I laughed and told her she wasn’t allowed. Lauren laughed back and then we fought. Everything was a reason to fight these days. We would keep the doors open when we pissed just to keep a fight going. We were like depraved virtuosos this way. This was art. We’d been living together for almost a year, breathing each other’s fumes. Madly in love and madly in hate. It was the claustrophobia that we refused to surrender. Lauren and I always had to be funnier. Smarter. Meaner. We needed a winner and a loser at all times, always. We knew that someone should leave the room; someone should just back down and quit; but no one ever did. I had come to understand that Lauren would eventually kill me in the way that many coupling insects go. Lauren cut her hair off the next day, too, like I knew she would, and it gave us a reason to fight all over again. Then somewhere, in the lull of insults, I admitted I might actually like her new hair a little. She smiled and nodded, pleased. Letting me kiss her then.
