Your ex-lover is dead.

[I’m on a Montana story kick. But to tell this story I have to tell more. Bear with me. I need to write about my past relationships to in anyway correlate to the one that just ended. Here is more]

Zak came to visit in early October. I hadn’t seen him since I said goodbye to him on my last day in Minnesota. I was excited to see my long-distance boyfriend.

We had been together since the previous February. By March, we were having sex on a consistent basis. By April, Zak had applied to Montana State. With his grades and Montana’s easy online application, he was readily accepted one week later. I said that it was a big step for a couple to take. That I wanted to be my own person, I didn’t want him hanging around me. We would have all summer, I told him. That we could make it work.

He bought the plane ticket from Denver to Bozeman. He was arriving at 11pm on a Friday night and was staying until Monday morning.

I still hadn’t told him about my arrest.

~~~

My relationship with Zak was void of argument unless we were talking about drugs. He didn’t support my habitual smoking. In high school, he said he didn’t want to be the couple that was defined by a stigma. The so-called stigma of being a stoner, of ME being a stoner. I hated that.

Because of his asthma, he was hesitant to smoke. I think he would have liked it. I wanted him to like it. Every time he mentioned that he had tried it, I was expecting to see a conversion, that now, finally, he would know how great it was.

So, It was a strange feeling of competition when he told me, that at one of his first fraternity parties in Denver, that he did acid. I wanted to know what exactly what it was like, where he had gotten it, if he would do it again. He shrugged it off, admitting it had been fun. I sulked. I wanted that story first.

~~~

The summer after our mutual high school graduation, we had planned a road trip to Manchester, Tennessee. Annually, this town hosts Bonnaroo Music Festival. One hundred thousand people camp in a 700-acre field for a four-day, all-day music festival. I went with eleven other people I graduated with.

Zak and I decided to smuggle in 7 liters of vodka. We didn’t tell anyone. Anna’s father, a prominent lawyer in town, lectured us before the trip about taking illegal drugs in and out of state lines. It was his car we were using after all, one of three that would be used as a caravan for the 15-hour trip.

Zak decided that when we arrived we could tell a few other people about what we had mischievously done.

He would let his best friend, John, drink. Anna also could, one of the few other females I liked. David too, the All-American athlete, whose parents and my own who -we joked- were secretly planning our future marriage. I had known him since junior high, when he had braces and bad highlights and wasn’t this charming tanned, muscular man four years later. And Tony was also in our drinking group, a kid who was considered ‘alternative’ by Lourdes standards. He wore loud colors and skateboarded.

We were secretive at first while drinking, sneaking off, and going into the tents. I felt foolish having to hide my fun at a music festival. I thought it was pathetic that we couldn’t confess to what we had done. These people weren’t my friends; they were Zak’s, mostly. Except for David, I didn’t care what they thought.

We were children trying to be adult. Or adults trying to be childish. Ben, a sneaky kid I never liked, stole one of our bottles and never admitted it. We were kids.

I was craving weed the entire time I was there. Our neighbors, a late 30’s something couple, smoked us up once. But I still wanted more. Isn’t that the way it goes?

Tony, the only other smoker, had decided to help. At this music festival, ‘looking’ meant that people would come to you and offer you drugs. Every drug under the sun was offered to me that weekend. So we waited.

Zak had wanted me to come with him to another show, but I made up excuses that at the time sounded legitimate. I was tired, I had said. I just want a day of rest. That I would go to Death Cab for Cutie with him that night but that I wanted to be awake for it. Let me be.

When they had left, a man with a plastic bag came over with special cookies. I was alone at camp with Tony. We ate two apiece. When the others returned, Zak cornered me.

He could tell I was high, but he had no proof. He couldn’t smell anything and he knew we didn’t have a pipe. He was naïve enough to believe me.

I cooked spaghetti on our makeshift grill. I held Zak’s hand as we walked to the main stage to see Death Cab for Cutie play a set. I lost him in the crowd and I passed out on the grass.

On the way back to camp, we had decided to finish our alcohol that night, as we were leaving the next morning. On a whim, I bought a pipe, the same one that a Bozeman police officer would take less than four months later, as Tony looked nearby. I hid it from Zak.

