HERE ARE MY FAVORITE LINES FROM THE BOOK:
abyss, n.
There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret
everything you’ve taken from me, everything I’ve given
you, and the waste of all the time I’ve spent on us.
aloof, adj.
It has always been my habit, ever since junior high
school, to ask that question:
“What are you thinking?”
It is always an act of desperation, and I keep on asking,
even though I know it will never work the way I
want it to.
arrears, n.
My faithfulness was as unthinking as your lapse. Of all the things I thought would go wrong, I never thought it would be that.
“It was a mistake,” you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, and that the mistake was trusting you.
avant-garde, adj.
This was after Alisa’s show, the reverse-blackface rendition
of Gone With the Wind, including songs from the
Empire Records soundtrack and an interval of
nineteenth-century German poetry, recited with a lisp.
“What does avant-garde mean, anyway?” I asked.
“I believe it translates as favor to your friends,” you
replied.
basis, n.
There has to be a moment at the beginning when you
wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love
with the feeling of love itself.
If the moment doesn’t pass, that’s it —– you’re done.
And if the moment does pass, it never goes that far.
It stands in the distance, ready for whenever you want it
back. Sometimes it’s even there when you thought you
were searching for something else, like an escape route,
or your lover’s face.
bolster, v.
I am very careful whenever I know you’re on the phone
with your father. I know you’ll come to me eventually,
and we’ll talk you through it. But I have to wait — you
need your time. In the meantime, I’m careful what songs
I play. I try to speak to you with my selections.
breathtaking, adj.
Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour
before we say a single word.
catharsis, n.
I took it out on the wall.
I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. YOU FUCKER, I LOVE
YOU.
corrode, v.
I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one
night I left the window open, and it started to rust.
detachment, n.
I still don’t know if this is a good quality or a bad one, to
be able to be in the moment and then step out of it. Not
just during sex, or while talking, or kissing. I don’t deliberately
pull away — I don’t think I do — but I find myself
suddenly there on the outside, unable to lose myself in
where I am. You catch me sometimes. You’ll say I’m
drifting off, and I’ll apologize, trying to snap back to the
present.
But I should say this:
Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from
a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely,
I would move my body away. I would stop the
conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead,
I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another
direction. But I always glance back at you.
dispel, v.
It was the way you said, “I have something to tell you.” I
could feel the magic drain from the room.
doldrums, n.
The proper verb for depression is sink.
dumbfounded, adj.
And still, for all the jealousy, all the doubt, sometimes I
will be struck with a kind of awe that we’re together.
That someone like me could find someone like you — it
renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire
against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood
of such a turn of events.
I didn’t tell any of my friends about our first date. I
waited until after the second, because I wanted to make
sure it was real. I wouldn’t believe it had happened until
it had happened again. Then, later on, I would be overwhelmed
by the evidence, by all the lines connecting you
to me, and us to love.
elliptical, adj.
The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It’s as
much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in
from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it
happen.
fallible, adj.
I was hurt. Of course I was hurt. But in a perverse way, I
was relieved that you were the one who made the mistake.
It made me worry less about myself.
fraught, adj.
Does every “I love you” deserve an “I love you too”?
Does every kiss deserve a kiss back? Does every night
deserve to be spent on a lover?
If the answer to any of these is “No,” what do we do?
flux, n.
The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change.
Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings
change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature
of the shower changes.
Accept this. We must accept this.
healthy, adj.
There are times when I’m alone that I think, This is it.
This is actually the natural state. All I need are my
thoughts and my small acts of creation and my ability to
go or do whatever I want to go or do. I am myself, and
that is the point. Pairing is a social construction. It is by
no means necessary for everyone to do it. Maybe I’m
better like this. Maybe I could live my life in my own
world, and then simply leave it when it’s time to go.
hiatus, n.
“It’s up to you,” you said, the graciousness of the cheater
toward the cheatee.
I guess I don’t believe in a small break. I feel a break
is a break, and if it starts small, it only gets wider.
So I said I wanted you to stay, even though nothing
could stay the same.
ineffable, adj.
These words will ultimately end up being the barest of
reflections, devoid of the sensations words cannot convey.
Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to
have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many
words there are, there will never be enough.
jerk, v.
“This has to stop,” I say. “You have to stop hurting me. I
can’t take it. I really can’t take it.”
“I know you can’t take it,” you say. “But is that really
my fault?”
I try to convince myself that it’s the alcohol talking.
But alcohol can’t talk. It just sits there. It can’t even get
itself out of the bottle.
“It is your fault,” I tell you. But you’ve already left the
room.
leery, adj.
Those first few weeks, after you told me, I wasn’t sure
we were going to make it. After working for so long on
being sure of each other, sure of this thing, suddenly we
were unsure again. I didn’t know whether or not to
touch you, sleep with you, have sex with you.
Finally, I said, “It’s over.”
love, n.
I’m not going to even try.
lover, n.
