“A story in which the first letter of every sentence falls in alphabetical order,” boyfriend said. Boyfriend thought he was a narcoleptic but really just bored. Crafty, his girlfriend called him, the way he suddenly would fall asleep whenever there were dishes to be done. Dishes were not fun, nobody was arguing that, but boyfriend should have wanted to do them as a measure of his commitment. Elsewhere, couples where getting married. Furthermore, she bought the food and prepared the dinners, so dishes were the least he could do. Going on and on about how the editors of literary journals just don’t get it. “Hand me the pepper mill?” girlfriend said over a beet salad under a parasol. “I think you should leave that douchebag loser,” girlfriend’s bff said at brunch. (Just so we’re on the same page, this is a fictional story.) Krafty, his girlfriend, who was losing her spelling, called him. Love was like Like except with unsentimental endurance, a judgeless swollen thing that beats onwards. More than ever she wanted to leave him but every time she began to speak he fell asleep. Narcolepsy was improbable, given his penchant for playing video games 10 hours straight. “Oh my god,” girlfriend’s bff said during one of their weekly brunches, using said exasperated rhetoric to convey her disapproval of boyfriend this and that in general. Perhaps, however, girlfriend’s bff herself was simply envious of the in-built albeit passive intimacy that comes with being with someone. Quixotic her situation was, having a face like that. Regarding her maxillofacial situation, one was compelled to look away—into the corn husk horizon of this fucking middle of nowhere. So, this unlikely love triangle slowly shaped itself into a rhombus as boyfriend—who did nothing but sleep, pretend to sleep, and play video games all day—became morbidly obese. Toblerone became a huge problem near the end. Under the mounds of lard, boyfriend was still there, naked and trembling under the weight of his new self. Verily he actually started doing the dishes, sadly thinking the solution was that simple. Wondering if there was still any chance to salvage the relationship, the morbidly obese boyfriend stretched for excuses, one being that he was Chinese. Xenophobia it’s called. “You’re such an asshole,” girlfriend said, who could sense another attack. Zzzzzzzzz.