Your apartment is small; the rent is usually a few days late, but it gets paid.

Night after night, clutter; dust; nameless tricks, anybody really. It is fun. The men are eager enough, their hesitant breath laced with cheap beer from Contacts, the bar down the street.

Your pick-ups share the stained futon on the floor. At the head of the mattress are your pornos. Two of the videos feature your last boyfriend, Curt, before he found his spiritual side and his new career; next to them amethysts and a box of tarot cards he left behind.

You can reach the condoms easily from the mattress. A couple of Trojan Magnums are tucked into the tarot box for the nights you catch someone particularly well-endowed.

Now you prefer your short, clumsy couplings to the previous affair of the heart. Tricks have no interest in you beyond your body, beyond the deeper friction you promise, grinding against them in the bar.

***

A thin crowd clusters at Contacts, in the booths, around the tiny pool table. Glances change into gazes. Drinks are bought. The crowd circulates. Usually you are given no last names; first names, given as a formality, are sometimes false.

You go early before the tiny dance floor starts to fill, and the club music is raised, almost deafening. You take the most willing guy back to your place. After you finish he will return to Contacts, maybe to pick up someone else to fuck. Everyone knows you're easy, the perpetual trick.

Sometimes you run into an old friend--once a young man from college who had returned to visit family, another time an old boss who was bar hopping, looking for someone forgettable. You chat them up, search for signs of interest: a look held too long, fingers brushing your knee. You bring them home. Part of the happy cycle.

***

Late afternoon your radio alarm goes off: a local talk show. Still groggy, you hear Curt predicting a vague future, shilling his astrology column.

"We exist," he says, "not in the flesh but around it, drawing out into the universe until we are fully dissipated in the ether. When we die, the body will fall away and we, no longer anchored to this world, go nearer the source."

His soft voice coaxes a scalding erection; any but a veteran slut would feel his stomach sink, remembering love, or something similar.

"We cannot be pulled away from ourselves, escape is rooted… is limited in our understanding absence from, not presence in the body."

But the soft tone promises only a disembodied future, not the tight moistness of rough, raw anal sex it once did. He promises the host and the listening audience a life beyond the body.

You turn the radio off, and search the floor for something clean enough to wear out.

At Contacts, none of the regulars pay attention to you. They mind their drinks and talk to each other. These men are less debauched than you would like. You buy a Bud Light and pay for a round of pool. No one joins you, and you slowly clear the table. You lay the cue across the table and spin the cue ball. You tap the ball with your finger toward a pocket. The spin causes an arc and the shot banks.

No one else new comes into the bar, and you feel like forgotten leftovers. You head home. During your time inside it started to mist. Barely anything; refreshing. Without anyone, without a buzz, you hurry down the street and up two flights of stairs to the apartment.

You see Curt standing at the door. His clothes soaked as if he has been wandering outside for a couple of hours. He knocks, tentatively, gently at first, as if he shouldn't have returned. "What's he doing here?" you wonder. But he loved his first tarot deck--you've scribbled your number on so many of them to give to tricks--and the crystals surely have some spiritual coinage. Something ridiculous but sincere.

The next knock is firm and the flimsy door rattles. The deadbolt racks against the door jamb. He sighs, not completely exhaling. His blue flannel shirt reveals less than the tight ribbed T-shirts he wore when he was dating you.

You keep quiet, not certain if you should advance or retreat.

He turns toward you.

You approach, sliding the keys out of your pocket. Whatever he wants you'll give it to him, so long as he leaves quickly. But if he wants to talk, you have a case of beer in the fridge to keep your guests relaxed.

You unlock the door and hold it open for him. He enters, still not speaking. He could have returned for you, just for a taste. (He wipes his mouth with the bottom of his shirt.) The pale stomach, softer, than you remember. His face half-covered, and he could be anybody else. You trace his sides with your fingers and force his hips into yours.

It doesn't matter what he says. He could be anybody.

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