Sora: I'm still getting used to having long hair.

Me: You had long hair when we met.

Sora: I didn't. I've never had hair this long.

Me: You did, too. I have pictures.

​Sora: Why do you have pictures of me on your computer?

Me: We Dated. For. Three. Years.

Sora: Oh, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeea.

July 2006: He crashes a car again and again into a van.  Low speeds.  No injuries.  Slight damage.  He has no insurance.  Back at the house, a kiss, an argument, his body, a slammed door.

August 2006: A vacation.  A lie about his father's health.

January 2007: He picks up the belongings he left behind.  A kiss on the forehead.  Never coming back.

April 2007: An apology.  His body.  A war with a horrid roommate.  His body, loud.

October 2008: Sora calls with the same as usual story.  His father and he blah blah blah fight and out of the house and what to do.  I offer him a chance to stay with me, no strings, no implied relationship.  He does not take it.

After a couple of months of me offering over and over a place, he comes up to visit.  I ask my roommates if they mind if Sora stays with us.  As long as he helps pay some bills, they don't mind.

Just before he moves up, I offer to do deliveries for the company I work for while the usual driver was on vacation.  The usual driver never comes back from that vacation.  And so, for the winter of 2009, I spend a few days a week driving a giant maroon van with a cartoon on the side.  I drive blocks out of my way to avoid playgrounds and schools.

I am working while he moves up.  He calls to let me know there is a party going on across the street, and that I should come.

"A party?"  Manny says.  "So there."

So Manny and Jim hop in the back of my cartoony van, and we drive to the party across the street from my house.  We are barely parked when someone is bouncing drunkily toward the van, befreckled of smile and hugs.  And it is not Sora.

"Hi!" The Slut Across The Street swoons.  "Who is Sora?"

Here's how it ends: Over a table mugged up for  beer pong, The Slut Across The Street asks me if Sora and I are dating.  We aren't.  We are most specifically not dating to the point where I even said that just because he needed to live with me, didn't mean he was beholden to a relationship with me.  But we are sleeping together.  And he does kiss me before I leave for work.  And while it wouldn't kill me if he dated someone else, it would deeply wound me if he chose this drunk, worthless slut over me.  So I lie.  "Yes.  He's my boyfriend.  Don't."

Here's how it ends: Sora and I head back home together and make out.  But he has left his iPod in his car, and goes out to get it.  The Slut Across The Street intercepts him with his face.  His fucken tongue.  His bloodshot eyes.

Here's how it ends: For once, Sora is honest.  He tells me about the kiss, prepared for my anger.  Is surprised when I say "Look, the guy's a total slutbag.  You're hot.  He kissed you.  Are you going to start dating him?"

"No.  I don't even really like him."

"Then we're fine."  Right?

Here's how it ends: I still love him.  I know he spends time with The Slut Across The Street when I'm at work.  I know something is happening.  I don't like it, but it's not how we are supposed to end.  So I try and pretend everything is fine.  And it would be except there's another party across the street and no one invites me.  I call Sora, and when he does not pick up, I call one of my roommates.  And there is planned karaoking, but Sora doesn't want to go and The Slut Across The Street doesn't want to go, so they come to the house, and everyone else leaves.  We play Mario Kart, and The Slut keeps looking at me with more desire than guilt. 

I am not drinking.  His face is a plaster bust of plaster.  Sora is prickly at both of us.

It is the next day when my roommate tells me that eveyone went to karaoke because The Slut Across The Street told everyone that me, him, and Sora were going to have a threesome.

Here's how it ends: An ultimatum.  "Sora.  Please.  You don't owe me anything" but money "but not him.  It's making things....difficult."

My roommate is friends with The Slut Across The Street, but he doesn't like his ethics.  Doesn't like the potential drama always brewing in his always beered up brain.  "It needs to stop."

Here's how it ends: My roommate gets him a job so he can contribute to bills.  He spends his money on I don't know but not me or bills.

"Adam, it needs to stop.  You need to talk to him."

Here's how it ends: We talk.  Via Instant Messanger.  I come up with an arrangement.  A terrible terrible arrangement.  Our relationship will be purely sexual.  He can fall in love with whoever he wants, safely fuck whoever he wants, but as long as he lives with me....

