It must be the coke, he thinks, or the fucking shame about the abortions, he clenches his ass and finds his eyes again in the mirror, and the uncontrollable thoughts, stirred up now remembering things that didn’t happen or that he’s no longer sure about. He isn’t sure, deep down, of anything, because nothing matters all that much. His friends are there, outside, and he can go back and dance, but he doesn’t, he remains imprisoned by his lined eyes, he can’t move, the memory allows him to string those scenes—real or not—together into infinite chains of thought that flow into heroic images of him cutting heads, liberating races, curing the universe with the power of his equation, of a mathematics that doesn’t fail and that has at its center the animal enthusiasm that throbs in his eyes: let us remember that he and reality flow down waters that converge to later separate again, to be distinct tributaries (in the river of life, he’ll say), but those different tributaries coincide not only in death but also in love, and love is in his little confused swirling hot body that comes together and drives people crazy and recreates always hospitable landscapes. Remembering all that, he listens to a song that makes him want to dance, but he wonders why and what for and where and again why what for where, why what for where and he laughs and thinks his eyes are as beautiful as his mom’s and thinking that he says what the hell, he laughs again and this time the song that’s a Marilyn Manson cover makes him start dancing alone, there, how many times has he danced alone in front of the mirror—Marilyn Manson is Kevin, the character in Mr. Belvedere, ha—but his brother told him no, that’s an urban legend, strictly Quiteño, it can’t be, he’s sure they’re the same person, period. When he’s ready to leave, his buddy comes in and tells him we’re out of toys, papi, and he says let’s buy another round, and without thinking about the rest of his friends or me, without thinking about me, fucking asshole, he leaves the bathroom and leaves the club and walks through the neighborhood full of the pleasure produced by walking, produced by being next to his buddy feeling the cold of the early morning on his arms, stepping over the urine that accumulates on the edges of the sidewalks, he also wants to piss there, he unzips, grabs his cock, aims at a little plant growing in some crack in the cement, and says out of love, pretty and pisses. He contemplates the stream softly flowing out and watering the plant while the landing starts to feel like an unfurling of everything solid, like a triumph of all that is material, then he speeds up to catch his friend, to hurry up and find the dealer, to buy pills or coke or paste or whatever, lastly a few beers, to catch the morning, he tells his buddy, but he realizes he doesn’t have any money, that he doesn’t have a jacket, that he left everything at the club, and the panic suffocates him for a second, it’s fine, he tells himself, we’re going back, and he keeps walking, quickening his step, running.