Binary Star

by Sarah Gerard

John suggested a unit on primitivism. I have become so much him that who I am is empty. I have very few ideas of my own. I have very few new ideas because I am consumed by a singular idea.

  I am an ideologue (an idealogue). I cannot teach them primitivism, John; I only teach the stars.

  I have made myself empty of intention. My body is hollow: a form. A vessel.

  An exploding vessel.

  Gas.

  To disagree with John would be to renounce what he believes are our beliefs, what I believe he believes are our beliefs. To disagree with him would be to admit that I’ve lied. He’ll know I’m lying.

  Lying about all of it.

  All of what?

  I believe very few things about myself. I believe in the possibility of perfection. I believe that I have mostly starved myself of will.

  Something is dawning that I cannot explain, though I know it’s related to darkness.

  I am not really here though I am here, though I cannot be sure that I am anywhere, if I am even sure of that.

  I mean that I’m not sure I’m anything.

  Starvation is a matter of privilege.

  I take advantage.

  I stand at the back of the classroom, a core unhardened into flesh and reanimated, cold like space, and white.

  I stand at the back until the bell.

  I am always in the back.

  This is how things are done.

  This morning I turned in circles before the mirror so that I could see my back.

  I know I am air because I hear and because I can see through myself. I would not if I was not.

  Most of the time, when I think I have heard something, it is only my heartbeat. Sometimes it’s so loud I can’t sleep.

  That’s a lie.

  At times I feel it struggle.

  That’s a lie.

  I would not if I didn’t have to. Do not if I don’t have to. If I don’t have, I don’t have myself.

  I drive straight lines across my back. My ribs, which are curves, are straight lines.

  I have mixed feelings about curves.

  These are not my students. They are only students of culture. Proximity does not imply a relationship. We are only near each other. We were born of civilization.

  We hear each other.

  We file out in a line that is rough at the edges and curves through a door, like sheep to the slaughter.

  We moved in a clustered line down a hallway, some slower and some faster, like the river that winds through the bottom of the Grand Canyon. John disliked the canyon. It was just a hole in the ground.

  Really a gash.

  A wound.

  Once, he tied me to the bed and played knives across my skin, but did not draw blood. John is a coward.

  This is the only way I can do it.

  Last night I touched my absence.

  Beauty can be tricked into being where it is not.

  It is naught.

  It is not the past. Because the longer I live in time, the less I believe in the past.

  I carry it with me but I can’t carry much.

  To consider.

  We stand at the edge of the gash. We are there for a moment, but we see it. We see ourselves in it.

  The river at the bottom reflects nothing back.

  Is absent.

  I found that it was absence. Only mine.

  I am faint.

  I’m often faint.

  Our palms sweat together. The canyon yawns before us.

  John takes his hand back.

  He dries it on his pants.

  He’s dry and I’m impaired.

  I’m hungry, he says.

  This summer, when John was here, I weighed myself at least five times a day. Sometimes I am already in the bathroom. Other times I just need to have a precise number. We all gain weight around each other.

  It is thought that our weight can fluctuate between two and four pounds a day, depending on a number of factors, including the proximity of one’s companion.

  And how much water one consumes.

  In other words, how dry one is.

  I have never liked water pills. I believe caffeine is enough. But still.

  I’ll try anything.

  I drink four cups of coffee every day. The first, I get from Dunkin’ Donuts. They know me. The rest, I get anywhere I can get them.

  I find the displays in Dunkin’ Donuts especially motivating.

  I drink two 12 ounce Red Bulls every day, at least. Sugar free. Sometimes I spring for the 16 ounce can.

  And tea. And water.

  I make this a “thing I do,” to always have some vessel with me, holding liquid.

  All the time.

  All time.

  To train for zero gravity, I’d have to float in a swimming pool. This is not a real simulation, as water resists movement.

  In zero gravity, my organs would drift under my ribcage, reducing my waist to a thin line.

  In zero gravity, my hair would have body, lift off my skin.

  My breasts would lift off. I wouldn’t feel them.

  Shed water.

  And blood.

  My body thinks it holds too much.

  Which I do.

  Some astronauts describe zero gravity as womblike: a more primitive state of being.

  The human arm weighs nine pounds on average.

  Not to have arms or legs or torso.

  I don’t want to stay in New Orleans, but John thinks it will be fun to go to a strip club. We park outside the French Quarter and walk through streets churning with bourbon and sweat.

  There’s a man dressed like Homer Simpson with an erection drinking beer on a barstool in the middle of the street. A black-and-neon devil flashes red and blue under a wrought-iron balcony in front of a tobacconist. Four overweight Midwesterners stand around an open-air barfront waiting for daiquiris to be poured from spinning dispensers. Old women in floral prints limp along with Big Gulps next to men with frozen margaritas.

  Bars follow restaurants follow bars and music pours from every entrance, jazz and zydeco, and classic rock and Rihanna. Yellow diamonds in the light / And we’re standing side by side / As your shadow crosses mine.

  A girl in a string bikini dances in the doorway of a club painted red. She spreads out, holding the doorframe, and rubs herself catlike against John.

  What brings you here?

  Celestial navigation.

