Binary Star

by Sarah Gerard

  We finish the documentary and he turns off the TV and tries to remove my shirt. At first I resist, but he tries again and I don’t want him to feel rejected. We kiss and he goes down on me. I try to enjoy it.

  I want you to be rough, I say.

  How?

  I don’t want to fuck you. You have to make me.

  We pause and he grabs my legs and pushes them down. He’s drunk.

  Make you what?

  Make me fuck you.

  Ow.

  Make me fuck you.

  I grab his hair and yank it.

  Make me fuck you.

  No.

  Make. Me. Fuck. You.

  Ow.

  Hurt me. Get angry.

  I hurt you, didn’t I? Now you have to hurt me.

  He goes to his room and brings out a basket from under his bed. There are nylon ropes inside.

  This is the only way I can do it.

  Fine.

  Turn the fuck over.

  He ties my hands and feet together. The ropes are soft and come untied with the slightest pressure. He has to keep stopping to retie them. This happens three times and then we give up and he tells me to pretend.

  Don’t be a fucking pussy. Make me hurt.

  This is how I used to do it with Michele.

  He holds my shoulders down and pretends to spit on my face. I picture Michele in my position. I picture his cock deep inside her.

  I don’t like that.

  She hated it.

  So do I.

  Good. Shut up.

  I’m serious.

  I hold my wrists together because the ropes don’t do it. I hold my feet together above the leather couch, so he can pretend they’re bound there. I drift across the room and see him above me, see me lying still beneath him. He finishes on my ass and falls asleep. I stare at the dark TV.

  Back in New York, I call him and lie.

  I just threw up my food.

  Why’d you do that?

  I don’t know. I just did.

  He’s quiet for a minute. Then he says, You said you wouldn’t do that anymore.

  Are you mad?

  Yeah, I am.

  Good. I want him to be mad.

  It really hurts my feelings that you would lie to me, he says.

  I didn’t know how to tell you.

  Are you doing it all the time?

  Just sometimes.

  Well, stop. Do you need to see a therapist?

  I don’t think so.

  So you’re going to stop?

  Yeah.

  Really?

  Yeah.

  Really?

  Yeah. I’ll stop.

  You better. You know I’ll tell your mother.

  What the fuck?

  I’m not putting up with it.

  THE THIRD DREDGE-UP

  THE RED GIANT DEPLETES THE HELIUM SUPPLY IN its core but continues fusing hydrogen into helium.

  It builds in a shell around the core, and reignites in a flash, leading to a thermal pulse within the star.

  Helium, carbon, and s-process products are brought to the surface, outweighing oxygen.

  This is the third dredge-up.

  John calls me three times a day in the month after he leaves to make sure I’m eating and keeping my food down. Sometimes I’m honest and sometimes I lie to him. When I’m honest, he’s upset and I like this. I find being honest and lying equally useful. I text him a picture of a meal that I’m about to eat and then text him a picture of my empty plate half an hour later. Then I text him a picture of my mouth, open without food inside. This only seems to prove something. It’s what he wants to see but he also wants me to call him later to tell him I’ve lied. He doesn’t say so, but this message is as important as the first; it keeps us connected, circling.

  We want to be concerned. It’s what we have to talk about. It gives us something to do.

  Someone to blame for our own behavior.

  I really don’t want to lie. I really do want to get better.

  I’m afraid of this.

  I want not to do this anymore. Not to think about what, when, how much, and what to do afterward.

  I feel myself growing dimmer by the day.

  I feel I’m growing cooler.

  A white dwarf can cool to zero temperature but still have high energy.

  I weigh myself once an hour when I’m home. Now that I’m eating for John, I can’t help but eat all the time. I don’t feel hunger when I feel it all the time. Now I know when I’m hungry — when I should be. I hate this.

  I hate.

  When I’ve eaten, I feel the food moving inside me. I buy groceries but don’t digest them. They’re gone within a day, down the toilet.

  I can’t stand the feeling of food. I feel it on my organs, feel it weighing me down.

  I purge and then fear that I haven’t purged it all and take pills to burn the remains.

  I drink Red Bull like water.

  I think of other ways to be empty.

