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by Megan Boyle

  left bar and searched ‘java dog’ on my phone. mira texted or called to say it was close to the bar, on 3rd ave i think. it was called ‘japa dog’ or something actually, though. when i arrived they had already eaten. remember feeling like ‘i’m still not drunk enough’ and that everyone had high energy and i was an ‘out of context object’ in their conversation (sounds negative, i didn’t feel negative, just like, ‘yeah’). put a red plastic hot dog container on mira’s head and said…i forget. this was my attempt at ‘high energy.’ walked back to the bar in a group. spencer said goodbye. it was taking me a long time to find ID in purse to give to security guard. think i told people to go upstairs without me.

  talked to gian and tao’s editor by the bar. ordered another vodka club soda. remember seeing ryan o’connell at some point and hugging him and saying ‘do you want to slow dance’ and he said ‘you know i do’ or something and we danced a little, but we were both moving to other places. it was a seamless ‘stop and dance transition to other places we were walking.’ it was nice. thought ‘i want to talk to ryan more but he’ll probably leave.’ remember having trouble discerning what editor was saying and some funny conversation that ended with me saying ‘i bet ten bucks you can’t remember exactly what you said.’ thanked gian for paying for the open bar and talked a little about new orleans.

  at some point it became clear that a drug dealer was coming. i said i wanted to buy heroin. have had difficulty swiping my card at ATMs. gian said the guy was coming soon and if i wanted things i should go to an ATM fast. walked downstairs, outside bar. saw marie and willis and rachel standing by the door. someone said ‘are you leaving?’ and i said ‘no i’ll be right back.’ jogged to a deli. card didn’t work. jogged to another deli, withdrew money from my savings account and i think it must’ve overdrafted or something, i don’t know how i was able to withdraw $100 twice. jogged to bar. texted gian if they guy had coke, because i was able to take out more than i thought i had. took a long time to find my ID for security doorman again. downstairs bar still seemed very empty. gave gian my money and asked if he saw my text and he hadn’t. i gave him all my money and said if the dealer had other things i’d like whatever he had, with the other $100.

  a little after this the upstairs bar closed. tried to buy a drink from upstairs bar person. she said ‘you can buy it downstairs.’ tried to tip her but she refused. people moved downstairs.

  sat at a table/booth between ryan o’connell and rachel white and taked about writing. further down the table were mira, sam, ralph, stephen, gian, one or two of gian’s friends maybe.

  sometimes i’d see mira/sam/ralph gesture to me in peripheral vision. saw stephen with his head in his hands at some point, maybe sleeping. distributed 1mg xanax to everyone at the table by…think i just said ‘pass these down.’ gian left and returned and gave me a baggie and $90. i said some thing like ‘keep the ten bucks, you did open bar.’ ryan asked what drugs i bought…i think…i said ‘heroin’…remembered him saying disapproving things to mira about crack use and i think he said something disapproving or just ‘i don’t do that’ about heroin. gian asked if i wanted to do a line. think i tried to get him to come to the bathroom with me to do it together but then it seemed like a bad idea. went to the bathroom alone and snorted large amount using pinkie-finger-length hot pink straw i keep in my purse. handed straw and baggie to gian.

  i don’t remember things for a while. have an image of myself…like, watching myself curl up in a ball on a booth. i was watching myself from a distance of maybe 20’, like where the stairs were. then i was in the bathroom with mira. mira was reviving me with coke. remember feeling like denzel in ‘flight,’ like, actually very much ‘coming to’/becoming aware of things the more coke john goodman administered to him. sam came into the bathroom. think i said things about how great they were and how much i liked them and was thanking them for reviving me. kissed mira on the cheek and lips, i think. it became may 31 at some point, during this night. omitting may 31 and june 1 until sometime in the afternoon when i picked up my car from parking spot on 6th ave. there was a group text message involving spencer, mira, stephen, willis, tao about going to the beach. tao said he didn’t want to go and willis and mira flaked. spencer texted that he and his brother still wanted to go regardless of other people coming and asked for my address. didn’t see this until it was too late. spencer sent another text saying they got restless and went to coney island. texted tao something like ‘sorry to involve you in group message for this long’ and he said he was joking by continuing to say ‘sitting this one out.’

