Delicate

"Can we pop in here?"

"Why?"

I feel like screaming. I feel like screaming a lot lately. 

"It's a bookstore I love. We're walking past it. We don't have anywhere to be." 

He's annoyed. He's been annoyed a lot lately. 

Bookstores are one of the few places I can go when my anxiety is really doing a number on me. There's something about tidy stacks of alphabetized books that I find calming. I abandon him to his simmering irritation near the door and browse the stacks. 

I don't actually want anything. I've got a houseful of books I don't have the attention span to read right now. I want a few moments of peace and calm before we head home to ignore one another for the rest of the weekend. When I return to the counter where he's scowling at his phone, I pause for a moment to read a framed print for sale. 

Months later, I'll wonder if this moment in time was a portent. 

For the time being, I start to cry. 

* * *

He has a smart mouth. 

At least, that's what my mother would call it. 

I mainly call it fun. 

It's the kind of sense of humor where a wildly inappropriate joke is out of your mouth before your brain has a chance to realize how inappropriate it is, something that's just happened. He takes a look at my shocked face, realizes what he said, and immediately starts to backtrack. 

I start laughing so hard I start crying. I get out of bed and he immediately reaches for my hand. 

"No," he says. "No, come back." 

I was only getting up to switch on the fan, but there's something in his voice that makes me crawl right back into his warm arms. Our best case scenario is three, maybe three and a half months at the outside, and who knows if it'll even be that much. 

These things are so delicate. 

For the time being, these snatches of three or four hours at a stretch feel impossibly precious. So much so that I treasure even his awfully timed jokes. 

"Next time," I say, "I'll just bring you a warm apple pie."

* * *

"What is it?"

I'm wiping tears off of my face.

"This print. It's beautiful." I grab his hand and pull him over to read it, keeping hold of his hand the whole time. I feel so hopeful in this moment, like he'll read it and whatever this stupid impasse is between us will break up and we'll cry and kiss and everything will go back to normal. 

"Huh." He says when he finishes and turns to me. My heart leaps. 

"Are you ready to go?" 

* * *

I'm midway into a long videochat when one of my best friends says something that stuns me. 

We've been talking about a lot of stuff: tri training and public health and science fiction podcasts. At some point I end up deep in a post-mortem about my love life and she interrupts, something unusual for her. 

"You need to stop confusing what's normal with what's rational." 

"What?"

"You seem to believe that everyone except for you acts perfectly rationally 100% of the time when they're making decisions about romance and love. Most people aren't, ever. Stop believing that you can or should."  

We talk for awhile longer, but I'm distracted. When we finally hang up, I walk off to read something hanging on my wall. 

It's the print from over a year ago. As far as art goes, it was never much. Just a printing of a quote from a book I have come to love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.

After reading and re-reading it for awhile, my phone beeps. It's the guy with the smart mouth and warm arms. Just seeing his name on my phone makes me break out laughing again. 

Three months or three days, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. Badly timed jokes and all, this is something worth having. 

What the Living Do

“So what have you been doing?”

“What?”

“With all the time you have now that you’re not regularly . . .”

“Oh.” I try to decide if I want to have this conversation, if I have any interest in what’s being offered on the other side of it. I don’t. We’ve been down this road together so many times. After years, I’m finally okay turning it down.

I believe that there's something better, that I'm worth something better.

“Oh, you know, Lost a lot of weight. Cut two minutes off my tri time. I’m kicking ass at work and taking care of myself.”

“I can’t even imagine going that long . . .”

I indulge myself in one long eyeroll before writing back. “Yeah. I know.”

* * *

I’m riding the bus when the first poem comes to mind.

I’m tired, my muscles are sore, and it’s been a long day. The bus is crowded and hot and I usually I would be carsick and annoyed. Today, I open an app on my cell phone and listen to my favorite reading of a Jane Kenyon poem.

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

I’m a little afraid to say it out loud. I don’t want to jinx it, but 2019 has started well. I don’t know if it was the straight up witch cleansing ritual I did on December 31st or (more likely) the fact that a new year just feels like a chance to start over, but I’ve been doing really well for the past few months. Anxiety and depression are still always in the background, but they’re easier to mute than they’ve been in years.

I feel content. Grounded. Happy.

