by Sarah Gerard
“By now I’ve read Binary Star twice, and I’ve become so entwined with it that I’m reluctant to talk about the subject at length. Let me just say that I’ve never read anything like it.”
HARRY MATHEWS
“Two lost souls hurtle through a long, dark night where drug store fluorescents light up fashion magazine headlines and the bad flarf of the pharmacy: Hydroxycut, Seroquel, Ativan, Zantrex-3. Gerard’s young lovers rightly revolt against the insane standards of a sick society, but their pursuit of purity—ideological, mental, physical—comes to constitute another kind of impossible demand, all the more dangerous for being self-imposed. Binary Star is merciless and cyclonic, a true and brutal poem of obliteration, an all-American death chant whose chorus is ‘I want to look at the sky and understand.’”
JUSTIN TAYLOR
TWO DOLLAR RADIO is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry.
We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.
Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Gerard
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-937512-25-5
Library of Congress Control Number available upon request.
Cover image by NASA/CXC/U.Leicester/U.London/R.Soria & K.Wu
Author photograph by Josh Wool
Printed in Canada.
No portion of this book may be copied or reproduced, with the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviews, without the written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s lively imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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For David
“Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased by the guarantee that we will die of boredom.”
—Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life
I am a white dwarf.
I spend all my energy, compress my core, I ionize electrons.
Each night, I find the burning center of my hunger alone in my apartment. The walls breathe the space between them and the distance tastes metallic.
If I stare at John’s painting on the wall, those walls left and right expand and cool.
Everything has a shimmer, including me, and I am empty. I find my emptiness in the center of the room: the dead space.
I and the dead space are most alike.
The sounds of Earth below reach me on the futon. I sit in a way complementary to my thighs: one crossed over the other, leaning more on the right hip than the left: a perfect balance.
There is work to be done, but I won’t do it. I will curve around the empty space between the work and me, and we will fall toward each other but continue to orbit.
I will study the main-sequence chart on the wall, the one John gave me. That John’s parents gave me.
The total mass of a star is the principal determinant of its fate.
A star is held together by its own gravity.
When I visited John in Chicago last spring, I awoke to his urine in the bed. He can’t wake from the Seroquel he takes to fall asleep. It’s pointless to try to make him. Even if I succeed, he’s delusional.
That time, he was angry. He thought I’d spilled something.
What time is it? he asked. Late is not a time.
It’s four in the morning. You wet the bed.
No I didn’t.
It smells like urine. You peed the bed.
No I didn’t. Snoring.
I blow smoke into the center.
I lie on the cold leather couch his parents bought him. Leather isn’t vegan, John.
I didn’t buy it. They did.
John is not responsible.
At two o’clock today, I ate half a bag of sunflower seeds and drank 20 ounces of coffee. At six o’clock, I had half of a raw carrot. I had a Red Bull at eight o’clock.
All morning, I tried to work the TV. John slept until four in the afternoon.
How many pills did you take?
What I was supposed to take. Two.
Whatever.
He has been alone for too long.
I don’t have keys. I can’t leave when you sleep this late.
So?
A revolution.
I can’t be responsible for you.
Because what if you weren’t okay? No, I don’t blame you.
Of course not. How could I blame you?
We’ll get used to this.
We’ll find a balance.
Closer to you than you are to me. You are massive.
We need to do things on our own.
I can’t.
I was alone in a second empty apartment with Dog.
To own a dog is cruel, John. To own a living thing is cruel. It’s not vegan.
It takes time.
We only have so much time. It is only a matter of time until.
I do away with all of my possessions, including myself.
The scale in the bathroom sits partially on the bathmat. I move it to the hallway and set it on the wood for absolute accuracy. Zero. Give me zero. I was 92 yesterday.
91. One o’clock. Some of that is urine weight.
Soon, I will disappear into the wall.
Soon, I will be light as gas.
There is work to be done.
Think of class.
Tomorrow, I will go to the school where I intern.
My students will take in matter about stars. I will radiate it toward them.
They will expand and harden at the center.
Convect new matter.
They aren’t not my students.
They’re interred. I have to study.
It’s late, I have to sleep.
I won’t sleep. I never do.
To sleep is lazy. I feel guilty when I sleep. I don’t need it like you do, John.
Just being awake burns calories. Just being awake brings me closer to you.
To perfection.
Tomorrow, I will work for free and then go to class where I take in stars.
A star’s luminosity is determined by its mass. I am faint.
I feel faint.
I am reeling. I shine.
A binary star is a system containing two stars that orbit their common center of mass.
Binary stars are gravitationally bound.
Gravity is the way we fall together.
In personal time and in universal time.
Tonight is the end of all time.
Tonight I want to stop time.
My time, John. Your time.
John and I follow our paths into the center but we never reach the center. We are objects drawn to each other in space. We are space.
We fall together.
I am tired but awake. I eat nothing.
I eat nothing but time.
John is thousands of miles away but I feel him.
He doesn’t call me.
Nobody calls me.
John calls me sometimes.
I try not to lie.
I just lied.
John loves me.
I take two Hydroxycut and sit on the red futon. I smoke and blow my smoke into the center and buzz. Sounds of Earth below reach me rolling like fog through the windows. I’m alone. I am always alone.
I’m disgusting.
Hunger burns and rises in the chest.
Up the ladder.
Tomorrow, I will lead a test on starlight.
1. Stars are born in clouds of gas and
a. Thighs
b. Arms
c. Tummy
d. Ass
Stars are born of gravitational collapse.
Stay away from the vodka, John.
One more.
Two less.
A hundred.
More.
A dense, hot core.
The total energy radiated by a star per unit time is its luminosity.
The more massive a star, the more luminous it is.
The brighter it burns.
High-mass stars rapidly exhaust their core supplies of energy.
And burn out.
I feel that this is the end of suffering.
I feel that I will be extinguished.
This is the end of indecision. Of two desires orbiting the empty space of why.
I will finally disappear. Be final.
Desire requires two bodies: This and that.
The final exam.
Evaluation.
John says: What does it mean to be primitive in the city? John thinks he’s primitive and he thinks I’m primitive.
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.
