Drown

The narrator begins the story by stating that he should have been more careful with the marijuana that he ingested the night before, as marijuana makes him sleepwalk. Consequently, he woke up in the hallway of his apartment building, “feeling like [he’d] been stepped on by [his] high school marching band” (111). He remarks that he would have been there all night if his downstairs neighbors, whom he calls Boyfriend and Girlfriend, in lieu of actual names, hadn’t started having a huge fight at 3 A.M. 

Although he was too high to move, the narrator remembers that Boyfriend was telling Girlfriend that he needed more space. The narrator asserts that Boyfriend was only saying that because he needed more room to cheat. The narrator intimates that he was acquainted with Boyfriend—he would see him at the bars and would also see him bring home girls while Girlfriend was away. Every time Boyfriend went for the door, Girlfriend would cry and ask Boyfriend was doing what he was. The narrator states that the couple reminds him of himself and his old girlfriend Loretta. He reveals that he promised himself that he would stop thinking about Loretta, “even though every Cleopatra-looking Latina in the city made [him] stop and wish she would come back to [him]” (111-112).