“Bum me a cigarette?” I ask Laurel on the badly lit balcony. I realize how cliché bumming cigarettes on balconies must sound, but shit happens on balconies, whether you're prepared to admit it or not. People stumble around and brace themselves on the guardrail, and in the back of my mind I'm patiently waiting for one drunk soul (or if we're lucky, a couple, or even a threesome) to careen through the sliding glass door and flop tragically over that guardrail like goldfish out of your sister's fishbowl and disappear into the night. But she's produced a pack of Pall Malls so I'm distracted for the moment.

“I got it,” I say when she offers up a cute little red lighter. I've got a bigger, green one in my pocket, somewhere. As I search for it, I reflect on the fact that I don't smoke. It's not so much a fact as a theory; in recent weeks it has become more flexible, fluid, than concrete. I'll know that I smoke when I actually go out of my way to buy a pack, awkwardly approaching the cashier at an AM/PM or some random gas station down town and try my best to use my deep “Juan Carlos” voice despite the fact that I'll probably still have to use my ID. I'll pick out Turkish Blend because I've bought those before, not for myself but for a friend. He has good taste, I think.

I cannot for the life of me find the lighter so I mutter, with the cigarette dangling precariously from my lips, “Fuck it” and motion for her lighter. I don't realize that I'm standing on the badly lit balcony muttering obscenities with a cheap unlit cigarette in my mouth, but even if I did, I don't think I'd feel badly. It's been a night. You know, one of those nights. She lights the cigarette and I try to shoot the shit about Foucault but it becomes clear that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about so I apologize and power-bomb my cigarette (her cigarette, whatever), then step into the dining room and find a half-empty cup of something dark red. It smells alright so I throw it down and gag a little as I realize that it's Franzia.

Elsewhere in the house Cursive is playing loudly and I think that I've never danced to Cursive before, at least not in the way I'm planning to dance as I make my way to a slightly darker room where bodies bounce and limbs flail in the air. I start dancing with a random girl I met earlier, and we begin to violate each others' personal space with a tenacity neither seen nor heard of in the bad teen movies we grew up with, or I did, at least. I can't necessarily speak for her, but she can't be any older than twenty or twenty-one and I'm not looking too haggard myself. Moments later we escape to a stairwell and start chewing on each others' facial features. I tell her she tastes good but it's a lie because all I can taste is cigarettes and Franzia. I tell her I've got to get another cigarette and she shrugs and heads back to dance.

I step out on the balcony and Laurel's still there, in the same place I left her ten minutes ago but now she's found a drink and all she can say is “Having fun?” kind of like your mother at a tenth birthday party, so I tell her I guess, and apparently she wants to get out of here. I nod hesitantly since it is getting late and I'm not really in the mood for thoughtless sex with the dancing girl so we leave the house and pass by a parked car with some guy asleep in the driver's seat. Laurel says there's no way she's driving so we walk all the way back, as far as the Taco Bell where she says “I'll see you around.” I protest but she's significantly more sober than I am so she kisses my cheek and tells me to drink a lot of water. I walk back to my house feeling empty, or maybe it's just the Franzia, drop into bed fully clothed, and fall asleep watching a broken stoplight glowing yellow over an empty street.