by Megan Boyle
he said ‘yeah, there’s no game where you just like, set stuff on fire for no reason.’ i said ‘no serial killers.’ he said ‘yeah, grand theft auto i guess.’
i said ‘i was so mad at you earlier.’ he said ‘i know, why were you so mad?’ i said ‘you were drunk. or. well.’ he said ‘when?’ i said ‘like, all of today.’ he kind of laughed and said ‘oh yeah’ and nodded.
1AM–2:30AM: ate sandwiches. TV froze on an image of a shark. antenna recalibrated. i said ‘sharks are like DMX, like, exactly.’ ex-boyfriend laughed and said ‘yeah, exactly.’ i said ‘their faces, just, everything. they’re so mad.’ watched ‘the office,’ part of ‘the simpsons’ and ‘seinfeld.’ went to bedroom and gave blowjob. held him until i think he was asleep.
4:32AM: have been sitting at kitchen table looking at internet for some time. snorted remaining heroin in bathroom. ex-boyfriend has been sleeping since i’ve been here but i still don’t want him to know. he’ll know tomorrow, or whenever he reads this. just. don’t want him to see me doing this right now.
4:36AM: heard pee wee herman-like groaning, then a water bottle.
5:09AM: eyes droopy. crossing involuntarily sometimes. eating orange.
5:30AM: ex-boyfriend is naked about 15 feet away from me in bathroom, peeing with his hands by his sides. asked if he remembered the apple thing. he said ‘birth control apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
5:57AM: annoyed by loud yawning noises and alvie’s chirping and shirley’s noises and cats chasing each other noises. want to smoke a cigarette and sleep. ‘big day tomorrow.’
5:59AM: tossed orange peel at alvie’s head. predictable response. i would’ve done the same thing.
6:42AM: retrieved keys from bedroom and walked away downstairs. ex-boyfriend said ‘peg? where you going?’ i said ‘out to have a cigarette.’ he said ‘you done writing?’ i said ‘no, why, am i keeping you awake?’ he said ‘no, just wondering.’ i paused. i said ‘i can go somewhere if i’m keeping you awake.’ he said ‘no. no. you’re not. don’t.’ i said ‘are you sure, you’re like, yawning a lot.’ he said ‘yeah no it’s fine.’
6:46AM: smoking cigarette in my car. reversed car to accommodate truck making a delivery to corner store. truck didn’t move.
7:34AM: sun rose. macbook resting on storage console near gear shift. second cigarette.
8:35AM: walked inside and updated this. heard ex-boyfriend’s phone alarm and went to bedroom. he was naked ontop of the covers, said something about how i was ‘smokey robinson,’ smoking cigarettes in my car for two hours. i said ‘i only had two,’ and that i’d been ‘making words go type-y type.’ he said ‘i’m going on my bus to new jersey in an hour’ playfully, like a kid bragging about a cavity. in a similar tone i said, ‘o-hhh yeah, i forgot. guess i’ll stay awake so i can drive you to that bus stop.’ he said ‘o-hhh yeah.’
started shivering big time. put on knee-length pink t-shirt and got under the covers. ex-boyfriend grinned at me mischievously and started masturbating. i swatted at the penis like how cats swat at things on the floor. he laughed, said ‘no, get away’ and ‘i got this one’ or something. watched him for a while, unsure where i was looking, thought things like ‘is he joking, should i help or go away, i want sex because i wish he was trying to have sex with me instead.’ rested chin on hand, said ‘you know? it’s just one of those moments. one of those…you want to remember it.’ he laughed. eventually helped with my mouth. when he came he made a noise like ‘waking mid-laugh from what you didn’t know was a dream.’
i went to hold him but it seemed to hurt him to be touched. sometimes he acts like that. he handed me a water bottle and said ‘adam humphreys,’ then ‘’woodcutters’ by thomas bernhard.’ i said ‘oh yes, ‘watercolors” thoughtfully. he laughed. he said ‘it’s really basic when people make fun of nice people. like that painter guy, bob. they make fun of them by making them seem like they’re evil. you know?’ i said ‘bob ross?’ he said ‘yeah.’ i said ‘yeah, that’s like. that’s an SNL thing to do.’ he said ‘i think they did that on SNL.’ laid quietly for a few moments. he sat fast and said ‘okay, okay, shower time, shower, come on peg, don’t you want to shower,’ walking away. i looked at him in interested disbelief, said ‘i mean, yeah.’ felt like i was watching ‘the fisher king,’ that movie, for most of this. like i was in a scene from ‘the fisher king.’
