A young Black man goes to a Halloween party with his friend. It’s early Covid, but she still takes her mask off when they get there, goes to look for the host. The young man sits down in the backyard, by the bonfire, where he meets a wine expert. He and the wine expert talk, and the man tries his wine, and eventually they get into a debate about race. The man thinks a Black wine expert would be categorized by his Blackness, as opposed to by his expertise. The White wine expert he’s talking to disagrees. They eventually drop the subject. The young man goes to look for his friend. She’s with the host. The three of them chat and then his friend and the host go upstairs to have sex. The young man goes back outside. He meets a translator who debates with him about colonialism. He says he can relate to that kind of oppression, and the White translator tells him that he can’t because they live in a privileged country. They eventually drop the subject. The wine expert comes over to them, drunk, and the young man takes him back to his place. They have sex. In the morning, the young man feels awkward and a little hungover. He wonders if the urge to care for someone you’ve slept with is “part of the colonial condition.” He wonder what exactly the colonial condition entails. “Was the colonial condition an act of suicide? Could he trust his own impulse to look after the sommelier? Would it have been better to kill him, perhaps?” He thinks, “Maybe every human life [is] a colony.” The wine expert asks if he can play some music, and the young man wonders what song he’ll pick. They both wait in the quiet “for the music to come on.”