Welcome to Night Vale - The First Ten Years, Year 1: 2009

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

A sometimes hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking, and always entertaining joint memoir by Joseph Fink, cocreator of Welcome to Night Vale, and his wife, writer and performer Meg Bashwiner, chronicling the first ten years of their relationship from both sides. There are two sides to every love story. Coming May 11th. Pre-order your copy at your local bookstore or any of these places: Oblong Books (for Personalized Signed Editions) HarperCollins Amazon Barnes & Noble Books-a-Million Indiebound Bookshop Apple Books Google THE FIRST TEN YEARS BOOK TOUR! Joseph and Meg will be on a virtual book tour in May. Come see them live online via these fantastic booksellers: MAY 11 - Politics & Prose (DC), in conversation with Dylan Marron MAY 12 - Oblong Books (NY), in conversation with Jeffrey Cranor MAY 13 - Powell’s (OR), in conversation with Symphony Sanders MAY 14 - Brookline Booksmith (MA), in conversation with Erin McKeown MAY 17 - Malaprop’s Bookstore (NC), in conversation with Jonny Sun MAY 19 - The Booksmith (CA), in conversation with Mara Wilson MAY 20 - Books & Books (FL) MAY 24 - Anderson’s Bookshop (IL), in conversation with Hal Lublin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A warning up top that unlike our usual, welcome to Nightfail episodes, there is some adult language and ideas in this episode. So if you are listening with children, that's just something to know. Hi, Joseph Fink here. And I wrote a memoir with Meg Bashwinner, who is the voice of the Nightfail Credits, the MC of the touring Nightfail Live Show, and also she is my wife. And this is a memoir we wrote together about the first 10 years of our relationship from 2009 to 2019, told year by year, with each of us writing about the year without consulting the other. As you might imagine, we don't quite remember things the same way. It comes out on May 11th, and info for how to pre-order it, including personalized, signed pre-orders, are at welcome to nightfield.com, and you can

click on books. But in the meantime, we wanted to give you a little taste of what the book is like. So here is the first year from that book, 2009, first told from my point of view and then from Meg's. And yes, this is us reading the audiobook. We performed the audiobook ourselves. It was a lot of fun to do. I think it turned out really well. So if you want to buy it on audio, it's there as well. Okay. Let's get to it. 2009 still feels like present tense. A decade passes so quickly. We met in the East Village, selling tickets for a downtown performance art collective called the New York Neofuturus,

working in a tiny cubicle of a box office where the inner wall was a cork board littered with programs for shows that had closed years before. Meg was interning with the Neofutris, and I had recently auditioned for them, and not been cast. Having nowhere else to go in New York, I subsequently showed up every weekend to their show, volunteering at their box office so that I wouldn't have to pay for tickets. The crash of 2008 had left me with few savings and no job. We were 22, and full of the posturing performance that substitutes for personality at that age. In a person's early 20s, the human being who eventually will form naturally with time has to be hastily scraped together

from the shaky models of movies and social media. Meg was a constant smoker then, and so my first impression of her was a rolling wave of cigarette smell. My sense of smell is sensitive, and neither I nor anyone in my family ever smoked, so it set that first meeting on edge. But she also was clearly smart and determined

and so entirely different from most people I had ever known, a slice of Jersey in my, until then, entirely Californian life. I didn't quite know what to make of her, but then I was such an uncertain mess at that age that I didn't know what to make of myself either. I don't remember us getting along well the first night we met, but I think we both knew that the conflict was as fake as the version of ourselves we were performing.

There were deeper, quieter versions of us, waiting to unfurl, and it was in those silent places that the heat between us lingered. The night we met, we went with the cast of the performance we had been selling tickets for, to a restaurant in the East Village that doesn't exist anymore. Most restaurants in the East Village don't exist anymore. During the evening, it somehow came up that Meg loved seafood, and I hate even the smell of seafood. Kevin R. Free, a member of the Neofutris, and a future member of the Welcome to Night Vale cast,

laughed and said, well, you two will never have sex. We would tell that story many times in the future, and Meg would always end it the same way. And he was right. New York in 2009 was teetering over the gap between the mythology of a thriving city for dreamers and the reality of the worst economic collapse in 80 years.