Later, when I was more drunk than high, I searched for weed. But the festival was coming to a close, and everyone was short on everything. Tony, an absolute mess when drunk, absent-mindedly mentioned my newly purchased bowl in Zak’s presence. Tony would apologize later.

This was the worst fight we ever had.

“You bought a pipe! Molly! You told me you wouldn’t!”
(Which isn’t necessarily the truth. I had said I wouldn’t smoke. Which I lied about too)
I had no words; I looked above and beyond his shoulder, silently blinking.

He told me to look at him and I didn’t, not as fast he liked anyway. He took the drink out of my hand and threw it out onto the grass. He glared at me. He ignored me for about two hours. That was as bad as it got.

He left, and then came back with a brown, heart-shaped trick box, a symbol of his remorse. We did this thing, as a couple, where we never apologized for what we had done. We had unprotected sex for the first time that night, in a tent made of noisy nylon. I closed my eyes and waited.

For the remainder of the summer, my smoking habits didn’t change. I was high in his presence more than I care to admit. I would arrive at his house; pet his dogs, chitchat with his family. He would be on his computer, and I’d sit on his knee and make fun of his nerdiness.

Zak would buy computers and put them back together. His prized possession, a two-paneled personal computer he put together, sat elegantly in the first room you saw when you walked in through the mudroom entrance. This room was his throne, his lair, and his evil genius room. He had his computer, his three guitars, his cd’s, his souvenirs, his mail, his clothes, all his stuff, for anyone to see.

What always gave it away were my giggles. I didn’t laugh that frequently when I was sober. What he was saying wasn’t necessarily funny, it was the way he said it. His behavior was what made me laugh. Obviously, he would be confused.

He constantly accused me, saying that I smelt like smoke. I would lie to his face.
~~

So, there was no way now, in the midst of our relationship, that I would tell him I got arrested.

I forbid everyone in Montana to mention it.

When he arrived I wanted to talk but I had nothing to say. I wanted to be with him, feel how close we used to be. But the spark never came back that weekend.

I didn’t know what to do with him. Campus got old, fast. I didn’t have a car and I wasn’t interested in skiing. By Saturday, I was bored.

It was my miracle of a roommate that saved the day. Sara’s sister Mary Lynn had rented a cabin in the woods near Hyalite canyon with her friends that weekend and invited us along for the night.

Before we left, we stopped to buy some alcohol. While in Denver, Zak had made a friend on his dorm floor that made and sold fake ID’s. He received it a few days before he had arrived in Montana. He was hesitant to use it, but gave in. He bought a small bottle of Bacardi rum at a liquor store on the way there.

I never said it, but I saw his actions as hypocritical. He could do what he wanted, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t his fault, but I felt like I was being punished.

Eileen drove Zak, Sara, Jake, and me forty minutes into breathtaking scenery.

We arrived at the cabin to an empty keg and a weak bonfire. I felt ages younger than I was. These people just felt older, with a ruggedness I could never imitate. I felt so out of place. I drank until I was more comfortable. It got better, as the troupe immigrated inwards to the cabin. We ate chips and guacamole.

A mountain man, who had an impressive beard and authentic flannel, offered a pipe in my direction. I wanted to badly, I hadn’t been high since my arrest. But Zak was there, and he would surely disapprove. I abstained.

That night Zak and I talked. We decided that we should stay together, that this thing was going good, I suppose. We slept in the back of Eileen’s SUV. We had cramped, unsatisfying sex in the trunk. Sara saw the condom wrapper the next morning, accusing me. I lied, saying it was from my purse, that it must have fallen out, that it was from the previous night when she gave us privacy on his first night in Montana.

Zak left twenty-four hours later, and I never felt further away from someone. I refused to kiss passionately in the airport prior to his departure. I felt better the minute his plane was airborne.

I thought, “here is my boyfriend, one of my dearest friends, who just came to visit me and we had fun and I know he loves me and I’m in college”
The words felt foreign in my brain and it didn’t register. I should have been happy, but I wasn’t.

He was so sweet. I broke that kid’s heart.

Our relationship never had legs to stand on. Neither of us approved of how the other person chose to live their life. He didn’t like my choices, I didn’t like his.