"Your life."  JBoB says, when I explain the arrangement to him, "is not real.   Relationships like that don't happen.  They don't work.  They destroy everything."

But it's so much worse than that.

Here's how it ends: Sora comes home from work and says the arrangement is fine.

But I couldn't really treat a stranger like this for sex.  Certainly not him.

Here's how it ends: A drifting.  Sora passing out on the couch.

One night he insists on playing a video game to the end.  And when the credits roll he starts calling out for his mother and then blacks out.

Here's how it ends: Slumped over my shoulder for the third night in a row.  I carry him to a bed we share nonsexually.  I can't keep doing this.  I can't keep doing this.

"He can't keep doing this."  My roommate says.  "He just sits at home all day when he doesn't work, playing video games on my TV.  He doesn't pay any bills.  He just...It's not that I don't like him.  He's a good kid."  kid kid kid kid kid kid kid "I just don't know how much longer I can put up with him."

Here's how it ends: My roommates throw a fake prom at a local bar.  The Slut's favorite bar.  And we all go.  And we're all excruciatingly nice to each other.  But it's actual niceness.  We all appear to be okay.  And there is dancing.  And Sora is drunk, but not horribly so.  And he says something funny, and I lean in and kiss him.  And I say "I love you."

And he says.  "I know."

Here's how it ends: In the living room.  We are talking about whether or not we're in a relationship.  I make some throwaway joke about how he moved out of our last apartment while I was in Texas to take care of his father.

And he finally says it.  "My father never had a heart attack."

"I know.  I've always known."

"I just didn't love you.  I don't love you."

Here's how it ends.  A fucken cliche.  I am for the first time I can remember crying, actually crying.  In the shower so no one will hear me.  This is entirely my everything fault.  I told him I wouldn't do this.  I told him we'd be fine as just friends.  Why do we keep lying to each other?

Here's how it ends.  A party at our house.  Everyone from our house and the house across the street except the slut.  A cook  out.  Beer pong.  Promise of dinner and karaoke.   When no one invites me, I invite myself.

Sora follows me into the house when I go to get changed.  "Adam, we shouldn't go."  He says.  "This is a bad idea.  Let's just stay home.  You and me."

The Slut will be there.  So my roommates don't want me there.  They are afraid of drama.  Which hightens the drama, because I no longer worry about Sora and The Slut, but I worry that The Slut and Sora's non-relationship is hurting my living situation, my friendship with all the people we mutually know.

Here's how it ends: We go out to dinner.  And when I announce I am going, several people decide not to go.  It is me, Sora, one roommate, one of the guys who lives upstairs, and his girlfriend, who lives with The Slut.  We are to meet The Slut for Mexican food, and then go to karaoke.

The Slut is there before we are.  He is smoking and not very much talking, so Sora goes gattling tongue.  "Mexican food poop is the worst." kid kid kid kid kid kid kid "....poop....poop...."

My roommate laughs uncomfortably.  "You know, every time we end up going out you always end up talking shit.  It's like you do actually know shit, but nothing else."

Here's how it ends: I left my wallet in my other pants when I got changed, and I need to go back and get it.  I tell everyone not to wait up.  I'll be back.  And I run full-intentioned back home to find my other roommate crying. 

"It's over."  She says.  "He doesn't love me."

And we hug, and we talk, and we play Mario Kart, and I call Sora to tell him I won't be back.  And she calls my roommate, to tell him we're not going to meet them there.  And we laugh a lot.  And things are okay.

Here's how it ends: Things are not ok.  The couple fights.  Sora and The Slut flirt enough that my roommate decides the night is over, and everyone should go home.  So they walk home. 

He arrives first.  He sits down at the kitchen table and says "Everyone else is about five minutes behind me.  Look.  Adam.  He's got to go.  This was a nice drama free house before he got here and now....He's a nice" don't say it "guy" thank you "but I hate all of them right now, and I need a break.  And I can't break from him if he's living in the same house with me."

Which is reasonable.  And he lived here first.  He invited me into this apartment.  "Okay."

"It doesn't have to be now.  Or tomorrow.  Or in a week.  Just...he needs to start working on a plan out of here."  And my roommate takes out a knife and stabs back and forth between his splayed out fingers.  "I'm sorry."