I had no job and no prospect of one for six months after moving to the city. There were job fairs in Herald Square where the line to even get into the building was an hour or too long, all for the privilege of being the 1,000th resume deposited on one of the eight tables inside. It was clear to all of us that the future of our generation had been gambled away by the previous generations, and now there was nothing left for us. After several months, I found a minimum wage temp job at a refrigeration chemical company, a 90-minute subway commute from Windsor Terrace,

the quiet, quasi-suburban neighborhood in Brooklyn, that was the most central area I could afford. I remember being ecstatic that I found that job. I was let go after two weeks. There were few companies hiring, not when they could grab temps, throw a few tasks at them, and discard them as easily as the trash bags full of resumes

going out to the curb every day. It was in the wake of this disaster that Meg and I met. It didn't feel like an unhappy time exactly. I remember it fondly. But we were survivors of a shipwreck floating on adjacent debris, and that must have defined how we related to each other. Meg and I were only friends. I was in the messy process of ending the relationship I had been in since I was 14.

I had never been an adult outside of that relationship, and I didn't know what that even looked like. but I knew that I definitely needed to be single for a while, so I resisted any feeling that might have been there with Meg, but that feeling, in retrospect, was undeniable. Looking back at Facebook posts, at a time when people our age used Facebook, before it became primarily a place to radicalize boomers,

there is an almost aggressive internet flirtation between the two of us. Like many people, we were doing online what we hadn't found a way to do in real life. Meg went through and liked every Facebook status I had ever posted, which is a form of flirtation that would be difficult to explain to previous generations. What new forms of flirtation will young people invent in the future? Truly, bold frontiers of science await. I would often publicly proclaim my interest in being single, as a defense mechanism for how badly that was going for me. The truth was I had no understanding of how to be single, and no model in my life for how that worked. My parents met on the first day of their freshman year of college, sitting at the same

table in the dining hall. My aunt and uncle had been together since they were 13 years old. There was a reason I had been in the same relationship from 14 years old until I attempted a clean break by moving across the country. My natural state was monogamy. Still is, I guess. One night in May of 2009, Meg and I ate at a fancy-ish Mexican restaurant off Houston Street that I think since closed and had it space filled by a Chipotle. I was eating a lot of Mexican food at the time because I missed the West Coast, and I was always disappointed because it is nearly impossible to get decent Mexican food in New York City. Long-time residents of New York will always insist that this isn't true,

and to prove it they'll give you the name of their go-to place, and you'll go there, and the food will be bad to mediocre. My theory is that New York has a reputation for great food, not because its food is noticeably better, but because the people that live there have shrunk their expectations and don't eat outside the city much. But I get away from the romance. Meg considered me from across the table.

Between us, our little lava stone bowl of guacamole, that is, for some reason, a mandatory element of every New York City Mexican meal. There was a fission there, But when you're 22, there is a fission everywhere. Your body has more energy than it will ever have from that point forward, and you project that energy out onto the world. That is why, in retrospect, the world feels brighter, more vivid and more real when we are young.

The world fades as we fade. So my experience of the city that rainy spring was a crackling, humming one. Meg eyed me from across the table. We were just friends, after all. Just friends who spent most of our time together and often ate meals together, but just friends. She was quiet for a moment, holding my gaze. And then she said, I just realized something about you. What?

I can't tell you. She had realized she liked me, of course. I knew that, of course. She knew I knew that. We both pretended we didn't know it. We finished our food. I went to my new apartment in Chelsea, the one I moved to because living in Windsor Terrace did not feel enough like the city life.

