I feel sorry for you, Detective Esteban. Because I'm all out of patience, and you're all out of time. I'm sure we'll see each other again someday. In Hell. Save a seat for me.

Do me a favor, Dallas. Tell me what games we're playing today so I can be sure to play along too.

Look at you. Riding the gravy train with biscuit wheels.

Sometimes a man celebrates his birthday with a large party, girls, food, too much drink. And sometimes a man celebrates his birthday by thinking deep thoughts. Who's to say which one is right.

Do you know how many men are incarcerated in solitary confinement? About 100,000 on any given day, if my numbers are correct. Do you know how many men commit suicide in The Hole? Very high. Twenty-four hours in a box with no windows can break a man. Some more quickly than others.

Even in the gay spots around town, he could walk in and suddenly realize he was the only person of color in the room. He faced questions in all the eyes he greeted. What’s he doing here? Does he think he’s one of us? How ironic that even here in the nation’s self-proclaimed “gay summer capital” he should feel unwanted, excluded.

Before the autumn of our years, there exists a time when we struggle to reconcile what we are with what we wish to be. This time can be known as summer. After spring gives us life, before winter takes it away.

The ocean drummed as loud as pulsating blood, eroding the sand, rushing the beach as if it had a point to prove. And like many things, it receded, was gone, and was replaced anew.

Knowing too much had turned him into something else, and he wasn't sure he liked this newer him, although he felt he could not stop being this other him, darker.