Binary Star (4 page)

I like to make myself a victim.

I lie.

I like to be victimized.

I like when you hurt me. It reminds me that I’m here. I make you angry.

I lie in bed and feel the moon pulling the plates beneath us together.

I feel you move me.

I pull the sheets over my head and stare at the dark, I stare at nothing. I pant. I’m falling through space. I fall through a void without coordinates.

I think that John doesn’t want to be here. I think he’d rather be moving. I wonder if I’m faking it.

I’m lying. Am I lying?

Faking it?

Am I being fair to John?

I wake with a tube in my arm. Calories.

I think I can stop when I want to.

I can be well when I want to.

I can stop this right now.

Be whatever I want to be.

Nothing.

Whatever I want.

What do I want?

Fill me with fluids.

Shed unnecessary matter, I say.

They’re not listening.

What do I want without John?

I love you.

I want nothing. Nothing. I actually want Nothing.

But to chew on the hospital sheets.

A binary star is a system containing two stars that orbit their common center of mass.

The relative brightness of stars in a binary system is important. Glare from a bright star can make detecting a fainter companion difficult.

Except in the case of spectroscopic binaries, where we know that stars share a binary relationship by their shift from red to blue.

Stars will shift from red to blue to red as each moves toward us, then away.

In Oakland, we stay with an old friend who hasn’t seen me in years. He’s shocked when he opens the door. He comments on how much I’ve changed.

A complete one-eighty, he says.

More like a three-sixty, I say.

He puts his arms around me.

You’re so tiny.

I’ve lost weight.

I guess I’ll have to feed you. Bring your bags inside.

We come in and put our bags in his living room. John is upset by my friend’s observation. I can see it in his face.

John, it’s nice to finally meet you after… How long has it been?

A year last month, I say.

Congratulations! It must be hard to live so far apart.

Yes and no, I joke.

John looks at me, surprised.

We’d drive each other crazy being together all the time.

John doesn’t find this funny.

Our friend invites us to sit and John asks if there’s somewhere nearby where we can get a drink. There’s nothing I can say to oppose this that won’t embarrass him.

The bar down the street just reopened, says my friend. It’s red and black inside. Hip.

We like hips, John says.

My friend is confused.

Sounds good, says my friend. Let’s get a quick drink.

“Quick drink,” John parrots.

On our way to the bar, my friend asks me if we’ve eaten dinner. I tell him not to worry, that we’ll have something small when it’s convenient.

Budweiser, Sam Adams, Coors, Corona, Bass, Grolsch, Modelo, Yuengling.

John and I flip through the jukebox playlist. My friend stands behind us. The options seem endless. The record spins.

Then it repeats.

What do you want? says John.

A love song.

Pussy.

I want love, I say.

You shouldn’t have a hard time feeling it.

Burn.

That sounds like an accusation.

Okay. Motown.

Jackson Five.

No, Shirelles.

It’s my money. He drops a quarter in the slot. Jackson Five.

You get three plays for fifty, says my friend.

Maybe stay out of it, pal.

Here’s another quarter, man. He walks away.

John drops the quarter into the slot.

Jackson Five.

No fair!

Too late. He smiles.

I’m sitting down.

No, stand. Burn calories. It’s what you want.

We hug the edge of the Earth all the way to L.A. We take turns choosing the music: John, me, John, me. We always end with John.

We play a game where I name a band and he names a band that ends with the last letter of my band. We play until we come around to bands we’ve named already.

We drive in circles whenever we leave the Pacific Coast Highway, not knowing where on Earth we are.

John reads to me from the books he bought in Portland.

All sentient beings have at least one right,
he says.

He lights a cigarette and opens the window. Cold salt air rushes my face.

All sentient beings have the right not to be treated as property.

Do you ever feel like property? he says.

All the time.

Why?

You never feel like you sacrifice more than you gain when you go to the supermarket?

You never feel like you’re part of a herd of cattle when you’re sitting at a stoplight?

Yeah.

He ashes out the window and reads the page over silently.

Why are you vegan?

Health reasons.

Is it really healthier?

I don’t answer. I don’t know. He keeps reading.

I can’t believe this stuff is true.