"No."  I say.  "It's okay."

"We'll all be single!"  My just dumped roommate says.  And we laugh.  And we laugh our way through a full hour with no Sora and no couple and no Slut.

After two hours, the others go to bed.

After three, I am looking out the window, and watching The Slut's house.  The guy upstairs and The Slut's roommate, walk across the street and upstairs to his apartment.

"Was Sora with you?"  I ask.

"Ummmmm." 

Which is worse than a yes.

Here's how it ends: Hour four I pack his belongings under the guise of cleaning the room. I am not kicking him out, I'm just....organizing.

"Hi."  says Sora.  He is all smiles and drink.  "You're cleaning your room!"  There is no y in our.  "That's...." and the smile fades."that's a box full of my stuff."

Here's how it ends: He won't stay.  Not another night.  Not another minute.  "It's embarrassing."  He says.  "But I get it.  I definitely get it."  And he starts carrying boxes out to his car.

"Don't leave." please don't leave please don't leave "I am packing all our stuff while I clean."

"You want me to go."

No.  "Eventually.  But not tonight."

"We didn't even do anything."

"It's not...look.  My roommate got you a job, hoping you'd contribute money to the house, and you haven't paid us a cent.  You're always drunk."

He laughs. 

"What's so funny?"  I ask.  Also laughing.  Though I don't know why.

"The last time we lived together it was all lies.  I lied about my feelings, about my father, about everything.  And this time...I like you.  I don't love you, but I really like you, so I tried to be honest.  But it's the same thing.  We  just don't...we just don't."

Here's how it ends: We are standing apart on the porch.  We are both smiling.  "Promise me something."

"Maybe."

"When you write about this.  Let it end with the word pathetic.  Because that's what we are.  That's what I am.  Pathetic."

"No.  No you're not.  And we're not.  I'm sorry it's over."  It's actually, I'm pretty sure over.  "But it's not...I'm not sorry we met.  I wouldn't give up knowing you.  I l...I'm glad for the fun times."

"Pathetic."  He says.

But I mean it.  I would erase Ryan if I could.  I never liked Elvis.  David I could go either way with. I wouldn't rid my world of Ben, but I don't even understand how I used to be attracted to him.  Everyone inbetween felt like filler.  But Sora.  I don't think I will ever be able to say I loved Sora.  Because I don't think I will ever be out of love with him.  I don't always like him very much.  I kind of hate what the lies put us through, but you can't really have hate without love.  An enormous weight of fucken love.  Even if what we had wasn't noble, the fact that we kept trying was.  I don't think that or him was a mistake.  I will move on.  I will find someone else.  I will be happy.  And I hope he will be too.  And I think that's enough.  I think we were worth it.

2009 was a terrible year for my phone.  And, frankly, 2010 doesn't look to be much better.  I had three phones die, one of which I lost twice before it committed hare-kiri.  It was difficult for people to get a hold of me, and difficult for me to return phone calls, as, when I don't have a phone, I don't think to call people.  I'm also not terribly good at being in touch with people when I do have my phone.  It's not that I'm self-absorbed, I'm environmentally-absorbed.  If I'm at work, I'm thinking of comics.  If I'm on the bus, I'm thinking about where I'm going.  If I'm bed, I'm thinking of Sora.  Rarely am I thinking, I should be on the phone with someone!

None of these reasons are why I didn't call The Slut Across The Street back, even though he'd given me his number several times.

The first time I got his number was New Year's Eve 2009.  Since 1999, there has been only one New Year's Eve that I haven't been in Boston doing the family friendly Poetry Slam as part of First Night.  This year was not the exception.  When we were done, I was invited to a White Haus party with a bunch of poets.  And Ben and I decided to split a cab and some champagne on the way there.

The party was uneventful for me, so just after midnight, I hopped in another cab, and went home alone.  There were a dozen people left at my home from an epic party that I know very little about.  I know the kitchen table was covered in a beer pong table.  I know there were pants all over the kitchen floor.  Both of my roommates were shirtless, and the guy that was leaving the party when I came in did not appear to know that he had a penis sharpied on to his face or that his pants were inside out.

