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After our first date in Chinatown, I couldn’t wait to tell Mazzy about Dino, how he was The One. I called her the next day until she picked up. I’d just gotten home from the library and made myself a pauper’s dinner: fried rice with mayonnaise, a bit of dried dill on top. Everything tasted good to …

And then there was Dino, with his grade-A ketamine. Our two-year romance. The kicked-off shoes. The roses in the wallpaper, sliding down the wall. K-hole conversations with angels and demons and post office workers. Daylight creeping under blackout curtains. Trapdoors opened in the carpet (whoosh).…

There was a bartender named Jax who liked to drink. He drank so much he tasted inhuman, like pencil erasers and steel. Mazzy detested him. His texts always came after midnight, when I knew he was blackout. I was a cross between a booty call and a suicide hotline. Still, I replied. He was so much ni…

Over the course of our affair, maroon became a code word of sorts, a stand-in for devotion. Are you feeling maroon? I might text him after a long day with no contact. He would write me back promptly: Maroon on my mind. He would tell me when and where to meet him for dinner, then add: I have a reser…

After our drink we made out in the park, next to a group of elders line-dancing to a dusty boom box. We faced away and got freaky. To the tune of Cher, he stuck his head under my T-shirt and gnawed on my nipples. Kids called us names from the playground. We didn’t care. It was after dark and the la…