LIVEBLOG

by Megan Boyle

  11:14AM: ex-boyfriend has been packing my records and graphic novels as i’ve been typing. want to go to whole foods now. he re-entered room and said ‘or dew inn is fine. or whole foods. yeah whatever.’ i said ‘no, yeah i want whole foods.’ he said ‘yeah, get out of this place. in a car, for a while.’ i asked if he wanted me to bring back anything from whole foods. then it was confusing, we had thought different things about who would be going to whole foods. he said ‘whatever is fine,’ not using those words exactly.

  12:48PM: handed phone to zachary (tired of calling him ‘ex-boyfriend,’ doesn’t seem to matter anymore), so he and my dad could sort out money things and i wouldn’t be ‘middle person’ in the conversation anymore. uploaded video of this to youtube. feeling xanax. feeling loose. zachary has been packing really well. i have been sitting here, mostly not caring about if he sees screen.

  said ‘usually i try to not act like i’m on xanax when i’m on xanax around you.’ he said ‘yeah, now you’re just not making as much sense.’ lighthearted tone today. nice stuff. took pictures of the living room for like, three minutes i think. getting them and a ‘fun saver’ camera i found developed at CVS and hopefully birth control refill. um. we are returning a modem. to CVS? this shit is long. feeling ‘out of it’ in funny way…like…not attached to anything that’s going on around me, everything seems funny.

  12:48PM–10:19PM: most of this was spent packing. loaded most things into zachary’s dad’s pick-up truck but i still have more. here’s what i remember happening today:

  1–2PM: remember un-self-consciously saying things in the living room before we left for whole foods, like we both wanted to stall leaving. ate another 1mg xanax. forget why i wanted it.

  i drove us to comcast so we could return our modem. remember laughing a lot, mostly about things that entertained me about me, like, not things that were going on with zachary, feeling confident enough to tweet ‘said ‘fuck yeah i’m a customer fuck yeah i like your jeep cherokee i really do’ to a man in jeep nodded as i parked behind him at comcast,’ and say/do those things.

  there was a long line at comcast, and like, bullet-proof glass and ‘exchange objects and money using this clear turning-thing without having to touch another person’ devices. zachary said ‘if they ask why you’re cancelling your service you should tell them it’s because you’re moving to texas.’ i said it would also be good to say if they didn’t ask me. laughed a lot picturing myself using a straight face to unsolicitedly tell a comcast person ‘i’m moving to texas.’ i ended up doing it. think i did it really well. convincing. remember saying ‘texas’ twice. zachary left prematurely i think, because of laughing.

  2–10PM: zachary said i shouldn’t drive so he drove. earlier at the apartment i said i didn’t want whole foods, i wanted el jarocho (mexican restaurant where we went a lot when we started dating, but haven’t been to much since).

  doing the times of things seems hard. here is just…everything i remember from yesterday, in the order i remember it happening:

  • think we went to CVS before comcast. i barely remember CVS. i said something atypically cavalier to the cashier.

  • on the way to el jarocho, gynecologist’s office returned my call. doctor doesn’t want to refill my birth control because i haven’t sent her a letter saying ‘my doctor has explained to me the risks of not doing a colposcopy, i do not want to have it.’ a colposcopy is this thing gynecologists seem to have been doing a lot recently, which i think is a scam. a colposcopy is where they scrape your cervix for a mini-biopsy of cells. you’re awake. seems to take a very long time. i don’t know. this was in 2007, when i had ‘pre-cancerous cells,’ but my gyno couldn’t tell if they were ‘cancer-y’ enough from the results and strongly recommended i have this surgery to burn a layer of my cervix off, so i did that, and all of it sucked ass. the colposcopy was the worst part, not the surgery. after the surgery my gyno got the more detailed biopsy results, which said there was nothing wrong with me, my body had taken care of the problem by itself, none of that needed to happen. i told the gynecologist’s secretary i’d write and mail the letter saying ‘i give consent to not have this thing done to me.’ then i can have birth control again. great. birth will soon be under my control. until then it’s just going to have to be out of control birthing.

  • think all day i was complaining relentlessly about being tired. took a nap.

