Binary Star (2 page)

I’m indifferent, I think. I don’t think much anymore.

I think I don’t feel deeply for John.

I think John needs me. I feel this without feeling it.

That he needs me reminds me that I’m here, worth something.

I know I feel hungry.

Distant.

I feel dizzy when I stand.

I’m not living in a tree, John. No.

If you say so.

That sounds perfect.

I don’t know what I believe.

You don’t believe these things you’re saying, either. You’ve just filled yourself with them.

You have filled yourself with me.

You don’t even know me.

You don’t even know me.

You don’t grow your own food.

You don’t grow anything but your gut.

I didn’t mean that. I’m tired.

I’m lonely.

I’m hungry.

I’m sorry.

Self-hating.

Justifiably afraid.

Don’t be angry.

Don’t leave me. I’m alone.

I should be left alone.

I love you.

I feel this now as a kind of falling.

I just miss you, I say.

I need you, too.

(We pass each other and keep turning.)

John, lighten up. It’s a joke. I said I’m sorry.

How committed are you, really? I doubt your commitment.

To what?

To the cause.

I do believe in causation. I believe in control. I control this, if nothing else.

I control myself. You see it. It is visible in my absence.

And on paper.

In my performance.

You got straight A’s? You do so much. Too much, really.

But those people online aren’t your comrades.

If you can’t touch them you can’t know them. I know you’re lonely.

I don’t like to be touched. I’m sorry.

Don’t remind me that I’m here.

I feel one thing: afraid.

Guilty. Vile.

It’s just that I miss you.

I’m sure that’s it. I am angry at myself.

I’m just angry.

I am justifiably angry.

Fine, then I’m afraid.

I call him periodically throughout the night. I can’t stargaze here. Otherwise, I’d be out.

There is too much light on Long Island.

He’s up all night when he doesn’t take his pills.

I’m sick. I know. I’m sick, too, John.

I’m sick of this. I’m sick of you suffering. I’m sick of suffering.

I’m fading.

We know each other’s sickness. It keeps us circling.

I ask him questions about it but he doesn’t tell me much.

I also think he lies.

I lie.

How can I know? I can know very little.

I know he lies.

I don’t know.

I don’t know what he sees. He doesn’t ask me about myself anymore.

I don’t think he wants to know.

What to say? I am empty inside on purpose.

I have a purpose. I do.

It is making myself a star.

I’m serious.

I don’t have a sense of humor.

I think it’s enough that I’m morbidly interested.

It must seem like concern. It does concern me.

He takes his pills for fun. They’re his. He needs them. He says that he doesn’t.

What would your doctor think? Do you tell him?

Of course not. I take them, but not for fun.

Whatever.

We’re different. We’re also the same.

John doesn’t know about my pills.

Once, he rear-ended someone on the Kennedy Expressway and spent three days in the hospital.

I couldn’t be there. Should I have told him then? There is never a good time.

I didn’t ask him, either.

Was this your fault? I know it was. I didn’t have to ask.

He forgets.

He doesn’t want to. He is stubborn. He overcompensates.

He has to love me.

We talk on the phone and he slurs his words, orbits nonsense.

What would happen if I left him?

Left him? I’m not there.

What would happen if I wasn’t?

What would happen if I wasn’t.

The work and me. But John is work.

I do John’s work for him already.

I help John become me. It is the cruelest thing I do.

I am orbiting. I spin.

You can’t drink with it, John.

I don’t.

Whatever.

I read about stars. Miley Cyrus, Victoria Beckham, Lady Gaga, Princess Kate.

I buy magazines at Walgreens. Read the stories, read for class. If I have Adderall, I read all night, filling myself. I empty myself.

I fill myself.

I empty myself.

I fill myself.

Again, I’m still empty.

My goal for the night: 85. Amazing!

I don’t need to be full to purge. I’m never full.

I’m able to purge without feeling.

I’m sick.

Mass is a numerical measure of inertia and a fundamental measure of the matter in an object.

I take my picture in the mirror. I know how to turn myself. I want no part of my body touching any other part.

The mirror hovers on the wall of my bedroom. It cuts me at the knee.

I’m short. I have very short legs and a big ass. My thighs are thick.

Nicole Richie is long for her frame. The space between Nicole and her clothes is immense.

Beautiful.

