"You'd be one of us," the old man said, his eyes always looking right into my own as he told me about the commune. His grey beard was a contrast against his dark skin and he wore a shirt and hat with bright colors in what I thought might've been an African design, though I wasn't sure. As we rode on the subway from Berkeley to San Francisco, I sat listening to him without knowing why. He told me about how young people came to the commune from all parts of the world seeking a place they could call home. They believed that love was the most important thing in a person's life. We got off at the Powell Street station and through the din of the traffic and the crowd of tourists we could hear the beat of drums. We walked along Market Street, passing rows of tables of chess boards and homeless men who played against men in business suits for money, and we came to a circle of drummers. The drummers played on instruments made out of garbage cans and hub caps and other carefully chosen junk. One drummer would start off with a rhythm, then another would improvise a beat that would accompany him. One by one they'd contribute something until they were all playing together. Sometimes the result was cacophony, but sometimes it all worked out somehow and I found myself tapping my foot, trying to blend my own rhythm into the fray. People were dancing in the center of the circle of drummers. One of them, a young, thin woman with long blond hair and ripped jeans, looked at me briefly and smiled. "Hello Inman," a man with dreadlocks said to the old man. The old man said hello and introduced me as his friend. "Join us," said the man with dreadlocks. I entered the circle of drummers and started dancing. I'd done years of karate but I only danced a few times in my life. The young woman with ripped jeans smiled at me again. "Are you looking for a date?" she asked me sweetly. She's a prostitute, I realized. I was embarrassed by my naivete and I didn't say anything. "You were looking at me," she said smiling. She seemed nice. "Do you want to go?" I asked her. She took me by the hand and we went off. I noticed her fingers were cold and I clasped both my hands around hers to warm them. "Thanks," she said. After asking me if it was OK if I payed for her, she took me to Tad's steak house. The place looked cheap and run-down, but she seemed concerned that it was too expensive. The bartender said, "Hello Laura," and she waved. "Everyone knows everyone in this neighborhood," she said. "We look out for each other." Laura told me her life story as we ate dinner. She was 34 and she grew up in New York before moving to San Francisco a few years back. She had a nine-year old daughter whom she talked about a lot, and an ex, whom she didn't want to talk about at all. Her voice was hoarse and scratchy, and when I asked her about it she said she'd been singing all day long. I told her what she probably already guessed. I was new in town and I moved here from Arizona, though I also grew up in New York. I didn't tell her about my ex-girlfriend in Arizona, and she didn't ask. I didn't tell her a lot about myself, but somehow I ended up talking about taking her and her daughter to Fisherman's Wharf and spending the day there. She liked the idea and talked about the things her daughter liked to do. As we left the restaurant I noticed that she left most of her food untouched. We checked into a cheap hotel in the Tenderloin. The Asian Indian woman at the front desk asked me for my ID and asked if I wanted to pay in cash. I gave her two twenties and I tried not to look her in the eye. As we walked up the stairs and down the hall to our room I looked at the paint peeling off the walls and pretended not to see anybody I passed by. Most of them were sitting on the floor, staring at the space in front of them with no sign of recognition that I was even there. "Don't mind them," she said, squeezing my hand tighter. When we got to our room she slipped her clothing off, dropping them casually on the floor, and went to the bathroom leaving the door open. She ran a towel under the faucet and wiped her face, her armpits, and between her legs. I saw bruises on her legs and arms, and I realized she was even skinnier than I thought. She realized I was watching and laughed a little. She walked up to me and all I could think of was the little lines of worry that creased the corners of her blue eyes and the tightness of her jaw even as she tried to smile and how much I wanted to hold her and make things better. "You can play with my breasts if you want," she laughed again. The nipples on her small breasts were crinkly from the cold. I kissed her once, lightly, on her forehead, as if she were an innocent little girl again, and then she hugged me close and kissed me with her mouth open as if she were hungry. I felt her tongue reach into my mouth and lick in little circles as she took off my shirt and undid my pants. She led me to the bed and told me to lie face-down. For long minutes she rubbed my back, kneading the tight muscles between my shoulder blades expertly as the knots slowly melted away under her touch. She lay down on my back, and I could feel her nipples against me and her crinkly pubic hair against my buttocks as she rubbed herself against me. I felt her tongue make small hard circles against my neck and I gasped when she sucked the skin of my neck into her mouth as hard as she could. She was breathing hard. "Turn over," she whispered. I did and she took my hard cock into her mouth. I stroked her hair gently with my trembling fingers. She teased and licked up and down my cock and then drove her mouth down all the way until I was completely buried inside her mouth and throat and I cried out her name. She took my hands in hers as she lifted her mouth away and slid her way up, bringing her nipples in front of my mouth. I sucked them in and out and licked around them in circles with my tongue until they were hard and I could feel her hands gripping mine harder and then she gasped and pulled her breasts away from my mouth and she kissed me until my lips felt bruised. Her hand reached down between my thighs. I felt her fingers and then a warm moistness just around the tip of my cock. She moved down and I felt myself go in just an inch before she withdrew. She moved over me, letting me slide in and out just a little. She was looking into my eyes, biting her lower lip. When I couldn't stand it anymore I grabbed her and thrust myself up into her. We both moaned as I slid into her fully. "Turn over," I whispered. I rolled on top of her and kissed her and entered her mouth with my tongue and I slowly thrust in and out with my cock and tongue at the same time as she moaned beneath me. My pinky tickled her earlobe with little circles. She shoved two fingers of her left hand into my mouth roughly, and then her hand snaked down between our bodies and rubbed her clit in time with my thrusting. She let out short, low grunts as she shuddered and her cunt spasmed around my cock and her back arched and her arms and legs held me like a vice. She lay there, sweating and catching her breath. "Take me hard," she whispered. "Use me." She thrust her thumbs into my armpits as hard as she could and forced me up and into her again. I cried out in pain and lust. Something broke inside me and I held her down and fucked her. She's just a prostitute, and I just wanted to fuck her savagely without love or tenderness. Her fingernails raked across my back and I bit into her shoulder and screamed, jetting my come into her wet cunt. I felt her inner muscles tighten, holding my cock as I spurted inside her again and again. We lay there for a minute, holding each other. I breathed into her neck, smelling the scent of cigarettes in her long blond hair. She sighed. "Someone else will want to use the room soon," she said. I got up and started to get dressed. "Can you give me $40?" she asked. "Yes, sure," I said. I took the money out of my wallet and handed it to her. She slipped the money in her shoe and started putting her bra on. I saw a red mark on her shoulder where I'd bit into her. "Sorry about your shoulder," I said. "It's alright. Sorry about your neck." She laughed and kissed the hickey she gave me. "Wait here a second?" she asked as she finished putting on her clothes. She stepped out of the room. A few minutes later she returned with a syringe. She stuck the needle into a vein in her thigh. "Shit," she said, flicking at her vein with her index finger. "Come on!" "Do you still want to go to Fisherman's Wharf?" I asked her. "It's late now, but we can go another time." "Can I call you?" "There aren't any telephones at the hotel I'm staying at, but I'll give you the address and whenever you want you can drop by and leave me a message and we'll get together." I saw her eyes start to go weird. "Don't look at me," she said. I turned away, but I couldn't help watching her out of the corner of my eye. "Don't fucking look at me!" I went to the window and looked down at the street below. There were children there playing Frisbee with a garbage can lid. I remembered that when I was little I used to sit for hours looking out the window of my apartment in New York, just as I was sitting now. I used to look down and watch the other children as they played in the street and stepped out of the way whenever a car passed by.