For JPB

 As Fair and Balanced as Fox News

Cicero said "These are the facts, my friends, and I have much faith in them."
He has much faith in facts.
He wanted to make dinner for me. Something special, he said.
Too soon after my mother died, I nearly bought a house. The house I nearly bought had so many problems the real estate agent had to talk me out of it. Plus, she said, it wasn't clear I wanted to own a house.
Too soon after my mother died, I started dating a man. A friend who is pathologically kind said "Asshole!" when I mentioned to her his name.
On our second date he produced a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his I-am-an-outdoorsman shirt. Politics: Libertarian. Job: university professor. Finances: two homes, paid off.  Health: "I believe life is a pre-cancerous state." "Rachel," he said, using my name like a politician or a parent, "I am a wealthy man." He thanked me for buying dinner.
 Friends had tried to set him up on dates, but the women, he said, were too fat.
I was, he said, his first Jew. He has no black friends. No Hispanic friends. No Asian friends. No friends who are poor. He has a lesbian friend, but he says she drinks too much, is financially irresponsible, and is fat.
He wanted to make Cornish game hens for dinner. He loved Cornish game hens.
He buys Ramen soup by the case. It costs less than a quarter per meal. He likes to get it at Wal-Mart where it's even cheaper, though he objects to the word cheap. He would not purchase a Costco membership, but he liked to use mine.
            At the base of my food pyramid are Wheat Thins and Tootsie Rolls. Having someone make dinner for me, even Ramen soup, felt like love.
On our first hike, I out-paced him. He said it was because of his shoes.
I am an aggressive asshole. I can turn yoga and knitting into competitions.
He asked why, if I cared so much about diversity, I refused to watch Fox news with him.
He rails against the "knuckleheads" who have been duped by Al Gore into believing in global warming. He has four cars and says he doesn't give a hoot about his carbon footprint.
He loves natural disasters and looks forward to tsunamis, earthquakes, major and destructive snowstorms. He gets giddy watching the coverage on TV.
When I lost my mother it looked like a disaster. The art of losing is, in fact, hard to master.
He says "Golly" and "Gee whiz" without irony.
I say "Asshole" and "Fuck" way too much.
He told me he loved sleeping with me. I said, "You mean you like me best when I am unconscious?" He said, "Yes. I like sleeping with you."
In order to sleep with him, I had to take Ambien. Ambien makes me uncharacteristically mushy for the twenty minutes before I pass out. He encouraged me to take Ambien.            His mother used to make Cornish game hens.
He is like my father. My father and I have not spoken for many years.
I am like his mother. "You are nothing like my mother," he said. "She is a mean, critical, evil witch."
He left yellow post-it notes with "I  ♥ U" in my car, in my house, in his house.
He said I don't know why someone like you would be interested in me.
I like Cornish game hens no more or less than I like chicken. I like chicken, more or less.
He would not read my work for fear he might appear in it.                         He said that the Supreme Court decision to extend free speech rights to corporations was "exactly right." "James Carville and Mary Matalin" I repeated to myself like a mantra.
He held me when I cried missing my dead mother. I let him see me cry.
What is a Cornish game hen, anyway?  Is it just a mini chicken? I asked while he was cooking.
He made his money in the market. ("Rachel, I am a wealthy man."). He cannot understand why people would choose to be poor.
He says he is a member of a disadvantaged minority. White men, he says, are being discriminated against.
I have a number of unhappily married friends who married soon after a parent had died.  
Cornish game hens are not chickens, he said. They are a different species. There are chickens, and turkeys, and game hens. All different, he said. I said Oh and felt stupid.
When we looked at the night sky while camping, he could name the stars. I wanted to know the relationships, where they got their names. He told me the names again. I loved Zubenelgenubi and said it over and over while I waited for the Ambien to kick in.
He has documented his life by taking thousands of photographs. There are rarely humans in them, except, he says, for scale.
He called me "honey" and "sweetie." I called him by his name.
Sometimes I think of something I want to tell my mother and then I remember she is dead. And then I think I am a cliché.
He read three books in the sixteen months we were together. The titles all started with "The Girl."
He shuns the first person and uses passive constructions and stilted syntax. He says "A trip was taken" when he takes a trip. "Mistakes were made," he says, instead of apologizing. When I asked if he wanted to go out for dinner he said, "At this point in time I am not desirous of eating."
I wanted to marry him. I wanted a ring to remind me that I was not alone.
He trusts Wikipedia.
Wikepedia: "A Cornish game hen is a hybrid chicken sold whole. Despite the name, it is not a game bird, but actually a type of domestic chicken. Though the bird is called a 'hen,' it can be either male or female."
He bought me not one present during the sixteen months we were together.
            When I dumped him he returned a trinket I had given him early on, a toy that sat on his desk for the length of our relationship. He did not return any of my other gifts.                         Cornish game hens are not Cornish, or game, or hens.                         He has much faith in facts. I envy his certainty.