Bugs Life
Dinner. Together. Translucent smiles of onions in the saute pan. This is the last year he will spend in Philly and in his head he has already left. Onion skins on the counter, a pile of bronze. This is gonna be a good year, he says, that's how innocent he is.
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Him: Hey! This is [His Name], i got ur number from the physics recitation group chat. If you’re around for the weekend, do you wanna work on this homework together?
Her: [no response]
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Her: What are you doing after physics?
Him: I have another class.
Him: Why?
Beat.
Her: Oh, no reason.
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In bed, in his room on Spruce, with the white curtains around the windows, with the windows open, with the curtains moving slightly, with the sounds of the city moving through the curtains, the strangers, their sedans, their wind chimes, their cell phones, coming, learning, returning. They're in bed. It's good, he thinks. I like this. I like how your foot and hair and fingers twist in mine. And he wonders if sleeping with another person is one of those things that become banal by the time you're 40. Maybe it's just that it's tonight and it's never been tonight before. But part of him, the only part he always trusts, is certain that even if they were old, even if they had done it a thousand times, it would be new, because they would make it new. Like a sunset, or a fried egg, or glass of water after sweating. Waking up next to her. His new old friend. Recalcitrant stranger ever to be won and lost again. And maybe, after waking, an English muffin with chunky peanut butter toasted. Does peanut butter taste GREAT? Do you want it to taste great? It tastes good.
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They say the more of a bubble a place is, the more you miss it when you leave, because you don't get that experience anywhere else. You feel like it gave you something.
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Lights. She's at one of those silly sweet college reunion party-not-parties when the news that he’s here spills all over her, and of course, of course on a day when her face is puffy. She sees him before any of her friends do, the kind of sightline reserved for your name or the sun or the cluster of people in the world whom you love like you don't love anyone else, whom you love without knowing how or why. Life happens and then we find reasons.
She sees him and pretends not to see him. He has his arm around a girl. She's pretty she's so pretty goddamnit
And she points to him with her eyes, with her voice, her breath, her posture, pointing to him without pointing to him, telling her friends Don't look and of course they do, and she does too, and seeing him again, he's like water, a surprise storm in April, a rush of blood and the faucet left on and the house flooded and the shirt open and the bra undone and god it is terrifying to miss a person and be absolutely soaking wet and to want you so much. And all of a sudden there is the possibility that she can still lose him, as if she hasn't lost him yet, as if she can still walk up to him, "Do you want to hear something funny?"
"Oh my God. [Her name]. Hi. Wow. How are you?"
And tell him impossible things.
"Me? I'm great. I'm super great. How are you?"
He thinks for a second. "Can't complain." Beat. "So -"
(simultaneously) "So there are these two cockroaches walking around Spruce. And their dream is to go to Paris."
"You've - you've already told this one."
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It's the first day of class. The energy of the room is vigorous, almost athletic, with the kind of flexing intellectual jockiness that arises when healthy, obedient kids are put in a room and graded on a curve. They're 21, so of course they're dumb, and they're dumb, so of course they're competitive. He turns in his seat. Easy smile. Open face. "What did you get for Part C?"
"Part C?" She hasn't gotten to part C yet. "Well, show me what you have." She leans over his desk. "Your answer is so beautiful."
"I don't even think it's correct."
"Correctness isn't what makes an answer beautiful."
"Then what?"
"Well, I know that's what it is to some people. But I've always felt that what matters more is not whether or not the answer is right or wrong, win or lose, but rather the elegance - the efficiency of the approach…"
He grins, shaking his head. "Not true."
"What are you doing after this?"
"I have lab."
"Hello? Skip lab."
"I don't know - "
"One hour. We need to finish this pset anyways. And then if that's all it is then that can be what it is."
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In the dining hall, after class.
"I don't quite get what whats-her-name was saying about -"
"She has a name, you know."
"Alright, I still don't quite get what [Professor] was saying about randomness. Is it a quality inherent in systems, or is it derived? Does randomness really exist, or is it just a term delimiting the things we don't know yet?"
"Well, do you also think if you could just look closely enough, that if you just had super large eyes, and you could see every atom in its position and velocity and direction, and if you had a super large brain, and you were really, really good at physics, you could write the formula for all the future, and the problem is just that your eyes and your noticing isn't fast enough?"
