He stared at me with that face, a swollen raisin soaked in gin, all inflated wonder and pitiful reproaches. I knew it all along. Sure, I was aroused just a moment ago. I came up from behind him on the third floor of Horton Plaza just across from the ancient dome and grabbed between his legs while he adjusted the camera. It took me all afternoon to remember how it made me feel when I could see him clearly, when he spoke to me with focus. But now his eyes were shaking, I never had to say more than a word. That’s how fast he became a stray dog in the rain, with no capacity to see more than his own pain. What a distorted image. It’s no longer him. I am alone and I have no idea where the fuck I am, my eyes are washed over with hundred’s of years of history where ruins such as this one crumbling before me still waves his flags and issues demands. What more do I owe? Did you know that the full anatomy of the clitoris was not discovered until 1998? I grab at the camera now, the only thing I recognize, he is howling as I wind back the film he had loaded and stained, and I throw down that rancid green bag and just after whip the roll of film into it, and I am gone. And now he’s trolling me through downtown, panting and pleading under Spreckle’s Theatre (or so he told me the next morning) arms akimbo, he always plays the Virgin Mary when it comes to confrontation. I keep walking home but its hopeless, I purposely have avoided assimilating the layout of this forsaken city years ago, and he is hopeless too, he even stopped following me. This is ridiculous, that balalaika has to drive me home. I look back around the corner and he is on his knees playing wounded prince in the former red light district. What’s left of him stands and leads the way back to car. How the hell does he remember anything with all these waving hands?

There was more. The rite didn’t end there. In one moment as we spat all over the side walk a group of men saw us and wanted to pick him off. And now I had to defend him. For whom are these wars? I see them frozen in place under the neon lights across from the stairwell leading up into lonely Horton Fortress.

The next morning we can’t find the roll of film.