He always thought the city streets were devastatingly beautiful. Cracked and dry, littered with the debris of the human existence. They had a feel to them, a taste and a smell that was beyond concrete and pollution, past suffering and pain, more pungent than loneliness. The air was thick with death and sweet with rebirth. The gravel scratched condemnation into his skin, and he bled forgiveness. An endless cycle of failure and triumph, a precarious balance of light and dark. It was home.People threw change at his feet and slipped dollar bills into empty Styrofoam cups that lay around his head. He didn't need it and tried to tell them, tried to make them understand that it was a choice, not a necessity. They would just smile in pity and hand him a fiver, going on their way with the notion that they had helped the poor. They never seemed to hear his laughter echoing down the streets as they left.

He relished the astonished looks on the faces of store clerks when he waltzed into their high-class boutiques with his dread locks and skin stained brown with grime. They made him show a credit card and then ID before he could look at anything. Then he would try on the store and leave without buying even a button.

He spent his spare time in an apartment on the Upper East Side, with a man who was all marble and gold, soft and hard and sweet. He would open the door for him, allowing his tired body and tattered clothes to enter a world of silk and velvet and fragrant champagne. He would take him to his bathroom, and he would spend hours in there, washing the layers of dirt and pain and happiness off of his skin. When he emerged, the man would wrap him first in a towel, and then in his arms, where he would kiss him until his mouth no longer tasted death, but instead he was swallowing love in great gulps. It was potent, much more than the vodka he drank when he got bored and horny, and it made his knees weak until all he seemed to be able to do was fall into bed. And that was just fine with him.

Afterward, they would lay together in a tangle of limbs and euphoria, and the man would kiss his ear until the sounds of cars and change faded to simple memory. The man would ask him to stay, tell him there was plenty of room and he wanted to wake up next to him like this every day. He would laugh and tell him that he understood that he wasn't able to understand, and that was OK.

Then he would kiss him and close his eyes, allowing himself to be content.

And that was OK too.