While José was leading the street defense committee and starting his zine library, Sebastian was doing his thing with the entertainment committee and the kids. It was the most separate I had ever seen the twins, and they both seemed so happy. They were good guys, you know? Mostly Sebastian, but even José who tried to be such a hard-ass. I never knew guys like that. I mean, the main dude in my life growing up was my asshole dad, who I never wanted to be like, and his fuckwad friends who always came around and drank and made stupid sexist jokes and shit like that. Then, once I left home, I was with these douchebag punk dudes who talk a good game about anti-oppression and equality, but at the end of the day are as sexist and homophobic and everything else as anybody else. I guess maybe if I grew up around guys like José and Sebastian, things might have been different for me, I might have landed somewhere else. Person-wise and gender-wise, too. Like, I always knew I wasn’t what they told me, I knew I wasn’t this girl in frilly dresses that I had to be before I had a choice. But then I would look around me and see these asshole dudes and think I’m definitely not that, either. So I landed somewhere in between, some crusty weird genderfucking person who everybody is confused by and most people don’t even think exist, if that makes any sense. I don’t know. Being there in the building, I had plenty of time to think about these things.

It wasn’t like I was completely idle. I helped clean the place, went out on the food gathering committee sometimes, played with the kids sometimes. Once in a while I sang and played guitar with the music group. But mostly I thought about leaving. It was weird, you know? There was this place, this great place that had come up out of all this misery and despair, and that’s what I’d always hoped for. It was like my motherfucking dream of what would happen when the world and capitalism and all that other crap fell. This. But it was nothing, because there was no Lux. I thought every day, maybe I’ll take a boat to New Jersey, maybe I’ll have the Red Cross relocate me to a shelter there, maybe I’ll start looking. Then this dread would come over me. I’d start picking at the pimples on my chin and acting weird and nervous and then José or Sebastian would ask me what was wrong and I’d say nothing. Finally, I’d just stop thinking about her at all, because, you know, having a dream once in a while that she’s alive and okay is better than knowing for sure that she’s in the fucking ground somewhere forever.