Like what?

Like, we eat over 7 billion chickens every year.

That’s disgusting.

Male chicks are immediately ground up.

Ground up?

Alive. They’re not useful.

Serve no purpose.

We drive a little farther and switch places at an Amoco. We continue to switch places each time we stop. We take turns navigating. When John drives, I read to him. He thinks that he bought the books in Portland for me, but I know he bought them for himself.

I don’t care.

I feel they aren’t real.

I tell him I’m too afraid to sleep while he’s driving on the cliffs. Really, I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to, I’m so awake. I swallow two Hydroxycut each time we stop, which is every few hours. I take myself to the bathroom before we eat and swallow more.

When I ask to stop at Walgreens for snacks, I get pills, magazines, bottled water.

He smokes impatiently. He calls from the car.

What’s taking so long?

I’m in the bathroom.

You’re throwing up.

I haven’t eaten for hours.

Come back.

Coming.

The road curves.

A revolution.

Do you think I’m sexy?

What?

Do you want to pull off and have sex?

We’re on a dangerous road.

Okay.

Maybe later, then.

Maybe later.

I look at my face in the mirror. It’s full of craters.

Some stars are fixed and some are not. I am not fixed.

Some believe that our sun’s companion is Nemesis, a red or brown dwarf, or an even darker presence several times the size of Jupiter.

Nemesis is not always detectible, but occasionally sends comets toward Earth and may be responsible for Earth’s periodic mass extinctions.

Nemesis is therefore also called the Death Star.

It is amazing what one can endure.

I know each box intimately. I believe in the benefits of green tea. I believe that coffee is the best replacement for food and also the best supplement. I believe that I need its bitterness because I don’t like it. I don’t deserve to like what I take in.

Most things are bitter, anyway.

Most things harden when they reach my center. Are compressed.

Most things are things I shouldn’t eat.

I pretend to like Tabasco because it burns.

I need to burn.

I am very scientific, or at least methodical.

Everything must be quantified.

I do constant research. I train myself to do it.

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Stars form in gravitational instability.

I want to go to the Grand Canyon.

I want to stand on the edge of its emptiness and feel small. Delicate.

No, fragile.

I want to sweat in the sun. Feel dry. Brittle.

Feel like mornings feel when I’ve been awake for days, because I’m standing on the dry desert earth, and I am part of it.

I want to stare across the desert and walk across it alone like the Mars of my mind.

If I wander far enough into the desert, I may become a dune.

And winds will blow across and reshape me, and I will see that my form has always been and will always be indefinite.

We’re stuck in a traffic jam in New Mexico and I get out to build a snowman on the side of the freeway. Other people get out of their cars, too, and soon there’s a small party sitting on the snow of the embankment watching the stilled vehicles extend for miles in both directions. I get back in the car.

I smoke the last of my cigarettes and John offers me one of his, and we wonder if it would be a good idea for me to walk down the onramp to the gas station and buy two more packs. People are honking but no one’s moving. The brake lights of several cars ahead of us go off, as if their drivers have put the cars in park. The driver in the car ahead of us climbs onto his roof with a pair of binoculars.

John takes a banana out of the bag at my feet, peels it, and offers it to me.

No thanks.

I read the fitness spa billboard three car lengths ahead of us: Want to Get in Shape for the Office Party?

You haven’t eaten anything today.

Yes I did. I ate some fruit at the continental breakfast.

No you didn’t. I was there.

I did.

You didn’t. I was there. I saw you.

I ate it on the way to the car. I was behind you.

He finishes the banana and tosses the peel out the window.

What does it feel like? he says.

What?

Starving.

I don’t know. It’s hard to describe if you’re not doing it.

I’m just trying to talk to you.

And I’m just trying to talk to you about your drinking, but
you don’t even think you have a problem, so where does that leave us?

What if I really don’t have a problem?

I open the door.

Where are you going?

To get cigarettes.

We’re going to start moving soon.

I don’t think so.

Get back in the car. Get in.

I look down the length of cars and see brake lights flashing and going out for at least a mile.

It’s the same as it was before.

I would just really rather you be here. I don’t want to have to drive in circles by myself looking for you.