Something about that confused her.

“Wait—” she said. “Are you not—,” looking around for some reason, checking that no one would hear maybe. “Are you not…homeless?”

“Well that depends,” I said, dipping my teabag sage-like, looking off into the distance, conjuring my response from the Great Beyond. “On what you mean by ‘home.’”

The fam came through in time for the mama’s birthday, mid month.

I whipped up a paleo choco mousse with avo, banana, maple syrup, raw cacao, vanilla extract.

Topped with a raspberry.

An anti-inflammatory bday ‘cake.’

The avo a diet-cheat but OK, relatively.

Talked to the ole man one night for his birthday, also mid month. Walking to the water at 4 a.m.

He’d pivoted away from politics to nutrition.

Was using nutrition to feed the neurosis beast within.

To occupy his YouTube time.

He’d been preaching paleo but had one-eightied to veganism.

Was exploring fruitarianism.

“Bro I ate seven bananas today.”

I was like “Bro seven? Bro that’s a lotta bananas.”

He was like “Dude I’ll eat seven bananas tomorrow!”

I was like “Fock yeah. Get it.”

Started hitting the park daily.

Re-remembering my inner baller.

Getting shots up.

Using shot-quotas to quell the hatred of neoliberal feminism I’d been cultivating.

It was lowkey working!

Was still reading Houellebecq, working through his corpus, but with less fanaticism than before.

More like Damn bruh, those some thought-provoking insights.

Those some hot takes!

Less like Wow this why my ex left if I see her new boo I’ma skull fuck her.

Y’know…progress!

•

One day went to the park to get up my 100 free throws, 100 pull-up Js, 100 3s, only to find all courts occupied save one.

And that one had a person on it.

A person who looked exactly like ex bae’s new boo Z.

Or looked exactly like how I remembered Z.

Which consisted of no specific features, just a general shape and hair color and seeming hatred of men.

This girl had all those things.

Mid-thirties, heavyset, indignant face.

Doing form shooting in the paint.

I started with free throws.

When I got to mid-range pull-ups, she was doing alternating baselines.

Both of us not speaking, but gradually finding the rhythm.

Shooting when the other wasn’t.

Moving towards the unoccupied portion of the court.

Shagging for the other when it was on our route, or could be done with a slight alteration of it.

But otherwise.

Otherwise, on our own waves.

Doing our own things.

When a couple times one ball back-ironed high and doinked the other’s out.

We sorta half-smile acknowledged it.

Bc she had headphones in.

Was actively tryna not hear me.

It wasn’t till I was near the end of my 3s, doing full-court-sprint transition pull-ups, sweating goddamn missiles, and she was resting from all that baseline action doing free throws, that I said something.