The door slams open and he trips his way out into the waning night, freed from the mass of bodies behind him. The bouncer eyes him warily at the door as he pauses to fill his starving lungs with a breath of fresh air, swaying on unsteady legs. As the door closes behind them, suddenly muting the pounding beat, the bouncer takes a step forward to offer him an arm to support himself, but he waves him off, a grim expression on his face . The smell of sweat, , and lust clings to him, just as eager to be freed from the grasp of the overwhelming barrage of stimuli, probing at every single nerve it could touch.

Clinging to the wall, he drags one hand across its rough brown brick surface, unaware of the small cuts that slice open his skin. The pounding bass echoes through his fingertips and his steps march to the beat in his mind. Ba-dum. ba-dum. Ba-dum. ba-dum. The beat of disappointment and lethargy, the beat of sadness.

The neon lights advertising the lone club flicker, reminding any onlooker that they needed to be changed soon. He stared through glazed eyes at the lights, finding comfort in their energy, inconstant but fighting for their next breath. The bursts of color and the after-image they create, fleeting though it was, was always replaced by another small burst of color hoping that maybe this time it would last longer. Or maybe, it might just blow out, the vibrant lights lost in a dark world. He turns away, the neon letters imprinted onto his vision changing the darkness to one that’s a bit more bright, a bit more colorful.

His hips sway naturally to the beat that reverberates throughout his body. The beat of life. The beat of blood. But to him it only sounds like one thing. Ba-dum. ba-dum. Ba-dum. ba-dum. Diss-a. point-ment. A-gain. a-gain.

The short alleyway becomes a trek as thoughts flow slowly in and out of his mind and tears start flowing from his eyes. And because he’s alone this night, like any other night, he lets them fall.

He stands in the corner, looking at the sun reaching its tendrils down the street that had led to so many beautiful memories on the shore. Suddenly he doubles over, fingers clawing into a crevice left between bricks where mortar fell years ago. He can see the rays run towards him on the ground through blurry vision and hears, as if detached from his own body, the retches of his body rejecting the alcohol he had so eagerly shoved down his throat, the release he gotten from the swallowed saliva of strangers, the touch of others lusting after his body.

His body rejects it all.

Stuttering out of his mouth with as much difficulty as the words “I love you”, his pain and sorrow was now reduced to a warm pool of disgust lying on th