The happiness catches me by surprise, because it doesn’t come as the result of anything tangible. The guy I thought I met ended up being a dud. I’m doing well at work, but that’s certainly never been the root cause of my happiness. I haven’t seen any shattering art or spent time in state parks or even seen my nieces lately.

Regardless, here it is, back at my feet.

Hello, happiness. I remember you.

* * *

“What’s most important to you in a relationship?”

“What?”

“What do you value? What are your goals? What are characteristics you’d like to find in another person?”

These may not standard first date questions, but I’m not really into baffing around these days. I’m trying this new thing where I’m being the person I am and fuck whatever happens.

In shorthand that means that I text when I feel like it, I dress and do my makeup for myself, and I am generally every bit as intense as I am in my work and personal relationships up front.

I go on a lot of first dates.

* * *

I’m half-asleep when the second poem wakes me up.


I’m tired, my muscles are sore, and it’s been a long day. My brain constantly wakes me up with trivia, so it’s not entirely surprising. Usually I’d be annoyed and would pull the covers over my head. Tonight, I let the guy next to me pull me in closer and think about the poem.

What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up.

I’m a little afraid to move, to breathe, to acknowledge my existence or his. This moment feels impossibly fragile. In a few minutes he will get up to leave. In a few days, I will decide that I don’t need this to be anything more than what it was, a moment of kindness and genuine warmth between two people. In a few months, we will have likely forgotten about it and each other. But for now, all that’s in the background. This, perhaps, was my something better.

I feel satisfied. Tranquil. Grateful.

The gratitude is the most striking. When it comes to intimacy I usually, um, give as good as I get. It’s something deeper that makes me think of the poem. It has been so easy to unreflectively give things up over the past years. Standards. Happiness. Independence and satisfaction and tranquility. Warmth and kindness. But more than any of those things, it’s been so easy to give up yearning for them.

Here, in this impossibly fragile moment, I feel it again. And with that feeling comes deep gratitude for the person next to me.

Hello, yearning. I remember you.

It's Still Complicated

"Yeah, I mean, you can do better."

"We always said that we were going to see you, not him."

"I never liked him, but I decided I never saw the him that you saw."

I hear a lot of this in the months after my divorce. People who previously seemed to enjoy the ex-husband's company are eager to tell me that they never understood why we were together, that he was clearly out of his league with me, that they never liked him that much anyway. They assure me things will be better the next time around. I have a canned response:

"I loved him. It was complicated."

Canned response or no, these comments send me waaaaaaay down the rabbit hole. There must have been signs I missed, right? And he was obviously horrible, so what was so wrong in me that I didn't see his horribleness? Did everyone tell me and I missed it?

I fixate on these things for months and spend hours sobbing over what a broken, disgusting person I am to have not seen the things that appeared so obvious to my friends.

* * *

I met someone. 

Just writing that sentence gives me stomach flutters and makes me flush. 

I met someone. 

It's early days, much, much too early to even be writing that sentence, but we live in hope, right?

I met someone. 

I smile when he texts me and get nervous when he doesn't. I spend hours worrying about what to wear, how to do my makeup before our dates. I talk on the phone with him when we cancel a date and don't want to hang up. I imagine sex, long weekends in the woods together, sleepy Sunday mornings with cats and coffee. 

I met someone. 

My stomach flutters. I flush.

* * *

"Jesus Christ, someone actually said that?"

I'm spending a long evening with friends, ostensibly gaming but really pouring my guts out across their dining room table. 

"More than one someone. Everyone seems eager to tell me how much they didn't like my ex-husband."

"Yes, but that's not true."

"What do you mean?"

"They're processing their own shit, Kel. They want to make you feel better, and don't know how. This is their attempt." 

This is one of the wisest things someone will say to me in my grief.

* * *

We're somewhere near hour four of our date when a few words start popping out at me. 

Vaping. Night Owl. Picky Eater. 

When I picked out my outfit for today I was going for something effortless and chic. More importantly, something that didn't require me to carry a bag with me. I look fantastic, but I also suddenly find myself on the edge of a panic attack and my meds are miles away.

He elaborates on each of these and if my lizard brain would stop screaming for long enough for me to listen I'd hear the important things. He takes care of his health and eats well. He's considerate about other people, especially ones he's seeing romantically. He's easy-going and a good listener. 

