the habit of being

I have no counter to put the microwave oven I received yesterday in the mail on, so it just sits on the dinner table, which is never used anyway. We eat our dinner sitting on the twin bed we share, watching a pirated movie on the small computer screen on the other side of the room.

Tonight, though, he took me out, to a small French restaurant with water colored flowers in frames on the wall, and a mural of a street in Paris. There were mostly Asians working there, but they spoke French beautifully. I had mushrooms and shrimp and sorbet. It was all very pretty and moderately expensive. Very expensive for us. It was part of my Christmas gift. Normally he never takes me out and it makes me angry and full of self-pity, despite the fact that we cannot really afford it. He saves his money for Italy and a bicycle.

I woke up this morning desperate to be alone, after bad dreams and being tangled in the blanket. The bed is so small. The apartment is so small. I have no space of my own and I don’t know how to operate in shared space. I let the apartment get filthy. It is not my floor so I cannot clean it. Nothing is mine. When he is gone sometimes I can pretend I have my own space. I thought he’d be working today but I was wrong. I lay next to him in bed and thought of gathering up materials to write and leaving the messy apartment before he even woke up. Instead I just said I was in a bad mood, and he was nice to me all day. He needed new pants, so we went shopping.

I got dressed. It was the first time in days I’d really gotten dressed. I wore a short plaid pleated skirt and a black shirt with a low lacy neckline and black stockings and red lips and mascara. I looked at myself in every mirror. I was beautiful. Much more beautiful than he was, and overly aware of it. This is not normal for me. I don’t accept compliments easily. It was just my mood; I needed a reason to resent him. I’d wanted to be alone and he was being too nice.

I said the same things about most of the pants he tried on, and tried on pants myself, because it was cold and my skirt was very short. I am mostly impressed by the sizes I can wear. I am still not used to sixes and fours, smalls, extra smalls. There is skinny and then there is really skinny. I am significantly underweight. It is great fun. I have a lot of ugly pride in the sizes I can wear, in the space I don’t take up. I like my breasts tiny, though I pretend not to.

I made him buy socks. His are treadbare and full of holes still, from when we were travelling. I don’t like to see it. I don’t like to be reminded that I was there too, wretched and dirty. I would almost rather be the kind of girl who looks at herself in mirrors, who knows she is capable of attracting others and counts that ability as a serious merit. He said he didn’t care much for pleated skirts, and I said, well, I’ll just have to look good for other people. I was merciless, in my mind, though he may not have noticed. I can only really be mean in my head, and I don’t like the look of it. It makes me want to vomit.

The sorbet was served in three little scoops, on a thin sculpted cookie bowl, and the plate was decorated in raspberry syrup flourishes and powered sugar. I ate the smallest bites possible. He looked at me and said I looked nice. We didn’t have a conversation. The food was very good and I thanked him as we walked home in the cold. He put his arm around me.

We walked through the door and everything was a mess. I took a shower. I didn’t want to have sex and I hid under a blanket but he touched me wonderfully until I did want to do and I did. I asked him to turn on some pornography. We’d never done that. He came much more quickly than usual. He is a good lover. He got on the computer and I started reading.

The microwave was a gift from my stepfather, who works for General Electric. I need to call him and thank him. He’s very nice to me, but he wants to beat up my boyfriend. He said if he ever found out that James verbally or physically abused me, he’d take a week off work. He asked me if James had ever hit me and I said no. My mother said “I don’t think that’s the kindof power he’s into” in the most hateful voice I’d ever heard.

My father emailed me the prayer he says. “Lord, please help me to stay sober today. Please direct my thinking, away from anger, resentment and self-pity.” He said he was working regular and doing alright and how were things with me.

I told him about the microwave and the French restaurant, and that I was going to quit my job at the bookstore and work at the yoga studio, and that there was this college in the woods of Colorado.

I told James his cooking was bland and it made him cry. Literally, there were tears in his eyes. He tried to laugh it off. I felt awful. I forget how human he is. He is more human than most people. Sometimes I still believe it when he tells me he loves me, even if he is just killing time with me until he can go to Italy. Even if he just wants to have sex. If I get pregnant again, I am going to hit him as hard as I can over and over until he makes me stop. It was yesterday. I made dinner, zucchini and peppers and asparagus. I didn’t make enough. We had cookies.