INSIDE MY SMALL tent, all was calm. Early evening. It was bearable. The shadows and the sounds slid over the canvas. People passed by, unsuspecting. I tried to breathe slowly. Visions of caresses and sand mingled in my mind. I couldn’t keep them away anymore. Outside, the waves kept crashing; I could hear them in the distance. It didn’t stop. The pink bunny would prance around tomorrow and the days that followed. After August, August would come around again. As during all those insomniac nights, the air thick with moisture and mosquitoes, my hand slipped inside my trunks. A dose of endorphins to help me fall asleep. Jerking off several times, without desire or pleasure, until exhaustion. But I couldn’t even do it anymore. Everything was limp. I heard singing through the canvas. They were having fun. A long line of people dancing around my tent. So what is the difference, I wondered, between this and all those other times when I’ve hidden here, waiting for people to go away? What has changed since then? I’m a little older. I kissed a girl, then lost her. Oscar died. Oscar is dead because he wanted to die, because he was sad and he had the idea of coiling the ropes around his neck to make something happen. Oscar is dead because of all those people who didn’t understand him. Oscar is dead because of me, because I did nothing. Because I didn’t move. And I didn’t move because, at that moment, I couldn’t. I would rather have died like him, and we could have watched each other die while the others danced.