On the surface, nothing he's said is even a theoretical dealbreaker for me. But ohboy, the ex-husband and I had some knock down fights over those exact things, so now instead of listening, I'm breaking out into an anxious sweat because of those five words. 

Vaping. Night Owl. Picky Eater.

I've been saying for months now that grief is a funny, unpredictable thing. It turns out that trauma is, too. 

To people on the outside, calling the ending of my marriage traumatic probably sounds foolish. Natural disasters are traumatic. Violence is traumatic. Your divorce may have hurt a lot, but it certainly wasn't traumatic. 

It was. 

It's one of those situations where there's a lot I could say about it and not much to be said about it. But the trauma there was real, and I thought I had handled it. 

Until I'm panicking on the sidewalk somewhere around hour four of a good date.

* * *

I may have been out of my husband's league. 

Who knows? The person I am not can't even begin to evaluate who I was then. How things ended throw a pall over how things started, and I don't really see much of a point in examining it anyway. Thankfully, people say things like that less now, and I say what I've always said: "I loved him. It was complicated." 

Oddly, my feelings about this new person are every bit as complex. How can I have stomach flutters and still keep enough distance to watch for those red flags? How can I be sure that I won't make the mistakes I made with my ex-husband? How can I trust that I'm not dating someone who can keep up with me? Can I date someone again and still protect myself? Is that even still love? Am I stupid for wanting love and romance again? 

I don't have a good answer for any of it. My life is seriously lacking in those Public Radio moments of insight these days. 

It isn't that I'm totally without an answer though. 

I met someone. I like him. It's complicated. 

Grim, Effective

I depart for Family Court fortified for battle.

I’m on track to be forty minutes early, enough time to watch previous proceedings and feel comfortable with the judge. I’m neatly dressed and having a great hair day. I put on the boots that make me feel like a futuristic crime fighter and give me a Beyonce level confidence. I got out of bed an hour early to apply a full face of waterproof makeup. I have tissues and panic attack medicine in my purse.

As I’m stepping onto the bus I double-check the letter I received, curse, and get back off.

Our divorce hearing is the following week.

* * *

I never expected email would provide such an emotional gut-punch.

I was searching for an confirmation that I cancelled our honeymoon bookings (we would have departed yesterday, a point I remembered today when I’m reminded that I didn’t cancel our Tokyo hotel) when I stumble across something my ex-husband wrote and sent to me.

Thanks, Google.

It’s a post from a blog he wrote for a little while as a way (I think) of helping him process his autism diagnosis. He wrote privately, but would send me things from time to time that he thought I would like.

The post is everything I loved about him . . . It’s thoughtful and smart, nerdy and a little self-deprecating.

It’s also completely shattering.

* * *

Divorce is the most interminable process imaginable.

I was so optimistic at the beginning of our process. Devastated, yes, but I believed that we could get it done quickly. We didn’t have joint assets aside from a savings account and didn’t have any actual kids. Since we didn’t have anything to fight over we could get it wrapped by my birthday! I could start 34 with a new name and a clean slate.

That optimism was a little misplaced.

* * *

The ex-husband left me five months ago.

It feels like 500 years. Things have slowly gotten better, the way everyone said they would. I’ve lost 10+ pounds and kept it off. I sleep better and am more active. I drink less and eat healthier. My tri time was two minutes faster. I’m not longer sushed or told that my feelings are too much or too intense. My life is better in measurable ways.

In the back of my daily journal, I keep a list of things I hated about my ex. Not “oh, that was annoying” but the big, talk-these-out-in-couples-therapy kind of things. It’s part of how I’ve coped over the past five months.

It’s been grim, but effective.

Which is why the piece of writing he sent me affects me so badly.

Right above that list of things I hated was a list I made early in our marriage, when I was still trying to figure out what living together as a married couple meant. I could pull it out and read it and think about how lucky I was to have him in my life.


The piece of writing I unearth in my email is like that list of positives about the ex. It’s a relic of the person my ex could be and the person (I think) he wanted to be. It was him when he was ready for adventure and love and commitment, before those ideas became . . . whatever they became to him right before he left.


