LIVEBLOG

by Megan Boyle

  5:37pm: scooped four plastic lids of kratom into mouth and ‘with great futile purpose’ organized things in car while listening to dancehall station, taking a long time to plan route home and make sure everything is ‘in order,’ buildings around me are tall

  6:04pm: zachery texted that he was curious about how he misinterpreted me/could think I wanted to kiss too, texted this to zachery:

  ‘Re social animal misinterpreting: I felt aware the other night that maybe you wanted to kiss me and I didn’t, thought maybe you had interest, so I was thinking things today like ‘I wonder if he thinks this is more than platonic,’ so maybe you picked up on that/weren’t ‘wrong’ in identifying some kind of subtext. Also I see how it could be confusing because I like talking with you and maybe [something about how I don’t hang out with people much but the last person I hung out with a lot was my ex-boyfriend, unsure about this ‘brackets’ part]. Seems ‘full of myself’/presumptuous or maybe insensitive or something, to say this, I’m just wanting to resolve confusion. Also if you don’t want this part to be on liveblog I understand 100%/let me know what you feel comfortable with me including. I like hanging out with you a lot and had fun today, sorry if I sent mixed signals, hope this doesn’t negatively affect how you feel about future interactions’

  6:46pm: arrived home, unpacked whole foods things, peed, cleaned cat box. Texted Danny (owns my apartment) I was here and he said he’d be over in 30 minutes

  7:15pm: zachery seems okay/accepting of text. Heated two pizza pieces in toaster oven to allow for more storage space in fridge, knew if I heated pizza I wouldn’t want to put effort into liveblog, would want to ‘fail’ again tonight and drink beer and watch TV or read or do nothing. Opened beer. Took out trash. Lost interest in pizza when I was inside again but there the pizza was.

  7:25pm: wrote date on a new check for Danny (landlord, not owner, actually, or something). Chewed gum so he won’t smell beer breath. Waited outside by the ocean for a while, smoking e-cigarette. Woman held the door for me and I walked inside. Sat on steps and filled in the rest of the check except for Danny’s last name. Went to hold the door for a woman with a stroller and she said ‘it’s really not necessary’ more times than I think normal people would’ve responded to. Sat on steps and watched her walk inside.

  7:51pm: resigned to Danny not coming.

  7:56pm: mark came, fixed oven. Will be back tomorrow around 10am-12pm to fix the closet. He talks to me like he knows me. I like him. We talk easily about cats. Guillermo is his cat, who looks like Shirley with less hair, who is an outdoor cat.

  8:16pm: Danny came. His name is Durim. He said he likes to collect rent in-person, so he can look at the ocean. Thick accent, big smile.

  8:48pm: too relaxed on bed to get second beer. I want to apply to callahead tomorrow.

  8:55pm: here is how it went, exactly, I really liked how this one went. I searched ‘wine’ on the maps part of my phone. Then I touched a phone number. Then here is how it went:

  Woman: harbor wine?

  Me: what time do you guys close tonight?

  Woman: ten.

  Me: thank you.

  That’s it. That’s all. No hello or goodbye. I liked it so much. No bullshit. This is motivating me to give them business tonight. After I drink another beer. I want to sleep so long. Cradled…want to be cradled by a yacht. Not a yacht, something with the magnitude of a yacht. What it must feel like to be on a yacht. Want that to cradle me.

  9:48pm: tweeted things at Mira, sent tao $45 in exchange for $50 tomorrow. Wanted to watch some/any David lynch movie. Looked on old hard drive. There are all of these movies of late 2011. Watching movie I made of Zachary and me on 11/27/11, 12 days after we had started hanging out. We were in Vermont. Jesus. So sad so sad so sad. We went to Vermont for fun. Neither of us had jobs. This shitty motel in Vermont for no reason. It was so good. I’ve had three beers but. Remember Zachary saying ‘I like your character in the film’ and me lying about filming us at the end. We look so young, somehow. We’re not that much younger. I just said ‘I really really very much like kissing you’ and a little later Zachary said something about waking me up with a kiss, like ‘I’d wake you up with a kiss,’ but the music (an atlas sound song I had forgotten until now and associate strongly with this moment) obscured our words.