  walked to my car. there was a ticket. it was sunny and warm. sat in car and read email from jordan asking for thoughts about him moving to NYC. someone asked if i was going to move my car so i did. snorted small amount of heroin driving on houston st. and felt happy. drove home. texted spencer that i wanted to shower and make juice/feed cats but i’d text when i was leaving for coney island.

  walked to apartment, talking to mom on phone. in the apartment…jesus. i forget a lot. i made green juice. milled around for a long time. hung up clothes. the overhead light was on. around 6:30PM i texted stephen that people went to coney island instead and said i was leaving soon. texted spencer to see if he was still there and he said they had left already/figured i had flaked due to no word from me and me not showing up yet. he said there was a roof party in brooklyn. i was texting with mira about all of this also, she was at spencer’s. they were going to the party together in a few minutes. i texted mira ‘i told stephen to go to coney island’ and knew he was probably there already. texted stephen sorry and that i messed up and would give him a ride to the other party. put on green dress and beige high heels and dried sweat from hairline. brought jar of chia mixture to eat in car, sugar-free red bull for stephen and for me, and macbook for [unsure].

  walking to my car, made eye contact with older man. the man said ‘excuse me, miss?’ he said i shouldn’t be walking alone. he had an irish accent, seemed drunk, moved slowly. he said ‘one more thing’ and ‘why you doin’ here’ a few times. i said i lived here. i asked what he was doing here and he said ‘surviving.’

  driving to coney island, mira texted that she was leaving to pick up sam, would return with him, and the three of us would hang out after the party. picked up stephen outside of nathan’s famous. he had gone to a biker bar. he was chill about the whole thing, also a little drunk. we talked a little about the after-reading party. i said i saw him sitting with his face in his hands, thinking maybe he’d say ‘i felt alone then’/talk about how he felt bad, but he said didn’t remember that and was probably sleeping. he said something about how he doesn’t like to leave right away, and how people are flaky and it’s hard to get people together to do something. i agreed and said i was part of the flaking problem.

  parked outside apartment building. stephen had to pee badly. the party was at michael seidlinger’s house. everyone had left to get food. walked with stephen to find the party and pee place. saw spencer, his brother tyler, michael, and erik on the street. everyone was wearing white t-shirts. they were waiting for dumplings. i said i wanted a blt and was going to walk somewhere to get that, knowing…i think i didn’t want one, but i didn’t want dumplings and i didn’t want to stand around. stephen was directed to a pee place. met michael who i knew from the internet already. met erik. remember shaking his hand and thinking ‘i am being presented with an erik. eric?’ shortly after this i think i said i was going to a deli. remember asking them if they planned the white t-shirt thing several times. asked it again as i was leaving. spencer said ‘we’re the plain white t’s,’ i said ‘hey there delilah,’ then he knew other words i didn’t expect to hear as i walked away.

  texted mira to see where she was. walked into maybe four delis, all of which had closed-seeming sandwich counters. typed about surroundings in iphone notes. a lot of people were on the street. got lost. typed ‘what am i doing, why did i come here, what should i do’ in iphone notes, standing in a del
i listening to a woman in a green dress tell the deli man she wanted toilet paper and newport 100’s and other things she wanted, in a funny way. exited deli. passed a man sitting on a stoop who said ‘girl, you’d better be careful.’ looked at him and said ‘you too.’ spencer called and i told him i was lost and couldn’t find an open sandwich counter. he said things suggesting i was walking big time in the wrong way, and i must’ve missed the deli he was at…think it was on prospect heights something. prospect something. he ordered a blt for me while on the phone. felt good/reassured about entire thing. felt comically overdressed. green dress and high heels. walked maybe four blocks to blt deli. girls were petting tyler’s dog. felt ‘face definitely looks like it can’t conceal lying about wanting a sandwich, all the delis, considering leaving, texting mira, feeling overdressed, deciding everything was okay and i want to be here.’ paid for sandwich and bought a 40oz of ballantine.

  entered another deli with michael and stephen to buy more beer. stood by a freezer. michael talked about working for melville house. stephen said something about wanting woodchuck but thinking people don’t like hard cider. i said i liked it. opened freezer door and stepped inside and showed them my sweat-stained armpits. michael bought hoegarden, i think. gave someone $2.

