Well, we broke up so we could see other people, which I don’t think either of us really wanted all that much but felt we should do, anyway, just because that’s what you do. So he stayed in New York and I went back west and got into an enormous fight with my parents who hadn’t been all that keen on my going out to live with him in the first place and dropping out of college to do it and the upside of all that was I was more or less on my own after that. It wasn’t so bad though I was stretched pretty thing working two jobs and going to school. You could just about do that then, pay for it yourself, I mean, you can’t do that now. But I saw a couple of people, other history people, generally, and fooled around and felt kind of hollow about it and kind of resented him for suggesting it in the first place.
Then he graduated and came out and followed me around for awhile and it all felt so familiar and so comforting that we were back together sooner rather than later. I asked him about it, one time, wanting to hear how he’d taken the time apart and offering my own experiences in exchange but he wouldn’t talk about it and got pretty hostile when I asked, which probably meant that he’d been alone the whole time, or at least felt that way.