•  saw a grocery store in the not-far distance. sign said ‘wa[something] mbd’s.’ tried to sound it out. zachary said ‘do you want to just make food instead?’ and i said ‘yeah.’ we had to walk over some kind of generator-run ATM area/parking lot/police station. figured out the sign said ‘waldbaum’s fresh.’ approached store. repeated ‘waldbaum’s fresh’ a few times, chuckling and using a variety of curious-sounding inflections/pitches, like beavis and butthead. when they do that thing.

•  a few minutes after we walked in there was a storewide ‘ten minutes to close’ loudspeaker announcement. zachary seemed joyless and businesslike, looking at food. i felt the thing of ‘how long have i known this person’ again. remembered being in ‘fresh grocer’ with him the night we gave up and threw the rotten watermelon into the water at penn treaty park, but i didn’t remember the watermelon part until now. in waldbaum’s i just remembered walking around the grocery store and commiserating in our indecisiveness about food and agitation at each other/the situation, and how even though that was bad, something seemed better than now.

•  bought kale, cucumber, yellow pepper, two strip steaks, avocado, banana, spinach. zachary said ‘beer…’ and i said ‘oh beer.’ he said ‘sometimes in grocery stores in new york they’ll sell beer,’ which i knew. i said ‘o-hhh.’ we saw beer. i said ‘look at schaeffer’s, i want schaeffer’s.’ zachary chuckled and said ‘okay’ like how ferris bueller would say ‘okay’ to a leprechaun at his door with surprise room service. compared with other things this felt extra good. still felt the ‘something has changed, am i just meeting this person’ thing but not as much.

April 30, 2013

APRIL 30, 2013

12–1:30AM: (things i remember, continued:)

•  talked about warheads/candy on the walk back to apartment. i said something bad. it was…i asked if zachary ever ate very gross things, at lunch, as a child. he said ‘no.’ the bad thing i said sounded probably like this: ‘because like, i like, we would like, for all of lunch in fourth or fifth grade, like it would be things like tuna mixed with jell-o, like that, we would like, just dare each other to see who could eat the worst thing, for the whole time.’ the point of the story, i thought zachary was thinking, was so he could see how i did unexpected interesting stuff as a little girl (the kind of ‘usual tricks’ i do in the beginnings of relationships, which he seems tired of hearing and i wasn’t sure i was saying/doing intentionally), which resulted in me saying ‘like’ a lot, because i knew if i said ‘nevermind’ and stopped talking that would mean things were unsalvageable, not worth trying for. my ‘likes’ were an attempt at stalling i think, like (haha), to see if i could think of something better instead of the bad story i was unstoppably telling.