  sat on the roof in a chair formation and talked and drank beers. i don’t remember everything. i liked this. went from ‘shit…’ to ‘this is nice.’ drank the 40oz and maybe four beers. everyone was joking and talking a lot. could see the skyline and it wasn’t hot on the roof. at some point i said ‘someone should name their dog ‘june fifth, two-thousand-three.” i drove stephen and erik home. erik lived in manhattan, kind of. we left mira a voicemail involving yelling something about fried chicken. sang along to things by myself on the car ride home and made a video. i hit a concrete fixture and the passenger-side mirror is fucked up now. got home around 4AM and went to sleep around 5AM. i remember how it looked in my apartment and what it felt like but it’s hard to type.

  woke a little before 9AM. felt bad. alvie was making noises. ceiling fan stopped working. felt stressed about [omitted] and how i would write about it. cut a mango and fed cats and…seems like i just continued typing into my phone until i decided i wanted to fall asleep watching ‘broken english.’ snorted amount of heroin i thought was small and didn’t feel anything. read some of ‘taipei.’ waited for movie to download even though i have the DVD. snorted more heroin.

  vomited. tao emailed asking me if i wanted to write ‘15 tweets by published poets that negatively reference hummus’ and the chris killen transcription for june 4 (when he would guest-edit thought catalog). said i wanted to do that. vomited maybe six times and had mild hallucinations and felt worried about going to sleep and embarrassed for doing…just…not liking what i was doing, not looking forward to posting anything i had written that morning, aware that i hadn’t been updating, worried about [omitted].

  i think then i made the poll asking people how they wanted me to update.

  6:41PM: peed and got water. ate 20mg adderall. answered ask.fm questions. it’s hot in the apartment, fan still doesn’t work. feel terrible, thinking about how i’m still in bed…doing this…yesterday…it was like this yesterday…all of the time that’s gone by in june. i don’t know what else i’d be doing. i’d be at mira’s/spencer’s reading. charging e-cigarette battery. i want to be in maryland. writing about all of this feels sad. i don’t know why. shouldn’t ‘not knowing why you feel something’ cancel out the feeling…like…you do a geometry proof and it results with ‘there is no way to solve this’ so you move on?

  7:34PM: mira texted ‘bb girl are you coming to this shit?’ at 6:41PM.

  7:47PM: texting with mira.

  7:50PM: making short updates like this so people who scanned through long ass retroactive update will maybe see a new long ass retroactive update is about to begin but this is the ‘present time’ before that.

  7:51PM: phone vibrated and i jumped.

  7:52PM: considering eating last 20mg adderall for this shitass update, then using it to work on…goddamnit…article…need to restart column…things…shit…would take too long to describe this thing i’m feeing.

  7:53PM: PEOPLE READING THIS: IT’S ABOUT TO BE ANOTHER LONG ASS RETROACTIVE UPDATE GET READY. MAYBE NOT NOW, MAYBE NOT TOMORROW, BUT SOMEDAY: YES. I WILL FINISH WHAT I STARTED.

  7:54PM: my goal of this week is to get a job. if it doesn’t seem like i’m going to get a job i have to do the navy thing. then school. goddamnit. there is nothing i want, really. i think. getting a job seems best. nicest. most considerate of me right now…consdering my state of…what i seem to be in…living here for a month after a year-long unstable living situation, preceding more unstable living situations…

  7:55PM: it’s getting darker and colder and smells like rain.

  7:57PM: maybe i should shower and buy energy drinks and maybe alcohol for later. then call mom. jesus. e-cigarette cartridge refills.

  7:58PM: texted mira i’d like to hang out later.

  8:02PM: still don’t know what i want to do regarding this update/what i’ll do tonight/getting things from store/anything. shit. something i haven’t written about: it smells like boat of heavy machinery exhaust outside. that’s why i closed the window last night. to stifle the wafting.

  8:13PM: cleaned cat box. stomach achy. wish juicer wasn’t broken.

  8:47PM: called mom and left voicemail. got in shower. heard phone noises.

