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by Megan Boyle

  a package with no return address, which looked ‘internationally sent,’ arrived a few days ago. have been ‘afraid’ of it. it was hydergine. i had ordered it a few weeks ago. it’s used to treat dementia. invented by the guy who invented LSD. ate half a tablet before i left for p&p and waldbaum’s. seem to be…sweating more. i don’t feel like i need caffeine. feeling better than yesterday, like, baseline mood is better, but that could just be circumstantial. ate other half of tablet a few minutes ago. ‘we’ll see.’

  6:08PM: alec said i should leave around 6:30PM. asked juliet if we could reschedule our final video interview for tomorrow or later tonight. gonna write directions and get this shitshow on the road.

  8:07pm: think about how many people would kill themselves if they knew they could see how people would react to their death. I would definitely do that. Then I’d probably get bored and want to be alive again.

  Listening to Barr. Stopped at CVS for uti pain medicine. Sometimes I’m really moved by Barr. He seems really intense, maybe, to hang out with. I feel like we ‘get it’ and probably have the same sense of humor, but I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from arguing with him about things he feels more strongly about than I do. He reminds me of Zachary. The music thing Zachary did, Fishkind, was like a funnier version of Barr.

  Picked up bag of ‘unreal’-brand candy. It’s candy without corn syrup and preservatives and hydrogenated things. There are three kinds: fake snickers, fake Reese’s peanut butter cups, fake Milky Way. Got the Reese’s kind. Who the hell eats milky ways. I did when I was little. Have a memory of running in a field after…I think my parents just parked so I could run or something. I was always wanting to run everywhere. It was in a grassy area of parking lot, in my memory, where I ran and my dad said ‘time to go’ and I said ‘can I have a Milky Way?’ He said there was one waiting for me in the car. It was in the car. It was a ‘Milky Way Dark.’ That can’t be right. Warped memory. I like the warped one better.

  Get goosebumps/tingles when I listen to Barr. Haven’t listened to this in a long time. Sometimes I like, laugh/cry, not a wet cry. Before I started writing in this I had done that, I was laughing and crying and said ‘what the fuck’ about the last song on the album.

  8:26pm: missed exit on 687 turning around. Using written directions via broken phone. Passed nytmes building. The breakup song is good, I like when he goes ‘catharsis is real.’

  10:10pm: slow traffic on 95. Passing building that says ‘one stamford forum.’ Looks misspelled. Stopped for gas and to ask for directions earlier. Think I’m in Connecticut. Hope Alec and his friends also encountered traffic. Before I left I thought I had lost phone and quickly accepted that. I wouldn’t even try to get another one. Life without a phone seems fine. Maybe better. I like not feeling reliant on gmaps for directions, it’s like an adventure, nature hike.

  AUGUST 12, 2013

  1:48am: driving to gas station. Arrived at Alec’s a little before 1am. Was driving up and down his street a few times looking for his house. Knocked on door and rang bell and walked around porch. Left him a note. On my way into city, saw a building with a decorative neon red design that looked like another language. Alien language. What if that was my spaceship and I missed it.

  I’m in Rhode Island. Haha. What am I doing in Rhode Island. Rhode Island Rhode Island everywhere and not an Alec to answer his door.

  1:49–6:46AM: bought ‘krave’ brand disposable e-cigarette from shell station. drove past motel 6 exit several times, listening to ‘take ecstasy with me’ by magnetic fields on repeat. didn’t feel bothered by missing exit, enjoyed driving. checked into a la quinta inn around 3AM. talked with the girl behind the desk. she said she’d been playing games on her phone, didn’t even realize what time it was. i said i’ve always wanted her job. she said it was fun except on fridays and saturdays they get a lot of ‘motel 6 drama’ and cops come. i asked who causes the drama and why. she said ‘they just come over here, already fighting. or they don’t want their rooms to be transferred.’ she said there was a free continental breakfast starting at 6AM and that she’d be awake for it. i said ‘i don’t think i’ll be up’ in vague fatherly-joking voice. got the feeling we were friends. considered asking if there were any 24-hour food places around here and if she wanted me to bring her anything. i said ‘i’m just gonna, go, um. grab my stuff from my car.’ she said ‘okay.’ when i walked back in with my stuff she was there. a man who looked like the guy in new orleans who tao and i asked if he thought darth vader would die in the new harry potter movie asked the overnight check-in girl for change. she said she had it. made brief eye contact with both of them and maybe waved as i walked to the vending machine area. didn’t seem to be anything good in the vending machines. the guy approached the vending machine area and stood by me and said ‘hi.’ i said ‘hi’ and walked away.