  • zachary woke me around 5pm. he had made coffee. the landlords wanted to show the place to a prospective tenant at 7pm. seemed really hard to wake. i packed at a lethargic pace. didn’t understand why zachary was hurrying, would’ve been willing to switch from ‘lethargy’ to ‘hurry’ if i knew more about the situation.

  • electricity went out but not due to bad weather. outside, voices were yelling things like ‘you got lights?’ i stuck my head out the window and yelled ‘no lights’ to a man in a hoodie. he seemed to be the MC of the ‘does this block have lights’ thing. texted landlord that there might not be electricity when she and prospective tenant arrive. she texted ‘it went out on my block too lol.’

  • travis and kat came over. travis is close friends with zachary and i’ve hung out and talked about him with zachary enough to feel like i sort of know him. this was the first time i met kat, who travis has recently started dating. felt like i could be friends with kat. we had like, an instant ‘riff’ connection or something. i was packing shoes and trying to give her shoes. she stepped into a pair of high heels and said ‘i don’t think i can do them, my legs are like, [i forget].’ we stared at her legs quietly in the mirror. i said ‘you look fly. you know, how people can look ‘fly.” she said ‘yeah, sometimes they look ‘fly.” i said ‘that’s how you look. ‘fly.” travis entered and said things, pausing irregularly. kat walked to him and said ‘it’s the first time you’ve seen me in heels.’ i didn’t see what travis did or remember what he said but i liked both of them a lot in that moment.

  • while zachary and travis moved things down to the pick-up truck, kat would sometimes enter whatever room i was in and we’d talk. shirley hid in this radiator/tunnel area and wouldn’t come out, so i’m returning to philadelphia to get her sometime before sunday. it’ll just be me.

  • zachary said ‘peg can i give travis a pack of your cigarettes from your carton?’ i have a carton. it’s cool. i haven’t bought cigarettes in a long time.

  • mechanically, but like, a very slow machine, helped carry things downstairs and load cars. as i was going inside, kat said something about ‘sensing raptors.’ i said ‘i can sense them too, since like, i was little.’ she said ‘me too, since i was little. you can feel it in your ears.’ we were smiling. i wasn’t sure what we were talking about but i wanted to say more. felt aware of ‘just standing there,’ then overcome by the exciting terrible certainty that ‘this is it, the thought to finally stop me from ever thinking about anything else, it’s already working because all i remember is not knowing what to say a few moments ago, this is like the first step, soon i won’t be able to move.’ then i was inside again.

  • a woman appeared in the hallway, followed by landlord, and walked towards me in the living room. they looked like they’d been ‘doing this for years,’ but neither had known what ‘this’ was and had each trusted the other did. the woman said ‘i’m sorry, i shouldn’t be here now,’ looking mostly at the ceiling. i said ‘me neither, sorry.’ she turned to leave without looking at the living room. landlord waved, looking uncharacteristically friendly.

  • stood with travis and kat and zachary after cars were packed. zachary told a joke with a long build-up, then said ‘it’s funny because of all the build-up.’ we gave him suggestions for improving the joke. he started another joke. i had heard both earlier. he seemed to be avoiding looking at/addressing me.

  • the man i said ‘no lights’ to stood by the corner store, in a group of people who periodically said ‘don’t go’ to us, with exaggerated fake-crying gestures. i saw a bottle of gin on the hood of my
car. the man saw that i saw it and took it and apologized. i said ‘no, it’s like. feel free.’ zachary said ‘he has your kind of gin, peg, look! new amsterdam!’ felt scared, like next zachary would ask me to give the guy a blowjob. i was trying to maintain ‘smiling to silently convey that it’s okay to put shit on my car, i don’t care, i like that you did it, please don’t say any more to me’ with the group of people while i ‘managed’ zachary’s comment, which they probably heard, and after hearing meant they knew more about me, but not enough to know that i had found a mostly empty new amsterdam gin bottle in my underwear drawer a few minutes earlier, which is what made him say anything, i think. discrepancies in the amount of information people know about you. highly unpleasant sensation. no matter how well i know the people who know things about me, or however trivial the ‘things to know’ are, i’m always going to feel uncomfortable when someone seems to know more about me than the other person/people. i’m suddenly the middle man in a situation that wouldn’t exist without me, and my task is to make sure everyone knows the same amount of things about me, and i hate doing that. this is the kind of thing that makes me not like people and not like myself. the endless. this thing. the urge to do it is insane. big dick boyle dishing out all the spiciest facts about herself. all that important information. to those interested people. whom she will know, for years to come, in her beautiful studio apartment in rockaway park. ‘for years to come.’ jesus. hate myself. years to come.

