I opened the door and the room threw itself up against me. I tasted the stench in my mouth of 4 cigarettes smoked in the last 15 minutes. There was music and talking and laughter that amplified 10 times as loud in my head. A cute girl took my coat and the people all smiled politely.

People talked for awhile until I heard this weirdly high-pitched voice. The voice tapped my shoulder and said, hi there, I’m Janey Smith. He blurted it out really fast, like he must’ve been waiting awhile to say that. I turned and I saw him, the pale bald man from those pictures.

He was wearing a dark greenish sweater that made him look greenish. He was wearing a white v-neck shirt that highlighted his baldness. He was wearing a pair of dress shoes that looked worn-out and cheap. He looked nervous. I didn’t make fun of him or his cheap shoes.

He had the biggest darkest eyes I’d ever seen. They were dark brown but looked black, like he had no pupils.

I remembered an article all about eyes, about pupils and how pupils grow. Pupils widen when you are attracted to someone or something. Widened pupils look cute, like a doll or a cartoon character. We will always be drawn to dark eyes, things that make us attractive.

We had an autopilot talk about the books and the people that we had in common. I was too buzzed to remember what we talked about. I asked if he would like to go outside and smoke. His eyes lit up. At least, I thought they lit up. It was dark and dimly lit inside that room.

I handed my lighter to Janey, and he lit his cigarette. I couldn’t seem to light mine, so he lit mine up with his. It was a kiss that drifted off into the streams of smoke. He said, cute, with his teeth clenched to hold in the smoke, like he’d learned how to capture a kiss.

Something bothered me about how he said cute. That’s when I knew I wanted Janey Smith to fuck me.

I looked over at him like, we could kiss for real. He raised his eyebrows at me for some reason. His expressions all looked cartoonish because of his dark eyes and his bald head. I said, your head looks so smooth. Can I touch it? He nodded. I did.

I used to have a bald head too, I said.

Did you really? He said. You don’t look like that kind of a girl.

I’m not now, but I used to be, I said. He smiled like that meant something to him.