  You’re funny. Ten gets you in.

  Together?

  Separate.

  John pays for us both and orders a Red Bull for me and a Dewar’s for himself. We follow the leather curves of the club through legs pointing toward the edge of the stage, and sit at a table. Above us, a woman in a silver thong and tassels turns in circles around a pole in the shape of a star. John throws his Scotch back and watches her until he gets dizzy, then stands to order another.

  You good? he says.

  Not really.

  What’s wrong? This is fun.

  I don’t want to be here, John.

  Just enjoy it. You never enjoy yourself.

  He leaves me and moves toward the neon corner that marks the bar. The song changes to Britney Spears’s “If You Seek Amy” and the dancer spins in tighter concentric circles around the pole. Then she stops, facing me.

  She points her legs away from both sides in a perfect cross. Her skin is shining. She’s radiant. Sexy.

  She rotates slowly on her axis and slides down, crossing her ankles. She puts her hands on the stage, bent backward.

  Mirrors surrounding the stage reflect her body from eight different angles. Every reflection is ideal, every line a smooth curve joining every other into a full form. She twists her feet to the ground and crawls toward me like a tiger, her hair covering her face.

  Do you feel objectified? Disrespected?

  No. Never.

  Her eyelashes burst in black flames.

  You have an accent. Where are you from?

  I am here for winter from Russia.
<
br />   Do you like it?

  It’s the same. Shallow, cheap.

  The room spins and bodies move around us but we remain still. She brings her hands to my face. She touches my mouth.

  You’re beautiful, I say.

  You like me?

  How do I get it? How do I know when I’ve gotten it?

  Do you see how she moves? John says.

  He puts two Coronas on the table.

  This is fun, isn’t it? he says. Do you want a lap dance?

  He pulls a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and hands it to me. He’s slurring his words. He’s had drinks at the bar.

  Are you drunk?

  I am not.

  You know we still have to drive tonight.

  Yes.

  I can’t drive. I can’t see, John.

  And I thought you weren’t drinking.

  We’re at a strip club.

  You’re a liar.

  You’re a liar.

  I give him back his fifty and say that I’m going outside to smoke.

  One more drink, he says. Then I swear we can go. Here, drink your Red Bull.

  You can drive a little bit, if it makes you feel better.

  It doesn’t.

  Bourbon Street is a hot mess.

  I drive us past the Superdome and out of New Orleans and pull off I-10 just after Gulfport, Mississippi, seeing out of one eye. We stop at a Best Western that’s full except for one room with two twin beds. It comes with a bible and a TV Guide in the bedside table, an assortment of Ghirardelli chocolates, and a refrigerator fully stocked with Coca Cola products marked up two hundred percent. The top drawer of the dresser has a guide to local restaurants that top out at P.F. Chang’s.

  John turns on the TV and falls asleep in his clothes on one of the beds. One foot remains resting on the floor. He begins snoring.

  I turn off the TV and sit on the other bed and watch him. His mouth hangs open and a pool of drool is beginning to form in his lower lip. His tongue rests fat and pink over his teeth. A receding hairline makes a widow’s peak above his broad white forehead, growing pasty with sweat. His cheekbones are lost beneath his cheeks.

  I reach over and shake him.

  John, you didn’t take your pills.

  Huh?

  You didn’t take your pills.

  Oh.

  His eyes drift halfway open and then close. I shake him.

  John, you didn’t take your pills. Wake up.

  I’m awake.

  You said you wouldn’t drink.

  He licks his lips, turns over onto his back, and brings his leg up onto the bed. His foot hangs over the side.

  John. Wake up.

  I don’t really want to wake him.

  John.

  Snoring.

  You didn’t take your pills. You said you weren’t drunk, so you need to take your pills.

  I walk to the bathroom and turn on the light and look at myself in the mirror. I smell the tiny soaps and unwrap a plastic cup, fill it with water and sit on the toilet seat, listening to him snore.

  I stand up again and get my purse and come back to the bathroom.

  So, I’m out here alone.

  I light a cigarette. I ash into the sink and look at the time. It’s four thirty. The last thing I ate was a handful of almonds at eight o’clock, followed by two cups of coffee and a Red Bull.

  I walk to the mini fridge and open it. Coca Cola. Diet Coke. Minute Maid Cranberry. Sprite. Barq’s. Seagram’s Ginger Ale.

  John’s snoring has become an oppressive presence.

  I slam the bathroom door.

  I blow smoke into the sink.

  I turn on the shower as hot as it will go and undress in front of the mirror. I hear John’s snoring above the rush of the water and imagine his tongue falling into the back of his throat.

  The tops of my thighs almost touch. My lower stomach extends past my hipbones. My upper arms look flabby. I can’t see my chest bones without pushing my shoulders forward. My collarbone looks okay but my breasts sag.

  I turn.

  My ass should have its own atmosphere.

  I stand on my toes. My shoulders are too wide when they’re seen from the back.

  I turn to the side and suck in my stomach. I hold my breath.

  I shouldn’t have to do that. This is how I should look all the time without trying. I exhale. I watch my stomach expand.

  I touch my hipbones and feel the hollow inside them and face the mirror.

