EVERYONE LOVES YOUR boyfriend. There was a time when you were proud of this, but then it got worse and eventually it was a huge problem. It started small. The neighbor would come over to talk to your boyfriend while you were at work. He would smile at your boyfriend. He would bring gifts. Eventually he stopped waiting for you to be at work, he would come over at all hours of the day and night to say hello to your boyfriend, to chat. Your boyfriend was polite but has never been very friendly. Eventually you would wake up in the morning to find the front porch covered in presents for your boyfriend, from the neighbor. Piles of gifts, all wrapped in beautiful paper, letters splashed with the most expensive cologne. A fragrant heap. One day you couldn’t open the door. It’s just a crush, your boyfriend said, but you couldn’t even find the fucking garage when you got home from work. Then there were the dead animals. The neighbor would bring little dead animals and leave them on the porch for your boyfriend. Rats and squirrels and small birds. Then dogs and cats. Then humans, children and old people, then small adults, then that one coworker your boyfriend couldn’t stand. You had to move.
You don’t really get it, the way that everyone loves your boyfriend now. He’s incredibly beautiful, yes, but not more so than any model on a runway or in a catalogue. His personality is what you would describe as fine. He has a good sense of humor but he’s moody. He’s kind-hearted but not especially friendly. Sometimes you spend the day looking at him, squinting your eyes this way and that, trying to figure it out and failing, utterly failing, because to you he’s just your boyfriend. He wakes up with bad breath. He never does the dishes. He leaves his laundry in big piles on the sofa. He doesn’t answer his phone, even in an emergency. He’s a bad driver.
He’s such a bad driver that when you go on the run he never drives, it’s only you. After the neighbor incident, you both move across town, to a different house with different neighbors. After a day, the new neighbors, men, women, and children, surround your home in a thick circle of bodies. They are chanting your boyfriend’s name, uttering declarations of love. They press their bodies against the exterior walls of your house and moan. Several times you wake in the middle of the night to hear hands clawing at the windows and doors. Parents try to shove their small children through your dog door so the children can unlock the house and let them in. At the darkest part of one night, you stumble into the kitchen and turn on the light to find a child stuck in the dog door, one shoulder dislocated so he will fit. He is thrashing against the confines of the door, drooling on the floor. I love your boyfriend, he says. I love your boyfriend so much.
You ask your boyfriend if there is anything he wants to tell you about this situation, but he just shrugs and says no. He is upset that you disturbed him in the middle of the night when you know he does poorly on too little sleep. I find this behavior inconsiderate, he says.
The next morning you pretend that you are heading off to work like usual but you hide your boyfriend in the trunk of your car. After that you are on the run. You learn not to stop for cops, who only stop you to get to your boyfriend. You turn the car radio off after the radio stations stop playing music and instead dedicate themselves to your boyfriend, only your boyfriend, 24/7. I have not left the studio in six days, one radio announcer says. I have not eaten and I only pee in a jar. I just love your boyfriend so, so much. He concludes his broadcast by weeping and moaning and chanting your boyfriend’s name, over and over. This is what being on the run is like. You have to hide your boyfriend under a pile of blankets when you get gas. It’s too hot under here, he says, and you tell him to shut up.
Obviously this has strained your relationship with each other. He is always annoyed at having to hide and run and spend all day in the car. You are always annoyed that he is not taking this seriously enough. Sometimes, after a fight, he presses his lips together into a flat line and says, I could just leave and anyone I met would take me in and protect me and treasure me. You want to say, you have no fucking idea what these people would do to you, but instead you say, you’re right. I probably like you less than anyone else in the world right now.
This is not, strictly speaking, the truth. You are annoyed with him, yes, but because he keeps making it so hard to keep him hidden and safe. You are trying to protect him. You are trying to make sure no one can take him away from you. Every morning, you drive down the road, watching over your shoulder for a caravan of cars coming to chase you down and steal him away. Sometimes your eye drifts over to your boyfriend, who has a bored expression on his face, his cheek resting on one hand, elbow propped up on the side panel of the car. He is so beautiful. You love him so much, so violently. There is nothing you wouldn’t do for him. Still driving, you lean over to kiss his neck.