“Do you want to see a naked woman?” asks the young man sitting next to me. “Because if you do, there’s a young woman who wants to see you.” I look at the man. He doesn’t look like a pimp, but then I don’t imagine pimps go around in zoot suits, capes and canes anymore. “I’m not a pimp if that’s what you’re thinking,” says the man. “Just a man who’d like to show you a naked woman.”

The truth is I do want to see a naked woman. It’s been a really long time since I last saw a naked woman and I feel like a naked woman could really do me some good right now. The truth is I’ve been walking around a zombie version of a self who once lived so long ago I can’t even remember my name, and if I could just cadge a glimpse of a naked woman, then maybe, just maybe, I’d be right as rain.

So I follow him out back, up a flight of stairs and through a door he opens with a key from a chain on his belt. It’s dark inside and at first I don’t notice the woman sitting on the bed, naked of makeup and also clothes, with a veneer of soft light and bad choices.

The problem with naked women is more often than not they’re the wrong naked women. Ingrid Bergman would’ve been the right naked woman if she weren’t dead, also Suzanne Vega, and also you, who wouldn’t condone this sort of thing at all.