  looked at dunkin donuts website in my room. the dunkin donuts by me closes at 4AM. considered driving there, seemed too hard. sent apologetic facebook message to alec, thinking he had maybe thought i would arrive earlier and had maybe heard me knock and ring the bell but was upset that i was late and didn’t want to answer. said i understood if he didn’t want to hang out tomorrow but if he did, to contact me, and that i felt okay and was staying at a la quinta inn. emailed juliet that i could do the interview now. got t.g.i.friday’s ‘cheddar bacon potato skins’ bag from vending machine. spent a long time deciding between cheddar cheese combos and the t.g.i.fridays thing. was surprised to see email from juliet on screen when i returned to room.

  3:30-6:46AM: talked with juliet. considering going to AA meetings in brooklyn. juliet said there were a lot of attractive people there. near the end of the conversation i asked what was the thing that made her want to get sober. she said she was surprised that she did, that it seemed like a bunch of coincidences lining up. agreed that anything that ever happens to me that ‘stays’ is due to…just…like, ‘feeling right.’ series of coincidences. something like that. we talked about god and men we like. it’s now august 20, i’m doing retroactive update. i like juliet a lot. she’s coming to NYC at the end of october. told her she and scott (my ‘parents’) should move into colin’s empty apartment across the hall from me and feed me soup using feeding tubes. juliet is good. will miss talking to her on skype. think it was hinted at or said outright that we both liked our talks and would like to talk more. ate 2mg xanax.

  7:10AM: decided to take advantage of free continental breakfast. overnight check-in friend said ‘oh, you’re up.’ i said something politely meaningless, smiling. another girl was at the desk too. walked to ‘the breakfast room,’ where many people were seated, mostly alone. two TVs were on. two teenage-looking girls holding styrofoam containers circled the belgian waffle station, taking turns talking in a kind of call-and-response conversation led by neither about whether their pizza and chicken wings ‘would be enough,’ to eat. seemed like they’d never decide. walked to the carb-toasting station and stood beside an old man in a tank top with big lips and a ‘fishy face,’ who seemed to be waiting for something in the toaster, built to toast four things at once. i asked where the knives were and he silently handed me his knife, gave me a chivalrous nod, and looked away. cut semi-pre-cut bagel in half using plastic knife and placed it in toaster. looked around the room a lot. didn’t know where to look. everyone seemed to be furtively redirecting their gazes to an arbitrarily wide variety of points at intervals suggesting a collective heightened yet noncommittal awareness of fulfilling their roles in a situation they’d regrettably involved themselves. wondered how long i’d have to wait for my bagel to toast. the fishy-looking older man was turned away from me, looking at the TV. thought ‘lucky him, he has the TV to look at, but if i try to look at the TV he’s in the way and he might ‘feel my eyeballs’ looking at him and think i’m staring at him.’ found the area where plastic cutlery was stored. brought the fishy man a knife and he said ‘thank you’ and resumed looking at the TV. filled a styrofoam cup with hot water and a chamomi
le tea bag to bide time. people seemed to be ‘watching me,’ i thought, because of my outfit (platform wedge sandals and ‘old lady’ polo shirt and pink shorts). returned to toasting station. bagel still not toasted. got a banana from the other room, closer to the check-in desk, to bide time. when i returned to the toasting station my bagel was done but the fishy man’s muffin still wasn’t toasted. said a few words with him about the toaster seeming broken. i said ‘you should try my side, i think your side is broken.’ he nodded slowly, almost graciously. i liked him. thought he was probably a trucker. i said ‘have a good morning.’ he said ‘you too darlin” or ‘you too, sweetie.’ was surprised at whatever term of endearment he used, and felt warm about him and our quietness. took two things of philadelphia cream cheese and walked back to room.

  ate bagel while watching ‘the office.’ knew i’d feel sad when the bagel was over.

  9:55AM: woke to aggressive door-knocking sounds. voice on the other side said ‘you have to check out by 12PM.’ i said ‘i’ll just pay for another night.’ the voice said ‘you have to call the front desk.’ barely remember calling front desk to do this.

