Mile End

"Say please." I am now four feet tall, kneeling at the feet of a woman I don't know. "Please."

The benefit to living in a big city is anonymity. Nobody walking past you knows or cares what you do, and you can bet that one in three people you encounter has a story more fucked up than yours. I can still feel every stripe on my back. She hit me too hard.

After a session, I feel infinite. Everything is clear and nothing matters anymore. The roaches in my moldy apartment, my evil landlady, the flaming rash I got from the water in my bathroom. My body disappears and I am God for a moment. I can feel again, something I haven't been able to do in years. The last time I can remember being awake to what was happening around me was when I met Judy, my only hope out of a cold, damp existence. Since then I've learned to tolerate the cold and the damp. To like it, even. Before I met her all I saw were colors mashed together. No outline, no form. Sound was muted, like it had a pillow over its mouth. But I knew every inch of her in detail. Her smell, the exact color of her hair and skin tone. The crack in her lip, the constellation of moles on her neck. I don't even remember what my mother looks like. Judy was the only person I had ever noticed in my entire life.

I used to stay in the back room of a bar my buddy owned. He named it "The Coyote Ugly", and prominently displayed the name in bright neon lights in the window. The bar was such a dive and in such a bad part of town that no one important ever got wind of his service mark infringement. I was sitting on my mattress in that cubby hole of a room, counting the money I'd made from a drug sale. I wasn't a big timer. I sold pills to poor old ladies and housewives, and only enough to afford me two meals a day. I was lazy and didn't want to get too wrapped up in selling, which would require some kind of routine. Routines are bad news for people like me. You burn up energy going nowhere. Better to use it when you need it.

I decided I needed time away from my cell so I stuffed twenty bucks in my pocket (a mandatory donation to the desperate) and took a walk around the block. It was dark and wet, like always. Washed clean that morning, black buildings and tar reflected the moon's light, which can be beautiful if you've never seen anything beautiful. I strolled down the block holding my worn jacket together, watching my feet step over bits of glass and cracked concrete. When I reached the end of the street I paused only for a moment, then kept walking. I walked across the street, not bothering to stop for cars. While honks and curses were thrown at me I started jogging, which turned into a kind of hobbled sprint. I ran for ten minutes straight, faster and faster until I couldn't tell where I was anymore and my saliva felt like acid burning in my throat. I rested on the step of a corner store and tried to clear my mind of all logical thought. I wasn't going back. My bed and some of my clothes were back at the bar, but I wasn't going back. I had been there for too long and it was starting to feel a little like home, which scared the shit out of me.

My skin absorbed the yellow streetlights and I knew that I had to start over again, an exciting thought. I felt someone watching me, which was not unusual at this time of night. I reached in my pocket for thief money. As I waited patiently for an attack, I looked up and spotted the only lit window I had seen all night. A slender, shapely figure peered through the glass. It was naked, and laughing, it seemed, at me. She beckoned me to come and, seeing as I was a bit cold and vulnerable, I walked toward the building.

I intended to have sex with whoever she was, but wasn't excited. I hadn't felt intimacy from anyone in a long while and simply wondered if I remembered what people felt like.

As I walked toward the building she quickly disappeared. A clear and playful voice came through the speaker. "Come in." A loud buzzer, then a heavy click sound. I opened the door and started jogging upstairs like I'd been there before. It was almost completely dark inside, with only the slivers of light from the street guiding me. There were no voices, no footsteps but my own.