Yes, I should not have just come over to the apartment and passed out in bed with you the way I did.
I’d thought about doing it a bunch of times before and always concluded that it would be bad and I should not do it.
You can trust that I’m not going to do it again because, if nothing else, you’ll be in the right to demand the keys back if I do, and that’ll really fuck things up for me if there’s ever a weekend where you’re gone and I want to go over and clear out all my stuff.
Just for the record, I didn’t know you’d be too drunk to say “no” when I came over, and I didn’t try to fuck you. I know that doesn’t make it okay, but it does make it less shitty.
Basically, it’s that I still see you as an enormous source of comfort and company, and miss you terribly. In my own head, I often think that you and I should kind of enjoy each other as much as possible before I move or you get a new boyfriend. It’s weird to me that you don’t feel the same way, but you clearly don’t. It’s like that saying about when a woman makes up her mind.
You sort of talked about this once in the context of neural pathways and how exes still text each other because they’re just so used to that action leading to good chemical rushes. It was like that when I came over. I was just drunk and unhappy and used to lying next to you and feeling better whenever I felt that way for the past two years.
None of this excuses much of anything, I know. Just sort of wanted to spell it out. When I showed up, if you had said no, I would have left.
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“About July Fourth” is an excerpt from Richard Power’s new memoir, Letters from a Heartbroken Pervert. You can purchase the book from Terror House Press here.
Richard Power is the author of Letters from a Heartbroken Pervert, available from Terror House Press.
