kerouac says

so, i got home.

the A train went local all the way up, and at my stop the escalators were broken so i lugged my two rolly bags up eight flights of stairs. hello, new york.

the monkey had very thoughtfully checked in by phone, asked about dinner, bought groceries, and was cooking when i got home. he had washed the bathtub so i could take a bath. he opened some wine.

this was all quite nice, so i did us the favor of waiting until after dinner to rip open the scab that had formed on The Fight during my absence.

i was trying very hard not to expect that when i left town for a week, and said "i'll be figuring shit out," and "maybe we shouldn't talk all the time when we're supposed to be figuring shit out," that the monkey would get intimidated. i mean, i admit that it occurred to me that if i grew resolute and said some strong words and left the room, maybe upon my return to the room, time alone to contemplate my absence would have softened the monkey's inflexibility on certain matters. and it did, a bit, i guess. but in my dream world, i was coming home to flowers and music and sweetness and abject apologies. and instead, i got flowers and music and sweetness and the same impasse we'd been at before i left.

i pushed us into a talk about what we'd been thinking about during my week away. the truth is that we thought about the same things we thought about before. i had hoped that he would mellow a little; he hoped that there was a way to make me see exactly why he felt he couldn't bend. this was not comforting, and i left the long conversation feeling scared, for the first time.

i've said this to people recently: that on one hand, the idea of this relationship ending makes me chuckle. it just doesn't seem possible. we are so good, and the idea of staying together brings a great deal of joy, and no one wants out--in fact, the idea of "out" seems scary and awful to all concerned. on the other hand, i know that what we're talking about is heavy shit that has real consequences. i don't know how the two get reconciled--the idea of breaking up is laughable, but clearly the idea of separating arrives unbidden into the conversation when one person says " i don't want to live here" and the other says "i don't want to leave."

to top it off, he's at rehearsal today all day and i'm home alone playing the tape of the conversation over and over again in my mind, looking in the mirror at my puffy eyelids.

at the end of the talking last night, we were standing in a hug, and i suddenly started gulping and crying that this was not right. we should not be talking about the possibility of breaking up. even as a hypothetical. this is retarded. neither of us wants this. we want the opposite of this. what is going on? and no one had any answers.

so i think that tonight, when we try evening number two, there won't be any hypotheticals. i think they're too scary and loaded and do more harm than good. i introduced them because i thought forcing one of us to say, if you X than i will Y when Y=leave would scare us into admitting that we were being foolish, would sober us out of any of this "leaving" talk.

and i'm trying to think of a way to close this, and i want to say the same things that came out during the hug. this is so stupid. i can't believe we're having this conversation. you're what i want. and you hear me say it, and look at me, and say: you're what i want, too. and once we've accomplished that part of the conversation, you'd think everything else would be crumbs and details, but there is a big heavy mess that isn't solved and i used to be more angry than scared, and now i'm more scared.

what i want is assurance that we will solve it. it seems ridiculous to suggest that we won't, but last night i feel like i looked out into the void where maybe we don't solve it, and it was so terrible i still feel cold.