i said ‘can you just hold me a minute.’ he said ‘yes but only if we listen to this.’ he played a fishkind song: a few of his friends and him half-talking half-singing ‘five-hundred twenty-five thousand people died in nine-eleven’ over ‘rape me’ on acoustic guitar. i’ve heard it before. seemed sad to me, that he was drinking in bed and listening to it and reading his old formspring. he said ‘i just wish i was here with my one true love.’ i said ‘oh, [person]?’ he said ‘yeah, [person]’ wistfully, drunkenly. i said ‘oh.’ i looked at his calendar wall-hanging from 1975, made of a some kind of light towel or canvas-like fabric. i said ‘i’m sorry i couldn’t be better.’ he said ‘it’s okay. you have people you like more too.’ i said ‘yeah, but. i don’t know.’ he said ‘i need to be with someone who i can like, control more. like, i want to be completely open with the person, but i also want distance from them. your openness seems like an attack on your readers.’ i said ‘wait, do you mean…are you talking about my writing or me, the person?’ he did something with his arms and shook his head and his tone changed and he said ‘i mean ‘what is a person,’ come on, come the fuck on, like…’ and i said ‘what do you mean, what are you talking about? my openness is…i attack you, you feel?’ he said something about him saying things that have hurt me, or something, and wanting to be with someone who he could say those things to more and it not mattering to them. i said ‘i understand that…i feel…yeah, i don’t like it when you’ve talked about other people you’d rather be with while you’re with me.’ he said ‘but why not? it’s not like you don’t have other people.’ i said ‘i know. it just doesn’t feel good. like, it doesn’t feel good to hear. i wouldn’t want to just, out of nowhere, just like, start talking to you about someone i’m interested in, as if i wished you were them or something.’ felt myself about to cry, leaning on my arm, not wanting to cry. i thought ‘look at him, it will make you either cry or not cry.’ looked and didn’t. he said ‘well great. good for you’ and kind of rolled his eyes. i said ‘you…but you just asked me…i only said because you asked me…what?’ he said ‘we were having this conversation a year ago.’ i didn’t say anything.

7:15PM: something weird was happening with jeopardy. bad reception. ex-boyfriend said ‘i’ll put the BASF on it’ and propped a VHS tape that says ‘BASF’ on the antenna. something happened to jeopardy. it was clear that the station had made a mistake, like, with the timing. they showed the beginning of the episode again. ex-boyfriend said ‘it’s definitely the station, not our TV’ and ‘i wonder what…what could they possibly do, how can they possibly fix this?’ i felt distracted or like…i wasn’t as invested in this.