  • asked zachary if he brought down the laundry and he said ‘no.’ walked to our building, where a man stood at the door, finagling with keys. he was moving slowly, holding a green palmolive bottle. i wanted to say ‘that’s palmolive for ya, sure does make it hard to put the key in,’ or something. i wanted to say anything. felt happy and good-willed. the man opened the door and i silently followed him up a flight of stairs. he took out his keys. he’s the yelling man who lives downstairs. i said ‘it would be funny if i didn’t live here and i just kept following you into your house.’ he turned around and was smiling big and said ‘yeah.’ surprised i said that without hesitation. seemed like i ‘needed’ to say it.

  • at some point it was just travis and me outside, finishing our cigarettes. he said ‘can i say something? i’m really sad you guys are moving.’ he looked like he meant it. i said ‘me too. the whole thing. yeah. i wish it would’ve worked out. it would’ve been good too, because now you live so close,’ aware that i had been to his new apartment probably less than five times since he moved, and that people who miss each other usually see each other more than that. i like him a lot, though, he’s funny and easy to be around. he is a person i could’ve missed more. there were opportunities for me to have missed him more. that’s what it’s like with most people and me, i think. i’m always aware of missing opportunities to miss people more.

  10:20pm: before merging onto 95, Zachary called to ask if we could pull over to check the tarp. I said ‘yeah, the first rest stop.’ he said ‘no like as soon as possible.’ Pulled over. Re-tied the tarp. He said ‘I’m so sorry peg, doing all this to save a guy I don’t like a few bucks.’ I said ‘it’s nice that you want to save him money. Plus I feel less dependent on him for money, because of this. It’s good.’ he looked unusually serious/concerned. Like he was having lot of thoughts. I said ‘if my stuff falls out I don’t care, it’s all stupid.’ Zachary looked lost in thought, gestured to the tarp, said ‘It would be helpful.’ I said ‘it’s okay. I’ll follow you and call if anything happens’

  10:28pm: the tarp became mostly detached. I called and said ‘pull over’ then saw a black thing and said ‘pull over pull over my stuff is falling out’ in a frantic way I didn’t like. Zachary looked defeated. He said ‘I’m so sorry peg. I thought it would work.’ I said it was okay and hugged him. Felt good that we both knew it would’ve been easier to rent a u-haul, and used that to justify not helping Zachary re-tie tarp, like I wanted to ‘let him live with the consequences’ of not following my good u-haul idea. Giving up and getting a motel was discussed. That would be exciting. Sat in my car and found a nearby best western. Wrote directions on the back of a Cvs receipt. Walked to Zachary. He said he still wanted to try. We were at the halfway point between Philadelphia and Baltimore.

  10:30pm: tarp detached and we pulled over again.

  10:48pm: Zachary called and said ‘lets listen to the same radio station. 90.5.’ I turned to the station and said ‘oh, Johnny cash.’ it was the cover of ‘personal Jesus.’ he said ‘is this good?’ I said ‘yeah yeah. This is good. I like this.’ Thought warmly about listening to the same station in separate cars. Seems to be a religious station. Want to change channel kind of.

  10:50pm: radio person said the previous song was by temple of the dog. Then he said something about an upcoming block ‘taking us up until a little after eleven, if you don’t mind. Do you consider yourself a theologian? I sure as hell don’t.’ now a song is playing where they say ‘theologians don’t know nothing.’

