God I can't do alone. This bright clean apartment is suffocatingly empty. The channel changer, the half-empty wine bottle, the carpet with evidence of more feet than just mine, though now they are the only pair here. It's all taunting me with what I already know-- I am alone here. It's something I've done to myself. No one else to blame. I won't let anyone else in. No one here. No. One. I am the only one now, and am I happy?

The sun is swallowed by my golden skin, cheeks red with warmth. The feeling is so good. We're on the tiny porch of my apartment, all squished together, moist skin rubbing against each other in the sun so alive it seems to have forgotten to set. We raise our glasses of cheap beer to a semester that skipped spring and went straight to summer.

A commercial on the T.V. brings me back. The actress doesn't trick me-- she isn't really sad. And yet, her own beauty might not be good company. I can't remember if she's married. Her lips, red and round, face perfectly normal with an outstandingly attractive body. She is beauty. She is not so much more beautiful than me, though, and I have been called beauty before, too. But tonight as this east coast sun is setting she is still on her sunny west coast with someone who is calling her beautiful.

I'm not sure which is worse: feeling alone in a room sardined with people, or feeling alone in a room empty except for yourself. Because I am on the latter of the two sides, I must admit with certain sadness I would give anything to feel utter loneliness with anyone by my side than to be alone while feeling alone. There is something about the nearness of two physical bodies that whispers companionship, even when everything underneath the surfaces proves it's not nor will ever be companionship. The hint of it is there. The possibility. Maybe a lie is better.

The rattling of the living room ceiling fan from heavy stomps above speeds my heart-- I forgot others exist so close to me. I stand on the couch in a drunken stupor and reach for the ceiling, feeling for a split moment the rugged off-white that separates me from the humans above. They are there, and so close! I don't know if this scares me or comforts me. Am I even drunk or is this the loneliness? God please don't let this be depression. I know what that selfish illness looks like and I don't want it. I know how it hurts your daughter, how it cuts and beats her as she watches her mother realize in a crumbling moment that you are not enough to bring her joy.

And yet, no one is here when so many say they love me and so many look at me like they want to fuck me. But what should I expect from these fucking men?

Another commercial of a four-year-old beauty queen and I am in tears. No no no. Someone tell her, her mother, her father, her No. Thick salty streams are raining down my face. No.

This curse of beauty-- they make you believe growing up that you'll never be alone. Well I'm alone, so which is the lie- my beauty or my loneliness? i know from too many horny men that the lie is that I would never have to live in solitary confinement, trapped in my own luxurious loneliness. This damn clean apartment. Just someone, anyone.

Anyone?

I wonder at the feeling of sex. Is it everything? That everyone says it is, sex? Tonight if a fucking man were here it would happen and it wouldn't be everything I think it is, because he (anyone, someone) is not coming. If only they knew how easy it was (to get)-- me.

Well, he did fuck me, but that doesn't count on account of suppression, or is it repression?, I explain. I refuse to think of it. That wasn't love. He-- an animal.

I'm losing my touch. Just one touch. I'm falling asleep under heavy eyelids and alcohol--

What was I saying?