  He sends me articles about the dangers of constant purging but I find them motivational. He tells me he won’t find me attractive without any teeth, but I think this won’t happen to me.

  I don’t care if it does.

  I also know it will happen but feel powerless to stop it.

  Many times I kneel before the toilet not wanting to do what I finally do.

  Many times I walk to Walgreens without deciding to do so. I find myself standing in the diet aisle and I don’t know how I got there; it seems I was compelled.

  I take Hydroxycut to the register and while I’m there, I buy Star Magazine. I don’t know how it happens.

  Miley Cyrus’s Tiny Workout Clothes. Christina Aguilera Shows Off Sexy, Slim Figure on Music Video Shoot.

  The 10 Ugliest Celebrities. The 15 Sexiest Sports Moments. Ask Yourself These Questions: Know If It’s Moods or Depression.

  Win It! A Year’s Supply of Pocket Protein.

  I’m not dropping weight because I’m not always purging. I think about the zero-sum ways I abuse metabolism: I store more fat because I only starve sometimes. I eat more when I eat because I only starve sometimes.

  I gain a couple of pounds because I can’t purge constantly. I’m storing water because I’m dehydrated. I feel bloated all the time. I know that I smell bad.

  I’m dizzy.

  And I feel that my fate is inevitable.

  I scratch my hands, my arms, I bite my nails.

  I grind my teeth constantly.

  An accretion disk is matter that is gravitationally drawn into the field of the black hole.

  Quasars are regions surrounding black holes at the centers of young, active galaxies.

  Angular momentum prevents the material from moving in a straight line into the region.

  Instead, it spirals down into it.

  I can’t do it. I can’t do this anymore.

  At the end of the month, John calls me from jail. He’s been arrested at a club for fighting with the bouncer, who kicked him out for sleeping at the bar. The bouncer wouldn’t let him go back in to get Michele. John punched the bouncer in the face.

  He kicked my head into the pavement. I have fifteen stitches.

  I look up his mug shot. The wound starts at his left temple and travels to the middle of his cheek, winding around his cheekbone.

  That’s a horrible scar.

  John, don’t drink so much that you fall asleep at the bar. This scares me.

  I wasn’t drunk; I was tired.

  Please don’t do this anymore.

  It’s not a big deal. He laughs.

  Michele thinks it’s funny.

  John lands at MacArthur airport the first week of May. I drive an hour and a half to meet him. I’m late, and by the time I arrive, he’s been drinking at the concourse bar for thirty minutes. He’s recently changed medications and sounds confused on the phone. He can’t tell me where he is.

  I walk in circles around the baggage claim and the drop-off, walk through the CNBC
News gift shop and the Long Island Travelmart, and finally see him across the security checkpoint. I call his name but he doesn’t hear me. I wave my arms but he doesn’t see me. Finally, he answers his phone. We collect his bag from the rotating conveyor and start back toward my apartment.

  It’s just after sunset and stars are faintly visible on the horizon. We follow a featureless four-lane highway through acre after acre of grey parking lots and squat concrete strip malls with tattered awnings advertising pawn shops, check cashing places, Mexican restaurants, and used sporting goods stores. John takes my hand across the console and tells me about a documentary on the May ’68 Paris uprising he thinks I should see. As he talks, he becomes more lucid, and I wonder if his prior confusion wasn’t just the residual grogginess of an in-flight nap.

  A wide pink scar wends its way down the left side of his face. I’ll have to get used to its being there.

  We begin to talk about what we should do this first night together. John jokingly tells me to stop at a strip club we pass, then together we decide to do it. I turn around and drive back half a mile. We’re laughing as we pull inside. The sex shop next door has a mannequin in the window wearing a teddy shaped like Saturn’s rings.

  The club is sparsely attended. Four dancers and a handful of tired veteran patrons pass each other and keep walking toward opposite sides of the room. The red of the velvet booths folds into shadows on silver-speckled black carpet. The walls are covered in black vinyl peeling away at the corners. John orders us drinks: a Red Bull and vodka for me, and a Scotch for himself. He leaves the bar and two strippers take his place. The bartender fixes them drinks without them having to ask.

  John sits next to me and hands me a blister pack.

  What’s this?

  Ativan.

