When I got off the airport train at 30th Street, post–red-eye.

Sweltering.

Shirt sweatsoaked, sopping, within seconds.

I was like Fuuuuuuuuh.

Like I’m fucked bruh.

Came back too soon.

Dr. Botox had thrown me two more weeks of roids, when I relapsed after the first stint and came back fiending for more.

But only five doses left.

Still addicted to everything I was addicted to before, only now addicted to roids too.

I started walking back to my spot before, after a block, getting overwhelmed and going Fuck this.

Swiveled around on the blown intersection of 30th and Market, staring at my phone, not knowing where to go.

There was a cop merking a deli sammie, standing on the corner.

I had a backpacking backpack on my back, a Jansport on my front, pulling a roller suitcase.

“Hey you know where the entrance to the ten trolley is?” I asked the cop.

“The ten? Trolley?” he said, squinting.

“The ten trolley, yeah.”

“Well where ya tryna get?” He railed the last bite, patted his hands clean.

“Forty-first and Haverford?”

“Why don’t you just take the El to fortieth?”

“The El? To fortieth?”

“The El. To fortieth,” he said.

“Walk down these steps here. Follow signs for the El, or Elevated Rail, or Market-Frankford Line. Take it to Fortieth Street.”

I repeated back what he’d said to him, then did what he said.

6

BIG LEAF

September 2018

First roomie bae approached me about moving in with me I was so flattered.

Me? You wanna live with me?!

This was a novel concept: a woman who wanted something from me that wasn’t my undivided and exclusive sexual attention.

Ha.

Nahh.

But it was on some different shit.

And had side-effect benefits.

For one, it immediately established me as non-predatory.

Like Fuck outta here—I live with a woman!

This was good.

Second, my relationship with roomie bae was different than my relationship with roomie bro: I couldn’t even imagine pulling some of the shit I’d pulled with roomie bro—like allowing my room to become an untraversable cesspit of unlaundered clothes, or stealing drugs from him, or becoming a full-blown, nocturnal gremlin—with roomie bae.

This was definitely good.

And lastly, there was always the possibility that we, with the forced intimacy of cohabitation, would hit it off.

I honestly didn’t think this.

But when V first arrived in Philly, I’d told him about side bae, and at the first House Gathering at the old spot, upon seeing me and roomie bae interact, he’d said Her? Like Is she side bae? To which I’d said Her?! Nooo. To which he’d said Oh, well y’all are definitely gonna hit it off at some point. Mark my words.

So that stuck with me.

But same time what tf did V know.

One evening roomie bae came back from her nannying job all energetic, like “ex-roomie bae is having people over—wanna go?!”