Autumn always gave our lives an inexpressible undercurrent of hope, for winter meant, if not the promise of new love affairs, at the very least a change of clothes. How strange, how perfect, that one did in the end grow tired of summer, and long to leave the beach and see faces in the drama of early darkness once again.

There is no other time, no other time at all, but now, when the city is overripe, like a fruit about to drop in your lap.

Everyone is the same here—suicide notes on Monday, found a lover on Tuesday, divorced on Thursday—the only things that change up here, darling, are apartments, haircuts, and winter coats; and good faggots still go to San Francisco when they die.