The night started like a day didn’t lead into it. I’m just in the middle of it, sweating like crazy in an apartment too small for the five of us. Me, Jet, Veloria, Felix and her. No. She isn’t here. It’s just the four of us, but still too cramped and hot. I keep opening the fridge door, hoping the cold air will do something other than run up an electric bill that I already can’t afford.

Veloria’s doing her eyeliner, painting it on like a Dutch master working on fine art.

“I don’t know why you bother,” I say. “With those tits no one looks at your face.”

When she realizes I mean it as a compliment, her look changes to a smile.

I usually count on Jet to be the stable one, but tonight the pills are hitting him hard.

“What are you doing over there, buddy?” Felix asks, bent over the kitchen counter using his Metrocard to chop up lines of something white, chalky, and a lot cheaper than coke.

“It’s the floor,” Jet says, hopping between the couch and a footstool. “It doesn’t want me touching it.”

“Come grab a line before they’re all gone.”

“Can’t,” Jet says. “Too much floor between here and there.”

Now I’m staring at myself in the mirror. Always a dangerous thing to do when your brain is fried on chemicals. I’m trying to figure out how I wound up looking like I’d lost a fight with my own shirt. Every time I try to straighten the collar it runs from my hand.

Veloria presses another pill against my lips. “Here. Take this,” she says, pushing it in.

I don’t see it, so I don’t catch the color. I hope it isn’t a yellow. They fuck me up the most, and not in a good way.

Felix has his iPod Nano hooked up to the speakers and scrolls through a playlist until he finds our anthem. Peaches' "Fuck the Pain Away". Goldfrapp would be next. I can already know it's coming.

I’m thinking about her and why she isn’t here. My leg starts vibrating. It’s not from the music. It’s my phone. She’s sending me a text message.

“see u at Scandal”

She’s not a woman of words. I never get more than that from her. But I always stare at the screen thinking maybe she’ll send another. She never does.

“Put the phone away,” Jet says, perched on the end table still afraid of what the floor might do to him.

“She just texted me.”

“Forget about her,” he shoots back. “You’re with us tonight.”

I love to dance and fuck the night away as much as they do. I live for it. But when I’m with her, it’s not about the night. It’s about making it through to the morning and watching the sun come up.

“I’m gonna see her,” I say. "I always do."

Jet rolls his eyes, but Felix changes the topic. He holds a Burger King straw out to me and points to one of the lines. “It’ll go great with the pill,” he says to me. “One brings you up, the other brings you down. I think.”

Veloria moves on from her eyes. Now she’s coating her cheeks with glitter. She’s using a paintbrush an old roommate left here years ago. I don’t have the heart to tell her what he’d used it for.

Felix is over at the window, looking out. “The cab’s here!” he shouts.

That’s our battle cry. I make sure I have everything I need. Wallet, check. Gum, good. Keys, got ’em. I stuff them all in pockets. The phone stays in my hand. I don’t want to miss a call from her.

Veloria and Felix lock arms and head for the door. Jet’s talking calmly to the floor, trying to negotiate a truce to get himself across the room.

I’m sure Friday nights look like this in lots of big cities around the world. For us, it’s a Tuesday. This is what we do. We’re not rich or famous, but on nights like this, when we’re full of drugs and bad decisions, we’re gods. Nothing can touch us.

The driver asks us where we’re headed.

“Luxx,” Felix says.

“No, Scandal,” I tell him. “We’re going to Scandal."

The stairs leading down to the club are an uneven mess. It’s like they’ve been designed to keep sober people out. You have to be on something to make sense of them. Veloria slips, catches herself, and laughs like it was intentional. She also takes it as a sign she needs another pill.

We get waved in by the door guy. I can’t tell if he knows who we are or just doesn’t care enough to stop us.

Inside, the club is darker than it usually is. It looks like someone turned on the fog machine and forgot to turn it off. All I can see are flashes of bodies on the dance floor, flickering in and out of existence in time with the strobe light.

I hear the first few bars of Le Tigre’s "Deceptacon" blaring over the sound system. The DJ slows down to make it sound like a warning. Or maybe that’s the yellow pill kicking in. Fucking yellows.

I lose Veloria in the first minute. She walks into the crowd and gets swallowed by it. I spot Felix over at the bar trying to trade what he’s calling Molly for shots of something. Jet’s grinding against the form of a woman in bondage gear. I don’t think he knows it’s a mannequin.

I walk to the back of the room. On my way there, someone yanks me back hard, but I push forward. I’m on a mission. I think I know where to find her. I take a few more steps and someone points to my chest and says, “Nice tattoo," at the Motörhead logo I got when I was eighteen.

“Thanks,” I say, then realize my shirt’s gone. How the fuck did that happen? I stop worrying about it when I see her.

She’s over by the DJ booth, right where I thought her to be. She’s wearing jean shorts over nylons and has a mesh top. No bra. Her arms are over her head, like she’s in a Baptist church singing Hallelujah to the man spinning the vinyl. She locks eyes with me and smiles like she knows what I did to her in my dreams last night. Then she turns and disappears. I’m not following her. She’ll come to me again.

