I didn’t know it would be such a big deal; it’s not like it’s incurable. Nobody’s going to die. We’ll take antibiotics and then, ten days later, it’ll be gone. But now he thinks I’m a total slut. And I must be, since I’ve infected people. But I think he’s being unfair. It shouldn’t matter this much. He acts like I’ve rejected him because I’ve been with other men. We weren’t together when I went to Central America; we’d gone on one date and I hadn’t even slept with him. I was traveling alone, so I slept around because I had nothing better to do and I needed to fill in the gaps. I didn’t know that something would grow between us; in fact, I thought it’d never happen, but I became more and more taken with him as I traveled. He sent me near-constant emails and he was always ready to talk when I went to internet cafés. We just started to connect. When I came home, we clicked; I fell head over heels. He’s beautiful and smart—I don’t know how many books he owns, hundreds at least, and he has this crazy DVD collection.

But the chlamydia kept eating at him. He wouldn’t stop interrogating me about the other boys. I held back at first. I only told him about one guy, a Norwegian in Cuba, and then I added the next one to the list—followed by the third, the fourth, the fifth, fuck, I can’t be expected to remember everything. I tried to explain that my memory isn’t really that great, but he thinks I’m lying. We were gliding on a smooth current, and now he wants nothing to do with me.

Bachelors I

Bachelors I

He’s moved into a basement apartment in Vesturbær on the west side of town with a friend who is the very embodiment of a tragic bachelor. His roommate can’t even take care of himself—he’s at least thirty, but he hasn’t learned how to wash his clothes properly. He just leaves his wet clothes in the machine until they dry. The place is a cesspool. Their towels are all sour, and the smell gets pretty pungent when you dry off. And his roommate doesn’t cook, either. On a good day, he might boil a hot dog, but he seems to live on bodega burgers, chocolate chip cookies, and Diet Coke. He’s crazy about Diet Coke; in the morning, he shuffles out of his room in a sloppy navy bathrobe and the first thing he does is swig flat Coke from the bottle. I don’t understand how he can live with this guy. But it’s nice to be able to hang out by ourselves. We aren’t together, but I’m with him all the time.

Vegetarians