My recently rescued cats, Selina Ribcage, and Yoda Louise Vader, were in my room, cringing in terror.  So I picked up Yoda, and brought her out into the remains of the party.  There are only two things you need to know about Yoda, she was adorable, and she was clearly not going to live very long.  I named her Yoda because her head and ears were monstrously large compared to the rest of her body, and I called her Louise Vader because she had terrible respiratory problems, and wheezed uncontrollably at all times.  I had only agreed to rescue her because I had already decided to rescue her mother, Selina, as very few people adopt cats when there are kittens around, and I didn't want her mother to be alone all the time while I was at work.

As I stepped out of my room, with the very tiny Yoda curled in my arm, a very intense guy walked up and started talking about Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  While I'm willing to accept that not every guy with spikey hair and an intense knowledge of the work of Joss Whedon spends their Friday nights on Craigslist looking to sit on a dick, I would put the probability around 97%.

Somewhere around the middle of his "Ohmygod, I totally loved evil Willow when her eyes got all black and swimmy and her hair..." blah blah blah "and the time when Xander lost his eye and", that I realized this was the guy who had offered to help Zuzu and I carry a few boxes into the apartment when I moved in.  I had noticed his crazy eyes, and his Natty Ice breath.  Zuzu had noticed him noticing me.

And he was clearly noticing me now.

While we talked, the room cleared.  And I went and sat in the living room.  Yoda Vader sat in my lap.  The Slut Across The Street was remarking how cute she was, and he started petting her, and looking at me.  And petting her.  And looking at me.  And petting me.  And looking at me.  And petting me.  And...wait, really?  This dude just totally used my cat to feel me up.  And then he just looks at me and says, "Do you wanna?"

Not really.  "Sure."

I was a bit too champagned to remember that night.  And he was too Natty Iced to remember his name.  I just remember that it was so unspectacular that, when he briefly fell asleep next to me, I was trying to come up with the politest way to tell him to get the hell out.  Not in a mean "You son of a bitch" way, but in a "OH, this was a huge mistake" way.

I took his phone number out of politeness.  I didn't use it.  Something he pointed out a couple of weeks later when he stopped in, twice as Natty Iced.  This time, I was unchampagned, and uninterested in his "So," flirtatious smile, "you never" hiccup "called me."

"I know."

And then he invited me and my roommates (who were actual friends of his) over to his house for drinks.  And, it's late.  And I don't have work the next day, so why not?

"We're" hiccup  (really, this can't be happening) "gonna have to" hiccup (ugh) "be quiet because" hiccup (Jesus) "my shitty roommate is a" hiccup *CRASH*
 
With one wsipe of his sweaty, drunken paw, he'd managed to knock his coat rack not only off the wall, but halfway down the stairs into the lobby.

"Oh" hiccup (God) "God"  "I'll" hiccup (why am I still here? "fix that" and he waved his hands to insinuate, I assume, later.

While I went back down the stairs to collect the fallen coat rack, my roommates disappeared into some alternate dimension.  I didn't see either of them again for days.

Instead, I walked into the now empty kitchen, and heard, "I'm" hiccup (I should really go home) " in my room."

And he was in his room.  And his clothes were in his room.  But his clothes were not so very much on him.

"So," hiccup (ok, naked hiccups are kind of funny) "do you have any friends?"

As come-on lines go, this was lacking something.  "Yes.  Quite a few."

"Do they like to" hiccup (did I feed Selina before I left the house?) "cum on people?"

Ugh.  "It's never come up."

"Have you" hiccup (it gets less funny every time) "come up yet?"  And he, of course, reached for my crotch.

Apart from the stairs, I had not.  Despite naked hiccups.

He fumbled in the general direction for my belt.  But instead of focusing on that, I had noticed one of my Buffy trades sitting precariously on a pile of filthy laundry.  Had I let this mostly stranger borrow my

""I'll be right" hiccup (why would I have lent him my Buffy trades?) "back"

He did not come right back.  I'd begun to suspect that he'd been swallowed by whatever dimension had taken my roommates.  Apparently, the Drunken hiccup Dimension. 