Someone hands me a shot of tequila. Down it goes. I see another one sitting on a table and help myself to it. This one burns my throat. I’m not even sure if it’s booze. The girl with the silver lipstick who works at the club pours another shot into her mouth, then kisses it into mine.

I shake my head to clear it, and the whole room becomes a wash of colors. I’m waiting for reality to stop being a blur and a hand finds mine. It’s not hers.

I get pulled to the bathroom. “You’re on my list,” she says. “Not getting away from me this time.” She pushes me into a stall and locks us inside. I don’t recognize her, not at all. Her knees hit the tile floor, landing in a pool of something cold and wet. It’s definitely not just water. It doesn’t look like she cares either.

The girl pulls at my pants and my cock pops out. I didn’t realize I was already hard. She spits on it as she’s looking up at me. Her saliva hangs from her lips for a second, then she smears it down my length.

“I’m gonna suck it so good for you.” What a way to introduce yourself.

The girl takes me in her mouth. She’s slow at first, until I hit the back of her throat. She lets it sit there for a few seconds, makes a gagging sound, then really starts going at it, all wet and sloppy. There’s no build-up or teasing, just full-throttle cock sucking like she’s a contestant on a fucked up game show where she has to make me cum as fast as possible.

When I look down, I see that she’s already got some streaks of mascara drying on her cheeks. Those aren’t from me. They’re from the last guy.

“You in here?” Felix calls out.

“A bit busy,” I tell him.

“Sounds like you’re getting your dick sucked.”

“One at a time,” my new acquaintance says between slurps. I feel her gag around me again. She keeps going, good as ever. The noises are obscene.

"Here," Felix says, and a small bag of powder sails over the stall door and lands at my feet.

The girl’s face is soaked. She pulls off enough to give her mouth a break and jerks me while staring up, tongue out, spit clinging between her chin and the head of my cock like a bridge.

She smiles when my knees buckle. Who is this girl? I’m right back in her mouth, before I can think twice about it. She hums when I get all the way in. I feel it in my knees even harder this time. I have to grab the walls to stay on my feet.

I try telling her to slow down, but fuck… it’s too late. My whole body tenses like I’m being tasered. All I can do is shake and grunt.

It doesn’t land pretty on her. I hit her face and chest, and suddenly she looks like the early stages of a Jackson Pollock.

The girl stands up like she didn’t just suck a stranger’s cock, and smiles at me. “Thank you,” she says, like I’m the one who just did her a favor. Anytime, Miss. 

I zip up in silence and notice I’ve got a ring of red lipstick on my cock. In the mirror I see a crime scene staring back at me. I’m a fucking mess, but feel like a fucking altar.

Jet barges in. “Hey, uh, where is she?”

“She disappeared by the DJ booth.”

“No,” Jet says, wincing. “The one who’s giving out blow jobs?”

“Oh, just left,” I say, smiling, letting him know I got mine.

Back in the main room, The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” is blasting and the whole scene looks like an orgy that started without me. Drinks are being sprayed in the air. Hands are grabbing whatever they can touch. Tops are coming off. It’s all flesh and sweat, like live porn set to an electroclash soundtrack. And I charge right into it, adding my filth to the pile.

In the middle of it all, I look for her. This is her kind of chaos, but the crowd's too dense. I can't see her.

The next thing I know, I’m in a taxi that reeks of all the sins from the last club as we head to a new one. Felix tells us we’re going to a place called The Where?house. None of us has ever heard of it before.

“It’s why you hang out with me,” he reminds us. “I get us into these places before they’re cool.”

“He’s got a point,” Veloria says, patting his arm.

We get dropped off on a side street that smells like rotting garbage and Chanel No. 5. There’s no sign, just a guy in zebra print pants holding a velvet rope in front of a loading dock.

“This is it,” Felix says, brimming with pride.

Inside is pure distortion. Strobe lights hit like seizures. What they’re playing isn’t exactly music. It’s more like static and sex noises set to bass lines that don’t match. Behind the bar there’s a giant screen looping a grainy VHS of someone getting spanked in night vision.

Jet’s gone as soon as we get there. Veloria hands me something small, round, and white. I don’t ask what it is, just let it dissolve on my tongue.

“I think this is cut with something weird,” Felix says.

I’m about to ask him why when my gums suddenly feel too big for my mouth. Everything goes numb, and the floor feels like it’s vibrating through my bones. I close my eyes. I need a moment to ground myself.

When I open them, I spot her right away. Perfect timing.

She’s like a fever dream, spinning and twirling in the middle of the floor, dancing with another girl I’d never seen before. The girl’s topless under a leather jacket. Her nipples are glossed in glitter or someone’s glistening saliva. Her skirt could pass for a belt.

The girl keeps dancing, lost in her own world.

But she sees me and grins like the villain in a cartoon. She crooks her finger. She wants me closer. I start dancing with her. Her mouth is near my ear, but I can’t tell if she’s actually saying anything.

