by Sarah Gerard
Is that all?
Kelly Clarkson. Lily Allen. Keira Knightley. Ginger Spice.
Credit or debit.
Lindsay Lohan. Lady Gaga. Fiona Apple. Isabelle Caro, who’s dead.
Felicity Huffman. Calista Flockhart. Tara Reid.
Karen Carpenter, who’s dead.
Would you like a candy bar for a dollar?
Fuck you.
The Barbi Twins. Lara Flynn Boyle. Paula Abdul. Joan Rivers. Sharon Osbourne.
The ladder is the ribs, the lines in the chest.
The gap between the thighs.
I want the rings around the eyes.
Nobody ever talks about the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy, or the fact that most, if not all, galaxies orbit supermassive black holes.
It is not good for casual conversation to talk about circling oblivion.
Death.
By death I don’t mean individual inevitable conclusion, but the death of any trace of any of this. Deep death, if you consider that death is a matter of time.
The nature of a supermassive black hole is such that the density of its singularity is less than that of a smaller black hole. In some cases, it is no denser than water.
This means that a body traveling toward the black hole center will not experience significant tidal force until very deep into the black hole.
An observer would notice very little change. Once a body crosses the event horizon, it redshifts, but it never disappears.
We stop in Savannah to see the moss on the trees.
We lie in the grass in one square, then another. We sleep with magazines over our faces.
John, I need to tell you something.
He’s sleeping.
Can I hold your hand?
Why are you crying? he says.
Do you love me?
What do you want me to say?
That you do.
Okay. Of course I do.
John bought me this mirror for my birthday. Or John used his parents’ money to buy me this mirror for my birthday. John used his parents’ money to buy me a gift card. I used the gift card to buy this mirror for my birthday.
I look at myself for hours each day.
I see myself and in that sense I’m real.
I practice saying no to various kinds of food.
No, thank you. I’ve already eaten. I’m cleansing. I’m fasting. Making myself pure. Eating vegan. Eating raw.
No, thank you. I’m an activist. I’m starving in solidarity with Ethiopians.
No, thank you. Another time.
We go out to The Cheesecake Factory the night of my birthday. It’s June. We drink wine and eat vegetables covered in butter.
John refuses to acknowledge the butter because he’s been drinking since the afternoon. He says it is something else, but he won’t say what. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to see it.
It’s not about personal purity.
But it’s also about purity.
John, is it ethical for a vegan person to eat here, even if they’re eating vegan food?
He’s not listening.
I read somewhere that the Bistro Shrimp Pasta has over 3,000 calories, I say.
Huh.
I have taken too many laxatives before the meal. I nearly pass out in the bathroom and sit on the toilet with my head against the door, trying to see the tile. Everything is black.
My legs are weak. My heart is pounding.
John.
I vomit and feel better for having done it.
John, help me.
I try to stand and collapse.
I spend the rest of the meal drinking water. By the time we leave, John is talking in his sleep at the table. This is how he wins every time.
On the way home, I buy a bag of pretzels at Walgreens. I eat the whole bag while John is sleeping and then I throw it up. The bile gets stuck in my nose and burns. I swear I’ll never eat again.
I lie to myself.
I walk away from the mirror. I look back.
I walk around in circles before the mirror.
The next day, John’s face is slick and heavy in the morning light and he says that he doesn’t want to drink anymore. I put my head on his chest and kiss his neck.
I’m so glad.
Oh, Jesus. Your breath smells horrible, he says.
I’m sorry.
It’s worse than just normal morning breath. Go brush your teeth.
In the bathroom, I look up pictures of bulimia teeth on my phone.
It is raining in Savannah. All the gutters turn to streams.
John, I’m not starting a revolution tonight.
I’m not sure. Give me time. It’s the only thing I eat.
I can’t lean one way or the other. I lean in a circular motion.
Revolution is a pattern of return.
You want to return to where we started. So do I. I also want to run away.
A runaway star moves through space at an abnormally high velocity.
It breaks free of its orbit or else it’s hurled free.
There’s no resistance.
Moving away from its source, going somewhere, going anywhere else.
Anywhere else, it doesn’t even matter.
The red giant is inflated and tenuous.
We go golfing in Savannah with a friend we make sightseeing in the historic district. We had no direction, so we bought a Rough Guides and went where it told us to go.
Our friend is the son of a Savannah politician and invites us to his country club. The golf course undulates green into the distance. The day is bright and atmospheric and crisp. John hands me a Nike hat.
You need shadow on your skin. You’re very pale.
I’m very cold. Aren’t you?
We should have brought sunblock, he says.
Aren’t you cold?
Not really.
I ask our friend how far it is to each hole. He doesn’t answer, but hands me a small white sphere with craters on its face.
You’ve got a tight lie.
Excuse me?
They haven’t fed the grass. Your ball is close to the ground.
