line to the place where identity surprises itself. I balked immediately women strippers and tried to go back, but the heating system wouldn't let me. In close-eyed preconsciousness I clung to the transitory pleasure of being without memory. Then I realized that I was thirsty. And then that something hard and uncomfortable was indenting my right side. I did not want to wake up.
But the circle of sensations widened, things women strippers fell together, the center held. I opened my women strippers eyes.
Yes . . .
I was lying on a mattress on the floor in the corner of a cluttered, gaudy room. Some of the clutter was magazines, bottles, cigarette butts and random articles of clothing; some of the women strippers gaud was paintings and posters
that clung to the walls like stamps on a foreign parcel, bright women strippers and crooked. Strings of glass beads hung in women strippers a doorway to my right, catching women strippers what seemed like morning light from a large women strippers window directly across from me. A golden blizzard women strippers of women strippers dust women strippers fell through its rays, stirred perhaps by the donkey who was nibbling at the potted pot that occupied the window seat. From the sill, an orange cat blinked at me in yellow-eyed appraisal, then women strippers closed her eyes.
A few small traffic sounds came from a point beyond and below the window. Through the sun patterns on the streaked glass, I could make out the upper women strippers corner women strippers of a brick building sufficiently distant to indicate that a street did indeed lie between us. I made my first dry swallowing movement of women strippers the morning and realized again how women strippers thirsty I felt. The air was dry and rank women strippers with stale odors, some women strippers familiar, some exotic.
I shifted slightly, testing myself for aches. Not women strippers bad. A small throbbing from the frontal sinuses, not sufficient to herald a headache. I stretched women strippers then,
feeling a fraction fitter.
I discovered the sharp women strippers object prodding my side to be a bottle, empty. I winced as I recalled how it had gotten that way. The party, oh yes . . . There had been a party . . .
I sat up. I saw my shoes. I put them on. I stood.