  10:10pm: drunk and watching stuff on old hard drives, beginning pts of two relationships recorded, drunker & drunker, drinking feels ‘kinder’ than drugs.

  11:13pm: heating pizza square in toaster oven. I’m doing one at a time. I feel ‘at home’ tonight. Drinking whiskey. Reading ‘every hour of every day sept 2011’ first version of liveblog. Newscaster said ‘special needs’ just now. I am heating one pizza piece at a time so as to discourage overeating but know I already have and will do more tonight. That feels good. I feel good being drunk. For the first time here I feel not confused about whether I belong here, maybe, first time I remember anyway.

  11:52pm: watching jimmy kimmel, he looks skinny, called Zacky, hanging out tomorrow I think, wish he was here right now.

  MAY 8, 2013

  12:24am: ate 1mg xanax, thought negative yelp review i was reading was for actor coming onstage for kimmell show

  Unsure of when I went to sleep, I ate the other pizza half

  7:[something]am: woke, ate 1mg Xanax and bit frozen banana then ate orange instead

  10:45am: mark came, fixed closet thing, funny talk. Have been putting away clothes, listening to records, drinking kratom-heavy smoothie. Tentative plans to hang w/Zachary tonight. Feel like he’ll cancel.

  3:23pm: Donna (insurance lady) sounds increasingly disheartened with me on the phone.

  Plan: shower, print resume at library, apply to callahead, go back to library and use internet to update liveblog.

  4:58pm: Zachary cancelled, is making mackerel (‘a two or three syllabled fish,’ we discussed) with Jamie tonight. Going to library now. Wish it were Friday night and I hadn’t gone to ikea yet and felt different.

  5:51pm: queens peninsula library was a ‘portable,’ the other one was still under construction. Man who gave me laptop to borrow said something about his leg cramps. I said ‘like a Charlie horse?’ and he said ‘yeah’ and I said ‘I just stomp them out.’

  5:52pm: uninterested in updating this. Going to push through. Uninterested in my life right now. Oddly felt more interested at mom’s apartment, the week or so ago when I was on a lot of adderall, transcribing the crack night with Mira and Sam, know I felt really bad that night (not the crack night, the transcribing night) but I like it more than now.

  5:57pm: memory of being in the Toronto airport eating/choking on an apple in line to a flight to Spain I think.

  7:22pm: man in deli said ‘ladies first.’ sitting in car now. Treating my ass to a hot nasty Reuben, salt & vinegar chips, 1mg Xanax, coconut water. ‘waiting on the world to change’ by John Mayer played annoyingly symbolically.

  7:46pm: read Sam pink things while eating the hot nasty and thinking ‘when comes the part where he’s been in my backseat the whole time and knifes me like in ‘goodfellas” before he got to a similar part. Sandwich stopped tasting as good after a while. I’m driving to ikea again.

  7:51pm: ran over a tree, seems okay

  9:35pm: bought things from ikea. Biting frozen treats in car. Parked next to car far from store to call wine stores to see if they’d be open. Realized I have whiskey at home. I want to be drunk. I’m eating an orange chocolate thing, very thirsty.

  9:39pm: no desire to update this, the <1% of ‘want to update’ putting me slightly over the 50/50 apathy line. Have thought ‘fuck the liveblog’ and ‘huh liveblog huh’ today a few times.

  9:40–11:59PM: did not update.

  MAY 9, 2013

  12–2:45AM: have been watching TV in bed.

  2:46am: confusion at pickles & pies with man who seems to dislike customers. Back at apt. Afrin before I left.

  3:21AM: watching ‘hanging up’ on ‘cozitv.’ drank and ate four tor
tilla hummuses trhee high life’s (lives?!!>?) 2” mm whiskey 1mg xanny

  9:20AM: looked at clock fell back asleep

  11:30AM: woke to jackhammer noises.

  12:19AM: made kale cantaloupe kratom smoothie gonna nail three pictures to wall then pick up my ‘machine’ from macmedics in maryland.

