutty white sheets and all the men who like to hide in them.

You burn bright and you burn hard, like a fire in a dumpster,and nobody is so worriedabout you burning as they are worried about the fire spreading.

You are only as deepas the ashtrays you use. You only stick around because you like the abuse.

I’m a lot like you,and you’re a lot like me.It’s sad to say,and it’s sad to see.

It isn’t easy,” is easy to say and sometimes I think that the only thing we can dois say really easy things to each other.

I want to remember what we were like before we became ourselves.

The piece of you that loves a part of me tries its best to hold onto the rest,but my heart is a thousand-piece puzzle of a faraway galaxy, deep purple,colors blending together and impossible to place.

You ask yourself when you’ll learn, and the answer is always,“Tomorrow.

Sunrise is starting to feel like a guilt trip.

I dye my jeans jet black once a week, but they never seem dark enough. I bleach my hair bright white twice a month but it never seems light enough. I drink two and a half bottles of champagne every night but I never seem drunk enough. And I know I’m not high enough until someone grabs my face to check my vision to see if I’m still responsive— And even then, I’m thinking to myself that I should probably do one more line, you know, just to be safe.

In the mirror I stand, an injured deer in headlights, or maybe high beams, judging by the way my eyes water. I measure my wrists with my fingers, and I clutch at my rib cage, fingering it languidly, tracing the rise and fall of sharp bones until my heartbeat slows, and I dream of a faraway ocean.

I’ve memorized the best angles in the bathroom mirror from which to see how badly I’ve disintegrated. I truly do go from sixty to zero.

There’s a weight in the room now, a remembrance of childhood. It sinks like a stone, or a heart, or my weight on a good day.

Another piano falls, but this time it’s me— or my lascivious loneliness, or my grab bag of mental instabilities and emotional shortcomings, or whatever.

Sometimes, when I’m chain smoking on the balcony and feeling like shit (which happens more often than I’d like to admit), I let go of a lit cigarette just to see if the ember will outlast the fall.It rarely does.

February falls on top of me like a cartoon piano. I reek of champagne, come, and CK One.

And then he’s somewhere inside of me, each thrust rattling my ribcage like a bottle of pills. I’m somewhere outside of myself, thinking about lust— about my slutty white sheets and all the men who like to hide in them.

I think it’s imperative that we continue confusing light with meaning. That’s how the human race evolves. Someone sees a light, names it God, goes toward it, goes up in flames. Same goes for moths. We’re all animals. There’s nothing revolutionary about evolution. The process itself relies solely on stupidity. We fuck up in the hopes that future fuckups will learn from us.

I love like a beaten child and I trust like an addict.

When you’re finally finished crying, I hope you run as fast and as far as you possibly can from me. When you land, out of breath, and I’m finally out of sight, finally out of mind, you’ll be honestly fine. All wounds will be healed. All fires will be extinguished. I’ll be a memory. Feel free to repress me.

Repression is dangerous. It makes anvils of memories and drops them from impossible heights when you least expect it.

See, that’s the thing about L.A.— When you’ve mastered the art of feeling lonely in a room full of people, that’s when you know.

You give the shirt off your back, no questions asked, and you stand alone at the cavernous mouth of your suburban closet—your entire life spent wonderingwhere your clothes went.

I gave them everything I had, and I guess it feelsalright.I gave them my body,and they use it every night.

Drugs may know how to numb a brain, but the past never forgets to resurface.

The homeless dudes on Alameda all have legs any runway model would kill for, and sometimes I think of giving them money, but— I don’t know, I’ve got bills to not pay, and drinks to make people buy for me.

I think it’s pretty common to hold onto people, to bribe them with things, say, a body, in the hopes of keeping them from leaving you. I don’t think it’s uncommon to invert such behaviors, to become something unlovable, in an effort to speed up the process of the inevitable. Fighting is an instinct. So is running. Everybody knows how to destroy a good thing. It’s easy.

What if I were to tell you the game’s been rigged, that I was destined to win from the very beginning? To be clear: Winning is subjective. For the record: I win by losing, by avoiding the confusion of possibility, the sheer terror of potential. To make a long story short: I win when I lose and I lose by running, by pushing you away.

I’ll be too drunk to fight when you ask why I prefer to hurt, so I’ll start hurling stupid phrases like I love you at your naked chest, but no matter what I try, they’ll all sound like cheap threats.