Somewhere behind me, Jet, Felix, and Veloria are still out there. But not for me. Not anymore. The group fell apart when we got here. I don’t know if they forgot about me, or if I forgot about them, but it doesn’t matter. I’m with her now.

The other girl dances her way to me. “Shannon,” the girl says.

I look away from Shannon and make eye contact with her, hoping she isn’t jealous. She isn’t. She’s smiling and mouthing the words go for it, like she wants me to get things started while she thinks about joining in.

I can’t tell if Shannon sees any of that, but she starts rubbing my cock through my jeans. I bite my lip and let my head dip back.

I want her to join us. I want this from her too, but if she’s going to keep playing coy, Shannon will do.

I start kissing Shannon on the dance floor, next thing I know, we’re in a room with a couch. Shannon’s on her knees, undoing my belt.

She’s in the corner, watching, still not joining yet. I want her to come closer.

My pants fall to my ankles. Shannon smiles when she sees the lipstick on my cock, and decides to add her own shade of red to it. Her mouth is incredible.

I grab at my shirt. Wait. When did I get a new shirt? I have no idea, but now isn’t the time to solve that mystery.

I lean back against the wall. Shannon has me pinned to it, sucking my cock. One of her hands comes up to my chest. She digs her nails in and scratches at my skin. I think she’s trying to mark me with something other than lipstick. I’m too fucked up to really feel it and I don’t mind. All my energy is focused on what her tongue is doing to my cock.

I look around for her. I’ve lost track of where she is.

My eyes close as Shannon does her thing. I don’t know how long that goes on for, but right now, I can’t feel Shannon’s mouth and I haven’t cum yet.

I open my eyes, and Shannon is in front of me. She’s bent over the couch, pulling her panties to the side.

“Stick it in,” Shannon says.

I slide in too easily. This isn’t the first cock she’s taken tonight, but it’s warm and wet and I don’t care.

She’s back. I see her in the corner, with her hand between her legs, watching as I fuck Shannon. By the looks of things, she’s enjoying the show. I need to fuck her too.

“You want this don’t you?” I ask her.

“Yes,” Shannon answers instead. “Give me more. Keep fucking me.”

She laughs from the corner. My brain checks out again.

I’m on the couch now. Shannon is riding me, going through her porn-star script like someone who’s used to getting fucked. “Give it to me… that’s it… keep fucking me... don’t stop… fuck me.”

I look over to the corner, but Shannon brings my head back. “Look at me when you fuck me,” she says.

I blink out, and things go dark.

I wake up on the couch. My shirt's gone again. My pants are half on. My cock’s still out, and I’m soaked in sweat that doesn’t smell like mine.

I pull myself together and head out. The party has mostly emptied. It’s only the most degenerate among us who are left behind.

And now I’m outside. No idea how I got here. I’m walking, not sure where I’m going. The club is behind me, I think. Maybe it isn’t. I know where I am, though. I’ve been here before. It’s Brooklyn.

I walk three blocks, checking my phone the whole time. Nothing. No texts, no missed calls. I go through my pockets and find the gum. I pop a stick in my mouth. I want fresh breath when she finds me. I keep walking. She’ll come.

I’m by the bakery when I feel her beside me. She always does this, creeps up on me and waits for me to clue in. She doesn’t say hi, just slips her arm through mine like we’d planned to meet, right here, right now.

“Let’s go see the sunrise,” she says.

I don’t know how we get up here. The door to the roof was locked when I tried it, but it’s open now. My foot is killing me. Maybe I kicked it open. I’m with her now. Nothing else matters.

For the first time, I notice she’s wearing my shirt. The one I started the night with. It’s too big on her, unbuttoned, and hanging loose. It looks good on her though. She’s going to want to keep it.

There’s cigarette ash in a Solo cup between us and a half-empty water bottle that keeps changing hands. She takes a sip, swishes it like mouthwash, spits over the edge, and passes it back.

Neither of us says anything. The city is as quiet as it’ll ever be, but still too loud as we come down from the night. I need this peace. This is what she does for me.

I don’t look at her until she looks at me. Her face is calm and her eyes are soft. She looks like she wants me to understand something.

“James.”

She says my name like it belongs to her as much as my shirt does. It reminds me of who I am, and hits harder than any of the drugs I took. I kiss her. She can keep the shirt, but I’m going to steal my name back from her lips.

Her tongue is gentle. She tastes like smoke and cheap booze. The pills are fading, but I feel higher than I’ve been all night.

The sun comes up, like it knows we’re waiting for it. She lights another Camel and passes it to me. The way her fingers touch mine is the best part of the whole night. It feels real.

I don’t always remember the way these nights start, but for the last year, this is where they ended.

“James.”

For a second, I think it's her again. When I turn, it's Jet standing by the roof door.

“You've got to stop coming up here, man.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

I look at the edge of the roof and think about her.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Jet reaches out, his hand lands on my shoulder. “Let’s get you home.”