I slept in the only bedroom, and my roommate, an unemployed photographer a few decades my senior, slept in the living room. Meg and I were sliding down a slope toward an ending we both knew was coming, but both pretended we didn't. Or maybe at the time I truly didn't know. It is impossible to consider the past divorced from my knowledge of how it is. turned out. April turned to May, turned to June, and the air went sticky. It was my first summer in the city, where the garbage rots in double time, but the parks become intoxicating in the

evening, laughing gaggles of people hanging together on the grass and on the concrete. That first summer, I remember it rained constantly. I had never seen storms like that. My native Southern California does occasionally get rain, despite our reputation, but New York storms kick down your door, hit you with a fire hose, and then are gone in minutes. California rain nurtures. New York rain roughs up. In early June, some high school friends of Makes were playing at the bitter end in the West Village, and she suggested that we could go see the show together, and then she could stay the night, so she wouldn't have to drive back to her parents' house in Jersey. She showed up at my door, all elaborate makeup and straightened hair,

completely beautiful and smelling of cigarettes, and probably wearing her ex-boyfriend's fedora, which she wore constantly that spring. I looked at her, and I knew, but I didn't know that I knew. There was a lot of knowing, but not knowing, I knew, when I was younger, and probably now, too. We ate dinner with my roommate, got uncomfortably high, and then went to the show. On top of our high, we got drunk.

The world went jangly. I took a picture of the graffiti-filled bathroom of the bitter end, and it was only by later checking the date on that blurry photo in my silver flip phone that we would be able to confirm our anniversary. Yes, we count this as the start, and why not? On the way home, Meg wanted to pet a police horse. I wanted to be nowhere near the police. The street staggered and swayed, and then we were on 7th Avenue, across the street from my apartment, and she stopped me.

I like you, she said. I'm not a good person to like, I said, which came out of the script of some macho fantasy of being single in New York, and was, it transpired, not remotely true. but the urge to kiss her was irresistible. So much about her was irresistible. The next morning, I gave her some money to help with the morning after pill. A day later, I would write on Facebook. 36 hours and a long shower,

and I still have a play written on my arm. Ten years later, we would read that and not remember what it was in reference to, but it sure sounds like us. The summer of 2009 was the summer when my fragile ability to cope finally deserted me. I don't know what combination of factors

sparked that change, but there are any number of possibilities. Six months earlier, I had moved away from my parents' house for the first time post-college, when the move is no longer a temporary adventure, but an understanding that in all likelihood you will never come back.

I was living on the opposite coast from the one I knew. In a city I wasn't in, entirely sure I wanted to live in. I had my first full-time, non-temp, post-college adult job, a low-level customer service position at a prepaid debit card company that I absolutely hated. I was starting a new relationship, and my father was dying, without any clear indication of whether we had a year left, or 10 years, or two days. As it turns out, we had two years exactly from that summer.

All these factors piled up, and I collapsed under them. That was the summer when Air stopped working for me. I would gasp and gasp, but my lungs would never fill. On a crowded street in Manhattan, I would drown. I saw a doctor once who gave me tranquilizers that only made me more anxious. I saw a therapist once, who then spent the rest of the year hounding me about the amount I owed him, so that was overall a net negative. There was an ambulance ride and ER visit

after I was convinced I was having a heart attack at work. Anxiety hasn't exactly gotten easier in the 10 years I've lived with it since, but it was a stranger to me that summer and a threatening stranger at that. One night in July, a month after that first night, I called Meg mid-panic attack, and she drove in from New Jersey.

She brought me the DVDs of the first two seasons of Saturday Night Live and a box of chocolate-covered strawberries. I took the bakery string from that box, cut it in half, and we tied the pieces around each of our wrists. A semi-ironic friendship bracelet to remind me of when Meg was there for me exactly when and how I needed her to be. We've worn matching bakery string around our wrists ever since. The string is replaced occasionally as it wears out. Sometimes we remember to do that on our anniversary, but often we forget, and just do it whenever it is needed. Romantic gestures are great, but you don't need to build a life around them. I'm very particular about what goes on my body.