I think sometimes we gravitate toward broken people, not ’cause we want to fix them, but ’cause we want to fix ourselves. The line between selflessness and selfishness is thin and intangible. It’s imaginary. We can’t see it. People project their problems onto other people’s problems. It happens all the time. We see ourselves in each other. We can’t help it. It’s human nature.

Do you think dogs enjoy fucking? Or is it something so primal, so intrinsically necessary that it just happens, just occurs? Do you think animals can fall in love? I let you fuck me from behind almost every single night, always wanting to be kissed, but still, I refuse to roll over.

I love you. Let's get this over with.

I need to move. I don’t fit in here. I almost tried a juice cleanse once, but quickly remembered that I could starve, and was starving, myself for free.

Years from now, I will pass this same park, and I won’t remember any of this.Instead, I will feel something like a spark— a heat like Augustin a suburban town,and a desire to groweven when I know I’ll be cut down.

We skip school and we ditch chores. We haunt shopping malls and grocery stores. House parties grow dull, but Amy's boyfriend is a dealer and we find ways to pass the time.

Apathetic in my adolescence,my heart is fluorescent. It flickerslike liquor store lights in the ghetto.

...stars are dying all the time. Some explode. Some collapse and cave in on themselves. Those ones become black holes. Others get sucked up inside of them just for getting too close. Guilty by association. Prosecuted for proximity.

Cry wolf often enough and you eventually get eaten by the wolf, even if the wolf is you.

I want to know exactly how many pieces of myself I had to give away before I became something else entirely.

Under the influence, I am easily influenced. I try to keep my pants on, but some things are easier said than done.

In the soft light of morning, the sky outside turning light blue, my answer is always and still: “I’m fine.

My slurred speech isn’t from one or nine drinks too many, it’s from my father.

My blood makes noise. And I’m saying this now, because I have a strange gut feeling that it will be silenced someday soon.

Everywhere I go, I kind of half stumble, half stomp. If there’s a balcony within a hundred feet of me at any given time, I am on it— smoking a Marlboro light 100 and complaining about something.

I know it sounds a bit trite, but I really do get everything I want now. They say life is a game, and I guess I might agree if the stakes were a little higher, but it’s just so easy to fall into a cycle. I get bored.

Sometimes, I worry I'm winning.

You preach cleanliness,so I try to keep my room clean,but I feel no closer to God, and I guess that’s okaybecause he doesn’t knowwho he’s fucking with anyway.

They say you can’t build Rome in a day, but I’m pretty sure you could destroy it in even less.

My nose bleeds, and every comedown feels like an overdose. I try to make peace with God each time, but he shows no interest, and it reminds me of my dad, and I get so upset that I just have to do another line. Like I said, a cycle.

And, to be honest, if weed is a gateway drug, then I really did hop the fence, but sometimes I can’t help but miss the sticky-sweet warmth of a good old fashioned hot box.

I drink Coke-zero while I score coke from an honors student in Huntington Beach.

My fingers are blistered and they smell like lighter fluid— like burnt tin foil and rusted silverware. Quick question: Is it still considered heroin chic if I’m actually using heroin? No? Whatever.

Every ghost has a story. Monsters are nothing without mythology.

Standing in the spotlight, surrounded by all my selves, each of them naked and vulnerable before your lens, I want to be split open and reminded of shame. I know that sounds selfish, but I’m allowed to be selfish ’cause we’re talking about photography. Do you honestly believe I don’t see it for what it actually is: Exploitative? Exploitation is the nature of the beast, whatever the hell that means.

I want to be split open and reminded of shame.

I’m not bilingual, but I am fluent in therapists’ jargon.

I like people with weak will and bad taste.It feels like anything is possible.

There are never any real stars in LA, but we’ve got a bunch of fake ones made out of brass and terrazzo. We embed them in the sidewalks outside of strip clubs and gift shops— Walk of Fame, walk of shame… walk of names we’re all destined to forget sooner or later.

The more we look at anything, the more we see ourselves in the thing. This is called projection. There’s an ethics to projection, an unhinged sense of honesty. Honesty is complicated. The truth is fascinatingly flexible. Lying is boundless. It knows no limits. People lie all the time. Lying is an instinct. It’s human nature. We lie to each other; we lie to ourselves. It isn’t right, but we do.