the way he stressed ‘waste.’ i don’t know. this is related to why we wouldn’t have worked. sometimes it feels like he’s making a special effort to avoid saying what’s bothering him. if changing the subject doesn’t work, he’ll say something acidic as a kind of warning about how little will be accomplished by talking about whatever it is. his face will look defeated and anguished. i’ve wondered if maybe he doesn’t think i’m smart enough to get it. like it wouldn’t be worth his time to condescend to someone not as smart as him. it’s less that this causes me to feel ‘stupid,’ more of a sad reminder that there is a limit to how much i’ll ever know about him. have sensed this quality of his since the beginning, but then it was more of an afterthought. he was so warm and bright and fun to talk to and sometimes i’d see this sadness about him, like something i’d learned alone and maybe intentionally forgotten, that i wanted to protect.

9:10–9:30am: ex-boyfriend made ‘hurry up’ gestures. i said ‘oh, that’s right, all of those important places you need to be. you’re on your way to big things, i forgot.’ he ignored or didn’t seem to hear me and i was glad.

ex-boyfriend said ‘hey peg, thank you in advance,’ for driving him, I think. I said ‘oh. Hm. Well. I don’t actually know if I’m going to want to say ‘you’re welcome’ in advance. So. This might. Hm. Do I?’ he made noises like he impatiently understood.

Drove down 4th st. We talked about my first cats, Puffy and Bluebell. He said ‘let me get this straight: you had two cats that were named after stuffed animal dragons you already had? You named the cats…because of that?’ I said yeah. He asked me other stuffed animal names. I rattled them off like the real ‘old sage’ in town, who knows all the hot spots and wants to show you a good time. Exbf was laughing a lot. I said ‘nooooo, soon you’ll be gone and I’ll be all alone. Over…there.’ He said things I should do: get boxes to ‘at least fill them with books, so you can look at that and think: ‘I did that,” go see ‘spring breakers’ alone. I started telling a story and he sighed. Interrupted myself to say ‘don’t worry, I’ll get to the interesting part.’ He said ‘oh my god, really?’

Said ‘I can’t believe I threw up out of nowhere like that. Did you put something in your come?’ he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head down and said ‘yeah, peg.’ I said ‘like, more than normal? Did you put more heroin than normal in your come?’ parked without paying meter outside Wawa. He wanted orange juice. Said goodbye in Wawa.

10:09am: shivering in whole foods parking garage. Ex-boyfriend is on the bus. Seems like liveblog is deteriorating. My sense of time. Something. Tenses.