Too many times I have forgotten my name. Would I be short and one syllable, like Curt or Frank? Would I be regal and long and stout, like Benjamin or Bradford? To not know your name is to be free. An Arthur is an Arthur through and through.

My neighbor Dot says to me, "You look like a Thomas," like she can say one way or the other that Thomas' mom made the right decision - a decision completely out of Thomas' hands.

My name is Thomas, but I am not Thomas. I walk among the Benjamins and Bradfords, among the Curts and Franks. I am not Thomas.

Dot says, "You need to find a nice girl. You're a handsome young man and everyone deserves love." She sits on the balcony of the Lazy-Loo Motel in her plastic chair, and she coughs long wheezes between inhaling her menthol cigarettes.

She talks about Mark like he's still alive. Mark, who slammed into a tree on Highway 12 seventeen years ago, was Dot's true love.

"Mark says everyone needs love," Dot says. "He knows the healing power of a woman's touch. He tells me in my dreams that I'm his girl, and damn right, I'm his girl. His one and only girl."

She trails away and looks down at our neighbors who are arguing about methamphetamines.

"This world is shit, I tell you," Dot says. She sucks one more time on her cigarette and throws it over the railing. "What you need is a nice girl, Thomas."

Dot doesn't know that Thomas had a nice girl once.

Her name is Lil, and she works at the Dollar Dealer. Lil has tattoos of snakes all along her arms. She says they keep her safe. She says, "People don't fuck with a girl who has snake tattoos." Lil likes to swear.

Lil likes it when people stare at her arms, but she doesn't let anyone know that. Instead she glares at them like she's about to tell them off, tell them to go take a hike. And then she looks straight ahead and says "People are so fucking rude," so that everyone in the deli can hear.

Lil eats her sandwich with her mouth open. All the little particles of meat and cheese and lettuce smash against her teeth when she talks. She talks about getting backstage at a rock show and having sex with the drummer. She talks about wanting a Mohawk but the Dollar Dealer threatened to fire her if she did it. She talks about how her mom is a whore.

The deli is too cold and the pickles are wilted and the man behind the counter stares at Lil even after she calls everyone in the place rude. He secretly likes her and she secretly likes him back, except she doesn't say so.

Lil says the snakes keep her safe, but Lil is wrong. She isn't safe no matter how many tattoos she has. She cries and sobs and her nose bubbles with snot when I tell her I'm not Thomas. She says, "You need to get you head checked." She calls out dirty names and spits.

A Thomas would have consoled Lil. Thomas would have said he was sorry, and he would have cried, and Lil would have laughed at Thomas' crying. I am not Thomas, and Lil does not laugh.

Dot laughs and wheezes and coughs when she hears the name Snake. "Sonny, if you're a Snake then I'm Cinderella." She shakes her head and smiles like she knows something but she isn't saying what it is.

The Meth couple are fighting in the parking lot again. Lil would have told them to fuck off, but that won't stop them from yelling at each other.

The man and woman fight about who is cheating, and who stole the money, and where the bike parts went, and when the check is going to come. Dot says they are addicted to each other. Everyone has a someone, she says, and sometimes those people happen to hate each other. They can't leave each other, she says, because they are meant for each other, like she was meant for Mark.

It's too hot outside and Dot goes to take a nap. Mark is waiting for her, she says.

The smells at the motel hover too low. Garbage and diapers and cigarette smoke and rotting food. The deli is the closest place with air conditioning, and the man behind the counter looks at me like he wonders where Lil went.

The man behind the counter is named Stu. He laughs and says, "Yo Thomas, why the hell you callin' yourself Snake, man? That's a dumb-ass thing to do. You ain't no Snake, man, I tell you that much." He laughs to himself the way Dot laughed.

The Meth Man and his lady are in line, and Meth Man orders a salami sandwich to share with his lady and they sit at the table facing the window. They fight about who gets which half of the sandwich. She takes the smaller half and says that she has first dibs on their stash, when they get it. Meth Man grunts at her and looks at his sandwich and says, "It's my money; it's my decision. You're just along for the ride."

Their movements are like fleas on a dog. Their arms twitch without reason, and they shift in their seats while they fight over who gets the last of the Dr. Pepper. She grabs it out of Meth Man's hands and shakes the ice and slurps the last drops.

Meth Man calls her a bitch.

She looks over and says, "Hey you. See something interesting, motherfucker? I know you. You're upstairs watching us all the time. What are you, a Narc?"

"Snake."

"Snake?" She says. And then she laughs and picks up the lettuce that fell from her mouth. She stuffs it back in and chomps down like she'll never eat again.

I am not Thomas. I am not Snake.

Dot is pretty attractive, even though she looks a lot older than she says she is. Hard living, she says, turned her bones to dust. Half of the time she doesn't make sense, but there's no one else to talk to.

Her hair is kind of wiry because she dyes it blond, but you can tell it's dark brown in real life. Her skin hangs on her face and is wrinkled around her lips from smoking. But she has nice teeth and blue eyes, and the blue eyeliner she wears makes them look even more blue. She wears tank tops and no bra, and sometimes you can see through her shirt and she knows you're looking at her chest but she just chuckles and bends over like she's picking something up, but really she is letting you look even closer.

Dot laughs a lot, like chuckles to herself, and it's hard to tell what she's laughing at or why she's laughing.

"It's cause you're weird," she says. "You're one of those kids who was probably normal once but you decided to act weird, and nobody noticed anyway so you just went all the way with it. Now you don't even know the difference between strange and sane, and it doesn't really matter anyway, does it Thomas?"

