Every night I peer across the street from the window in my apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. In the street are pimps and prostitutes, dealers, addicts, moms hurriedly escorting their kids home past liquor store after liquor store. The air is sometimes dense with shouts and sirens. Tonight, right now, a transvestite wearing a hot pink dress and silver boa waltzes out of the front door of the bar across the way onto the sidewalk into the street. She teeters on canary yellow gladiators. One more shot of tequila and the short hunchbacked man she towers over will take her home. Dancing, dancing in the middle of the street. This could be Paris, she thinks. This could be Florence. This could be anywhere but here. Cabs speed up, lean on their horns and swerve around the couple. Cyclists turn their heads. A baby cries, a dog howls, someone yells about his cigarettes where are they goddamn it who took my goddamn cigarettes fuck this fucking shit. The couple stumbles back into the bar for one last drink. Lights flicker on in the apartment opposite on the third floor of an old white formerly stately now dilapidated building. A tall woman strolls in, kicks off her boots, tosses a motorcycle helmet to the floor, shimmies out of her pants, throws off leather jacket and T-shirt. Her hair is dyed black, it’s long and dry and in need of a wash. The stereo is activated via slim remote. Duke Ellington commands the room. She stands in front of the dingy white couch in dingy white bra, shiny nylon underwear and red and white striped socks that hit just below scarred knees. She turns her head and calls to someone in a back room. Another woman emerges tiny, squat, with close-cropped platinum hair. She is wearing a short white dress and nothing else. The small blonde skips up behind her lover, throws arms around her neck. They move to the couch, in the corner of which looms a giant stuffed white bear, the kind you might win at an amusement park, the kind that might carry a shredded red heart that reads “I love you” in one of its paws. They position the bear between them, then each grab a side and begin to wrestle it, soon tumbling from couch to thin beige carpet, soon discarding the bear and wrestling each other. This happens every night at 6:30 exactly. I smile, as I always do, before heading to the tiny kitchen to prepare dinner.