It can’t last longer than a minute.
I just have to 
the room, walk out the door. But it’s like I’ve suddenly overdosed
on Saint-John’s-wort. Because while it’s not unusual for me to have
twenty-seven thoughts at once, it’s definitely unusual to be
hearing every single one of them pass through my mind in the time
it takes for me to leave a room.
1 Walk. Just. Keep. Walking. Don’t look at anyone. Don’t look at the ground. Focus. Straight. Ahead. Just. Keep. Walking.
2 Okay, you pussy-teasing
faggot, do you know what I’m going to do to you? I am going to
take back that boy whose lips you are currently fellating, and I am
going to 
you
pictures of him doing things to me that he’d never, ever be able to
do to your 
Every
time you step out of the elevator, I’m going to make sure that he
and I are jammed together on the other side of the wall, releasing
moans that are going to make you scramble to find some porn.
I will take him by the 
and lead him away from you, and I will make you
watch every. fucking. moment.
3 This is too much. This is too far. This isn’t really happening.
4 I showed you mine and you showed me yours. Kindergarten. Maybe first grade. Mom was in the other room, watching her soaps (before our lives became one). You had to pee and I went in to watch you. It was curiosity. That one place where we were different. Only that one place. Otherwise, we assured each other, we were completely the same.
5 Are you happy now, Kelly? Did you
get what you wanted? 
, I can’t stand you. I hope you get into your
poison Ivy League school and disappear into a physics lab and never
return.
6 It’s the shoes. If I hadn’t chosen these shoes this morning, none of this would have happened. The pumps are to blame.
7 I kissed Bruce first. People are forgetting that. I kissed him first. That has to give me some kind of right, even if he ends up being gay.
8 I have printed out every e-mail
you ever sent me. And that horrible year, when Mom would disappear
and Dad would fume and cry and yell, all I could do when you
weren’t home was go to my room and take out the box and read
something stupid about the velour pantsuit that Mrs. Keller wore to
school that day, and how you thought it made her look like Barney’s
bastard love child, and I would find myself smiling, because even
though the 
was
falling apart and our parents had turned our lives into a 
, I honestly believed that
you were the only family I needed. My future family.
9 One spot. I was just one spot away from bingo.
10 B-I-N-G-O. B-I-N-G-O.
B-I-N-G-O. And Bingo was his name-O. What I want to know is:
What the fuck does the 
have to do with the game? There has to be some
connection, right?
11 Did I really just dump Bruce the
First, the one person in this whole city who worships the ground I
stalk on? So what if he’s a 
. Isn’t it enough to have someone who adores you
even when you’re not being adorable? Isn’t it enough to love
someone because you know he’s going to be nice to you? Does there
really have to be a sexual charge? Isn’t it enough to feel it in
your 
even if
you’re not feeling it ?
12 Who the fuck am I kidding?
13 I’m not kidding myself, that’s for sure.
14 Robin has the right idea. When Robin
told her he just
wanted to be friends, she threw her 
at him. Just picked up her appletini and
splashed it over his just-wanna-be-friends expression. Then she
stormed out and left him to pay for the drink she’d just emptied
onto his face. I think it’s the last part I admire the most. (Of
course, afterward she cried for about six days, which was about
five and a half more than I could really stomach. I told her the
only person a named Robin should date is a guy named Batman, so
they can live in their Brokeback Batcave and 
. I told her she could do better,
even though she probably can’t. That’s what friends are for.)
15 I miss Dad. Even when all of these other things are going on, even when he should be two thousand miles away from my thoughts, I wish he was here. Not so we could return to the fighting time, but back farther than that, to the good time. I know he and Mom both say now that the good time wasn’t really that good, but what matters to me is that I didn’t know it then. I felt it was good, and even though that’s selfish, it’s really good enough for me.
16 Do you remember, Ely, the way we’d always be picking places to get married? How many years did we do that? In front of the polar bear pool at the Central Park Zoo. Or in a swank soirée at the Temple of Dendur. Or on the Staten Island Ferry, with the guests changing every time we docked. Or at the top of the Empire State Building, before we realized how cliché that was. Then just this August, when you dragged me to XXL so you could flirt with one of the go-go boys while all the gone-gone boys hit on me . . . at one point between oglings, you leaned over to me and said, “Maybe we should get married here.” And I laughed, because it was funny. And I was happy that you’d made us into an us again, in a place that wouldn’t treat us like an us. And I was upset—really upset— that you weren’t taking it seriously, that you would never take it seriously. Even though it was ridiculous, I wanted you to care.
17 I am so over guys. Even gay guys. Especially gay guys. Sympathize all you want, boys, but when it all comes down to it, you still have dicks.
18 Look, there’s Gabriel. He’s looking very, very gazeworthy tonight.
19 Oh, Mrs. Loy, don’t glare at me like I’m a strumpet. I know you want Bruce the First to be the Harold to your Maude, and now you should be royally pleased that I’m freeing him from the shackles of being sadly in love with me. Maybe he’d like a real Dame for a change.
20 It shouldn’t be called a multi-purpose room. It’s a no-purpose room.
21 Almost there. Almost there.
22 I’m so glad I didn’t sleep with
Bruce the First. And by sleep with, I mean have
intercourse with. We did a lot of sleeping, and that was nice.
In fact, 
was the
nicest part. I’m glad I’m smart enough to know that not getting to
have intercourse with your first choice for your first is not
reason enough to have intercourse with choice #2.
23 I’m so tired. Tired of the
drama. Tired of missing Ely. Tired of spending all my time trying
not to miss him. Tired of being so fucking angry. At him. At Mom.
At Dad. And most of all at the universe. Tired of having to deal
with people. Tired of not getting anything close to what I want.
Tired of having the wrong people want me. Tired of wanting the
wrong people. Tired of the 
and the 
and the 
. Tired of thinking. Tired of the games. But if I
got rid of all of that—what would I have left?
24 Why is Gabriel smiling like
that? It’s like he knows the 
ListTM has been 
A into pieces.
25 Danger! Danger!
26 Do you really have anything left to lose?
27 Go for it.