  10:55pm: tarp looked like it was detaching. Called Zachary and pulled over. He is adjusting tarp. I said ‘it’s like. Is it a religious station?’ he said ‘I don’t think so. I really don’t think so.’ I said ‘yeah it’s like good Friday something. ‘Do you consider yourself a theologian?” he said “I sure as hell don’t.” I said ‘did he really say ‘sure as hell don’t?” he said ‘I think so.’ looked under the tarp. Didn’t seem like I could help. Walked back to car. Tried to take a picture then Zachary was at my window and said ‘let’s just be on speakerphone. I’ll call you.’

  11:09pm: insane remix of a strokes song is on radio. I was like, singing the words without knowing what I was singing. Seemed interesting. Interesting combination of knowing and not knowing. Dj just said it was the song ‘barely legal.’

  MARCH 30, 2013

  12:53am: went wrong way on the way to storage unit. Turned around. Tarp looked bad. Called Zachary to say we need to readjust. After situational details he said ‘this is what life is’ and laughed. I laughed and said ‘love it, love life, live your life fucking fuck.’ Stopped to readjust tarp again. I said ‘we’re going to have to untie all the rope.’ Zachary said ‘that’ll be the least of our problems.’ I said ‘yeah, that’ll be the start of more problems.’

  1:09am: read Jesse prado’s thoughts re my liveblog. A person on twitter said ‘how many well-known alt lit writers hasn’t she blown.’ I replied ‘like 3-5 not blown so far.’

  1:24am: got lost looking for storage unit. Held access-swiper key up to a gate-opening device. Gate would not open. Sign under swipe device said ‘closed for good Friday.’ a more permanent looking sign on gate said ‘access hours: [morning hours] - 9pm.’ Walked defeatedly to Zachary’s car and told him. Felt lack of energy in my voice. Talked about what to do. A lot of pauses and staring. Decided to go back to dad’s despite zero garage and all my stuff being exposed and ready to steal. Zachary seemed more concerned with the stuff not getting stolen. I’d feel good if things got stolen. Less things. I want less things.

  1:40am: seems like my body is falling apart, like constantly aching. Want to complain but can’t think of things to complain about. Just. Drained. Feel like I’ve been in that machine from ‘the princess bride’ that takes years off of the blonde guy’s life. Like in my sleep, someone hooks that machine up to me.

  1:50am: pictured myself on highway suddenly accelerating to like 100mph and driving off a cliff. Actually first pictured crashing into some car head-on but that would effect Zachary who is following me. Like he probably wouldn’t die and his life would just be worse. So cliff thing would be ideal.

  1:53am: A man on the radio is earnestly singing ‘so pile on the mashed potatoes and another chicken wing, I’ll have a little bit of everything.’ sounds like a Dawson’s Creek-type theme song.

  2:11am: royal farms closed. Going to…try….another one…this is life…

  2:13am: Just remembered old woman rickets. So far away in time. And yeah I was right: I’m nostalgic for three
days ago. I think Dunkin donuts was three days ago. Feels like three days ago. Feels like the first time, baby, feels like the very first time. That’s a song, right?

  2:27am: whenever I pass over a sewer thing or bump in the road without letting it touch my tires I feel like I am getting ‘bonus points’ or ‘health points.’ If I do it a certain number of times in a row or in some kind special pattern it’s going to launch me into another dimension.

  2:30–4AM: arrived at dad’s. The back door of the truck had opened but nothing fell out. Brought whiskey, gin, el jarocho leftovers inside. Zachary said we should put the food on plates and heat them in the microwave. I said, like, ‘but…we…in the frying pan…don’t you want…heat it in the pan?’ He looked at me like ‘you dopey loveable lummox’ and said, like how you would talk to a kid, ‘just think of how much easier it will be. To heat it in the microwave. Think of the easiness.’ I continued the lummox-talking, pretending not to understand anything, which progressed into audibly dragging my feet as I walked, running into cabinets, putting a fork in the toaster, trying to eat inedible things, all very slowly and with Zachary’s ‘gentle assistance.’ He started guiding me away from things and saying ‘no, no, you don’t do that!’ Seemed very hard not to laugh. He said ‘you tell me ‘I hide being on Xanax from you’ like you think I don’t know you’re just saying slightly different things. But like. This? I know this is what you’re really like, underneath it all.’ We ate our things and watched TV and went to sleep.