  9:06PM: i don’t experience thoughts or feelings fully, i experience something else fully. it’s pre-thought, pre-feeling. the text you’re reading is maybe five steps down the line from what it started as. maybe. tried to discern how i was feeling in the shower but it felt hard to do things other than look at the wall and shower curtain and sometimes scanned down torso/legs. mom left a voicemail saying she wouldn’t be available until tomorrow, but tomorrow would also be busy.

  tomorrow i need to get my oil changed.

  9:19PM: alvie shat. made plans to do something i’m omitting.

  10:58pm: driving to IFC to do [omitted]. Drinking soaked chia mixture. Car is 3000 miles overdue for an oil change. A light has been coming on and a ‘-[miles] past oil life’ flashes. I refilled the oil recently though. Ate noopept and antiracetam before leaving.

  10:59–11:59PM: [omitted]

  JUNE 9, 2013

  PARTS I FEEL COMFORTABLE NOT OMITTING:

  • walked around greenwich village after movie

  • bought 12-pack corona beer at pickles & pies (around 2AM)

  • heated pizza in unconventional frying pan way at my apartment

  • went to sleep around 6AM

  • woke around 5PM

  • dressed in turquoise button-down shirt, navy blue skirt, high heels

  • split order of french toast, bacon egg and cheese on english muffin, hash browns at ‘last stop diner’ on beach 116th st

  • looked at A/S train next to the diner

  • donned bathing suit, black and white striped dress, yellow cardigan

  • laid on a towel on the beach in front of my apartment building from around 5:30-8PM napping and reading ‘tracer’ by frederick barthelme

  • showered

  • dressed in blue collared wrap dress, beige high heels

  • watched spurs vs. heat in my apartment

  • went to lenny’s clam bar in howard beach

  • watched second half of spurs vs. heat at lenny’s clam bar

  • [omitted] said ‘i’ve noticed you do a lot of drugs when you’re by yourself but not with me.’ i said something like ‘i think it’s because i like to feel occupied…with something else. and don’t take this the wrong way, but i think you’re ‘occupying’ me.’

  • bought toilet paper

  • watched ‘VHS’ on netflix

  • ate five valerian root pills

  • scared to fall asleep due to images from ‘VHS’ playing on backs of eyelids

  JUNE 10, 2013

  10:
00AM: woke. drove to Q train, then back to my apartment. almost out of gas, i have one bar. ‘engine oil life’ light is flashing ‘-89 miles.’

  11:13AM: ate 1mg xanax to induce nap, heated pizza in toaster oven, think i made two hummus tortillas.

  4:00PM: woke. drank corona with lime. read more of ‘tracer.’

  4:43PM: mom called but i didn’t hear.

  6:50PM: called mom back and talked. she is reading ‘taipei.’ she read this aloud to me and started crying at ‘small and irreducible thing.’ at some point she said ‘are you still listening’ and i said ‘yes’ and i remember tears on my face and trying to sound okay. forget when i started crying…i didn’t expect to be crying but…something hard to describe…something:

  ‘They sat facing hundreds of the same type of four-story building, the expanse of which, in most directions, darkened dramatically, creating an illusion that one could see the Earth’s curvature, until blurring, in the distance, into a texture. Sometimes, looking at a city, especially a gray or brown one, at night, Paul would intuitively view it as a small and irreducible thing that arrived one summer and rapidly grew, showing patterns of color on its expanding surface, then was discolored by autumn and removed of its exterior and deadened by winter, in preparation for regrowth, in spring, but was unable, in its form, to enter the natural cycle, so continued growing, in a manner as if faceless and skinless, through summer, autumn, etc., less in belligerence or tyranny, or with some abstruse knowledge of its own rightness, than as a stranded thing, sightless and uninstructed with an objectless sort of yearning. Seeing the streets and bridges and sidewalks, while living inside a building, locked in a room, one could forget it was all a single, alien, seeking entity.’

  after mom read this i think she said ‘i’m sorry’ and something like ‘it sounds so much like you’ and something about imagining me and tao as she was reading this and, ‘i didn’t know how alone you felt, i see it very clearly now, i had no idea.’ we were both crying in a good way. read several parts aloud to each other. she said ‘i just love this so much, this is so beautiful,’ and tearfully read this aloud: