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FACT: The average human colon is five and a half feet long and is composed of four main sections: the sigmoid, the descending, the transverse, and the ascending.
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It's morning. We're at my boyfriend's apartment. My boyfriend and I are fooling around in bed when he sees the time and realizes that he needs to get ready for his job interview. We're usually too busy to fool around, but not the kind of busy that brings in money.
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FACT: My boyfriend is five and a half feet tall. He has no colon. He lives on the third floor of a six-story apartment complex. He's no good with keeping jobs.
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My boyfriend grabs three shirts on hangers from the closet. He holds one shirt in each hand and hangs one on his erection and says, "Honey, which of these three do you prefer?"
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FACT: I have my daughter from Thursdays to Sundays and her father gets her the rest of the week. Today is Saturday and, while my boyfriend hangs a hanger on his cock, my daughter is in the living room, which we converted into her bedroom.
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My daughter doesn't like the apartment where I live, she says it's boring, she always wants to go to my boyfriend's apartment instead. I feel the same way, and we do spend most of our time at his place, but I often argue on the side of my apartment because it feels cruel not to stand up for when I'm from.
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My daughter said that my boyfriend is down to earth. I said, "What do you mean down to earth? Where did you get that word from?" She said, "You know, he treats me like a regular person. And he's good at freeze tag." I thought to say, "Too bad freeze tag doesn't pay fifteen or twenty bucks an hour."
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My daughter is awake because I hear her singing from the other room. She's changed the lyrics to her favorite pop song so that it goes like this: "I love the way you Poop when you Poop with me."
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FACT: Before I knew him, my boyfriend went into the hospital on thirty-one occasions during the two years that he was sick before the big surgery.
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I tell my boyfriend that it's his fault that my daughter is always talking about poop. My boyfriend blames his lack of a colon on why he's got such affection for words like poop. It's "poop envy" he explains.
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FACT: My boyfriend has what is known as a "J Pouch." Through the magic of surgery, they reconnected his insides so that his small intestine now has a pouch in it to mimic his missing colon. The only problem is that he has to go to the bathroom a lot. When things get inflamed in there, which happens every few months, it's called "pouchitis" and it makes bathroom visits less than pleasant for him. "Another case of the itis," he'll tell me.
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My boyfriend told me that the nurses would come visit him even after their shift, that they would play cards and joke for hours with him. My boyfriend's parents never understood why overworked nurses would stick around the hospital like that, playing hearts with my boyfriend.
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My daughter has no patience for board games but will play with a deck of cards for hours. She wanted to know why one king had a knife in his head. I thought to say that it was because the queen caught him cheating on her but then my boyfriend said that it was because nobody would let the guy poop. I'm glad he spoke up first.
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FACT: My daughter's father slept with a blonde blackjack dealer when my daughter was one year old. I didn't find out for another year. We didn't divorce for another year.
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Now it's easy to see there was something wrong with my husband. The moment my daughter was born, the man became cruel to me. But it's true that he had a decent and stable job. It was nice not having to work so much.
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FACT: In the last interview, my boyfriend was asked what his weaknesses were, and he told the guy that he was lazy and sleepy and had digestive problems and that he was a bit of a drunk. Then he made the drinky drinky motion. He didn't get the job.
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My boyfriend's disease is not getting better. Sometimes, while he is in the bathroom trying to deal with the inflammation and scar tissue deep inside of him, I cry in the bedroom, begging for a simpler life. When he comes out of the bathroom, he always has a smile on his face, like he was just awarded some kind of prize. It makes me angry that he isn't more upset.
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FACT: I have a picture of my boyfriend and my daughter doing push ups. Except that their pants are pulled down so you can see both their butts. One is bony and hairy. One is cute and chunky. It's true that I was amused enough to take the picture, but it was my boyfriend who put it on the fridge door.
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My mother was horrified at the sight of this picture. I tried to explain to her that it was all in good fun. That my boyfriend is as sweet as any adult has ever been to be my daughter. But my mother didn't look my boyfriend in the eyes all through dinner.
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Before he leaves the room, my boyfriend is looking good with his tie and his shiny shoes. He gives me a kiss and tickles me in those places he knows about. I can hear a grumble in his stomach and I know it'll be hard for him to last through the interview without running to the bathroom.
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On his way out of the room, I say, "Break a leg," and he comes crashing down on the hardwood floor of the living room. I suspect that he fell harder than his joke intended. But my daughter is clapping and giggling from the other room.
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FACT: My daughter loves that man.
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When I first kissed him, it was on the balcony of a friend's place. We were the only two people outside because the keg was inside and outside was cold and windy. He whispered in my ear, "It's not true to say that I don't want to entertain the idea of not avoiding something with you." He looked at me in that way he has with his lips and eyes smiling and not smiling. It's magic that way he can hold onto something sweet -- in a mess of crazy. I said to him, "Are you trying to hit on me?" He was so soft about how he touched my cheek with two fingers and then held my neck and kissed me on the lips. But I started to laugh and he didn't separate from me. He laughed too, with our lips still together like that, and then we stopped laughing, and we were just breathing again, but with our lips together, not really kissing. Just breathing.
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Even back then, he warned me that he had a nasty little disease, that he was up to his ears in debt from all that scar tissue. But back then, I didn't care, because he was so lovely. And now, I do care, because he is so lovely.
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FACT: Even when you're broke and tired and your health is a mess and there is so much to worry about, even when all the facts are against you, there can still be a place for a laugh and a breath. That's what I tell myself every morning.
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After my boyfriend leaves the apartment, my daughter hops in bed with me. I love her giggly smile more than anything else in the world. "Do you want to hear the new song I just made up?" she tells me. And at that instant, I want nothing more than to be in that warm bed with my daughter singing about Poop.
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