I hate to let a good time end. As much as I value the solitude of sleep and look forward to dreamtime theatre, at times it seems I'll do anything to postpone that moment when the door closes and I'm in the house alone.

My resulting sleep deprivation tends to lend a surreal quality to the day's events, something I alternately enjoy and regret. I just hate to miss anything. My friend Linda terms this sydrome "FOMS," or Fear of Missing Something. My doctor scoffed when I told her how I felt, and replied that my unwillingness to go to sleep was "teenage stuff." It is teenage stuff, but I don't like the alternative. Sleep? As much as I love it, I would forgo it for weeks if I could.

A friend of mine wrote me once that she viewed her disinclination to stay out late on work nights to see bands as a sign not of growing old, but of growing up. I see it as a matter of personal preference rather than relative maturity, but the point could be argued either way.

The past weekend brought lots of opportunity for sleep deprivation, and I took full advantage. It started Thursday night, when our friend Kent arrived to sail the King Harbor race with us--an 80-mile journey that last year took us sixteen hours. This year, we took off from the dock in fog and drizzle, and fought our way out to Anacapa Island, only to abandon the race fifteen hours later when the wind had died completely, nearly 40 miles from the finish line. We bobbed for hours in the dark just outside the shipping lanes while container vessels slipped past us, black silhouettes glowing at the edges like ghost ships. We sailed back to Santa Barbara and reached the dock 24 hours after we'd left. I slept for about two hours as we drifted toward Malibu, but when we'd gotten the boat put away, I drove our skipper down to King Harbor, two and a half hours away, to pick up the boat trailer.

Perhaps it was the prospect of sudden solitude after 24 hours on a boat with three other people, but I dreaded driving back from King Harbor alone, and so selfishly insisted that Kent come along for the ride. "I'll buy you a margarita," I promised, which turned out to be a lie, and instead he bought me a beer, and we listened to Russian folk music beneath a bright copy of Van Gogh's Starry Night, eating shrimp in dill sauce from a hollowed-out pineapple.

We'd been on the ocean so long that the land seemed to undulate beneath us. "This is kind of surreal," Kent noted, looking at the two paper umbrellas decorating the pineapple, and the lemon slices arranged around it. I agreed, and drank my beer, although I'd really wanted a mai tai. The bar served beer and wine only, but on the way back to Santa Barbara, we stopped at the Lucky Kowloon, where we each had a mai tai, "Lucky Kowloon style." "It's got grenadine," said the blonde bartender, ignoring the Chinese waitress poking her head through the service window from the restaurant and complaining that the Cosmopolitans were too sweet.

We decided to eat dinner at the Lucky Kowloon, ordering from Jimmy the waiter, who'd greeted us warmly when we'd arrived. "Is he wondering why the guy you're with isn't your boyfriend?" asked Kent, but the warm pat on the back Jimmy gave him indicated that he hadn't noticed the difference.

We watched a group of children playing on the lawn outside, between the Lucky Kowloon and the Mexican place next door. "This would be a perfect place for my wedding," said Kent, and although his fiancee Lydia would have disagreed, we imagined it anyway, the guests on the lawn, Lydia's entrance from the Mexican restaurant, the karaoke reception in the bar. The Keelhauler called about then, and gave the idea his full endorsement. The light outside began to fade, and the mylar streamers left over from New Year's Eve glittered over the dance floor. "Something changed," said Kent, looking around, perhaps meaning the light, or the waitstaff, or the arrival of the karaoke host, or the feeling that the evening was gearing up, meaning the end of the casual, empty-bar afternoon feeling.

We were due to meet Anthony and Lara at their house, or we were overdue, really. "I'll try to find Jimmy for ya," said the new bartender, rolling her eyes. Jimmy appeared after a while with our check and two fortune cookies. "You can't choose your own," I told Kent, and so he handed me one and I gave him the other. Mine said something about looking close to home for happiness. I remember thinking it was apt, but I'd had two mai tais at that point, so I can't vouch for anything. Anthony called again. "Did we lose you?" he asked, and I said no. "Lara's waiting to have ice cream until you get here."

We drove to Anthony and Lara's, where we had ice cream with fresh blueberries and recapped the race. We all agreed that it felt surreal--perhaps not finishing something begun in earnest caused the feeling, perhaps it was the late hour.

Kent and I left, and when we got home, I wanted him to stay up and watch TV with me. He looked at me without the indulgence that had caused him to make the drive to King Harbor or sit in the bar and drink mai tais, and said no, he planned to be asleep in 30 seconds. I will admit that it seemed slightly unreasonable to me at the time.

I went to bed and turned on the television, where the last fifteen minutes of A Clockwork Orange was playing. I'm certain that its candy-colored gloss informed my dreams that night, dreams of sailing on canals through streets lined with brightly painted buildings and golden fish.

Later the next day, I finished a song I'd been working on, a sea chanty of sorts in meter if not exactly in theme, with a first verse that goes:

The birds on the bridge are frozen in flight
I drive past your house, one hand on the wheel
Your windows are dark, you're not home tonight,
but you would be, I think, if you knew how I feel.

Star of the day. . .Illiam Quillian Kewley