I took my hand off the door. “Tell me.”

She stayed in the same position but put her phone down. “I hate before-and-after pictures of drinking. It’s like before-and-after weight-loss photos. I dunno how you feel about that, but I think it’s just as fucked up.”

I nodded.

“The before pictures are blurred, poor quality,” she continued. “They’re always supposed to be pathetic and sad. Whatever the before people are feeling? It must have been at once depressing and immaterial. And if they’re smiling? Must just be masking the deep pain. The before person is supposed to be a different human, someone who no longer exists. And they are selling you that the life on the other side is going to be meaningful for the first time.”

“Sounds like—” I started to say, but she cut me off.

“Transition photos.” Her eyes danced, not looking at me. “Exactly.”

Every now and then, I realize that it’s been months since I’ve been touched. I can’t tell you how dark it feels. When I can’t be alone in my apartment anymore, I walk the riverside and the streets and the campus in my neighbourhood, and the quiet feels like it’s going to kill me. Yes, sometimes there are people, and sometimes they’re even with each other, and sometimes I can even see their faces—but that’s worse, somehow. Because there’s such an undeniable reason underlying the fact that I cannot get close to them. In the sickest, most awful way, it feels like being a teenager again. All these strangers, they have lives and they’re going on without you and what you can do is nothing, nothing, nothing but walk alone and sit in your room. Supposedly, one day, life will be different, but how does that mean anything and how can you believe that? The strangers say they’re feeling the same way. I know I should believe they are.

The next morning, I watched Cleo leave in the rain out my window. There was no rhythm to how Cleo walked, either. She would list to one direction, and then back with no pattern, throwing herself into forward motion.

Next evening was Sunday karaoke at Villains. This guy I know, Tommy, posted up next to my stool.

I once had a one-night stand with Tommy, after meeting him in this very bar. He took me to a house in Walkerville, a house he owned and lived in by himself. He was in his late thirties and worked in a factory. We tried to have sex, and we did for a bit, but he was hammered and couldn’t keep it up with a condom. I told him he could fuck me bareback, but then we both passed out. That morning, I drifted in and out of sleep in his bed until noon. I saw the sunlight coming through his curtains. Eventually, he woke me in a timid voice. “Don’t you think you should be getting up?” I gave him my number, and he drove me home.