You got the love.

He's in his bathroom. I'm sitting on the edge of his bed, fussing with the sleeve of my shirt. I can feel him turning faucets off and an through the wall. I can feel the rush of too much air conditioning from the vent across the room. It's one of those new apartments built in a converted hospital. It seems like there are hundreds of them all over town now. Everyone in this town must have been ill a hundred years ago.I get up and walk around the place. Everything's in its right place, and it's very cold. I walk across the living room and stare out the window onto 19th St. below. A voice in my head: "You don't really want to do this. You don't have to do this." With that, a sense of panic washes over me, and I realize I have to make a beeline for the door before he gets out of that bathroom. I do the kind of fast walk people do when they don't want to make a sound, unbolt the door and run down the hall. For such expensive apartments on the inside, they sure don't do much about the abandoned mental ward feeling in the hallways. My feet clicked on the concrete as I made my way to the stairs. Once outside, the muggy air slapped me in the face. I opened the front gate and stepped out into the middle of the street. I always liked the middle of the street, seeing how my parents seared into my brain that it was the one place never to be. The same reason I'm addicted to Twinkies. I felt awful. Not about him in the least, though. Another hot summer night ended tipsy and alone. My sleeve was bugging me, and I could feel grease collecting on my brow. Climate change is Satan. I walked a few blocks and found myself next to a discotheque by my apartment building. Leaning against the outside wall, I decided to focus on my breathing a little. Out, in, out, in. You could've lit the air on fire in front of my face. Note to self: Rum is trouble. I looked down at my new shoes and noticed a black smudge. At this point, a Latino boy walking by gently lifted my chin and said "A face like that shouldn't look down" with a huge smile. The street lights were bouncing off of the ice in his ears. He continued walking by with his posse who were looking back at me and smiling, too. And that was all it took to turn the night upside down. The bar began blasting "Strut" by Sheena Easton, and for the next block home, that's exactly what I did.