stood and felt overcome with nausea. walked faster. vomited maybe four big vomit units into toilet. said ‘huh. how is that BLT still in there?’ ex-boyfriend said ‘gross.’ i said ‘i know.’ he asked why i threw up and i said ‘’cause i did heroin, i think.’ he made an insane jim carey smiling face and said ‘oh noooooo.’ he said ‘in your car?’ i said ‘no-ooo, in here.’ he said ‘oh nooooo’ and clapped and sort of danced in place in a circle. i sat at the kitchen table shivering. it’s not actually that cold in here, i don’t think. ex-boyfriend turned on the shower and i got in maybe two minutes after him. he rubbed soap on his face and with his eyes mostly closed, said ‘i think i have like, they’re doing something to me, i’m a social experiment, where i end up pickling my insides because they made the world so bad.’ i said ‘huh? you’re. wait, why are they doing that to you?’ he said ‘like how they have veal in cages, getting tender and stuff. they’re doing that to me but like, my cage is just the badness of the world, and it makes me pickle my insides with alcohol?’ i said ‘oh, i see. yeah.’ one of us started singing the smashing pumpkins song that’s like ‘despite all my rage i am still just a rat in a cage.’ i said ‘it’s actually: ‘despite all my suede, i am still just a rat in a cage.’ it’s about this rat. he just has so much suede, you see? but he’s still’ ex-boyfriend laughed. no urges to dominate the hot water stream this time, though he seemed to kind of let me.
9:10am: toweled dry, applied coconut oil and clothes. sat at the kitchen table and typed in liveblog document while ex-boyfriend moved from room to room, packing for new jersey. exchanged casual nonsense-like comments sometimes. he’s letting me borrow his library card so i can print things today. watched him write his name and access code on a small piece of paper and thought ‘considerate [his name], kind [his name]’ in ‘giant misunderstood lummox on public display’ voice.
i said ‘it’s impossible to include everything.’ he said ‘yeah, i mean. you can’t.’ he said something about not wanting to read liveblog anymore because it was ‘a waste of his time.’ i said ‘do you feel bad reading it?’ he said ‘well. of course i feel bad when i waste my time.’ i said ‘what is it that you’re wasting exactly, is there anything specific,’ aware of his change in posture and lack of eye contact. remembered what i wrote about ‘how can people talk to someone willfully looking away’ and felt like it would be kind of me to stop talking. was also provoked by his tone. not angry-provoked, curious-provoked. like how it would feel if someone had said, ‘there are things about me that are fascinating, that i will never tell you, and i’ll never tell you why i won’t tell you.’
the way he stressed ‘waste.’ i don’t know. this is related to why we wouldn’t have worked. sometimes it feels like he’s making a special effort to avoid saying what’s bothering him. if changing the subject doesn’t work, he’ll say something acidic as a kind of warning about how little will be accomplished by talking about whatever it is. his face will look defeated and anguished. i’ve wondered if maybe he doesn’t think i’m smart enough to get it. like it wouldn’t be worth his time to condescend to someone not as smart as him. it’s less that this causes me to feel ‘stupid,’ more of a sad reminder that there is a limit to how much i’ll ever know about him. have sensed this quality of his since the beginning, but then it was more of an afterthought. he was so warm and bright and fun to talk to and sometimes i’d see this sadness about him, like something i’d learned alone and maybe intentionally forgotten, that i wanted to protect.
9:10–9:30am: ex-boyfriend made ‘hurry up’ gestures. i said ‘oh, that’s right, all of those important
places you need to be. you’re on your way to big things, i forgot.’ he ignored or didn’t seem to hear me and i was glad.
ex-boyfriend said ‘hey peg, thank you in advance,’ for driving him, I think. I said ‘oh. Hm. Well. I don’t actually know if I’m going to want to say ‘you’re welcome’ in advance. So. This might. Hm. Do I?’ he made noises like he impatiently understood.