Oh, how I hated this word. So pretentious, like it was always
being translated from the French. The tint and
taint of illicit, illegitimate affections. Dictionary meaning:
a person having a love affair. Impermanent. Unfamilial.
Inextricably linked to sex.
I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover,
I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never
wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to
be loved.
There is no word for the recipient of the love. There
is only a word for the giver. There is the assumption that
lovers come in pairs.
When I say, Be my lover, I don’t mean, Let’s have an
affair. I don’t mean, Sleep with me. I don’t mean, Be my
secret.
I want us to go back down to that root.
I want you to be the one who loves me.
I want to be the one who loves you.
masochist, n.
If there wasn’t a word for it, would we realize our masochism
as much?
misgivings, n.
Last night, I got up the courage to ask you if you regretted
us.
“There are things I miss,” you said. “But if I didn’t
have you, I’d miss more.”
only, adj.
That’s the dilemma, isn’t it? When you’re single, there’s
the sadness and joy of only me. And when you’re paired,
there’s the sadness and joy of only you.
persevere, v.
Those first few weeks, after you told me, I wasn’t sure
we were going to make it. After working for so long on
being sure of each other, sure of this thing, suddenly we
were unsure again. I didn’t know whether or not to
touch you, sleep with you, have sex with you.
Finally, I said, “It’s over.”
You started to cry, and I quickly said, “No — I mean
this part is over. We have to get to the next part.”
posterity, n.
I try not to think about us growing old together, mostly
because I try not to think about growing old at all. Both
things — the years passing, the years together — are too
enormous to contemplate. But one morning, I gave in.
You were asleep, and I imagined you older and older.
Your hair graying, your skin folded and creased, your
breath catching. And I found myself thinking: If this
continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories
of me will be my greatest accomplishment. Your
memories will be my most lasting impression.
quixotic, adj.
Finally, I said, “It’s over.”
You started to cry, and I quickly said, “No — I mean
this part is over. We have to get to the next part.”
And you said, “I’m not sure we can.”
recant, v.
I want to take back at least half of the “I love you”s, because
I didn’t mean them as much as the other ones. I
want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you,
because you didn’t get it and said it was hipster trash. I
want to take back what I said about you being an emotional
zombie. I want to take back the time I called you
“honey” in front of your sister and you looked like I had
just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take
back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it
was a nice wineglass and the argument would have
ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex
in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people
who got the car after us, but because it was massively
uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while
you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I
said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic
and I should have just said you’d hurt my feelings. I
want to take back the secrets I told you so I can decide
now whether to tell them to you again. I want to take
back the piece of me that lies in you, to see if I truly miss
it. I want to take back at least half the “I love you”s, because
it feels safer that way.
reservation, n.
There are times when I worry that I’ve already lost myself.
That is, that my self is so inseparable from being
with you that if we were to separate, I would no longer
be. I save this thought for when I feel the darkest discontent.
I never meant to depend so much on someone
else.
retrospective, n.
I catch you checking out some guy on the street. This is
no big deal, because we both like to look at other people
when we’re walking around. But this time it’s not an observational
thrill on your face. You notice me noticing,
and you say, “He just looked like someone I know.”
A week later, we’re going through photographs, and
there he is, hiking through Appalachia with you. It
wasn’t him on the street, but it was definitely him on
your mind. I wonder why you said “someone I know” instead
of “someone I knew.”
Two days after that, I’m walking along alone, and I
see someone who looks like the someone who reminded
you of him. I feel the irrational desire to pull this
stranger aside and make sure he doesn’t know you.
stanchion, n.
I don’t want to be the strong one, but I don’t want to be
the weak one, either. Why does it feel like it’s always one
or the other? When we embrace, one of us is always
holding the other a little tighter.
tableau, n.
We go to visit two friends who’ve been together for ten
years now, five times longer than we have. I look at the
ease with which they sit together on the couch. They
joke with each other, get annoyed with each other, curl
into each other like apostrophes within a quotation
mark as they talk. I realize that two years is not a long
time. I realize that even ten years is not a long time. But
when it seems insurmountable, I need reminders like
this that you can get used to it. That it can take on the
comfort of the right choice. That lasting things do, in
fact, last.
tenet, n.
At the end of the French movie, the lover sings, “Love
me less, but love me for a long time.”
vagary, n.
The mistake is thinking there can be an antidote to the
uncertainty.
viable, adj.
I’ll go for a drink with friends after work, and even
though I have you, I still want to be desirable. I’ll fix my
hair as if it’s a date. I’ll check out the room along with
everyone else. If someone comes to flirt with me, I will
flirt back, but only up to a point. You have nothing to
worry about — it never gets further than the question
about where I live. And in New York, that’s usually the
second or third question. But for that first question,
where it still seems like it might be possible, I look for
that confirmation that if I didn’t have you, I’d still be a
person someone would want.
yearning, n. and adj.
At the core of this desire is the belief that everything can
be perfect.
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