Son . . . that you were blowing your nose”). The Smithsonian archives don’t contain a single shard of Macedonian pottery depicting an instance like this. In fact, given the resources available to me, it’s entirely possible that, since the dawn of time, no man has ever been caught doing something this stupid. Which makes me a pioneer, I suppose. So, in an inspired moment, with the winds of history at my back and the gazes of my forefathers fixed upon me, I do the one thing I’m confident they would tell me not to do: I apologize.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I—”
It was a historic miscalculation. Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Abraham Lincoln cringes. From inside his golden sarcophagus, Alexander the Great slaps his forehead. Cain mutters to Abel, “Jesus, what’s the matter with this kid?” I am an idiot for the ages.
She launches out of the bed, pulling the sheet with Her. She’s shouting, What the fuck is wrong with you?! Her face gets redder and redder. Her entire body begins to shake, and great rivers of tears flow down Her cheeks, landing on the floor in a series of epic splashes. She wraps the sheet around Her naked body and begins sobbing, asking, Why would you do that?! Don’t you trust me?! I just lie there in the bed, watching Her mouth move and Her body shake. The years drip away with each tear, the letters and I love yous are shaken loose with each convulsion, and suddenly I can’t summon the energy to do this, not now, and not ever again. We are a dying star in its last cosmic throes. We are a ship with its hull pierced, the arctic water pouring in through the gash. It’s over. Because the truth is, I didn’t trust Her. I haven’t for a while now, for about a million stupid reasons—the smoking and the moving of my shampoo, the overturned cell phone and the hurried long-distance calls, like there was somewhere she had to be or someone she had to be with—and one real reason, one that made me stop calling, and the one that had buried itself in my subconscious and had been gnawing away at my insides for months now: that she didn’t believe in me.
In the end—and this was certainly the end—it wasn’t about who she was (or wasn’t) fucking behind my back, it wasn’t about the secrets she kept from me, it wasn’t about the shampoo. It was something much deeper and more profound than all that. She had doubted my abilities and my dreams and my intentions. She looked at my life as a folly, a children’s crusade. She didn’t have faith in me to write the great rock-and-roll album of our time, to make art and save souls and, sure, maybe even get rich and famous and have hallways lined with platinum plaques. So she kept offering me alternatives—apartments and degrees and fucking Berkeley—when she knew I didn’t want any of them, and she did it because she knew I would fail. She was certain of it, but didn’t have the guts to tell me. Secretly, she probably hoped I’d crash and burn, come back to Her broken and ready to be put out to pasture. That was the breakdown. That was the disconnect. She didn’t trust in me, so why should I trust Her?
My psychiatrist would tell me that I was projecting my insecurities onto Her, that I was frightened of success, but terrified of the alternative. That, subconsciously, I had doomed myself to fail, no matter what the outcome, so I was determined to control at least one aspect of my life: Her. Even if that meant pushing Her away, even if it meant denying myself the one thing that actually made me happy. He was probably right, but at this moment I didn’t feel like listening. She was the fucking anchor that kept me tied to this town, to this life; she was dragging me down and she needed to be cut loose. So that’s exactly what I did.
I probably could’ve done it differently, could’ve explained everything to Her, or sighed that I just couldn’t do this anymore, gathered my clothes, and left. But I’ve never been one to pass up a grand gesture. So as she stands there wrapped in a bedsheet, shaking and red-faced and betrayed, sobbing, Why don’t you trust me? What did I do? I sit up in bed, grab Her phone off the table, and whip