At the Museum of Contemporary Art, I’m sitting on the steps and my heart is going beat, beat, beat. I’m waiting for Megan to come and meet me.

My leg is shaking.

People are walking around in t-shirts.

I think something like: it feels like summer and you can’t hide how you feel.

Recently I’ve been getting these headaches.

In Melbourne, before I left for the reading, I went to the doctor.

In the waiting area there was a pamphlet titled ‘Cancer’.

I thought: you always hear about cancer and AIDS but never about diabetes.

I’d seen this blog post about diabetes that said, ‘Diabetes kills more people than breast cancer and AIDS combined.’

I thought: combined.

It seemed insane.

The doctor called my name.

I walked into his office.

The doctor said, ‘What can I do for you?’

And I said, ‘Is it true that diabetes kills more people than breast cancer and AIDS combined?’

He said, ‘Yes.’

I said, ‘Really? You just don’t hear about diabetes that much.’

And he said, ‘I guess it’s not as glamorous.’

We stared at each other for a while.

I told him about the headaches.

He asked what I did with most of my time.

And I said, ‘I stare at my laptop.’

He said, ‘Do you elevate your laptop?’

And I said, ‘No.’

‘So you stare down at it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Stop staring down at your laptop.’

And I told him that I couldn’t — I was trying to write this book about growing up in Texas — but he cut me off and said, ‘I don’t care about your book. If you want to stop getting headaches, elevate your laptop.’

I did that for a while and my headaches went away.

Then I forgot about the headaches and I forgot about the elevation. But now I have a headache again.

When I was growing up, my dad always told me I lacked attention to detail.

When I told my housemate Sofia this, she said, ‘Well! Stop being such a dumb fucking cunt!’

Sofia is from Sweden and we like to play this game where we speak like bogans.

Sometimes, in the mornings, I’ll walk into the kitchen and she’ll be cooking breakfast and I’ll forget that we’re playing the game.

Like, I’ll say, ‘Morning, Sofia.’

And she’ll say, ‘G’day, ya fucking shithead!’

Real loud.

And I’ll make a noise like ‘Ah’ or ‘Ooh’, except it won’t be voluntary.

I think about the game Sofia and I play and I realise you can’t really win or lose except that in some ways you are always winning because it makes you laugh and feel good and in other ways you are always losing because you are a human and you feel better by looking around and comparing yourself to people you are not.

Often, I think about writing in the same way.

How it can be confusing.

And I mean in terms of labels.

Like, how something is branded.

In a way that you are always winning and losing.

Because nonfiction is fiction and fiction is nonfiction and memoir is just a collection of memories and experiences that looks different to everyone and doesn’t belong, exclusively, to anyone.

So fuck it all together and call it a thing.

Okay.

I will.

In the distance, I see Megan walking towards me.

Every second, she becomes a larger version of herself.

And I think: that’s the goal.

To become a larger version of yourself.

And Megan meets me and we hug and inside the gallery there are maybe twenty people and I don’t feel nervous because after all there are people sleeping under bridges, and I have to cut the middle section of my reading because I have written too much, and I read for an hour not telling one joke and I forget to involve the audience and I finish reading and Megan stares at me with a blank expression.

People walk towards the exit and then disappear.

And I feel sort of shitty but I can’t tell if it’s valid.

Like, I can’t tell if I’m just thinking about myself too much or whether I actually did okay and it’s all in my head.

I walk outside and there are people from the reading outside.

I ask them what they’re doing and they say, ‘We’re going to the pub.’

I walk with them to the pub.

We order beers.

We sit.

People smoke.

At other tables, people laugh.

Someone says, ‘What do you do in Sydney?’

And I say, ‘I live in Melbourne.’

I tell them I’m flying back tomorrow.

I tell them I’m starting a job in a warehouse assembling reusable coffee cups.

I say, ‘KeepCups. They’re called KeepCups.’

A few people nod.

For a while there is silence.

People look at their iPhones.

Then someone says, ‘Wait, how old is Shia LaBeouf?’

And people say, ‘Twenty-one,’ and then, ‘No, wait: thirty-two,’ and then someone says, ‘He’s just got one of those faces.’