IT IS SOMETHING that you notice very suddenly. You are standing in the checkout line holding a sack of limes and you realize that the cashier is your boyfriend. He wears a wig that is long and chestnut-colored and has a slight wave to it. This hair is nothing like your boyfriend’s hair. It could be your imagination, but it seems your boyfriend, wearing a bald cap, is also bagging your groceries, making a face at your unripe bananas.
It’s possible that you are just having a bad afternoon, except all week you don’t run into anyone who isn’t your boyfriend. Your boyfriend in dreadlocks hands you your cup of coffee. Your boyfriend in an undershirt jogs through the park while your boyfriend in an extremely fancy car cuts you off in traffic. You go to the gym and your boyfriend sits at the front desk when you check in, your boyfriend hands you a towel, your boyfriend has already worked up a sweat by the time you make it to the weight room. You are at a club late one night and you have unprotected sex in the bathroom with your boyfriend, who is on his break from dancing on a glowing platform.
You go to your therapist, who is also your boyfriend, and you feel uncomfortable telling him about your feelings. Let’s say I am your boyfriend, your boyfriend says, being your therapist, with glasses and unflattering lipstick. What is it you feel like you couldn’t tell me?
In your hands, you hold a magazine that you carried with you from the waiting room. You couldn’t put it down. You twist it nervously, bending the pages into a semipermanent tube. Your boyfriend is on the cover, wearing a well-tailored suit and grinning and suddenly you can feel him looking at you from every direction. You look over at a lamp and it is your boyfriend, and the computer, your boyfriend, your therapist’s chair is your boyfriend and the chair you are sitting on is your boyfriend and the bookcase is your boyfriend and the desk and the diploma on the wall is your boyfriend the whole room is your boyfriend and the sky outside the trees the cars the roads the buildings the earth, everything is your boyfriend and you love it, you love it all so goddamn much.