I hate wearing ties. I don't like the feeling of jewelry on me, so I don't wear my wedding ring. I'd probably be happiest in a nudist colony. But I do wear a bakery string around my wrist, and I always will. To me, that is the marker that means something. Unlike a wedding ring, it's something we made for ourselves. Meg's family had a small house down on Long Beach Island, off the coast of New Jersey. Growing up in Southern California, my images of East Coast beaches were based on probably images of New England, rocks and lighthouses, and cold waves breaking against snowy shores. It blew my mind to encourage

counter, fine sand, and warm water. She took me there that first summer. It was just the two of us. We had pinia colladas made from a packet mix, bought at a liquor store off island. And in the morning she made us bagel sandwiches, bulging with egg and cheese and tailor ham, a New Jersey specialty that is as good a testament to New Jersey as anything else. Simple, delicious, and with absolutely no pretense. After going back to work at the prepaid debit card job in Manhattan, I would get egg and cheese bagel sandwiches in the mornings from the bodega by my work, because they reminded me of her. As a result, I gained a good deal of weight, literally becoming fat on the memory of her. Long Beach Island also became the only place that summer,

where I wasn't a continual walking panic attack. My fear was of death, and for some reason it felt impossible that I would die in a place that beautiful, which is as rational a belief as any I had during that time. Looking back, it was likely that it wasn't the island, but the woman attached to it that felt like the stability the rest of my life was missing. She and the sunshine and the outdoor shower with an open beer and the warm waves all became one unified thing, and that thing was the start of my life on the East Coast. And so the start of my life on the East Coast. And so the start of adult life altogether. In October, I decided to get my first tattoo to celebrate my first year in New York City. My plan was I'd get a tattoo for every major milestone in my life. That idea was

pretty quickly scrapped, and my current plan is I get a tattoo every few years when I get the urge, which is much more doable. I spent days researching and found an artist in the East Village who had an impressive portfolio. Meg volunteered to go with me, and so the two of us wandered around the neighborhood, waiting for my appointment time. I was all nerves, my baseline anxiety providing a foundation for the towering edifice of first-time tattoo jitters. And so Meg did her best to distract me. There was a wall on the street that said, post no bills, and we started thinking of all the bills we could post on that wall. Bill Clinton. Bill Nye. Once we ran out of famous bills, we started improvising. Billiam Shakespeare. Billiam H. Macy. Bob the Billder. Meg bought a large bag of frosted animal crackers,

with the promise that I could eat the whole thing once the tattoo was done. So how long have you been together? asked the tattoo artist. A broad and bearded man named Chad, who was busy stabbing the state flowers of California and New York, a poppy and a rose, into my forearm. Oh, we're not, it's not, we're just, we mumbled. And Chad rolled his eyes. It's like that, huh? He said.

Chad saw right through us, or, more specifically, he saw right through me. After the tattoo, I ate the entire bag of frosted animal crackers, and the next morning, Meg helped me wash the tattoo for the first time. That fall, I finally gave up on my stupid idea of being single, and made what was obvious official. Meg and I became an exclusive couple. My parents visited that December. I'm glad of so many things, but that Meg and my father got to know each other for a while before he died is one of them. She remembers him, too, so she can understand my grief. But that was all before, back when he was only dying and not yet gone.

We gave them tours of the East Village and of Chelsea. We went to markets and to our favorite Thai restaurant on 7th Avenue, and we saw a little night music starring Angela Lansbury in her last Broadway role. On the high line, an elevated train track turned to public park on the west side of Manhattan. Meg and I walked through the snow. Behind us, my mom took a photo that still hangs in her hallway. In it, we wrap our arms around each other, bundled in thick winter coats. Our faces aren't visible, but our heads lean toward each other, talking quietly with the urgent conspiracy of early love. Hanging over us is a

billboard, advertising a whiskey, or else a car, or else perfume. The text on the billboard says, all I need is all I've got. I don't remember the exact specific details about waking up the morning of Joseph's and my first date. Probable stimuli were the four walls of my childhood bedroom, a floor covered in a mix of dirty and clean clothes, and a ceiling with a dusty swirling fan. I graduated college the summer before

and promptly moved in with my parents in Jersey. I had majored in make-pretend. read theater arts, and the economy had just collapsed, and they were generously willing to have me. So I boomeranged right back home. Lots of people my age were in the same boat and completely miserable. But luckily for me, living with my parents was all right. My parents were the cool parents who treated me and my friends like adults. We could be ourselves around them.