Drove down 4th st. We talked about my first cats, Puffy and Bluebell. He said ‘let me get this straight: you had two cats that were named after stuffed animal dragons you already had? You named the cats…because of that?’ I said yeah. He asked me other stuffed animal names. I rattled them off like the real ‘old sage’ in town, who knows all the hot spots and wants to show you a good time. Exbf was laughing a lot. I said ‘nooooo, soon you’ll be gone and I’ll be all alone. Over…there.’ He said things I should do: get boxes to ‘at least fill them with books, so you can look at that and think: ‘I did that,” go see ‘spring breakers’ alone. I started telling a story and he sighed. Interrupted myself to say ‘don’t worry, I’ll get to the interesting part.’ He said ‘oh my god, really?’
Said ‘I can’t believe I threw up out of nowhere like that. Did you put something in your come?’ he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head down and said ‘yeah, peg.’ I said ‘like, more than normal? Did you put more heroin than normal in your come?’ parked without paying meter outside Wawa. He wanted orange juice. Said goodbye in Wawa.
10:09am: shivering in whole foods parking garage. Ex-boyfriend is on the bus. Seems like liveblog is deteriorating. My sense of time. Something. Tenses.
10:33am: walking around whole foods. Struggling not to show physical shivering. Teeth are chattering like, unstoppably, it feels good to let them. The vibrating chattering shivering thing is designed to help me somehow. My ideal self is a giant vibrating head vibrating so intensely you cant even tell it’s vibrating, it makes you feel like you’re vibrating, it’s just this giant head floating in another dimension.
Passed a woman freely sampling trail mix from bulk containers, nodding excitedly, like she wanted to say ‘that’s a great point you just made.’ Or that they were a new kind of music performed for the first time in her life, that she would then stop everything and rearrange her life to tour with them.
Bought two green juices, a coconut water, four-pack steaz zero calorie energy drinks, large container papaya. Bought mint green nail polish and a grapefruit candle because I wanted to see the sentence ‘bought mint green nail polish and a grapefruit candle.’ Thought ‘small kindness of consumerism.’ In car now, teeth chattering and shivering still.
10:46am: wanted another cigarette three drags into this one. Would it be good to just smoke five simultaneously? Is that what I really want? Is that what…all of this…is that the thing that’s going to make me stop wanting anything? It was actually 10:47 when I wrote that, thought ‘it’s okay, it’s accurate, it’s always 10:46 somewhere. 10:46: Beer o’clock.’
11:28am: impulsively pulled into Dunkin donuts. Ordered an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese and medium coffee. Remembered meeting Colin at a Dunkin donuts in Rockaway Park and felt ashamed. He was eating a multigrain bagel. Letting things I want skip away from me. Wish I had gotten multigrain, knew everything would have too much flavor for me right now. Have just been driving around since whole foods. Saw Ana Carrete posted a picture of food in a McDonald’s bag on instagram and thought ‘get chic fil a, it’s okay, you deserve it’ then passed chic fil a 20 minutes later and knew I didn’t want it. Pictured bagel ex-boyfriend had the other day. Looked so good. Dunkin donuts. Sat in parked car. Bit bagel like it was a sandwich. Was correct: it had too much flavor for right now.
Re-read parts of this. I seem more interesting and better adjusted when not around ex-boyfriend. A little worried about this. Feel something crippling me right now, knowing soon I’ll be returning ‘home’ to a place where there are mostly memories, scattered evidence of how I’ve been malfunctioning the past few days, year. I’m nostalgic for three days ago. In three days I’ll feel nostalgic for now. Keep smoking cigarettes just because they’re here, they’re preventing me from arriving somewhere.
11:34am: seems way too bright outside. the sky looks broken, clouds are like an oily soap film on water or something. nothing looks right. just noticed christmas wreath on a light on my building. seems like the only appropriate thing. like ‘what the fuck…’ is the only appropriate thing. feeling, as usual, unable to complete tasks i said i’d do. like what is supposed to happen to me today? i’ll write a letter about how i’m good and want to live in an apartment building? then i’ll…print it? somehow? somewhere? the library? then i’ll…find a fed ex? park my car? send it? it’s….already this late, the application? yeah? then i’ll send a check to the truck school, for my loans, three months of loan payments? then i’ll get more birth control? then i’ll get boxes? then i’ll put all my books and things from this apartment into the boxes? the boxes will be moved out of here on sunday? then i’ll write things that aren’t this? then i’ll…respond to emails? i’ll be talking to people, as i’m doing all of these things?
