Standing with a guitar at the end of the intersection, the sweat poured down his face like a river. Tobacco-stained fingers and a faded ball cap, he played the beaten instrument like it was the last days of his life. Strum. Take a breath. It was becoming harder and harder to show up. Hated by his father, unwanted by his mother, he played for love. He played for money, too, but what did that money say when those coins clanged a dong? We love you! They shout. You’re good enough, the dollars whisper.

But it was empty. An illusion. As he hallucinated what it would feel to be successful, he stood under the heat of the stage lights rather than the sun, heard the roaring of crowds rather than traffic, smelled the tang of the stage fog instead of thick pollution. Every day he came for a sliver of validation, but it was so, so hard when no one paid you a mind.

What was he doing? Hoping for a big-shot agent or producer from Nashville in East Tennessee. What does he do with the change he earns? He goes down to the corner store for cheap liquor, to fade into a darkness where rejection doesn’t exist.