I remember when she dumped me, sitting on the couch and telling her I’d like to work on it. Telling her that we got along in every way, but in the bedroom. I remember thinking about her whiter than white teeth in the dark and long slender neck twisting with the never getting there. I remember thinking about the night in the kitchen and her hands up on the wall over her head, arched back. I remembered thinking about the day she showed up at the airport with flowers and the night after her French friends came over and I made them laugh and her ferocious approach on the hard wood floor that left her unsatisfied. I remember the strangeness of being wanted and liked but broken within.

I remembered all that and still thought it could be worth it, but she was certain that this had to be it. “I don’t want to work on it,” she said. And I wondered if she’d ever solve it for herself.

And I remembered all that again 15 years later at a show she was doing when she described me to great laughter as a nice man who’d had too much marriage counseling.

But I also remembered the great relief after as I walked away from the warm light of the apartment: this time it’s not me.