It's like getting a nose ring and nobody says anything, so you turn your hair blue and get a tattoo of a bruise on your neck, because you think it's kind of funny, and still people just brush past you on the street and never say anything. The only time people talk is when you stare at them for too long, and then they usually aren't happy about it.

It's a hot night and from the deck outside the front door, the sounds of Meth Man's grunts and his lady's screams waft up from downstairs. It's hard to tell if they're fighting or fucking. Either way, they're probably angry with each other. They'll probably go on like this until they get their real fix. Fighting and fucking doesn't fix them, but drugs do. Everybody needs a somebody, and maybe sometimes those people also need a something.

Dot needs something. Her eyes have too much make-up tonight, like she's going to a concert. Her lipstick is a kind of orange color, like the shade my grandma used to wear, and it seeps into the cracks in her mouth. She's not going anywhere; she's just sitting there in her plastic chair, with the table and the ash tray next to her. The table is the wall that keeps her out of reach. She's braless again tonight, and that makes me think of Lil and it's like there's an animal inside that wants to do things a Thomas wouldn't do.

"Did Mark make you scream like that?"

Dot wasn't expecting it. She stops mid-suck on her cigarette, waits a second, then inhales the rest and blows it out.

"He makes me scream for a lot of different reasons," she says. "He makes me scream in the middle of the night when he tells me he's on his way home and should be here soon. He makes me scream when I think about the day he told me he was married. He makes me scream when we make love."

"It's not like you do it, though. I mean, Mark's dead."

"That doesn't mean shit," she spits out. But then she breathes for a second and says, "He's still a better lover than I've ever had, and he still makes me feel like I'm just floating on the ocean, just floating on the ocean."

Dot sometimes says things that don't make sense, but it's not like she's stupid. Mark still makes her feel good, is what she's trying to say. Dot looks at my crotch and chuckles. She knows something that we both know. She smashes out the cigarette into the ash tray and leans over like she's picking something off her toe, and then she gets up out of her chair and walks inside her room.

It has the same wallpaper as the wallpaper next door, and the bed is in the same place, facing the TV, and she has it on the daytime soap opera station, and a guy named Rock is telling a lady named Ally that they can't be together because Ally belongs to Brick. The air conditioner rattles and the toilet runs. Dot waves her hands at her face like she's hot, and then she takes off her tank top. She plops down on the bed and takes off her jeans and underwear and this whole time she's acting like she's totally alone, like no one is watching her. She picks up the remote control and starts to change the channels, but she goes back to the soap.

"I'm just floating on the ocean, Thomas," she says without taking her eyes off the TV. "Just floating on the ocean. Just like you. Just like everyone."

Dot doesn't scream. Instead she moans. She feels wet on the inside and dry on the outside, and her breasts are saggy but that's OK. In the background Brick and Rock are fighting over Ally, and Dot says "give it to me, you little motherfucker," which feels really good and really shitty at the same time, for her to say "motherfucker." It's like being mad and sad and ready punch her and ready to kiss her all at the same time.

The bed frame squeaks and the air conditioner rattles and Rock and Brick and Ally fight, and Meth Man screams, and Lil is somewhere crying, and then everything just stops. All the sounds disappear, all the little noises leave, and it's like I'm on the ocean, like Dot says.

Dot falls over on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. She lights a cigarette and moves her knees around like they're something to be looked at.

"What did you think of that, Thomas?" Dot says.

It's like that's the last thing in the world she should have said. Out there on the ocean, just floating on the ocean, and then Dot has to go and say something and make the wallpaper appear again and the smell of trash come in from the front door and the yelling and the screaming from downstairs.

"I am Mark."

I am not Thomas.

Dot's knees stop moving around, and at first it is as if she's about to turn into Lil, like she's going to cry and sob and get snot in her nose and call out dirty names and spit. But she doesn't.

She gets up off of the bed and the rest of Mark runs out of her and down her leg. She puts on her jeans and her tank top, and she picks up her cigarette from the ash tray and takes a long, deep drag. And when she exhales, she says "You'll never be Mark." She stands between the bed and the TV and doesn't move, just watches. She stares and says, "You are nobody. You little piece of shit nobody. You're not Mark, and he will send you straight to hell for saying so." Dot has tears in her eyes but they don't fall down, and it looks like she's waiting for something that isn't going to happen and she knows it.

The meth couple's door is open. Meth Man looks up and then jumps up and says, "Well lookie what we got here." His lady glances up and then back down at the foil and pipe on the floor and she scratches a sore on her forehead. She's more interested in her little science experiment than anything else. Like if you put some food down for a cat and then expect it to come sit on your lap, it's not going to happen.

"Don't mind her," Meth Man says. "She's a cunt."

She grumbles "fuck you" and then continues to jerk her fingers around, trying to be delicate with her stash but failing.

Meth Man gets real close and says to give him twenty bucks, it's the least you can do, he says, for barging in on them and always eavesdropping on their conversations and for lusting after his girlfriend. It's the least you can do, he says. And after that he cools off and sits on the couch and offers up a piece of whatever his lady has been toying with.

"This, man, will be the best home cooked meal you've had in years," he laughs.

Everybody needs a somebody, Dot says. And sometimes those people hate each other, and sometimes they both need something else. I am not Thomas. I am not Snake or Mark. I would never be Benjamin or Bradford or Curt or Frank. I rest my head on the back of the couch and it feels like Lil is chewing on me like she chews on her sandwich. Gritty and disgusting and fascinating and real. A real nobody.