He went easy on me – I sensed that others had suffered more – but this wasn’t for my benefit. He was maybe scared he might disturb some beloved image of him I might have preserved from my girlhood when he was at the height of his fame. In truth, there was nothing – just a single blurry scene of him falling over, an amalgamation of gurning expressions. When we got back to the apartment, he watched the episode alone as if to punish me for some imagined slight. I wanted to apologise but I couldn’t physically say the word, ‘Sorry.’ I hadn’t slept in days.

When he locked himself in his bedroom, looping the laughter over and over, I logged onto the forum that followed my boyfriend’s career. I scrolled through early, stand-up photos of him – long-haired, pretend bashful – accompanied by his most caustic one-liners, scrawled across the screen. Before I noticed my fingers moving, before I recognised the words, I’d left a detailed post where I declared the comedian not funny, suggested that he had never been funny and that hopefully, God willing, his show would be cancelled and he wouldn’t inflict himself on us any more. I drew attention to his deteriorating appearance. I might have made a remark about his mental capabilities, which was out of character for me. I posted the diatribe under his mother’s name and took two sleeping tablets. I passed out on the couch then, soothed by my own ugliness.

In the morning, after scouring reviews of his show, disturbed, he read the post back to me.

‘Unbelievable.’

I made my eyes wide, saint-like.

‘An extremely difficult person.’

‘A sicko,’ he said. ‘Issues.’

‘Oh for sure,’ I agreed. ‘Many issues. No doubt.’

*

Only once did the comedian notice my reticence at these gatherings. While his friends spoke about shows – who was on what show, the ratings of that show, a seemingly endless amount of shows – I enjoyed fantasies of being at the airport, walking uninterrupted through the departure gates, browsing through the duty-free, doing various breathing exercises at the carousel, watching a beautiful tide of bags tumbling out. They weren’t imaginative visions. They wouldn’t have received high ratings on any network. Still, it was impressive what was going on in my head – my own personal airport reality experience, complete with a one-way ticket.

‘You’re an odd little ghost person,’ the comedian said, confrontationally, in the cab on the way home. It was late autumn and we’d been together for five months. I’d been feeling the sharp deterioration of our love for some time. I wasn’t helping by staying up all night, leaving long, anonymous messages on the forum that hated my boyfriend. I’d established a lot of friendships on there, made meaningful connections. There were some nice people.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I replied.

‘Every dinner you don’t say a word.’