Coming across that person unexpectedly, especially days before our divorce will be finalized, provokes such a deep sense of loss that it nearly knocks the breath out of me. It’s a startling, and half-unwelcome reminder that despite all the fortifications and grim, effective lists and desire to dear god, just get this over with already there’s a part of me that is still mourning our relationship and the man he used to be.

It's Complicated

It’s a request for new music that brings people out of the woodwork.

My husband was never interested in music. No, it was more than that. I don’t think he actually liked music. He would buy tracks here and there that he had heard in movies or television or video games, but he rarely bought whole albums and I wasn't supposed to listen to music in the house without headphones because it was too stimulating.

I am somewhat on the opposite side of the spectrum.

I take opportunities to see shows live whenever I can. Big, expensive shows at arenas, tiny jazz shows in clubs that you could barely move around in, someone’s aunt’s second-cousin’s cover band at a bar in the suburbs. I have playlists curated by mood, by activity, by person. I took hours to make the husband a playlist that introduced him to all of my favorite bands and tried to tell him how I felt about him. Very high school, I know, but it meant something to me.

He never listened to it.

For weeks after he moved out I couldn’t listen to anything. I was raw enough that any music just hurt. After I moved out of our apartment and took a deep breath and realized this is actually happening I plugged in my headphones and turned on some old favorites.

I couldn’t listen to them. Any of them.

I wasn't stupid. I avoided all the Motown we used for dance parties. I didn’t touch any of the pop songs we played at our wedding. I skipped tracks that were happy or about falling for someone.

It didn’t help.

When I turned on For Emma, Forever Ago all I could think about was how much he hated Bon Iver and would ask me to turn it off. Robyn’s Body Talk was playing the last time we had an argument about one of the big things going wrong in our marriage. Even the Miles Davis and John Coltrane I used to listen to when I was falling asleep reminded me of meeting him and falling in love. There was no catharsis in any of it.

I did what any reasonable person would do. I asked my social media channels for recommendations, saying that a lot of music I loved was now associated with my ex and I needed something new.

That word. Ex. It blew up my entire life. Again.

I haven’t been HEY WORLD I’M GETTING A DIVORCE, but I haven’t exactly been silent about it either. I changed my last name. I posted about getting a new apartment, about moving, about living alone, for Christ’s sake. I’ve wrote and posted about sadness and heartbreak as it was happening.

But as soon as I posted the word ex the entire world messages me.

* * *

I was unprepared for a lot of things about getting divorced: the sudden, intense return of my sex drive, the discovery that I don’t know how to make friends aside from awkwardly blurting out “You’re cool and I want to be friends with you,” the return of surprise, awful panic attacks all catch me unaware.

What I am most unprepared for is the people who want me to perform my grief for them.

People I haven’t spoken to in decades are suddenly calling, texting, messaging with versions of the same thing. “OhhhhhhhhmyyyyyGawwwwwwwwwwwwd. I’m so sorry! What happened?”

There are people I am genuinely glad to hear from. I get a card from an old roommate saying she’s thinking about me and hopes the next year will be better for me. A friend I haven’t seen in months comes over and watches Peaky Blinders with me so I don’t have to be alone. Another person who generally isn’t into being physically affectionate holds my hand and lets me sit with my head on her shoulder for awhile because she knows how alone I feel.

The people I’m glad to hear from are the ones who don’t ask anything of me. They don’t offer lame “I’m here to help if you need it.” They bring food when they notice I’ve lost 10 pounds in two weeks. They drag me out of the house to go walk and pet their dogs. They hand over their babies for me snuggle while they unpack my boxes. They don’t ask for details about what happened.

I am amazed by the number of people who do ask for details, or who offer their own opinions about what happened. Oh, was your anxiety too much for him? Did you catch him with someone else? Did a demon secretly take over his soul during a failed exorcism and now you have to return to the faith of your youth to escape?

What I want to say is that I was trained by Ra’s al Ghul to secretly infiltrate a gang of 40-something male Trekkies. My goal was to seduce and destroy them one by one, but I realized that the poison given to me by the League of Assassins turned out to be a sugar pill, a ploy for a larger conspiracy which I wanted no part of. Now I sharpen my blade and wait for death to come.

Instead I tell them what I tell everyone.

“It’s complicated.”