  1:33pm: told off gynecologist. hung up on her. Shaking. I said ‘you can’t just go around telling people they might have cancer and then that they seem perfect then that they might have cancer again if you really dont know. You can’t just throw people around like that.’

  1:36pm: there is a possibility my car has been towed Jesus I can’t see it I know I parked it all the way at the end of this road. Taking off sunglasses because that might do something

  1:39pm: car was there Jesus thank you

  1:48pm: behind a school bus. It says ‘drivers wanted.’ I could do that.

  1:53pm: insult I should’ve dissed gynecologist with: ‘did you decide to become a gynecologist because when you’re born a cunt, you get to skip medical school?’

  Er

  ‘Did you even need to go to school to study vaginas’

  ‘Did they let you bypass gynecology school because you’re already a cunt?’

  Or just…well. Simply, ‘cunt’

  3:17pm: pulled over at Walt Whitman travel stop for peeing and red bull and gas. This is where I pulled over on October 26 or whenever it was before hurricane sandy, I left new York because I heard about the hurricane and I had a flight to Argentina coming out of Baltimore and thought I would get stuck in new York. Then…it seemed clear that I had missed the flight, somehow, but I went back to NYC after the hurricane to hang out at Gian’s with Jordan and Mallory and Tao and Katie on Halloween. Yeah, then I was driving back to Baltimore after that, and I pulled over here, and called Zachary and asked if he wanted to get lunch because I was passing through Philadelphia. Then I just started living there again. Then I stopped responding to emails from Jordan and Sam. So here is where I made the mistake on October 26: somewhere near the stall I’m currently peeing in. I lied I’ve been done peeing for a while.

  3:21pm: exited stall holding keys by biting, for ‘bridle-like’ variety.

  3:25pm: in line to buy water red bull and a new jersey shirt. I like the color. It’s only $12. Seems funny to have a souvenir of this moment. ‘The moment I remembered something I now regret not-doing or doing oct. 26, 2012.’ Standing near a book that says ‘have you felt like giving up lately?’

  3:32pm: reciept flew out of van ahead of me in the gas line. The gas-filler man chased it, smiling. Beaming. He signaled for me to move my car to where the van had been, continuing to beam. Asked him how he was doing and he said ‘really well today, thank you,’ in a way that suggested he…I don’t know if he’s always doing this well, or like, if he thinks he needs to act a certain way for customers, but either way I believed him when he said he was doing well, and I believed his gratitude when he said ‘thanks,’ and I wished I had more to offer him.

  3:39pm: eating 10mg opana for the hell of it. I am an hour 45 minutes from macmedics. They close at 5pm. Farting nasty egg smell farts. Trying to chew the opana with front teeth but it’s ‘gummy’ and a little slimy and ‘highly solid,’ also tasteless.

  3:47pm: the opanas are still dissolving, coaxing with teeth still, flavorless and gummy as ever. What a. Huh. What a thing.

  3:50pm: they have a chia seed effect. Gelatinous membrane. They started smaller and pale orange.

  3:53pm: swallowed opanas. Macmedics opens at 8:30, I could…Jesus, I would be risking missing Verizon if I got the computer tomorrow morning instead…if gynecologist hadn’t called goddamnit.

  3:56pm: now there is an accident.

  3:57pm: ‘pictures of success’ played on iPod shuffle, feels comforting.

  4:03pm: voicemail message began ‘it’s nicolle, from callahead? the port-a-potty place where you applied to work yesterday,’ as if this was something i could’ve forgotten. They want to interview me tomorrow at 5pm. I have plans to meet with Jaime (Zachery’s friend/roommate, not Zachary’s ex-girlfriend/roommate of the same name) about being in ‘point break live’ around 4pm. Maybe Verizon will come early. Maybe I will make it to macmedics in time today.

  4:22pm: called dad to see if he could go to macmedics for me, no. Called mom, who was eager/excited to help in way that made my chest big. Big and beaming towards mom, like the gas-filler man possessed my heart. Running on a little treadmill inside my heart, wearing his light blue gloves, beaming and saluting me. Mom and the gas man.

