Fourteen hours after my "suicidal gesture," and a mere 17 hours after I incongruously celebrated a possible new album by Kate Bush, I fled my apartment (which, to remind you, is located one block from Ex's). Packing nothing but my computer, my cell phone, and a grocery bag full of dirty laundry, I drove the icy, snow-lined roads to spend the night with friends.

Di's collection of fountain pens

I am now on the second night of my sojourn. The house is quiet. I am typing at one of my friends' desks, observing the many unfamiliar objects surrounding my computer: a Waterman pen case full of fountain pens; a small basket containing, among other items, a pad of Post-its, a shrink-wrapped deck of playing cards from Foxwoods Casino, and a bottle of "envelope moisturizer" (I'd never heard of such a thing); and many, many stacks of papers. This desk belongs to "Di," one of my two hosts. She and her partner, "Matty," are asleep upstairs. I imagine them blissfully dreaming, wrapped in each other's arms, leveraging their combined warmth against the cold drafts of night.

Matty and Di met three years ago. They purchased this house, moved into it, and filled it with objects from their formerly separate lives almost as quickly as they fell in love. In addition to being my friends, both women are also my (and Ex's) colleagues. Up until this semester, Matty advised the college newspaper. My work with the LGBT student group brought us into frequent contact; eventually I volunteered to assist with the newspaper, and she and I became fast friends. Di teaches English and Law. A lawyer herself (though not currently practicing), she came to Ex's and my aid last year, providing indispensable legal (and personal) advise as we battled homophobic administrators to secure Ex's tenure. The ignorance of these administrators outraged all the four of us, but it also brought us closer. By the time Ex finally received tenure, we'd become four peas in a queer pod.

Last September - about five months before the breakup - I decided to throw a surprise party for Ex in honor of his first day on campus as a tenured professor. I asked Matty and Di if they would host the party at their house. Matty suggested a potluck. I sent secret invitations to 12 of Ex's closest colleagues. On the day of the party, Di met me at the house for the drop-off: six bottles of wine, a red velvet cake, and an assortment of plastic cups, cutlery, tablecloths, decorations, and plates in the college's official colors of green and yellow.

Ex had meetings all day. By the time 5 o'clock rolled round, he was exhausted and resentful of the day-long exercise in college bureaucracy. He grumbled when I met him at his office, grumbled as we trotted to the parking lot, then threw up his hands in the car and huffed when I reminded him that I needed to stop at Matty and Di's to pick up a textbook. He grumbled all the way up to Matty and Di's door. I rung the bell. They invited us in. Ex was in the midst of proclaiming his utter contempt for the college. "I hate that place," he bellowed. The next thing he knew, "SURPRISE!"

For the next two hours, I reassured a shame-faced Ex that none of the guests had heard him. Even if they had, most of them shared his animosity toward the college for one reason or another: moronic deans and faculty (none of whom were present, of course); the school counselor with the deliberate, Sesame-Street-like speech pattern; the staff's mistreatment of students; the administration's prehistoric attitudes toward diversity. Di waved me into the kitchen where we giddily lit the candles on the cake. The party also marked the end of Matty's first day on campus with tenure, so we invited her to blow out the candles along with Ex and a third, freshly-minted lifetime appointee among us. I asked the three of them to squeeze together so I could snap a photo. It would be one of my last photos of Ex, one of the last moments in our relationship - only five months ago! - when everything seemed certain and lasting.

Among the guests at the party were Denise and Mindy, another lesbian couple and the fifth and six peas in our queer alliance. Denise teaches with us; Mindy teaches English at a four-year university but knows all about the indignities of our humble community college from Denise. Two years ago, the six of us - Ex, myself, Matty, Di, Denise, and Mindy - started an annual tradition of "Queer Thanksgiving" dinners at Matty and Di's house. A third installment was planned for next November, though I'm not sure what will happen with that now. Probably it will occur as planned, albeit with one less guest at the table.

