Sheets, a disarray of white paper; smudged acrylic; the sun pours down from the boxy window in my ceiling, and I think of Dakota who comes in late on Sunday evenings. Her laugh came easy. Her hair were waves of somewhere between red and brunette, a little more than shoulder length; her curves were amazing, neither too extreme in a porn way, or too small and lean against her bones, and her tits were perfect. Her laughter was easy as the way she missed an old friend. She was always last to leave because she liked to say warm goodbyes, and then she would say goodbye to the space herself, like a slow regathering of her bits of soul left in a booth, or by her early-on abandoned seat, or in the lights on the bar counter. She'd enjoy her last smile in the afterglow, and in the cooling of the night. And then she would take herself home.

-

A moth kissed my arm; I was startled.

On Fridays, I used to dance all night. Crowds of skinny bodies and fog machines, and caffeine and shots of hard, showy liquor in my blood. The strobe lights flickering and fading in the hands of some automated algorithm or technician. Stranger after stranger, these bodies. Substances in almost everyone, some to dull, and some to heighten. How do you even remember the people you touch lips with, when nobody intends to go home? Did you even kiss, when there was no intimacy or connection, or even memory?

A boy I met around this time, told me that he slept with 55 people, and now I am his age.
I have not done this, but I don't think it matters. I don't think it is as hard to touch bodies with a stranger. Sex is easy; we have drives. Intimacy is the elusive pursuit.

There was another boy who went sometimes with me when we chased strangers and bodies and maybe something new to pass the time. Sometimes something promising would happen, like the passing interest of an attractive stranger. Most nights, there was nobody quite right. There was never enough drink to quite balance out that thing that weighed a person down, and then there was all at once too much, so he'd get us home, and let me sleep on his shoulder during the long rides.