After ten minutes or so of waiting, I wandered out to the kitchen, and notices an ass and a pair of legs sticking out of the bathroom.  There was a definite smell of vomit.  At no point in my life has the smell of vomit appealed to me.  And having had now two lackluster experiences, I deleted his number from my phone, and walked across the street.  Comfortable with the knowledge that The Slut Across The Street and I would never again have any sort of relationship aside from neighbor.

This was when my phone rang.

Sora was calling.

The realization that Elvis was a flat-assed liar didn't ruin my life, or lower my respect for him.  I had none.  He was just some guy with no ass, bad teeth, and a horrible dye job who had invaded my life to escape...well, I have no idea what he was escaping because he never told me the truth.  Finding out he was a lying liar didn't take away from all the happy times we'd shared together.  We had no happy times.

Things were different with Sora.

If you read The Insafemode Journals before they were deleted by a Russian hacker, you may remember that Sora and I had lots of happy times.  I wrote frequently about the happy things we shared.  Easter with Cheerio, Ben, Celeste, and Sir Trick; antagonizing Ben at a house party.  There were other times, I know there were.  But they disappeared in a whiff of internet hackery.

I didn't write about the lying, because unlike Elvis, I actually love Sora.   But our entire relationship was built around a lie.  And, no, not the epic He Never Loved Me lie.  Though, yes, that, too.  The first lie was an innocent one.

We met at one of my shows, I invited him to another competition.  He told me he would come up to Boston, we could hang out, we'd go to my show, and then he was going to stay with one of his friends.  And then, totally weird, right, his friend never called him back, so he needed a place to stay, and came home with me.

Of course there was no friend.

Two weeks later, he was supposed to meet me and Celeste around noon to go to one of Celeste's shows.  At 1:30, Celeste was long gone, and I was thinking I had maybe overjudged our relationship, when he called to apologize for being late, that he was almost to my house.  So I walked down in the direction of the T to meet him.  I was halfway down the hill when he bounded up, a white rose in his hand.  And the kiss.  And the kiss.  And the wow, okay, kiss.  And a white rose.  No one I had ever dated had ever given me any sort of flora.  And no guy since. 

Back at the house, Sir Trick was watching MXC.  "Hey guys."  He said, flashing a rare smile.  He hadn't been smiling at me, partially because he wasn't a full time smiler, and partially because Ben, who I wasn't talking too very often, had borrowed one of his DVDs, and had now had it for several months.  And I, being an associate of Ben's, was guilty of overborrowing by association.  But, at that very second, Sora had committed no wrong, and was, thereby, smileworthy.  "What happened?  Thought you were going to be here at noon."

"Oh."  Sora said.  "I forgot to take my medication, and I passed out on the train, they had to stop it and call an ambulance."

Which was news to me.  "You passed out?"

"Yea, it was no big deal."

"What condition do you have?"  Sir Trick asked.

"Oh, I don't know."

Because, of course, he had no condition.  He was not on medication for a condition that he didn't know about.  He did not pass out on the train.  He missed a train, because he was completely unreliable.  He would miss train after train in the coming months.  He would get caught in traffic that didn't exist.  I would lose entire days waiting for him because I loved him and knew he was lying and didn't care because I loved him and.

There were many, many little lies littered throughout the happy times.  But there were happy times, so why focus on tiny, little harmless lies?

In August 2007, after four months of knowing each other, and three months of dating and living together, I went to Austin for a national poetry slam competition.  On my second day in Austin, I got a call from my friend Don, who happened to also be Sora's boss at The Truffle Shuffle chocolate store.  "Hey, Adam, tell your boyfriend he's late for work."

"Ugh.  Really?  Sorry, Don, but I'm in Austin, so I can't exactly dump him off the couch or wherever he fell asleep.  I"ll call Celeste, though, and see if she can wake him up."

Well, Celeste said he wasn't home.  I told her to call me when she saw him. I told Don to have Sora call me when he got to work.  I called Sora's cell a few times.

No one called me back that day.

The next morning I got a call from Sora that his dad had a heart attack, and he had to spend some time helping take care of the house, and he didn't know how long it would be for, but probably not too long, and he missed me, and was really sorry, but "Don't be mad.  It's an emergency."

What were the odds of me dating another compulsive liar with a supposedly dead parent who would leave me by telling me a close family member was ill and he had to take care of them?

Apparently, pretty good.