oh captain, my captain

[lola_leviathan]

I had my birthday party tonight, and it was really fun. My boyfriend got way too drunk, which is something he does once in awhile, and for reasons you can't really understand if you aren't a 25-year-old woman who's been involved/in love with the same person since she was 19 even though she never really expected this to happen and makes all her life decisions with this person in mind even though part of her remains fiercely independent blah blah blah, I got pretty pissed about the way he was responding to my babysitting and kind of flipped my shit. At one point, I realized I didn't know where my purse was, and noted this and he, drunk, half-asleep and puking into a rusted saucepan, was all like, "let me help you find it" and without really realizing it, I immediately snapped "You can't help me, and David Foster Wallace is fucking dead." I hadn't really understood until that moment that he (DFW) was this weird center for us, how much The Speech had meant to me, how many times I'd thought of "Little Expressionless Animals" during my Jeopardy experience. His floppy hair, his fucking bandanna. My friend Amy has a letter from him she kept on her fridge for years. My friend Becky cleaned his office at Pomona. He touched our lives, and he gave us hope and ideas and he fucking hanged himself. Fucking cheater. I don't care, I still believe in it all, even moreso now, I feel like I have to be strong and kind and exuberant and never let the dark parts of being conscious and aware drag me down. I put that story up there with Chekhov when I listed my favorites. Fucking Chekhov. I feel all the more need to relish every painful ambivalent second of it. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight: I'll be breathing for him too. And him. It's the least I can do. We shared a last name, and now his atoms are spreading out into the universe. And this other one, he's finally asleep, and still breathing, and I've thrown my lot in with his, for good or ill. Sometimes that's a happy thought. Sometimes it's fucking terrifying.

p.s. I have the best friends in the world ever. Yes you.