He shows me how to grip my club. I let him touch my hands but I don’t want to lead off.
Then John can lead, he says.
John used to play golf with his parents, but he wouldn’t tell our friend that. He didn’t want to come; he thinks he’s doing it for me, but I know we’re doing this for him.
He’s hung over. I know that, too. He swings.
Hit a skull.
I didn’t mean to.
You’re up second, says our friend.
While I’m teeing, he tells John about his father. I’m not listening. I make a straight line from my hands to my goal. I lick my finger and hold it to the sky. My hands are dry and cracked.
What do you mean? says John.
They’re disgusting. Half are crazy, half are drunk. None of them work.
Our economy is broken, says John. They have no choices. They’re backed into a corner.
I turn to them.
An explosion. Earth everywhere. Backspin.
Nice one.
They’re a bunch of worthless bums, says our friend. They’re a waste.
Maybe they’re not able to get jobs, says John.
Yeah, that’s it.
I don’t want a fucking job. You know what? I dropped out of business school.
That was dumb.
No, I had to. It was the only way I could live with myself.
Our friend snickers. Hope you enjoy welfare.
Fuck you.
Or maybe you have a trust fund? You and I aren’t so different.
Keep talking. See what happens.
He’s got a short fuse, doesn’t he?
Don’t talk to her.
I’m just kidding. Look, John: we’re friends. He gets upset! I’m just kidding.
I’m not friends with fucking bigots.
Only drunks.
John, stop.
Let’s get the fuck out of here, John says. This guy’s a prick.
You ruin everything. Why’d you do that?
The red giant is a late stage of stellar evolution, when nuclear fusion has exhausted the hydrogen in its core.
The core of the star turns degenerate.
The star expands.
The increase in size and brightness marks the beginning of the end.
John drives north from Savannah and stops on the side of the freeway. He hasn’t said a word until now.
I have to pee. Pee now if you have to.
He turns on the hazards and I follow him down the embankment, past a sign advertising Subway, Church’s, Quiznos, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s, and one family-owned restaurant.
We enter the woods.
The trees hang low and barren and grey. The traffic dims to a hush. Dry leaves crackle beneath our shoes. We walk a distance and stop on either side of a fallen log.
This is where people get raped.
Turn around.
Don’t look at me, either.
I’m not looking.
Don’t look.
I squat against the cold bark of an oak and drop my head between my shoulders. I try to direct the stream of piss between my shoes but it splatters off the tree and I piss on my ankles.
Son of a bitch.
You piss on yourself?
A little.
John circles around to my side of the tree. He takes a clump of my hair in his hand.
What are you doing?
Fuck me against this tree, he says.
I just pissed on it.
So? He’s smiling. So don’t touch the piss.
He leans against me.
Stop it.
Drop your pants.
He kisses my neck.
Drop them.
I don’t want to. We left the car up there. Stop.
He kisses me hard on the mouth. I hit my head on the wood and pain shoots through my neck. I slap him across the face.
I said don’t touch me.
Fine. Be a bitch.
He walks away.
Haven’t fucked me in I don’t know how long. And you taste like shit.
I ask him to stop so that we can eat. He stops. I don’t eat anything.
A binary star that is visual is rare. Its true separation is vast; its orbit measured in decades, centuries.
It moves slowly.
Did you see that asshole’s face? What a pussy.
You shouldn’t have hit him.
On our lunch break, I ride with my mentor to the supermarket. We both smoke cigarettes. I admire my arm out the window. The day is bright for fall on Long Island, and warm. I’m wearing an oversized Uniqlo sweater and a scarf with black Levi skinny jeans. For once, I feel good.
I noticed my students looking at me.
I didn’t know you smoked.
I don’t.
You’re smoking.
I’m on fire. Just coffee.
No food?
I’m not hungry.
Or I have food at the school. Or I ate before I came. Or I never eat lunch. Or there’s nothing vegan here. Or I’m feeling nauseous today.
You know what they say: starve a fever, feed a cold.
Are you sick?
Kind of, yeah.
I’ll buy it. You look a little overworked.
We drive back toward the school with the windows up and the radio on the oldies station. My mentor sings along. Housewives jog on both sides of the turnpike in Lululemon activewear. Leaves dry up and curl into themselves, and fall from trees onto the sidewalk. Cars inch around the Burger King Drive-Thru.
So, any plans post-graduation?
“The next phase.”
Exactly.
Not really.
That’s not what he wants to hear. We finish the drive in silence and pull into the school parking lot. Students crouch low in their cars, not wanting to be seen skipping class, but we see them. He turns to me.
Your boyfriend lives in Chicago?
Yeah.
That must be hard.
I don’t say anything.
If you ever need to talk…
Thank you.
I sit in different parts of the room. I imagine someone seeing me sit in different parts of the room. This person isn’t John, but someone I imagine. Someone better than me. Someone luminous. A complete stranger.
