So tonight, you’ll be my best friends. And for the five hours we shine underneath strobe lights, I will give you the best damn time you’ve ever had. I’ll look at you with a hopeless admiration, like you’re the prettiest girl in the room, like I can’t take my eyes off you. And when you reach for me—because you will—I’ll never let you know that it’s really only the me refracted through you that I can’t stop staring at, never let you know that your whole world is only a necessary game to win.

Asher and I ran, danced, breathed, lived on alcohol and adrenaline. Claimed everything. Stretched our bodies because nobody wanted our souls. We blew lines and in and out of lives, and we had different best friends every night.

And the boy that I love, the only peace of salvation in the relentless anarchy of my world? I had to put him aside for a little while. I had to forget him, just a little, just for now while there was a room on a street in a house with a bed; I was looking out over the Amstel. What a pretty name for what a pretty river, I thought, standing by a window in the room on the street in the house with a soft bed tousled by sheets that smelled like a baby’s head. What a pretty name, indeed, and what a fuckshit would I be to spoil the view with an errant, terrible blotch.

I wanted a cigarette. I had a cigarette. I asked him to have one too and he said he didn’t smoke, so I asked him are you sure and he smiled and took it. He was cute when he smiled. The small dimple in his right cheek wiped some of the asshole off his face. I wondered why he took the cigarette.

Seven hours ago, in a hotel room with porn strung up as artwork, Asher and I had debated the consequences of snorting bad blow. Well, not bad, exactly. Contaminated. New York snow.

‘The hell, Ash, didn’t you check this before you paid?’

‘I did. It looks so pretty!’

‘Asher. There is glitter in this. Glitter!’

‘I think it’s leftovers off a hooker’s belly.’

I tried to be pissed but the degree to which this was expected pretty much rendered that pointless. Ever since he’d burst out of the closet, Asher had been climbing a steady upswing of flamboyance. He’d gone from layered, collared prep to sequins before noon, and the only reason it was more amusing than irritating is that everything Asher does is ironic. Or is it? You can never tell. That’s the fun part.