My girlfriend Merle came and spent the week with me. I just sent her home on a Greyhound a few hours ago. I wasn’t happy she came but I embraced the excuse not to write and study. I forgot as best as I could my looming deadlines. Since I hadn’t planned on her coming I hadn’t planned any special activities to do with her. Instead we spent the week going to theaters, my favorite arcade and comic book store, new and old places to eat, coffee shops and diners, book store, pet store, wherever. I would have liked to have gone out and listened to music or maybe even a club but the timing wasn’t quite right. I had a dentist checkup at which, my wisdom tooth was extracted, so after that drinking and dancing never seemed to suit my mood. When I perceive something wrong with my body I tend to move very slowly and just want to spread out on a nice cushy armrest, close my eyes, relax and sleep. That didn’t stop her from getting drunk, pestering a friend of mine on the phone, then a friend of hers and dragging me downtown though. So that’s a little of what we did. She spent today crying because she didn’t want to go and miss me. This is good for my ego but also reminds me of how rotten and cowardly I am. I like Merle. I don’t think we are right for each other though. I think we got along well this week only because we are sexually compatible and I knew she was leaving at the end of it. She looks at me with stars in her eyes and tells me how deep and true her love is for me. How she wants to marry me. To be with me forever. She wanted to go to city hall this week for a marriage license. I resisted as always. Sometimes I wish she would just cheat on me so I could break out in a righteous escape. Instead I will be forced to crush her innocent heart in my cold evil hands. Yet, even though I know I should, I still don’t break up with her. I am indifferent but I keep her because she is mine and I don’t want any other male to put his dirty paws on her. I also am scared of being a failure and alone. Hmmm, that was the most honest sentence I’ve written in awhile. I guess I’m a bad guy with a good girl. It is hard to discard a bond with someone who looks at you like you are the world. Merle’s a problem I’ll be forced to deal with, like everything else, after March along with the possible aftermath of academic collapse. I have a feeling I’ll be back home in T Bay some time this summer, single, unemployed and licking my wounds. Big dreams pathetically shrunken. On a related note, I saw the movie Closer this week end. (Also Million Dollar Baby, In Good Company and I Heart Huckabees.)  Closer was my favorite of the four. It won’t be anyone’s favorite movie but much of it rung true with sharp and vicious insight.