Overdose (drugs, deceit, passion, you name it)
    In retrospect, it makes sense that we rarely called each other by our real names. Sometimes, he called me Coco—inspired by a blue too-tight t-shirt I wore that had a pink line drawing of a poodle in front of the Eiffel Tower. To his face, I didn't really call him anything much, in the way you never quite know how to address your friends' parents. In email I used endearments—cupcake, darling, lemondrop, love, ox. Only when I was being quite serious would I use his real name (after we broke up, or while we in the midst of it doing just that, he corrected my pronunciation of his name, a Slavic constellation of letters I could not quite master). When I'd call and get his voicemail, the sound of it pronounced always seemed startlingly brand new. Our relationship died an excruciating death, so protracted it's hard to pinpoint its end, though I think by 2005 it was clearly over and on Independence Day that year I saw him with someone else. Here's how it started in 2002: Nerve, that hackneyed facilitator of flirty then lusty emails loaded with promise of at least a one night stand. We exchanged email addresses and wrote incessantly at work, at home at night, in the morning, and quickly set up a time to meet, on Saturday night in late winter. I was to call as an engagement party I attended wound down and meet him at a bar, which I did. He said on the phone that he imagined, based on something I'd written, that I'd have a voice like a little girl and was surprised it was otherwise. I found him there in the East Village, tall, skinny, black hair, reading the New York Review of Books, if you can believe it. I offered to buy the first round and as I stood at the counter waiting for the pour, felt a hand on my shoulder and he spun me toward him and kissed me, truly a spectacular kiss which made me thirsty for more. And more. And then—was it that night?—I found out he was married. Or maybe I knew already and didn't care. And then, it was that night, I am quite sure, I found out he had a child too. He and his wife were on the rocks and what's a few obstacles when someone seems to adore you? I felt euphoric and in any case, I was unattached. We met again a few weeks later, and my fear that it would not be as fun was unrealized. Hurrah! I became consumed, thinking about him all the time, writing whenever I could, hoping to make a furtive date whenever possible. He did the same. We intoxicated one another. We kept up our letter writing too--full of fantasies about the immediate and far future and unbridled. For a while we wrote erotic haikus. Sometimes, on a weekend, he'd come over at 4 in the afternoon and stay until 3 in the morning. I remember one night, late, as he kneeled on the floor to tie up his sneaker, I reached out from my bed and touched the seam of his shirt; it was inside out. I felt that I loved him. I think I did love him for quite a while and he seemed to feel the same way. He said so, anyway. It was the first time I felt so consumed by anyone but it was lonely. I could only speak about him to a few trusted friends and then incompletely. If I called him 'my love' to his face (which I did once, with a great big inhale first since it seemed to require courage), to my confidants he was Mr Wrong. We drank together, at my house (where else could we go, after all, he was married and I felt embarrassed). There were drugs too--not on my end, but on his. Cocaine, occasionally heroin which he urged me to try and claimed was safer than pot. At first even his drug use had romance about it--some sophomoric proof of internal demons that show a person's depth. Later it became a bore, nobody's much of a conversationalist when they're high and boy, how it it kills sex drive. I wanted more for myself and my future, and would break up and then recant and break up and recant, I was still thirsty for his kiss, but I was also restless and unsatisfied; he was so needy, it was painful and trying to listen to. He spoke, it seemed incessantly, about his marriage, obligations at work, how anti-smoking laws were ruining his life, no money, no money, get high. Wait, that's not all. I took him to a play, as friends, and ran into someone I knew and tried to pretend he wasn't with me. One night, on the phone when I was trying perhaps again to end it (I confess it took a long time to ween my addiction to him; a little I feared I'd never find this kind of passion again ), I said that he felt stronger for me than I for him. I was surprised it hurt his feelings, sometimes I am obtuse. I said, I know everyone has baggage but yours is way too heavy for me. And finally, that was that. He got tired of my rejection and I saw with someone else (not his wife, they were separated, now divorced and he's clean and well and, I think, happy). I stopped thinking about him all the time, even stopped dreaming of him (which earlier I longed for, an appearance was like a nighttime gift). That was an achievement.