“Nothing´s permanent. Nothing.”

“Conversely, I though humiliation would be everything, but it´s such a nothing.”

“Already things are changing; it´s starting with small shit but oh it´s starting, the change, the irrevocable, impossible change.”

“I should have known then it wasn´t nothing, as he called it. But I was eight months pregnant. No sense closing the barn door now, or so I thought. I swallowed the nothing, straightaway after the usual tears and denial.”

“I know now with blind certainty that no matter what, eventually marriage is just two financially interdependent strangers staring across the kitchen table at each other. They have backpacks slung across their bodies, containing their sexual and romantic history and unresolved issues and family memories. And there´s nothing but cold cereal, because the days of flaky croissants and foamy cappuccino are over. Reality reclines on top of the refrigerator, leering down with a wry yet tender expression. And one day it all just collapses and the backpacks are hauled away to another kitchen table.”

“It´s a little song about abandonment, and it goes something like this....”

“For me, it´s sloth," I say. "Hedonistic sloth and escapism.”