1.) The first night in my new apartment, the idea of having a permanent residence again was all it took to thrill me. I inflated my air mattress, and made the bed. I unpacked my clothes and stacked my books underneath the windowsills (no bookshelf). I plugged in my laptop and connected to the wireless, and then I pulled my hair into a quick ponytail and ran down the stairs. (I have stairs! Like in early ’90s family sitcoms!) “So, uh, nice meeting you, again!” I called to my new roommates. “See ya later!”

“Leaving already? K, . . . bye!”

And I don’t even remember what I did that night. Several things, one hundred. Maybe I watched Tool Academy at Tamar’s and ate mint ice cream. Maybe I walked the Minuteman alone, staring up at the dimly-lit leaves, passing the playground where a former love and I used to swing. Maybe I made out on the porch of someone new, or maybe I snuck my wet laundry into your basement. I don’t know, life has been crazy. But somehow it didn’t occur to me to return until two in the morning. Braden and Josh, responsible professionals that they are, had already been asleep for hours, and I tiptoed up our back staircase like a cartoon thief. “Tee hee,” I thought, taking my heels off at the door and walking barefoot in the dark, “I am sixteen years old. And bad news.”

I stopped in front of my bedroom, turned the handle.

Or, tried to turn the handle. It choked, resisted, clack-clacked.

Locked.

What?

2.) My first thought:
“Shit. There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to break the door.”

My second thought:
“How much do doors cost, anyway? And what do I need? A machete? A gun? Will it be loud?”

My third thought:
“I could just sleep on the living room couch and deal with this in the morning.”

My fourth thought:
“. . . Didn’t I leave a window open?”

I haven’t had this problem since I was a kid — but for the past few weeks, whenever I see you cry, I have to stop this smile from spreading over my face. You are sitting across from me, overwhelmed with grief. You have just told me something awful. My face pulls at the corners — no, no, don’t do that, not appropriate! My god, what is wrong with me? And then you may up the ante. Take it to the next surprising level. I can see my reaction coming even before I comprehend what you’re saying and I dread it, this cruel toothy stretch. The cheekbones ache; I choke on my own mouth to apologize, force my lips to move a different way.

And it’s not that I’m pleased, it’s never been that: but maybe I’m going crazy, a little bit, or I just don’t know what to do with my face. I’m smiling, I’m so sorry, I don’t mean it.

Courtesy of Brendan Sullivan, a few weeks back:

“NEVER CHECK YOUR EMAIL WHEN YOU’RE HAPPY.”

We had been alternately angry or sad at each other for weeks before we decided to meet in person and talk again: to hand over discarded possessions and mail, to iron out some personal matters. I was almost twenty minutes late, as I am late for everything now — unaccustomed to the new time frames of where I’m departing versus where I’m arriving. In times like these I tend to reset and default to my Minneapolis sensibilities: everything is fifteen minutes away. Isn’t it? Aren’t you just fifteen minutes away?

“I thought maybe you weren’t coming,” he said. “I even kind of hoped you weren’t.”

If only there had been a neutral place to go: but the fact is that if you want privacy, if you want to talk or react in a place where those words and reactions can be yours alone, it’s likely that someone owns the space, and space that is owned is rarely neutral. So here we were, meeting at our old apartment, where everything was familiar but lacking certain things; the bad-dream version of a place that is impossible to describe upon awakening. He told me that he knew I was kissing someone new.

“Isn’t it strange and amazing,” I had thought just a few days before, wandering to my new home in a sweet autumn dream, “that this can be secret?”

Breakup life lesson #1: Assume that nothing is or can remain a secret.

We sat and talked for two hours, and everything hurt. I understood him, he understood me, and we were left staring helplessly into the wreckage. “Do you want your rug?” he asked. “I have a Zipcar rented this afternoon, I can drive it over, if you don’t mind me knowing where you live now.”

“I don’t mind.”

We walked together to pick up the car, and passed an apartment we’d almost moved into together, just over two years ago; we’d decided it was too much space for us at the time, and too expensive. But it was a beautiful apartment: wild and big-lawned, with brightly painted walls, and situated at the bottom of the hill instead of the top. I put my hand on his shoulder as we walked by, and he grasped me tightly around the waist. I thought, “if we’d lived here, instead of two blocks away, would everything have been different?”

Between 2 and 4pm is the easiest time of day. Any song is fine.