They didn't give me shit about staying out late or smoking too much weed. It was the general annoyance of not having anything of my own, and of being at a holding pattern that kept circling adulthood, but was continually unable to land, that frustrated me. Things were tough at the beginning before I had a job, and I was just sitting around every day, making the house messy by depressively existing in it. Eventually, I settled into the millennial must-have lifestyle

of two or more jobs cobbled together to still not make enough money to afford New York City rent. As a result, I was rarely home to piss my parents off by abandoning my shoes in a walkway or leaving the front porch ashtray overflowing. I woke up the morning of our first date as me, a desperately lonely, 23-year-old with lots of feelings. I was sad a lot, depressed a lot. I was pining for the life I had left behind the year before, my senior year in college. It was a hard fall going from really thriving,

in an educational and social environment, to being slammed into the reality of half a life back in the suburbs with an unclear path. I worked a day job and insurance claims and a night job interning with the New York Neo-Futurists, an experimental theater company in New York City, where I had met and befriended Joseph a few months prior to this day. He had been on vacation for the past two weeks. While he was away, I missed him. and that missing him inspired me to decide that I liked him enough to risk our friendship and to make a play for him. I had a lot of friends and zero boyfriends. Today was going to be the day. I texted with Joseph about our plans for the night as I drank iced coffee and smoked weed sitting on a beach chair in my parents' garage.

We planned to see my friend from high school's band. Then, after the show, I would sleep over at Joseph's apartment. because I was bridge and tunnel trash, and it would be too late for me to drive home. He didn't have a couch or an air mattress or anything, so the plan was for me to just sleep in his bed, like single adult people with a history of flirtation do. I began my physical preparations for our date. My beauty regimen consisted of straightening the humidity waves out of my box-died red hair,

putting on too much gold eye shadow, and a ring of black eyeliner around. on my bloodshot eyes, and mismatch concealer on my adult acne. I wore fake silver jewelry that I was low-key allergic to. Hives are beauty. Then, on a slutty whim, I put in my tongue piercing, which I had thought had closed up,

but actually, after the application of brute force, had not. I selected the ring with the image of the Virgin Mary on the stud, ordered from the internet for $24 while I was still in copy, and I had a total of $42 in my bank account. If you needed a precise example of who I was at this time in my life, let this detail be that example. I dressed in some sort of late-aughts jersey party girl trying to catch a dick outfit, complete with black lace bottom leggings and a mini skirt.

I finished the ensemble with my black Steve Madden high-heeled cowboy boots, as they wore my signature at the time. I thought I looked dope as hell. I had no idea I would think back upon these clothes as I put them in the giveaway pile and feel a sticky combination of deep shame and confident pride. Yes, I could have passed for a mildly goth roommate from the TV show Jersey Shore, whose wardrobe was a mishmash of sale items from the junior section at Marshalls and a smattering of sold-as-as-is capsule pieces acquired from the hot topic. But this was my look. I didn't have much agency over my sputtering to a start adulthood, but I could wear cowboy boots anywhere I wanted.