  I am so, so wide.

  I’m fucking huge.

  I grab the backs of my thighs and pull them apart, making a space between them.

  This is how I want to look.

  This is how I’m going to look.

  This is 85 pounds or I’m fucking dead.

  The mirror is getting foggy. I climb into the shower without feeling the water. It burns and my skin grows red instantly. I hold my face beneath the full force of the pressure. I can’t breathe. I lie down and close my eyes.

  I hate you, John.

  I stay there until I can’t feel the heat anymore and a calm overtakes me. I breathe.

  I turn the water off and stare at the ceiling.

  He’s still snoring.

  I wait until the air gets cold.

  Belief is brittle. My skin is dry and brittle and cracks. I am always bleeding, especially from the fingers. I do not believe that John loves me. There.

  I believe that John used to love me.

  I do without my body: I am you, I am me, I am you, I am me: I always end with you.

  Do you remember what happened last night?

  I don’t.

  The question is what do I want in my center? The question is What Do I Want? I blow smoke into myself.

  Do I want anything without John?

  I know what I don’t want. I know some of what I don’t want. I don’t want to be heavy. I don’t want to be a burden.

  If I believe in anything: lightness.

  I once thought you were a neutron star.

  I thought I was a neutron star.

  I could never be a neutron star.

  There is not enough of me to be a neutron star.

  A white dwarf is the final state of a star whose mass is too small to be a neutron star.

  We’re confusing terms.

  A white dwarf no longer uses fusion.

  It is held together by degeneracy pressure.

  Extreme pressure.

  This is the only thing supporting it against collapse.

  This is also the only thing that keeps it from exploding.

  A white dwarf depends only on density. A white dwarf isn’t burning.

  It isn’t doing anything productive.

  It doesn’t matter that I’m not burning anymore. I haven’t burned for a long time.

  I approach my natural state of being. Cold is my natural state of being.

  I grow dimmer every day.

  Lightness very much depends on will. I have basically starved myself of will. Of want. Of whether and what I believe.

  In happiness?

  In being better?

  Better.

  I was born without will. I was born with certain beliefs.

  In sacrifice. Humility.

  I am mostly devoid of feelings on purpose.

  Feeling is fleshy. Don’t touch me.

  If you touch me, you have to hurt me. I don’t want you to be afraid.

  What matters now that isn’t?

  You used to paint. Now, when you paint, it is shapes overlaying each other. Transparency. Reds, blues. I see through them all.

  John is mostly concerned with appearances. In this way we’re alike.

  In this way we’re destructive.

  We have only ever believed in appearances. Even now.

  You have only ever believed in appearances.

  A white dwarf cannot exceed a certain mass. I reach a limit that my pressure can’t sustain.

  You want me to be better.

  J
ohn wants me to be better.

  John doesn’t want me to be better. John doesn’t want to be better.

  John doesn’t want me.

  Is that true?

  Let’s stop. We’re circling each other.

  I feel that the sun is rising. I have made more coffee. It burns in the gut, in the kitchen.

  I move from the couch. I am little but a shadow

  I feel that everything is a matter of because, because John and I talk on the phone but it is mostly trying to understand.

  Now we’re eating ourselves and the star chart moves and everything seems to be curving around what I want, but I can’t find my way to it.

  The main-sequence chart. Are we on the main sequence?

  We’re dim.

  I’m the center of the room.

  I’m fixed. I’m not fixed: I careen.

  I’ve been still for too long.

  What was I thinking?

  I was thinking about the scroll. But scrolls end in circles.

  Clothing tags. Toe tags. Taglines.

  All seems to move except for me, and yet I feel that I’m in motion. I vibrate against you.

  I’m spinning. I’m spinning. John, I’m spinning.

  I’m spinning. I’m spinning.

  I’m spinning. I collapse.

  There are binary companions we never see.

  Like black holes.

  When a body crosses the event horizon surrounding a black hole, it shifts to red.

  The body’s redshift is its infinite gravitational lensing.

  I walk down the street without feeling. I always move without feeling.

  It is something I will.

  So oblivion is a verb.

  Redshift.

  I think the pharmacist feels me. He anticipates my needs.

  Can I help you?

  No, you can’t. I’m here again. You’re in my periphery, so I see you.

  You see me. You look concerned.

  Are you sure I can’t help you?

  Actually, no.

  The modern value of the limit of white dwarfs was first published in a paper:

  “The Maximum Mass of Ideal White Dwarfs.”

  Can you explain that?

  I stand in the diet aisle. Hydroxycut. Lipozene. alli. EAC. Metabolife. Sensa. ReNew. Natrol.

  Zantrex-3. SlimQuick. QuickTrim. Mega-T. Slim FX. PhytoGeniX. Xenadrine. Dexatrim.

  Thermonex. NitroVarin. Stacker. Labrada. Irwin Naturals Triple-Tea Fat Burner Softgels.

  I stand at the counter. Christina Ricci. Nicole Richie. Portia de Rossi. Mary Kate and Ashley.

  That’ll be twenty.

  Mischa Barton. Victoria Beckham. Bethenny Frankel. Allegra Versace.