This person is a woman. She is young. She is thin. She is sexually magnetic.
She has a lot of friends and she’s the center of her social circle. She has a lot of clothes but she doesn’t need to brag. She has men, only some of whom she pays attention to. They give her money.
All of her beautiful friends are as beautiful as her.
She lives in half-darkness. She hardly ever sees the light. She has her own light. She sleeps late in the day.
She goes to the beach.
She is constantly in motion but there’s no separation between her movements. She is fluid.
She’s white. She’s so white, she’s silver. She’s glowing and reflective.
You can’t take your eyes off her.
I imagine what she would think if she saw me in this chair. I wonder if she’d be jealous. She wouldn’t tell me if she were. No, she has class.
I change positions. There. I lean back. I curve. I reach around myself.
If she saw me this way from a certain angle:
I take a picture with my iPhone.
From this angle: Take a picture.
Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. I wait for comments. Retweets. Shares.
I look for people to like me.
I look at other people. I look through a whole photo album of someone I used to know. She’s lost weight. She’s married.
She’s happy.
She’s successful.
She has money. Recognition.
I like a picture of hers and she likes one of mine.
I look through a whole album of John’s ex-girlfriend’s. She doesn’t know I do this. I do this often. I take a minute to change my profile picture to a picture of John and I kissing deeply.
I imagine she notices.
Sickness is reciprocal.
Gravity is how we fall together.
If you’re able to love, you can tell me what it means.
The way space-time curves around it:
Love is a black hole.
Undetectable except by the way it affects other bodies.
Invisible but strong. Inescapable.
You have a leather couch that I’ve slept on. You have a field; I have a field.
If you stopped talking, you’d fall asleep, John.
(The red behind your eyes.)
I know that about you.
I sit in the back of the class. I haven’t been to the last two classes. My classmates know. They see how tired I am. I have a 24 ounce McDonald’s coffee on my desk; it’s mostly empty. This morning, I ate half a McDonald’s salad without dressing, cheese, or croutons, and felt it for hours.
That’s a lie. I have a very poor sense of time.
I can sleep with my eyes open.
Make your hand still. You’re shaking. What does that say?
You’re wobbling on your axis.
I can’t sleep with my eyes open. Stop. Stop pretending.
Write this down.
(In your Mead notebook with your Pilot Precise V5 — the only pen you use, because it makes the thinnest line.)
(What do they call you?)
– In 1860, Gustav Kirchhoff first put forth the idea of a perfect black body.
I feel that I’m sinking but awake. My skin is dry like a morning after days of not sleeping. It is brittle and tired. It hurts when I touch it. It bruises easily, red and blue, and clouds of black.
– It would be of infinitely small thickness and completely absorb all rays of any kind.
I feel my classmates looking
at me. They wonder where I’ve been. They notice my unwashed hair. I haven’t showered for days. I avoid the shower.
– We’ve since dispelled with the need for the body to be small.
(– Or have we.)
– We preserve the requirement that it absorb anything. Anything.
– All incident radiation.
John calls me while I’m in class. I don’t answer. He knows that I’m in class.
He doesn’t know. He forgets. He overcompensates.
He wants to disturb me.
He needs me.
So I don’t forget him.
What does he need?
What do you need?
Nothing. Call me after class. I’m going out.
Are you alone?
I’m with Michele.
Getting drinks?
My coffee isn’t hot anymore. I pull a Red Bull out of my purse. I crack the can. It’s warm. I rub my face.
Probably. Does it matter?
I thought you weren’t drinking this week.
It’s fine. I’m with Michele.
This is what we do together.
It’s what we do together.
This is what we do together.
I call him later but can’t get him on the phone.
Charleston is a cluster of river veins flowing into the Atlantic.
We drive to the end of a thin peninsula and stare out over the estuaries. I wear a white cashmere sweater. John wears a red wool cardigan. We pass a bottle of Dewar’s back and forth as the sun sets over the ocean.
How are you feeling? I ask him.
How are you feeling?
Really happy to be here with you.
This is nice.
It is thought that a white dwarf with a low enough surface temperature could harbor a habitable zone.
It is also thought that a white dwarf’s cooling could draw planets in, completely consuming them.
It’s raining. The streetlight shines through the drops on my windshield. They make a pattern of constellations. Two of them merge and slide in a stream down the glass, and break up at the wipers.
I blow smoke into the cabin.
I am at the center of an immense system. I keep the planets in orbit around me. I keep everything in balance.
I am a perfect daughter, student, girlfriend, woman. I’m admired.
I have roles. I’m a social human. I follow the rules.
I easily follow rules.
Men want me. Right? They’ll want me more when I’m thinner.
I’ll be unstoppable.
Then, I will always be happy.
I open the door and step into the lot. Stop & Shop glows like a galaxy.