The character of Genevieve in Annie Baker’s John: “I became aware that he had replaced God in the celestial sphere.”

Charlie Chaplin, after being mauled by a mob of fans in Paris, 1925: “It’s all—nothing! It’s all a joke. It can all be explained, I tell you. It’s all—nothing.”

I’d long known that I didn’t believe in a higher power; what I didn’t realize was that you still end up believing in something or someone, just by the plain math of what takes up the most of your day and headspace, and may start to live as though the world is objectively theirs. When I was with Man, every day was Judgment Day, because I imagined that his exact standards were my exact insecurities. When we broke up, he became Satan, but I was still habitually moving through the world as though everything came down to his assessment (Satanism?) while also feverishly defining myself in every area of life against everything [I decided] he, the devil, really was deep down (Puritanism). I did this with everyone I became similarly disappointed by or disillusioned with in my first year finally joining the world that, during high school, I only ever visited in professional capacities. I characterized every awful L.A. or NYC person I met as Him-esque, dripping with the same potential to disappoint me.

Once This Is Our Youth closed in January, it was too sad to stay in the city. We both had work in L.A., so we spent a month out there in a giant minimalist house with a lot of empty white for me to pace around in while he slept, agonizing over a line from the show that I was only just now understanding and would never get to do again. We went to parties that made me sad and I went to the beach alone. I texted Lesley a deadpan selfie in front of the normally beautiful view from the Griffith Park Observatory, and said, “I feel nothing!” She wrote back, “A definite blessing. It’s ok to feel nothing, as I’m sure you know. Nothing outside of ourselves is ever gonna be ‘the thing.’ Not career not boyfriend not a Met ball. You might feel nothing because you’re forgetting that you’re everything!”

Was I, though? Everything I defined myself by had evaporated with the play; even my feminism felt phony what with all this recent self-loathing. I kept waiting for a party to be not depressing. I kept reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s brutal On Booze, surrounded by the ghosts of those who’ve fallen from grace in a city that had promised them everything. I kept extending my stay even though all it did was mute my loss with beating sunshine, stir my uncertainty about this relationship on nauseating drives, each of us quietly, self-consciously half-singing along to “Just Like Heaven” in the car. Sad sad sad.

One night, we attended a birthday party in a dark bar. I had a bit much to drink and asked him to dance with me. I was not so drunk that my judgment was off in that he wanted to participate. I was participating so much that he would never entirely reciprocate. I was introduced to Jay Z, who nudged Man to appreciate my shameless efforts. “She’s busting a move! She’s trying to pull you out of your comfort zone!”

“That’s riiiight!” I said, dancing like Linda from Bob’s Burgers.

This went on in a fuzzy drunken way until Man stopped me and whispered in my ear, “Jay Z told me your dancing is trash.” I was not sober enough to realize that was a joke (of some kind?) and so I had to go to the bathroom and talk myself back up in the mirror: “You don’t have to be a good dancer! You’re a good friend! You’re a good writer! You’re a good houseguest!” and such. I went back out and Man continued to be a lump of spam, so I said, “You’re boring!”—never had the courage when sober!!—and danced in a group of girls instead. Beyoncé nodded at me when I joined, which my self-doubt interpreted as, “Oh look, it’s the guy from Ratatouille! May I please have another drink, small rat?”

Now we were staying in a poolside cottage at the Chateau Marmont, because it’s great to stay in a place known for hosting the deaths of young successful people when you’ve just finished up a project you’re pretty sure will never happen again and people have asked since you were 12 if you’re worried you’ll one day crack from the pressure and kill yourself like young prodigies so often do and you’re also wondering somewhere inside if your only current semblance of an authority figure, the only person who feels big enough to hold you, only likes you for your youth, for being so small.

We took an uber. I tried to buoy myself above the black leather seats, to not sink back into silent paranoia and sleep with him another night without knowing he cared as much as I did. And so, while we were in bed and having sex and saying sex things, I blurted out: “Aaand…you don’t want to fuck anyone else, right? Because I don’t want to fuck anyone else, I have no reason to fuck anyone else, and you shouldn’t want to fuck anyone else, and if you do want to fuck anyone else, then really what you should do is just stop right now—wait, yeah, stop, just stop!!” He stopped.

“Do you want to fuck anyone else?”

He let out a little laugh, or maybe forced it. “I only want to fuck you.”

“…Kay!”

Over the course of the entire next day, I tried to have an honest conversation by being extremely indirect.

ME: Oh no! Gosh! I’m spiraling over things I might’ve done when I was drunk last night! I remember being kind of annoying. Was I? Was I annoying?

HIM: You were a little annoying.

ME: Hey, watch it! Ha ha. OK, well. Guess you’d know better than I!

Two hours later.

ME: Did I like, say anything embarrassing?

HIM: Eh, you might’ve.

ME: YIKES! Ha ha! Zoink! Back to sleep in this really fucking bleak hotel which makes me utterly depressed about success and aging and everything coming to an end, then!

Three hours later.

ME: Well, I mean, what did I say? Like, if you remember, I mean, but if not, then like, no worries.

HIM: Um…

ME: No worries.

HIM: You asked if—

ME: No worries.

HIM: —if I wanted to have sex with anyone else.

ME: Whoooooa, there!

HIM: Ha ha, yeah.

ME: What is this, Topsy Turvy-ville? Pee Wee Herman’s Big Adventure? I mean CAN IT, sister, right?! Honk honk!!!

Four hours later.

ME: Sometimes when you tease me I like it but sometimes I don’t.

HIM: Why do you think you only like it sometimes?

ME: I think that when I don’t it’s because I’m already feeling insecure.

HIM: Do you feel insecure about yourself?

ME: Not about like, what I think of myself, but I guess about…this situation? Like nothing has really been established.

HIM: Right.

A time lapse of a bean sprouting over the course of many months.

ME: And what I said last night…like, even though I was drunk, it was probably already on my mind, and I just had to be drunk to say it, you know?

HIM: Right.

A generation of British infants have their childhoods documented for the Up Series.

ME: But…I would be surprised if either of us had the time to see anyone else!!

HIM: Right!

ME: Right? Right!! Laugh-out-loud! Chuck E. Cheese! I am NOT in love with you and you will never hurt me!!!!!