My apartment windows don't have any screens. My roommates like it this way. And so do I. It's prettier. We get unfiltered Brooklyn sunlight in every room. When tall, skinny neighbors come to visit, they can holler up at me and I can stick my head out my bedroom window and holler back. I have total freedom to lean out from the living room and glare my disgust at the latin music beating from the parked car on the corner. And one day, I really will have the courage to lean way out and yell, "Yo! Cheese Sandwich!" to the slow bodega clerk across the street so that my food will be ready for me when I get downstairs. We live only barely separated from the outside world. No screens, no air conditioners. When the neighborhood cats go into heat, we know it. When I was little, my parents used to joke that I had sweet blood. I imagined my veins running rich with fruit juice, and felt special for all my bites. So my first summer in this apartment, snapping awake every night and s...