He doesn't blink. "Yes, I think that."
"But maybe it's possible that some things are just unknowable. Not because we're not smart enough, but because they're mysteries, and they exist outside knowledge."
"So give me the example of a mystery."
"I don't know. Love."
"Seriously."
"Do you want to stay in Philly after you graduate?"
"No."
"Because you don't have a reason. But if you loved someone who lives in this city, or even if you loved this city. Then you would want to stay. And Philly would stop being just a 4-year pit stop for you on your way to NY or SF, Paris etc your glorious future. Your life would be here."
"I guess I just don't think that's true."
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"Do you think we're going to stop talking after college?"
He looks at her and she can't read his expression: pity, regret, amusement, annoyance? Maybe just tired. She can't tell if she's projecting.
"That's not a helpful question, I'm not going to answer that."
She isn't trying to be unhelpful, just as he isn't trying to be curt. She's scared of being easy to forget. And he's scared of forgetting. They can't help it. Each of them wants to say the worst, the most painful possible thing, to toss the relationship around to see if it will come back to them, like any boomerang worth its weight, to see if it's worth trusting.
Here's what she thinks: realistically, we have a few months. We have March and then we have April. And in those few months we have something about 50 hours. After that there's a reasonable probability that we will never see each other. Not because we don't like each other, or enjoy each other's company, but because life is large, and part of life is loss, and loss is like that. And I am 22, and I have everywhere to go. Here's what she thinks: After graduation, France, then Spain, Germany, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, San Diego. I want to give away EVERYTHING when I move and get all new things. Redefine myself entirely. California for 2 years. No more than 3 for sure. Then? Then maybe I'll visit every country in Southeast Asia. Maybe I'll learn Japanese, and visit Japan.
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Lights. He's at one of those stupid overdone college reunion party-not-parties looking for her. He's looking for her and he doesn't want to admit to himself that he's looking for her until he can't find her. Until he's staring at a stranger's hair. Dark wing of a bird. Let it go, he thinks, don't be that guy, college is over, let it go.
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Currently the Nasa Voyager 2 is 18 hours 26 minutes 39 seconds of light-travel time away from earth.
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And it's crazy because I would have hugged you so much tighter before walking out that morning if I knew
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In his bed, in his room, on Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States North America Western Hemisphere Earth our solar system the Milky Way galaxy observable universe multiverse God
The inclination is that everything is sex, everything is desire, everything is the easy and immediate rush of blood, but now he's pensive, quiet, looking down at the city, looking down at the milk of her nose, wondering why why why why why, while she sleeps, while she sleeps and he watches. Night after night he looks at her and feels such a pure, deep, and whole sense of commitment that he wishes the future would simply vanish, that neither of them would ever have to get out of bed. But of course it's never like that: she shifts in her sleep, or he does, and the moment melts. We still have to talk, he thinks, and a hot arrow of anxiety moves across his mind as his eyes fall shut. After midterms. After this month. About what comes after. But he doesn't want to jeopardize the remaining time they have with an emotional upheaval. He's scared of what she will say if he asks. She'll say, [His name], is this really so serious, so precious at all, is any of it that big of a deal? Or worse - she’ll smile. Imagine. Two students in their early 20s meet in class. They study together. Of course after you study you get hungry, so they eat together. Of course when you’re eating you have to make conversation, so they walk each other through the little boxes of their personal history, their messed-up exes, their messed-up parents, et cetera, you already know how this goes. As the semester ends they are each surprised to discover a little magic there. They’re smarter than they had thought, and happier, and more beautiful. Being together makes each of them feel bright. They’re too young to consider the possibility that what they wish to sing about as love is actually, perhaps, a tentative acceptance and understanding of their own selves. Of course they feel smart: the brutal weed-out courses of freshman and sophomore year physics are over. And the rest - beauty, happiness, humor, health - well, you can chalk that up to 3 hours nightly of extra sleep.
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"Do you want to hear a joke?"
She always does this, says "do you want to hear a joke" and says something downright terrible, like "When do you think we're going to stop talking", or, fatally, "Nevermind."
"Sure."
Secretly she was hoping for a more enthusiastic response, but she forges on: "Alright, so there are these two cockroaches walking on Spruce, and -"
"Cockroaches? Walking?"