They gave me the confidence to loudly stomp through this uncertain time in my life. No one fucks with a cowboy. Now that I was coated in my lycra nickel-plated and plethora suit of armor and feeling good, I drove my Volkswagen Golf into the city from Jersey. I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Lincoln Sunnel Helix while smoking camel light-wides and presumably listening,

and slurring along to John Mayer, because of my oversized tongue ring. I vividly remember parking the next block over from Joseph's new apartment in a choice spot. I'm a proud parallel parker and sleuth for free parking in New York City. This remains unchanged. This is also one of the few details about this date that I am not embarrassed to share. I walked up to his apartment at the corner of 16th Street and 7th,000. Avenue. I had been to his apartment several times before. I helped him move into it from his place in Brooklyn. Helping someone move is the ultimate early 20s flirtation. His super intense doorman

grilled me about who I was and where I was going. This would continue every time I entered his apartment for the next year. He would yell the apartment number at me, two E, two E, two E! And I would reply, yes, two E. Thank you. The doorman was all. also named Joseph, which likely aided in the continued confusion. Joseph, the doorman, eventually let me upstairs to Joseph the object of my desires apartment. My high-heeled cowboy boots clicking across the tiled hallway, counting down the final moments of the time in my life that was firmly before our relationship. Joseph opened the door and immediately said, You straightened your hair! My spot was instantly blown up. He caught me making an effort,

to be desirable. I steered into it and responded by showing him my Virgin Mary tongue ring to really double down, because, hey, if he can see your cards, why not throw them on the table and show off how good your hand is? This exchange occurred in the hallway. He eventually let me inside. We caught up a bit. He was bronzed from his recent vacation to Hawaii. I had never been. It seemed like a magical place that I would never get to go to because it was outside of the tri-state area. We drank whiskey and smoked some weed with his very strange, middle-aged, out-of-work fashion photographer, roommate-slash-landlord. Joseph played the guitar for us. He didn't know any John Mayer or DMV. The only covers he knew were Leonard Cohen. I was experiencing a paradigm shift. This was not the status quo. Every boy with a guitar crush I had ever had,

knew those sweet, sweet sing-along jams. What do you mean you don't know crash into me or your body is a wonderland? I said out loud. Do you play guitar because you like music and not just to get laid? Weird, I thought to myself. At this point in my life, I was still fresh out of college. I could really drink. I also smoked weed every day at the time, so I was used to its effects.

Joseph, on the other hand, was not a party girl pothead and had a little trouble keeping up with me. I remember him repeating, I am very intoxicated over and over again. I thought at best we get on with our night and get him some fresh air. So the three of us, Joseph, his aged sad roommate, and I, took a cab downtown to the bitter end on Bleaker Street to see this band. We were in one of those cinematic New York City moments as we rode down 7th Avenue in a yellow taxi to the West Village. The city was all lit up and filled with people. who are making their way out of their winter hibernation and onto the warmed sidewalks to bathe in the gentle humidity and faint garbage smell of the late spring weekend night.

When we pulled up to the bitter end, his roommate stayed in the taxi, stating that he was too drunk and high to be around people. We hadn't realized this at the time, but his roommate only ever left the house once a day to go to the gym and the vitamin store. We were still pleasantly unaware that he was a shut-in who would grow to hate and resent our youth. We rocked up to the bar, and I ordered a drink, probably like a fucking Bacardi and Diet Coke, as that was the unofficial drink of the times for North Jersey party girls, the close second place being Red Bull and vodka. It is a miracle I survived. I ordered water for Joseph because I wanted him to not throw up and ruin my plans to pounce on him later, like a jungle cat.

I saw my friend from high school, and he was surprised and touched that I came to his show. I was mostly using this show as a badge to show off to Joseph that I was cool, that I knew people who did things. I knew people who knew John Mayer covers on guitar. I think we stayed for his set. It was unmemorable, which could have been due to the content, my nervousness about making a move on Joseph, or the Bacardian diets. likely the combo. We decided to walk back to Joseph's apartment to enjoy the finally comfortable to be outside weather

that is incredibly rare in New York. Joseph was coming down from being too high and I was pretty smushy drunk at that point. We stumbled out and up through the West Village. A few minutes into the walk, I stopped in my cowboy boot-trotten tracks. I saw a police horse and I wanted to say hi. The difference between me and most people is that when they come across a police horse, they see a police officer. And me, I see a horse.

