2002-11-21 || 3:24 p.m.

|| and he had a hat that made him look a lot like an elf. ||

i once lived with the tiniest man. who brought pinecones home from school. and insisted on cheese, artificial or not, for every meal. and demanded that i hem his pants and cut his hair and read to him when he was sad. his bed was a child's bed, his childhood bed, and his feet didn't hang off the edge like men's feet would. my bed was a grown up's bed, and he would come in and jump on it when i was trying very hard to be a grown up. he played the beatles loud when i was having sex. i played nico loud when he was having sex. and we'd tell each other about it afterwards: what we were listening to and what we could hear despite our efforts. we had an arrangement. a grown-up one.

i thought i was pregnant on an easter sunday, have i written about this before? he was in his childhood bed, on the phone with a girl who invariably caused me to play nico loudly when she came to visit, and i stood in his doorway to tell him i had to go to the store. he cupped the phone and asked if i wanted him to go too. and i started crying and told him i was going to buy a pregnancy test. he hung up with the girl and we walked to the store in silence, taking the back way along the drainage canal and haunted hill. at the main intersection we crossed the street and passed a truck that had died in the middle of traffic. we asked if we could help and the man, old enough to be my father, got in the truck and steered as the littlest man and the potentially pregant girl pushed the car onto the side of the road. he got out and wished us good karma and we started walking again. the littlest man said we had good karma, so maybe everything would work in our favor. he was thinking of it by way of import records and star wars action figure ebay victories. i was thinking of it by way of not peeing on my hand and floating minus signs. in the store we stood in the embarrassing aisle, side by side. i was taller than him. i outweighed him, littlest man of chest hair and t-shirts originally worn by ten year-olds. i picked a box and he found candy and we stood in line. i paid silently, not lifting my eyes to the teenage clerk or the elderly man in line behind us or the store manager who stopped at the register to fix a bad transaction. we walked out and the littlest man whispered, 'they think i'm the daddy.' 'i know. i think i would crush you,' i said. and we walked home.

i don't remember what happened next. i know it was negative. i like to think he was waiting outside the bathroom door, or jumping on my bed, or playing the beatles loud just to be funny.

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