* * *

Grief is so personal and complicated and I want, so much, to talk about it. I want to tell someone about how waiting for my divorce papers induced a panic attack, how getting coffee with my ex-in-laws felt like a birthday party and a funeral all at once, how I met a man recently who made a bell in my chest ring. I need to talk about how I still don’t understand why my husband doesn’t love me anymore and how I’m getting to a point where I don’t need to understand.

This is not the grief people want.

They want me to go through motions, to perform grief that will give them some sort of catharsis. They want to hear something horrible about one or both of us so they can say “That could never happen in my marriage.” They want me to set his things on fire or tell them that I can’t live another day if we don’t reconcile. That kind of a narrative is reassuring.

And that narrative isn't true. At least, it’s not always true.

I have days where I feel great.

I wake up and get dressed and feel beautiful. I go to work and feel happy and fulfilled and like I’m making a real difference in the world. I spend time with friends talking about comics or music or the role of coded eroticism in 19th century novels and I feel funny and smart and interesting. I feel like I might be romantically valuable to someone else. Of course I am! People I love have shown me many times.

I have days where I feel like a piece of garbage someone has thrown away.

I wake up and get dressed and feel dumpy. I go to work and write shitty first drafts all day. I spend time watching trash television just so I don’t have to think about what a disgusting pile of crap I am. I feel like I’ll never be romantically valuable to someone else. How could I be? Someone I loved already showed me I’m not.

There’s no catharsis in any of it.

Blushy

A few weeks ago I went back and reread our wedding vows.

It was a dumb idea, but I was looking for . . . something. Some indication of what was about to come, some hint that I loved my husband more than he loved me, some inkling that he was lying when he promised to hang on with me through the hard stuff.

It was counterproductive. I knew that even as I was searching through my documents for the final copy. There was no way I could learn anything new about the person I had been with for years by staring at something we built in our best, most optimistic place.

I thought divorce and therapy and ruminating on the people we were would help me discover something new about what happened to us. It didn’t. It just confirmed what I already knew.

He wasn’t the person I needed him to be.

* * *

I had two goals for myself when my husband moved out.

Of course I did. I had a new five-year plan the week after he left. I’m a grant-writer. My religion is measurable outcomes and SMART goals.

The first was relatively simple. Be an adult. Treat the husband with kindness where I could and respect where I couldn’t. Avoiding airing dirty laundry to mutual friends or family. Provide prompt replies to requests for information. As much as you may want to, don’t smash or steal any of his stuff (leaving the special edition blu-ray of the original Alien trilogy behind was my greatest test).

That part has been easy enough. (He may have other feelings about this, who knows). I’m still on good terms with his family. When people ask “What happened?!” I say that it was complicated and I’d rather not talk about it. I apply the “is it true, is it kind, is it necessary” test to everything I say outside of my shrink’s office. He still owns the Alien trilogy.

I’m not perfect. I have days where I fantasize about smashing all of his shit with a baseball bat or breaking back into the apartment and erasing all of his saved Breath of the Wild data. I left Alien but I took Silence of the Lambs.

I’m trying.

* * *

I have a crush on someone.

Of all of the things I expected to happen after the husband and I separated, this was absolutely not one of them. Having to hide my cell phone from myself so I don’t text an “I miss you?” Yup, sounds about right. Not being able to sleep because I’m up armchair psychologizing about what went wrong. Duh. Crying uncontrollably while organizing my spice rack? Unexpected, but not out of the realm of possibility.

But an actual, stomach-swoopy, blushy, can’t-make-eye-contact, feel like a sixteen year old crush?

Jesus. What kind of a person am I? I don’t even have my divorce papers yet and I’m already feeling like a dumb kid, mooning over someone else. Am I incapable of being alone for two months without immediately looking for someone new?

This isn’t the person I wanted to be.

* * *

The second goal was to come through the divorce with an open, warm, and trusting heart.

I’ve lived my life as a pretty warm and open-hearted person. Not necessarily as a result of trying, but because that’s just the kind of personality I was lucky enough to get. It’s something I really like about myself and wanted to be the retain in the midst of a shitstorm of anger, despair, and bitterness.