12–2:30PM: extreme tiredness. tried to screenshot the reflection of my face in computer and was shocked a little, to not see myself in the screenshot, like that meant i’m dead maybe. remembered things about ‘real life.’
2:30PM: overcome with foreign urge to masturbate. remember sam cooke requesting me to write something about masturbating, was aware of like, ‘how will i remember this’ as i was looking for things to masturbate to, which maybe effected the length of time i felt it took to find something ‘good.’ i was also extremely tired. think i fell asleep with eyes open and woke twice via hypnic jerk. didn’t feel aroused when masturbating, except when i was about to orgasm, then i’d be like ‘what the fuck, my body could do this all along?’ masturbated a few times in a row with varied frequencies between the orgasms, to like, test if i had been able to do it all along. i could do it all along.
3:30PM: saw images of things i masturbated to when i closed eyes. a lot of cunnilingus happening behind my eyes. felt annoyed by them, like they were pop-up ads of porn and i wanted to swat them away so i could sleep. set alarm for 4:04PM.
6:17PM: gian was wearing a white robe and speaking at a college graduation. he was also the…like…what do you call the smartest person in the class? they’re famous, kind of? for like…their grades are so good…anyway. the college graduation was at a coliseum. i was the only non-college person there, not wearing a robe. gian gave his speech (which wasn’t too long, it was really good, there were going to be like, headlines about it like the DFW speech [was going to write ‘when DFW graduated college’ as if that’s when he…just laughed and a snot flew out…still waking, jesus]).
here is the thing.
everyone cheered gian and i watched him walk out of the coliseum with his arms up in the air. he was walking towards me. he was wearing sunglasses. HERE IS THE THING:
as he’s walking out, an announcement comes onscreen. the announcement was funded by will smith’s family. it showed family video images of will smith’s kids, will smith as a kid, his entire family as children, and there was a voiceover that said something to the extent of ‘while gian’s speech was great, we have come to an agreement that he did not include children enough. we want to say these things about children to our graduates: watch three minutes of any ‘twilight’ movie every day, if you can’t read ‘JIF’ on your peanut butter you need a new blender’ [everyone laughs], [several things i don’t remember].’
hugged gian and said ‘that was the best thing ever, i can’t believe you did that and you aren’t like, people aren’t mobbing you right now.’ he said ‘they’re not mobbing me because of the will smith thing.’ he was also my best friend from high school, katie, like morphing into her sometimes. he asked what i did today and i said while simultaneously recalling this in my memory, like, actually unaware of what i was saying/what i had done that day until
i had said it out loud. there is some name for this thing i’m talking about, they do it in movies, i’m doing it to an extent with you right now…maybe there isn’t a name for it, i forget. here is what i told gian i did that day: ‘i was running, then i started to run faster, then [image of me transforming into a ‘fleet’ of like 16 cats spinning over and over each other, extremely fast, like a wheel, going faster than traffic and in the opposite direction of traffic].’ i said ‘this was all on the way here. i thought i was really going to make it, to graduation, on time. then [image of me as the spinning cat-wheel frozen in front of a person on a bike in a lane of traffic between cars, then me dodging out of the way ‘matrix’-style slow motion]. then [image of me getting hit by a bus, also like, really feeling that i was dying as this image played. looked for ‘ruins of me’ under the tires. driver’s side door opened. saw my hand open it from the inside with ‘comic timing.’ i emerged from the driver’s side door without any legs. i was just a floating torso and head and arms, floating at my normal height. i waved and smirked like ‘that’s all folks’].’ gian said ‘whoa, that’s some real shit’ and looked affected. i said ‘yeah so that’s why i was late.’ there was something else about people from the internet and sex. i said something in my liveblog, in the dream, about someone from the internet who i want to have sex with, then deleting it really fast in the dream. woke after hitting snooze for around two hours.
6:30PM: woke lightly a few times, like, mentally typing how i’d say the dream, what happened before the dream, how i’d make this list to discreetly include [masturbating thing] and [person i want to have sex with thing]. peed, felt more awake. brought papaya and energy drink to bed. g-chatted ex-boyfriend.
ex-boyfriend and i used to watch ‘whitney’ and ‘jeopardy’ when it was slow at his work, and call each other at commercial breaks to talk about the show. will miss this. he g-chatted:
Ex-boyfriend: jeopardy starts soon