  11:02AM: woke to door-knocking sounds. it was maid service.

  4:17PM: alec had sent a facebook message around 4AM. he apologized and said he had fallen asleep. thought ‘he definitely ignored my knocking on purpose. no. it’s possible that he didn’t. he would, though. maybe. i would understand if he did. there’s no way to tell for sure, i think he’d say he didn’t if i asked him in person. whatever the reason, it is okay.’ i called him from the hotel phone. he was at a café with a friend. i said i’d meet them in 30 minutes.

  parked across from the café. talked with alec and his friend, alexandra, for a few hours. i liked her a lot. alec and alexandra are going to brown university this fall for masters programs and moved in early. one of the first things alec said was that he tried to call my room at the la quinta inn after he saw my facebook message, but the check-in woman said no one with my name had checked in. i thought ‘shit, he thinks i lied.’ i said that was really weird. we talked about how it was probably a legal issue, they’re not allowed to give out information about who’s staying at the hotel or something.

  talked for a long time about woody allen and fellini movies. also another movie about hannah arendt. remember trying to access my ‘hannah arendt: what you know about her’ file in my brain and could only think of something funny zachary said and an essay i remember not enjoying reading in a women’s studies class i dropped after something like two weeks, my first year at depaul. the movie seemed good. hannah arendt wrote an essay about how the ‘evil’ part of the holocaust was that people who didn’t seem outwardly ‘evil’ were nazis. remembered this after alec and alexandra talked about it…don’t think this is the essay i had read. the movie was about how hannah arendt’s friends turned against her and called her an anti-semite after she wrote the essay.

  sometimes felt ‘dwarved’ by how much alec and alexandra knew about things…movies/culture things…like i wasn’t sure what i could contribute to the conversation if i talked. felt like an imposter a little bit, talking to them, like ‘how can they not know i’m not smart, somehow they aren’t picking up at how i’m an imposter.’ alec said something that struck me. it reminded me of how my parents sometimes talk in a ‘richard yates-y’ way where they think they’re concealing something. alec was talking about a woman in a fellini movie who…i forget. alexandra liked the movie. the movie is about a woman with some degree of clairvoyancy. think alec was saying something like she was self-involved and unaware of her craziness. thought he was like, saying a parable or something, about me, that he might think of me as similar to his interpretation of the woman in the movie, based on our recent interactions and me seeming flaky or depressed and self-involved and maybe losing some kind of awareness. the thing alec was saying about the woman didn’t seem related to other things, and alexandra wasn’t agreeing or disagreeing. i hadn’t seen the movie. alec said something like ‘i’m sorry, i don’t know how i got to talking about that for so long’ at the end. felt embarrassed and wanted to make a joke, like i wanted to say ‘i get it i get it, the woman in the movie is kind of like me.’ also thought ‘this isn’t about me at all, i’m projecting/being crazy and overthinking.’ we talked about keurig cups, funny things about the future, reading ‘star charts’/astrology, ways to make coffee, google glass, i think…there were funny things i’m now forgetting. we developed a running joke type thing about ‘buying and selling,’ like, financial jargon. forget how that happened.

  something about pace university, that’s where alexandra went and where colin went. we talked until it was dark and alexandra wanted to go home, via not having a bike light yet. alec asked alexandra to text him when she got home and she said she would, and had forgotten to last night due to her roommates talking, and alec said ‘i figured that’s what happened.’

  alec asked what i wanted to do and i said i wanted sushi. neither of us knew the area well. we went inside to use the bathroom. the bathroom was a ‘one-holer,’ behind the employees-only area. i went first. a girl usurped alec’s spot in line, surpassing the employees-only area. i stood by alec and we kind of shrugged and laughed about the girl and talked about pooping. i said ‘i like your shoes.’ alec had ‘business shoes.’ he did not like his jeans. we asked the lady who i bought iced coffee from (the coffee was poured from a ‘narragansett’ beer tap thingy…the lady was older and danced as she poured it…felt aversion to her, kind of, but also endearment) if there were sushi places. she said she had just moved back to providence and wasn’t sure. the girl left the bathroom. alec asked if he could leave his backpack (large black jansport, i think, which was surprisingly light in contrast to its size and ‘turtle shell’-like protrusion) and i said ‘yes.’ my phone was picking up wifi so i checked email. jordan emailed that he had been arrested. alec emerged from the bathroom and the female coffee lady was standing next to a younger male employee, holding a white bag of sushi leftovers. the male coffee guy said the name of a sushi place.

