2001-06-20 - 7:40 a.m.

So he won. He beat me, anyway, but only because he has email access from home.

And I felt very sane and in control last night, even as were arguing (hushed voice for me, loud voice for him) in front of the car, in front of his friends, over whether I was going to give him a ride home or not. I told him I couldn't earlier, and repeated myself four or five times on the way out to the car. But he had the keys. I said, "Look, I'm not being passive aggressive here [as he had accused me of being last week]. I can't give you a ride home. I'm driving Carrie home, and it's in the opposite direction of your house. Then I'm going to the show. Give me the keys. Give me the keys."

My keys. To my car. He threw them out into the parking lot. I want to say he threw them into the path of an oncoming car, but the car was halfway down the parking lot, and slowed down as I retrieved them.

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you too."

Carrie tried to talk about it as I drove her home, putting on her best reassuring girlfriend voice. But I would have none of it. I changed the topic of conversation six different times, with a lighthearted tone, playing the part (I'd rather play that part, than that of the embarrassed girlfriend).

I suppose it was a mistake to plan a trip so far ahead, with someone you're "kinda sorta dating," but it made us so happy for a while, and when he is happy he is so nice to be with. I wasn't going to cancel it, not yet anyway. I was going to say that we shouldn't see each other before the trip, that I didn't want to see him, and that I might not want to see him during the trip either, but that I'd be willing to play that by ear. I was going to email it this morning, from work, so that it would be waiting for him when he got up, bleary and hungover, trying to remember exactly what had happened last night, until he did, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

But the email was waiting for me this morning, saying he would change his flight to San Francisco, and find his own accomodation, and would not be travelling with me to the Northwest. Simple and straightforward; I guess the histrionics were over. But damn, I wish I had done it first.

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