They seem to orbit around her bones, her empty space.

She seems to be disappearing.

She is massive.

She has an impossible shadow between her thumb and her wrist when she holds a cup of coffee.

I covet that shadow.

I hate the shadows in here.

I am also nothing but shadow.

I take pictures of myself before the mirror.

I stand in elongating postures. I send them to John. Make him miss me.

What can improve? Always something.

Please tell me.

He doesn’t answer.

I trim the sides of the photos. The space around a body. The space to the edge. I am nothing but a shadow one thousand miles away.

I am nothing but light’s interruption by matter.

How are you feeling, John? Better?

I’m sorry I woke you.

A white dwarf is very hot when it is formed, but with no source of energy, will radiate away its heat and cool down.

A white dwarf is also called a degenerate dwarf.

I shiver when it’s warm.

John’s parents flew him here this past summer. John has never had a job. He is probably not capable.

For weeks, he sleeps on the red futon. For weeks, I walk the floor around him. The ashtray lies beside him on the mattress.

And the ashes, I rub into the red cover.

I blow smoke into the center.

John, what about your class?

It already started.

The one you were taking in the city?

I have opinions about class.

How do you feel about your class?

You take advantage.

You take advantage.

Your class is destroying you.

I destroy me. I burn myself away.

It would take me an hour and a half on the train.

You can’t get it up.

What?

You can’t get up in time to leave.

He isn’t hungry. He isn’t motivated. I am, but he doesn’t know why.

John tried to tie me up.

He tried to tie me with nylon ropes but I don’t have bedposts. He tried to tie me to the feet of the bed but the ropes weren’t long enough. So he tied me to myself.

This is the only way I can do it.

I want you to hurt me. Please. I need it.

We don’t need sex. I don’t need sex.

If you touch me, I’ll explode.

John tried it with knives and with handcuffs but he’s a coward.

(We have the darkness between us.)

John tried it with ropes and cigarettes.

That’s enough and it will never go away.

There’s something between us that matters.

Degenerate matter.

That matter is darkness.

The degenerate state of matter occurs under extremely high density or at extremely low temperatures.

Its pressure forces atoms to shed electrons in the dwarf’s core, which is mostly carbon and oxygen:

Diamonds.

The largest diamond in the universe lives at the center of a variable white dwarf star.

It is nicknamed after the Beatles song: “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”

John is very confused on the phone.

If I call too early in the morning or too late at night.

He is often angry with himself during the day.

I understand that I can’t understand.

He is angry at himself and at others. He wants to do better.

Do you ever feel powerless? he says.

You must be joking.

I never joke. Do you ever arrive somewhere you don’t remember going to?

I feel like I’ve never had a choice.

John is mad at his culture.

His culture has made him mad.

I am always somewhere without knowing why.

I want to know.

We have an understanding of damage, and of the fact that what is between us is only thought.

That I am damaged has a significant effect, it is very important.

That John doesn’t know.

He doesn’t need to worry about it. He shouldn’t worry. He has enough to worry about.

It’s my role to be supportive. That’s why he loves me.

John loves me. He does.

Maybe he doesn’t.

Maybe I don’t.

Maybe he wants to hurt me.

Love is giving up yourself. He has nothing to give up.

John doesn’t believe in sacrifice.

That nothing is substantial prevents him from owning it fully.

If I were perfect?

Nothing is perfect. What is a perfect star?

A white one.

They’re all white.

No. Some are blue.

And some are red.

THE FIRST DREDGE-UP

A GIANT TURNS RED LATE IN ITS LIFE, WHEN IT exhausts the hydrogen fuel in its core.

Its surface is cool but its radius expands; it is luminous but has low mass.

The outer layers of the red giant are convective, bringing material exposed to nuclear burning to the surface for the first time.

This is the first dredge-up.

Last winter, we spent a month driving around the country’s perimeter. John’s parents paid for everything: hotels, food, and gas. Our job was to drive and come back in January: to find something new. At first, we didn’t know what.

To step out of time, place ourselves entirely in the present, which is also eternity.

The week before we’re set to leave, I spend the night at a friend’s house on Jones Beach, cramming for a final. I call John at two in the morning, speeding on Adderall, and tell him that I weigh 98 pounds, which is true at the time. I had weighed myself several times during the night. Then I’d become afraid.