"Not that it matters, really, because it isn't my job after all, you know I'm an accountant, I guess it's more of a hobby, though I've always seen it as my duty even before I knew I could do it, but everything I have to say always comes from the outside, you know, like my depression as well, or any sadness I feel, it's never from inside, see, it took me some time to understand this because I've always been all introverted and solitary and kind of a reclusive, you know, and I thought for a long time only bad things came from outside when, really, it's everything, good and bad, and I inhale all that and take it inside me, and then, only then, do I have something to say, and see, the stimuli I get these days are limited to a single window, it's absurd, me, who most needs to see the world to take it in, I'm confined to four blank walls that can't inspire me, and a single window where rarely something interesting passes and gives me life to put into words, I do think it's unfair—"

As he was speaking he was also sipping endless cocktails from the server's tray, and I wanted to warn him that those were for the auction and not for him, but just then someone else entered, and through the guests I could only see their faces, they were an old man and a younger one, the former looked worried and the latter dead, and they were making their way through the crowd, but the old man was already looking at me and saying, "There's not enough light here for my son, not enough natural light at all," and I meant to ask, when the crowd dissipated and I could see his son had his feet sunken into a flowerpot, and his father said his son needed the soil to live, and I felt oddly jealous then, as my friend was still speaking to me,

"—especially when they go about their days staring at their feet, but I wonder, and you'll have to tell me, how can I be of interest to anyone if what I say is right in front of them, unlike those writers who say what's inside them and no one knows until they read because it's unique to them, you know what I'm saying, they have something new to say, all I do is translate, I'm heir to the air of the world whereas writers are boundless creatures, they fly and write about what's in the clouds while I'm a mere nature writer writing about flowers and feelings those flowers give me, I'm merely putting into words what's painted before me, and it's never even as beautiful as the real thing because of course it can't be, so even when I'm not imitating someone my art is derivative, derivative of the world around me, and if only I could have something inside me, anything at all, to give birth to into the world as something new, something that only existed in my heart, or my mind, or my soul, but all I do is catch, catch, catch, and I never release, I only set free what I imprison myself, I'm no better than those who take the field and turn it into a city, I'm ruining the very nature I live of, so how will I breathe then, when it's nothing but concrete, how will I live when my writing suffocates me?"

The father was watering his son, the server was only now realizing the cocktail glasses were empty and was starting out on a rant about manners and explaining how he'd fucked this young girl before he realized she was his long lost daughter he'd had when he was her age, and by then I'd forgotten what his point was and I was slightly worried, but I remembered my friend had asked me what I would do in his place, and for the first time that night I wondered if we might have been poisoned, so I cleared my throat before I spoke to him,

"I have a strong desire to be seen naked," I said, "and to see you naked."