  4:27pm: can’t believe Callahead wants to interview me. Fortune.

  4:53pm: Mom said the macmedics guy said he’d stay late for her. What if he’s the face mole macmedics hottie and my mom seduces him

  5:12pm: mom made it to macmedics. I am also on the macmedics road. Tried to sing earlier but voice seems ‘shot’ from e-cigarettes maybe. Have been smoking probably 75-80% of the day, every day, ‘burning through’ cartridges. Don’t feel shitty body things or chest tightness like with normal cigarettes.

  5:16pm: mom called to say it worked, the guy was there, can’t believe it worked and they stayed open. Now my drive down here wasn’t ‘misguided shithead’ style hooray. She is calling again

  5:24pm: entered macmedics area at the same time mom was exiting, pulled over in an office center thingy and mom gave me computer. Mom wants to get some kind of cream from Lord & Taylor and we talked about eating together at the mall near here. I said ‘what about Clyde’s [restaurant on the lake where we used to go when I was little, have a strong memory of going there July 4, 2007 with mom and telling her how depressed I felt, like ‘why am I here’ things, had started feeling those things strongly that summer, then crying in the car and later going to a 4th of July party in college park md and stopping on the way there to watch fireworks on the road, had never seen that. The next day mom and dad and me went on a ten-day cruise to Alaska]?’ she thought a moment and said something about money. I said ‘maybe we shouldn’t.’ she said ‘no, no, yeah let’s go to Clyde’s’ making a face like ‘it makes more sense to rob this bank,’ like ‘it makes more sense to conspiratorially do the evil thing’

  Craving hummus tortilla bad but also envisioning salmon on a plate, getting excited

  5:50pm: on the same road I was on the day in April I passed coca cola drive. Practicing what I’ll say at interview tomorrow.

  6:00pm: mom called with Lord & Taylor face cream/time update. We are going to eat outside. Feel almost boringly ‘sane’/normal, typing this and everything today.

  6:08pm: arrived early. I used to try to swim in this fountain when I was little. Also feed ducks, we would feed ducks here. My phone wants to change things to ‘dicks’ and ‘sucks’ and ‘fucks.’

  6:13pm: went back to car, used face towel, got jacket. Nervous about getting table for some reason.

  6:23pm: difficult to maneuver ice cube into mouth, needed straw to help.

  6:28pm: table next to me said things about it starting to rain and a few moments later a waiter said something about water dripping from an air conditioner.

  6:33pm: ordered glass of chianti. Mom has been referred to as ‘my guest.’

  8:22pm: wish I had been recording the whole thing. Mom is so funny. We were throwing down a lot of Lorrie Moore style puns. There was a sad thing behind all of it also. At the end she said I had always reminded her of Diane Keaton (who she reminds me of). She watched a Woody Allen documentary where Diane Keaton said she met Woody and thought ‘I want to make him fall in love with me’ but she never thought he loved her. I asked mom if he was in love with her. She said ‘it didn’t seem like it, really.’ I asked why. She described a behind-the-scenes cut from ‘sleeper’ where Diane Keaton is talking with a Yiddish accent and Woody Allen can’t stop laughing, then said ‘he said ‘she was the funniest woman I ever met.”

  8:29pm: picked nose with thumb while eyes locked on distant staring point. rolled down windows and thought ‘you s
topped typing about moments like this.’

  9:06pm: did the ‘no you go first’ dance with older lady behind me in line at roots natural food market (bought shampoo).

  10–11:59pm: watched billy eichner ‘billy on the street’ with mom. Laughed a lot.

  MAY 10, 2013

  12–1:30am: still watching billy on the street.

  1:31–4am: sat in room and transferred files from dad’s computer to mine. Mom stood in doorway and said ‘i just have to know if you’ve opened your packages on your bed.’ she had bought me my perfume I’ve been out of for a long time, Marc Jacobs. I wear it because she gave her bottle to me a couple years ago, not liking how it smelled on her. Sometimes she buys it for me. That’s what was doing at Lord & Taylor. Hugged her big.