I already got stuck late at work helping someone else's customers, already missed peak people watching hours at the park, already walked in the dust that is blowing in from the construction site next door.

I already know what the day's dwindling out feels like.

So, I have my A-line shorts and my tank top on, revealing after having been in a polo shirt for ten hours, that I smell more like myself than I thought. I actually like my sweat, the scent of it, a scent of me. I don't mind it. They're my biological chemicals, anyway. My shaved head hasn't been washed in two days, and it's a little itchy. You can still see the sparse, longer hairs the clippers missed that I have yet to tend to.

Last night, I stared at my face in the passenger side mirror and asked, "Does my face look different with my head shaved?" I wiggled my nose at my reflection.

"Yeah, your nose looks a little bigger and the circles under your eyes look darker. You know, I never liked your hair in a pony tail; you looked really nice with your hair down." Like I wasn't self-conscious about my nose as it is, I thought, dismissing it.

I like the suburban strip at night, the neon of a city cooling down. The dust puffs from across the street make me feel like Nevada might feel at dusk, of stretching my legs out on a patio under a straw hat at dusk, sweaty Long Island Iced Tea in hand. Even though I live alone, coming home after dark makes me feel like I'm sneaking in after curfew, that I should be creaking up the stairs carrying my shoes so I don't wake my parents. It makes me feel pleasantly deviant, a sort of self-imposed sneakyness when you're doing nothing wrong, you're just being sneaky about it.