  8:26PM: alec and i walked to a shell station and i bought ‘krave’ brand e-cigarette starter kit. interacted with the shell station cashier with like…grandeur, i keep thinking. bravado. rapport. i knew what to say and i said it. paid and left, vaguely in the direction of the sushi place neither of us remembered how to get to, sometimes making noncommittal statements about how ‘it must be one way or the other.’ alec asked about e-cigarettes. i said i liked them more than regular ones and have no desire to smoke regular ones anymore. he said ‘that seems mature, a sign of maturity’ or something like that. gave alec a regular-flavored ‘krave’ e-cigarette and smoked the menthol one. alec said i seemed taller and i said something about my shoes. he asked about the shoes, the decision to wear high heels. i said something like ‘i’ve just liked them lately,’ not wanting to talk about how my recent wearing of high heels has been partially due to a pattern of dating men as tall as me or shorter, or taller than me but who didn’t like high heels, and feeling like my ‘high heels incentive’ is stereotypical. alec said he thought he had a spine tumor and i said something about a bump on the top of my spine, that’s always been there, and he moved to feel it and i put his hand on it. i said ‘it’s always been there.’ asked him where he felt pain and he said it was mostly an all-over kind of tension and maneuvered my hand to an area on his spine. i said ‘it’s probably not a tumor.’ he said it was probably not real, just due to anxiety.

  passed a hardware store with an intricate window display. alec said something about the display. i said ‘it doesn’t seem real, it looks like an art thing’ and sort of walked backwards for a minute, thinking if alec followed we would look at the display again. shortly after this we saw the sushi place. asked to be seated outside. looked at the menu, sensing both of us doing the thing where you look at the menu without reading it, you just like, ‘absorb’ it at first, because there’s so much information. said things about what we wanted to
eat. i held the paper ‘sushi list’ and asked him if he liked salmon, eel, other things/if he had preferences. he said he didn’t. felt anxious about the waiter appearing. i said ‘do you just want me to pick a bunch of things from the list and we’ll get appetizers or something?’ alec said ‘yes, you seem to know much more about this than i do,’ which i felt i didn’t. alec said ‘do you think it’d be okay if i got beer from somewhere and we drank it here?’ i said ‘probably yeah,’ and looked at the menu to see if it said ‘BYOB.’ it did. i said ‘yeah that’d be fine, it’s BYOB.’ we talked about appetizers. decided to get shrimp dumplings and seaweed salad. alec asked about beer again, seeming unsure. i said ‘it’s BYOB, they say it on the menu, it’d be fine.’ felt like he left for beer still uncertain about it being ‘allowed.’

  8:50PM: the waitress brought one set of chopsticks. i said ‘one more set.’ she said ‘one more?’ i said ‘one more, for my friend. two people.’ she said ‘two people.’

  notable things i remember from dinner: alec said he hadn’t read ‘taipei.’ felt surprised and asked him why. he said he doesn’t want to read things that make him more depressed…like he is wanting to read things that make him happy lately, a lot of which are classics, i think…think he said ‘dickens’…something about how depression or writing depressed things folds in on itself and becomes…jesus. i forget. we talked about how we first met and he asked if i knew he had a crush on me for a little bit, in baltimore, and i said ‘yes.’ he asked how i knew and i said ‘when you asked to spoon me that night.’ he said ‘you asked me to spoon you!’ remember this…specifically another way…snickering right now…i could’ve asked him to spoon me though, now that i think about it. remember the night it happened, his 20th birthday, the day before we took a bus to new york and stayed with his friend ryan for a few days, walked around brooklyn a lot and i bought sandals and shorts, then i met jordan and mallory for the first time with tao at pure food & wine and we ran around times square, then i cat-sat for zachary at his apartment in brooklyn while he was on vacation with his then-girlfriend, jamie, who has been living with him at the same apartment since sometime this summer. alec and i did a ‘power hour’ on his porch in baltimore the night of his 20th birthday. the only other ‘power hour’ i had ever done was on my 20th birthday too. regarding the spooning: i remember thinking ‘it’s possible that we could have sex but i feel platonic, maybe spooning would be okay,’ something about a hand…thinking ‘it’s okay if he holds my hand, i like alec’ and wishing i felt romantic things.