Tonight I experienced a "sneak peak" of Queer Thanksgiving 2011 when Matty and Di invited me join them for dinner with Denise and Mindy at the state's "largest steakhouse chain" (so says the restaurant's website). Only at the very end of the meal did the conversation turn to Ex, and even then, only briefly. Earlier in the meal, as we gorged ourselves on the salad bar, Mindy took a quick jab at Ex and his new "arm-candy" of a boyfriend. Denise, ever nonjudgmental and kind to the core, shot Mindy a discouraging look. I love Denise's kindness - aspire to it, really - but I also appreciated Mindy's potshot.

Early in the breakup, Ex and I agreed to discourage friends from siding with one of us over the other. But - kvetch alert! - this was before I learned about Sven, before I signed a one-year lease for an apartment only a block away from Ex under the pretense that both of us would be struggling, separately, to rediscover ourselves, and that neither of us would start dating new people until a minimum of several months had passed.

These days I welcome one-sidedness, although most of our mutual friends are too kind to take me up on it. Matty abstains from judgement because, she explains, she played the role of "Ex" to her own ex-husband, leaving him heartbroken and bewildered when she fell in love with Di. For her part, Di believes Ex is "treating me very badly," especially given the mixed signals he sent when he texted me a week ago to say he was breaking up with Sven. (I don't think I mentioned this before, probably because I knew in my gut that Ex was lying - to himself, perhaps, as well as me.) I don't expect our friends to shun my ex-partner or lecture him on his misdeeds. But it's nice to occasionally hear them question his judgement. He didn't have to lie to me. He didn't (and still doesn't) have to post status updates about his dizzying love for Sven which all of our mutual "Facebook friends" can see. He didn't have to assure me he was breaking up with Sven or say things like "I can't do this now" when I kissed him.

Mindy, Matty, and I are starting a "writers' group" - one of many engagements I've booked for the week. In the past I turned down nearly everything that demanded extra bits of my time, but now? Writers' group? Check. Seeing a movie with a former student who is now something of a hybrid between an acquaintance and a possible new friend? Check. Going to the city next Saturday with another of Ex's and my mutual friends to meet up with buddies from his married-to-a-woman-but-gay support group? Check.

I'm actually looking forward to all of these - anything that will get me out of my apartment and cut the odds of late-night panic and tears. Tomorrow these odds will increase significantly, as I will once again be spending the night alone in my otherwise empty apartment.

Whatever I do, I will not call Ex, even if it takes a six-hour marathon of Golden Girls to distract me. I will point the remote at the TV, cycle through the episodes one by one, and make myself laugh even when I don't want to. I will call friends. Past 11:00 PM, once all my friends have gone to sleep or fled their own apartments to enjoy their Saturday nights, I will watch more episodes of Golden Girls and maybe an Absolutely Fabulous or two. I will take no more than one and a half pills. I will write frivolously about my favorite musicians and bands, my gadgets, my love of CNET podcasts and technology journalist Molly Wood. I will write a biography of a friend or a stranger, about my teenage infatuation with the books of Tom Robbins. I don't care what I write - and you need feel no obligation to care about it, either - so long as it has nothing to do with Ex.

These posts - fluff pieces - will be my equivalent of Jerry Bruckheimer movies. I will relish the empty explosions, the time-killing pyrotechnics. I will start reading a new book - something funny. I will smoke cigarettes out my kitchen window and marvel at the 10-foot-high snowbanks, inhaling the glassy, wintry air between satisfying gulps of smoke. A colony of cats - I haven't even mentioned it! - lives in the alley beside my building. A few nights ago I spotted one cat leaping through the snow - hunting it, pouncing on it, shaking it from its paws, then beginning again as though the next batch of snow would be different from the last...

This memory reminds me of Ex - he loves cats, and we used to laugh at the antics of our own pet felines. Never mind - move on. On to a new memory, a new image. I will outrun him, if only for an hour each night when I need to outrun him the most.

Then I will crawl into bed. I will tell myself, someday, someone will love me lastingly, because I believe this is true. I might cry a little because this person isn't here yet, but mostly, as I'm doing now, I will smile at the idea of him, and I'll think about how much I will love him in return.