"Yes, walking - don't question it -"
"Okay, no questions, but-"
"Don't interrupt! So there are these two roaches walking on Spruce, talking about their respective hopes and dreams, and one of the roaches says, I want to go to Paris. And the other roach says, what's Paris? And the other roach says, it's like, I don't know, I hear people talking about it sometimes. Like heaven? What's heaven? No, like next year in.. Paris. You know that phrase? They say the light is slower there. You can hold it. Like honey. Like relativity? Like how time moves differently? Yeah, like relativity, like how if you stand at the top of the empire state building your watch will tick more slowly. Maybe if you got to the top you would never die. But I think after a certain point, once you're gone, you can never return. Well, why go? Why not stay here? On Baltimore? I hear there are streets that we've never even seen. Something called Walnut. Delaney. Market. Locust. Locust? What's Locust? Well, I don't know. But that's the point! Remember when we lived in the dumpster? Yes! That was so fun. That was good. And the whole time there were all these other streets so near of which we never even knew. Like Locust. We did not walk there together. Or 43 which becomes 44 or 44 which becomes 45. So? We can. We can. We're going to go to Paris!1!1! So the optimistic cockroach turns to the pessimistic one and picks up a little piece of paper that some spoiled undergraduate has left on the ground and reads aloud: Paris is a country in Europe, population 80,000,000, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Its flag is Red Blue White .. What's wrong with you, why are you crying? We're not in Europe, idiot, we're in Philadelphia! We're never going to get to Paris! Philadelphia? I thought this was 42? It's both somehow, that's the point, we don't know that so how can we know anything, we're cockroaches, we are not going to go to Paris, we are not going to go to Baltimore, we're never even going to make it to 43!"
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2:03 AM. [DAY] [MONTH] [YEAR]. Him naked, sweating, openmouthed, hips bucking as I give him head. Sometimes I look at him and he seems to flicker before my eyes. I look at him and I swear I can see all the people he's ever been, all the people he will ever be. A man's innocence. A woman's experience. A boy with the blush and temper of a girl. We see what we believe. We believe what we see. Two more weeks. I think of him gone from my life and I begin to cry but he doesn't notice because his eyes are closed and my face is wet anyways from all my spit on his dick. His eyes are closed, he's already somewhere else. I taste my spit, I taste his spit, I taste his precum, I taste my tears. I look down at him with as much gentleness and strength as I can muster, and wipe my cheek, and open my mouth again, and press inside him deeper.
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And it hurt but that was okay because it was good
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When we lived in Philly between 41st and Spruce we often did walk up and down the one street with its wide open sidewalk to the local parks to sit and be alive together and of course there were other streets for example Pine which becomes Osage or Osage which becomes Baltimore but of course we could not walk together on every street ever it wouldn't have made sense and we only had those days of course baby you know how it was we were so implausibly busy trying to live our lives we had dreams big dreams which seemed hardly compatible with waking up and going to bed together let alone appreciating the font and fact of the street signs of Philly the quality and character of this city yes it was our last time there but it was only our first life we had only those days baby we were young together yes we were young we did only what we could do
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Still the sense of missed opportunity lingers like a perfume. You remember waking up early in late April, in his bed, in his room, in his room with the white curtains around the windows. The day just beginning, and already it's so bright out. And you remember thinking that this is it, the beginning of happiness, the beginning of love, the beginning of the day, of the rest of your life. Only in retrospect do you realize that it wasn't the beginning. It was the whole thing. That was happiness, this was the day, your life. There it was.
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She would choose a word or a city over you. And I hope you choose those things, too. Not just over her, but over anyone, if you wanted it
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And what is it that you want?
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[His name]! You know what his name was? [His name]! His name was [His name]. He and I would study together. He wanted to learn the whole history of the world. He wants to do good, and he always does it well. And this is why he'll always have work, and good work, well paying work. (Plus he majored in physics.) And I only want to do what I love. What the words for don't yet exist. I always want to send it. I wanted to jump but couldn't. So I kissed him. And teetered on the precipice. And understood.
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"Hey, [Her name]".
"Wow - [His name] - hey - hello - how are you?"
"I'm good, thanks."
"Oh, that's good. That's really, really good."
"Are you - " - gestures -
"I have to go to work."
"I mean afterwards."
"I don't know - "
"Let's go for a walk. Or get a drink. One block. One drink. And then if that's all it is then that can be what it is."
