This one time you and I got super high in Atlanta, up near Midtown, in my brother’s house with all of the wood floors. I loved that apartment; it was big enough to stay cool in the summer, it was small enough to furnish easily and look super trendy and timeless. I’m still really into that apartment, and when I think of places that I want to live some day when I get enough money to buy so many houses, I always think of that place up off of Peachtree with the big courtyard and the tile patio. Anyways, we’d been hanging out at some future ad director’s place, talking to a terrible amateur filmaker, and you’d told me off-hand that you had wanted to major in film at one point. Which was a surprise to me because you’d never said anything about it before, and sounded very false coming out of your mouth. I was still telling people I’d go to Ohio University for film, even though I’d done no research on the actual program and would eventually find out that there is only one person allowed to be in the program. By the time I found this out though, I was already on another track and hardly minded. But I did find it very strange, this thing coming out of your mouth, and seeing as how it was right around the time that you started to tell me that you were jealous of me and my life, I chalk it up to something I call “Bullshit said in desperation.” Other things that go in this category include “I thought we’d get married” and that smug little smile you gave me when I realized that you had a hickey on your neck the day after we broke up; one I’d obviously not given you. Yeah, but that was later and we were still on relatively good terms when we went down to Atlanta, in keeping with our annual spring break ritual. After you’d said that thing that wasn’t true, we went to the backyard and my brother and all of his friends started playing “Ad off”, which is a really fun game if anyone wants to try it. You pick something to sell, like a Geo Metro or adult diapers, and you get ten minutes to write down all of the pitches you can think of. Then you present them to one another and the group gets to decide the best ones. You tally your points and then somebody with a good sense of humor or who is pretty popular usually wins. We started passing a joint and then the ten minutes got really long and the ads were all funny enough to win. You and I finally just had fun, probably for the first time in months. We sat next to each other with our bodies touching from time to time, our eyes catching each others, the fog of alcohol and smoke blurring everything into one giant feeling. We somehow ended up back at the place with all of the wood floors, watching that awful filmaker’s movie. I don’t remember much of it except for the end when they find out that a car is actually a human and the bad guy takes a chainsaw to it. If that’s not what actually happened in the movie, it should have happened because that sounds more interesting than it actually was.
The point is, I guess, that back then I liked you because you kept a pack of cloves in your console and because you had hair like Jean Seberg; because you liked Wes Anderson and had nice legs. I don’t like you anymore, mainly because you went into that aforementioned state where you’d sit outside of my house in your car, in the rain, crying, telling me you didn’t want to see me. And because you’d go through my things, looking for an argument. You went to therapy and then quit, and when I told you that I couldn’t handle the weight of your depression, you told me I was entitled and selfish and that I was the reason that you were losing weight and wanted to cut yourself. You used to get this look in your eyes, kind of like when we’d get high and enjoy holding each others hands, only it’d be way more reserved and blank; you’d stare out of the window while we were talking, telling me it was never going to be over, that we’d be stuck forever, that this moment was too surreal and that you were going to figure out a way to end it.
