The First Bad Man

by Miranda July

I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn’t.

“I know.” I didn’t explain that I was single. Therapy is for couples. So is Christmas. So is camping. So is beach camping.

I wouldn’t use a British accent out loud, but I’d be using one in my head and it would carry over.

When you live alone people are always thinking they can stay with you, when the opposite is true: who they should stay with is a person whose situation is already messed up by other people and so one more won’t matter.

After days and days alone it gets silky to the point where I can’t even feel myself anymore, it’s as if I don’t exist.

The dog won’t die gracefully. Is the dog yourself, as you’ve known yourself until now? Yes. No need to kill it, my sweet girl, he’d say, reaching into the toilet bowl with a slotted spoon. We need a dog. But it’s old and has strange, unchangeable habits. So do I, my dear. So do we all.

Each of them the center of their own world, all of them yearning for someone to put their love into so they could see their love, see that they had it.

Until then she had been giving birth to birth—to contractions and noises and liquids. There was someone in there.