Erik: It started in 2001. Lasted most of the school year at USC. Ended in the summer. Kind of badly, but I was going off to grad school and I wanted to focus. I wanted to cleave tight to my work. I was in a really ascetic phase for eight months, fasting and no sex, no drugs. Lots of walking in the desert.

Ray: Why?

Erik: Why what?

Ray: The fasting and the abstinence.

Erik: I wanted to purify myself.

Ray: From what?

Erik: For what. For my art.

Ray: Did your relationship with Layla end your phase?

Erik: Actually, it was the night I went to Fatburger and ate six cheeseburgers in a row. I couldn’t stop. After I puked them up, I thought to myself, This is BS. I am twenty-two years old. I am supposed to taste life. And I was done with being a monk. [pause] You think I’m joking, but I’m dead serious.

Ray: When did you start dating Layla?

Erik: We got together around the last week of school—2002, I mean.

Ray: Was it monogamous?

Erik: Huh?

Ray: Did you engage in physical relationships with other people after you started dating Layla?

Erik: No. No.

Ray: Did Layla know about you and Brenae?

Erik: No one knew. We didn’t tell anyone.

Ray: How did you meet Brenae at USC?

Erik: I was her TA. But before you ask any more questions, I swear that I didn’t grade any of Brenae’s work. There were a couple of teaching assistants in the class, and so I made sure that I never had any part in her academic record. If I had, I would have championed her too much. [laughs] I thought she was crazy brilliant.

Ray: And you chose to conceal your relationship.

Erik: We both thought it was better to keep it on the down low during the first semester, because of the TA thing, and then we just kept doing it that way.

Ray: Doing what?

Erik: You know. Making her videos. Hooking up. Honestly, it was a very sexual, passionate thing. But not boyfriend-girlfriend. We were both really, really committed to our work, really pure about it, and we didn’t want the distraction of anything else.

Ray: Let’s move on from USC. How often did you see each other once Brenae enrolled at LAAC?

Erik: At first, not much. Then she got on Hal’s crew and it was hard not to be thrown together all the time, especially when we went to London. But I didn’t give her any encouragement, and I didn’t reject her. It was just neutral, you know? That made her mad.

Ray: How did she react?