February 20, 2003 | 11:09 PM

It looks like I'm definitely going to New York for my birthday to be with Sean. And I'll also get to see Eric there as well.

I just talked to Eric on the phone for an hour. Why do so many people whom I love so dearly have to live so far away?

We reminisced about our wild trip to Vermont five years back. How we took off in the middle of the night on a moment's notice, crazy speeding down the high way with nothing but a cooler of beer in the trunk and our clothes on our backs. We spent days on end at Nell's college, smoking pot and reading poetry, canoeing under the stars and sleeping outside. It was so beautiful.

One night while highly inebriated we almost decided to get married just for the hell of it, as a joke. We didn't of course.

That trip is one of my favorite memories.

This June we're going to go again. It doesn't have the same ring of cracked spontanaeity as it did the first time, when we left without telling anyone after having discussed the possibility for less than five minutes. We're different people now-- a little more grown up and not quite so reckless. A little wiser and more cynical and world weary. But when Eric is around there are always possibilities. Eric makes me rememeber the best of who I am.