And that is what white horse girl privilege will do to you. I walked over and started talking to the officer and asking if I could pet the horse and asking what kind of horse it was and blathering on with the confidence that only straightened hair and a liter of rail rum and Diet Coke can bring forth. Meanwhile, Joseph was awkwardly standing by and thinking, I am way too high to be talking to a cop right now, even if that cop is a horse. After I finished petting the horse and Joseph realized he wasn't going to be arrested for knowing me, we continued uptown and I reached for his hand.

This was my move. Friends don't hold hands. He reluctantly took it and we walked a few more blocks. When we got to the corner of his street, we stopped, and I told him that I like-liked him. He said, I'm not a good person to like. And then he kissed me. We clumsily made it back to his apartment,

passing his shoddy doorman up the stairs and into his room. This next part I do remember with clarity, as much clarity as something as delicate as memory can allow. But this delicate memory is just for me. I can summarize in a list of adjectives. clumsy, awkward, sexy, new, hilarious, fun, intimate, amateur, and a good start. I didn't sleep much. It's always been impossible for me to sleep next to someone after sleeping with them for the first few times. My insecurities, the adrenaline, and my need to always be in

control result in a perfect storm of sleeplessness. I learned the cracks and contours of his bedroom ceiling like I would come to know the cracks and contours of his being. The next morning, I kissed him goodbye and took myself directly to the CVS pharmacy, where I got to experience the acute humiliation of having to buy the morning after pill from a girl I went to high school with. There were two women working behind the counter that day, which was a relief. Regardless of the power dynamic between pharmacy sales clerk and patron, sisterhood is always welcome in times of family planning emergencies.

One of the women was being very shoudy about customers' orders and prescriptions. There was a long line, and she was working quickly and loudly. I did not want her. I could imagine her hollering. Plan B! Plan B! Do we have any more of the morning after pill? This chick right here needs it, while pointing to me, with my formerly straightened hair, now curling from the late spring humidity, and the rolling around on Joseph's Bachelor error unmatched sheets,

still donning last night's slut suit, and the fucking cowboy boots. I did not want her to be my sales representative for this particular purchase. The other sales clerk was the girl I went to high school with. She was a year below me. We were not friends, but I come from a very small town, so we definitely had mutual friends and likely worked on a few school plays together. She definitely knew who I was. I remember her as a quiet and clean girl.

I was half relieved when she was my clerk. We made eye contact, and I mouthed the words, plan B. She retrieved a pack and rang me up in total silence. I handed over my $75 and was thankful that it was just one person who knew me who was aware what I was up to the night before, not the whole CVS full of strangers. What would you rather? One person, who very lightly knows you, to know that you were having unprotected sex,

or the entirety of the Cedar Grove CVS on a Sunday morning. I realized as I wrote this that I could have just gone to another CVS. They are literally fucking everywhere. I chalk it up to being exhausted, and the adrenaline from having just leaped over the edge of something big. Joseph still owes me for his half of the $75, but at present day I'm willing to forgive that debt as an in-kind contribution to our future.

Earlier that spring, I sat next to Joseph on his bed, as it was his only piece of furniture. We were just friends at the time. I felt an odd click in my body the moment my butt touched the bed next to him. It was that strange feeling of intuitive recognition that I had only felt a few times in my life before. It's the feeling of scraping the first layer away of what will become a well-worn groove. When I felt it sitting next to Joseph on his bed, it took me by surprise. I was not expecting to feel this in a moment of casually plopping down next to a friend on his sole piece of furniture. I filed the feeling away and waited for life to bring it into focus.

This night was when that feeling started to become clearer. Joseph didn't want a girlfriend. He made that known. He told me, I'm not a good person to like. But then he kissed me, so I was like, cool, cool, Cool, we'll see about that. He had been in a long-term relationship for years and had recently escaped it. He wanted to be a single guy in New York City with flings and flirtations.

I wanted desperately to be someone's girlfriend, with cuddling and no longer fucking strangers. We were mixing those desires together that night, an alchemy that led to a lot of emotional bruising in the months to come. But on that humid, late spring, rum-soaked night, those desires were our bottom. brick, our basement, our beginning.