It’s hard because it’s not really the kind of thing I can gauge in the moment. It’s easy to look at my actions and say: “I didn’t smash my husband’s signed-by-George-Takei-Enterprise-Model on the way out the door. Well done.” In the midst of the previously mentioned shitstorm of emotions it’s harder to say “I’m as accepting, warm, and loving as I was four years ago.”

The best measurement I’ve come up with so far is looking at how I’m treating myself. I’m pretty fucking hard on myself, so can I just calm the fuck down and see a stupid, stomach-swoopy, blushy crush as just that, and not some kind of a reflection on my character?

Because all that stuff, the ruminating and therapy and inappropriately-timed-crushes can show me what I was hoping to find in my wedding vows; what I’m hoping for from the goals I set for myself during this whole miserable process.

I can be the person I need myself to be.

Tidy

A year ago I was the happiest I had ever been. I was looking forward to our third anniversary as a couple and our first wedding anniversary. I was as in love as I was the first weeks we were together.

Half a year ago, the husband and I were working on some stuff. Maybe our first year together hadn’t been perfect, but I had never expected it to be. We were two people who were used to being independent, and it takes awhile to get used to a major life change. And none of that mattered, because we had the rest of our lives together to get it right.

(I now see where this is going, too)

Two months ago my husband asked me for a divorce.

My break-ups always followed more or less the same format: bourbon, sad music, crying, bitching, and about two weeks later moving on. It’s worked for every break-up from my high school boyfriend (minus the bourbon) to finding out my ex asked another woman to marry him while we were still together. I sympathized with friends going through wrenching splits, but always assumed that I was impervious. I was resilient. I had the perfect formula.

Yeah, no.

I thought I knew how to handle a break-up.

* * *

I’m standing in the kitchen of my apartment, washing the dishes and sobbing so loudly I’m certain my neighbors can hear me. It’s not the first time it’s happened in recent weeks, but it’s a new set of neighbors and I feel like I should give a damn.

I feel like I should. I don’t

I just keep washing the dishes and crying. When the dishes are done, I move onto dusting and crying. And on to sweeping and crying. And on to alphabetizing the spice rack and crying. I keep up with the doing-chores-and-crying thing until it’s time for-going-to-bed-and-crying. I don’t pour myself a drink. I don’t put on The Cure. I don’t call anyone to bitch.

I cry.

I do things that feel like forward motion.

I thought I knew how to handle moving on.

* * *

The truth is that any real grieving I’ve done has been decades ago, when childhood or the simple self-absorption of my 20s was enough to take the edge off. Sure, I’ve split with people since then, but I haven’t lost someone.

So I go into heavy-research mode. I read everything I can get my hands on about psychology and divorce and grief. I talk to my friends who have gone through the same thing about what to expect. I strategize with my therapist about empowerment. I mark days on the calendar and congratulate myself when I get to the point where grief turns a magical corner and you stop crying in public.

I cry on the bus the same day.

I start to track my moods on a daily basis. I see my friends. I throw myself into triathlon training and meditation. I go for long hikes. I switch to a primarily plant-based diet. I start practicing lock-picking and knot-tying. I get serious about paying off consumer debt and saving for a house.

I cry while having dinner with my best friend.

I make one-year, five-year, and ten-year plans—I’ve never had a problem that couldn’t be addressed by a good five-year plan! I wait for that moment of insight that’s part of every public radio piece—the moment when I realize this is when I’ll become a mountain-climber, write the Great American Novel, take a trip to Tibet and become the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

I cry in my one-to-one meeting with my boss.

I thought I knew how to handle grief.

* * *

A year ago I was the happiest I’d ever been.

I’d never met a problem I couldn’t fix. I’d throw hours of intense study, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and a good diet at my life. It wasn’t always perfect, but I had a lot of confidence life could at least be tidily organized.

My life has suddenly been dumped out of its neat boxes and I don’t even know how to start organizing. I want, so badly, to be able to fix this, to find a way to clean up this mess. Beyond the messiness of my marriage ending (and ohboy, is that a mess), everything I’ve relied on for years—exercise and a support system and research-backed therapy—isn’t helping me put anything back where it’s supposed to be. There’s no faster tri time, no Great American Novel, no spiritual insight.

I thought I knew how to handle a break-up, how to handle moving on, how to handle grief.

Turns out I don’t know a goddamn thing.