Free I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Achievement Fuck-up Oscar. And if you think you can deprive me of the joy of watching you fuck up for the rest of your life, there’s one thing you need to know. I’ve been waiting for someone to fuck up with for a long time, and you’re it, compadre.”
    â€œI don’t speak Spanish,” I say, lamely. I’ve stopped crying, but my bad eye keeps tearing.
    â€œFurther proof of your fucked-uppedness.” He takes yet another loop around the tree. “And tomorrow you’ll start packing up your things so that this weekend you can move in with me.”
    â€œOkay.” I have nothing left inside me to argue with.
    â€œTime for me to go, fucker-upper.”
    On this last trip around the tree he strips the petals of a rose blossom. He showers them over me with one hand and pulls me up with the other.
    â€œI name this variety Summer Fuck-up. Genus: Josh; Species: Kilmer-Purcell.” He skates off down the path toward the gate and turns around before reaching the sidewalk.
    â€œSee ya tomorrow, pal!” he yells back toward me, smiling, waving. Then he turns around, rolls out onto Hudson Street and disappears into the labyrinth of the West Village.
    I stay on the bench, crying. For him. For me. For us. However we found each other, I know that we will never lose each other. I failed his test, and he’s moved me up a grade anyway. This is not new to me. I’ve always gotten by on extra-credit projects. When people test me, I fail on purpose—to test them . We both passed, each in our own fucked-up way.
    Crying always makes me have to pee, for some strange reason. I go to the corner of the Church of St. Luke’s in the Field Prayer Garden and unzip myself.
    It seems like the fucked-up thing to do.

7
    T he Tempest has passed. So to speak.
    It’s a Saturday afternoon and Jack and I stop by my old apartment to see if Tempest has finally vacated. I gave him a week to get out after I’d moved in with Jack, and so far he’s taken three. But today, other than a broken Absolut bottle in the tub and a leaking lava lamp on the kitchen floor, everything seems to have been cleared out.
    I’ve been in New York for only six months now, and have moved from an East Village studio to an Upper East Side penthouse. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I still had a little gnawing feeling about rushing things. Then again, New York doesn’t leave a lot of time for pondering forks in the road. People who have paused to gather their wits often find themselves suddenly waking up in a cookie-cutter beige apartment in Hoboken. Or, worse yet, back in whatever backwater they came from. I will not ever leave New York. I don’t know how long it takes to become a true New Yorker, but I assume that if I die here—either soonish or years from now—that that would qualify me.
    Three weeks ago when I finally got all my boxes moved into Jack’s, he quickly got sick of me constantly asking if “I could put something in this closet” or if he “wouldn’t mind if I used half a shelf in the medicine chest.” The third day after I arrived he went out on a call, telling me that by the time he returned the next morning I should have all my things put away wherever I thought they should go. “It’s no longer my apartment,” he clarified, “it’s ours.”
    Of course I can’t imagine anywhere I belong less. Against the stark white walls my cheap furniture and tchotchkes look like a yard sale inside the Guggenheim. But those first few days he patiently walked around the apartment picking things up and pretending to admire them. “This is a beautiful piece,” he’d say about my wicker laundry hamper from Pier One. “These must be really valuable,” he’d comment while admiring my collection of 1970s cereal boxes.
    When he’s away on calls, I feel a little more at home. Less like a hillbilly relative who’s