  Is this your new prescription?

  He nods.

  I’ve never heard of it.

  It’s for anxiety. Take one.

  No, I don’t think so.

  Trust me. They’re not strong.

  I turn the package over. The thin aluminum on the back pops open easily and a small yellow pill falls into my hand.

  What’s it going to do to me?

  Relax you.

  He pops another out for himself and washes it down.

  We turn our attention to the stage. A bored stripper does basic tricks on the pole, looking nowhere in particular. Another checks her phone. A third dances for two businessmen sitting on the far side of the stage. They seem amused and talk to each other.

  How long does it take to kick in?

  Half an hour.

  I walk around the room and see my students working together. Every time I pass my mentor’s desk, I take a sip of my coffee. Last night, I told my only remaining friend that John and I are happy together. Whatever she may think she knows about him is not based in fact, I said. Remember that.

  I left my friend at the table after dinner and purged silently in the bathroom.

  I splashed my face with water and returned to the table. She suspected nothing.

  I have even done it in restaurants with people in the stalls next to me, but not in a long time. I haven’t needed to, as I don’t go to restaurants anymore. This night was a rare exception.

  My students are making visual aids of spiral-ins. Not messy enough, I say.

  It’s violent. They’re gas. They won’t hold together.

  Picture one star eating another. Picture them both devastated.

  Imagine bodies tearing through bodies.

  I drag my hand in circles through a desk covered in plastic jewels. They scatter on the floor.

  Like this.

  Nothing is preserved but the cold, dead cores of the components. Sometimes not even those remain intact.

  I want Styrofoam balls all over the floor. I want glitter everywhere. Broken pencils.

  I want the floor covered in your partner’s hair. Cut it off.

  Here, use these craft scissors.

  Don’t be afraid to bleed a little.

  A tooth will get you extra credit. A finger: automatic A+.

  And if I find you in hard, little pieces at the end of the class, I’ll make you dinner.

  But not eat it.

  I watch headlights approach and recede in the black distance from our ship in the strip club lot. John sleeps next to me, unaware that we’ve left the club. We’ve been asked to leave. They hurled us free.

  Light pollution obscures the stars, but most things happen unseen. A spotlight on the neighboring building has us at its center.

  John slept beneath the woman whose body turned rhythmic circles over his crotch. She curved and rolled. She rested her ass on his dick.

  A body circled me, too.

  I kept my hands on the sides of the chair. Her breasts brushed my cheek, soft and maternal. I closed my eyes and reentered the womb. A man’s hand shook me awake.

  You gotta leave.

  Prolonged time spent in space will result in massive bone loss and musculoskeletal atrophy, severely inhibiting astronauts’ long-term flight capabilities.

  Take him with you.

  Astronauts could sustain injuries reentering a gravitational field such as Earth’s, or even stronger: that of Mars.

  This is exacerbated by in-flight anorexia: a loss of appetite resultant of space’s adverse affects on human metabolism.

  I cannot control what my arms do. I feel that they don’t belong to me.

  (Sleep beneath her pressure.)

  There are two mechanical forces: active and passive.

  Wake up. I can’t drive, John.

  Wake up, John. Help me.

  I reach for the keys but miss. My eyes bob open and shut. I put my head back.

  One leg on one side and one on the other.

  I can’t see. Help me.

  Wake up, John. Please.

  He didn’t know his body and hers came together. He didn’t know when they separated. He breathed peacefully. Passively.

  Can you drive?

  She asked me what to do. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I couldn’t see. I was comfortable as I was.

  Shut up.

  I was comfortable there without body. I was gas floating in the warm, dark walls. I turned to gas and floated away in the margins, moved like liquid mercury.

  Had my own woman dancing. She was mine and I was nothing.

  Open your eyes. Open them.

  She was slim torso, long legs, full breasts, firm and encapsulating. She began as a nebula.

  Open up. John, help me.

  I slap my face. I slap the other side. Open my eyes. I’m awake. I slap myself again.

  I’m awake. I’m awake. I’m awake. I’m awake.

  John, I’m going to drive us home now. You need to help me.

  I open the windows and shake him hard. I pull onto the road. I move in one direction.

  Mom, please.

  My arms are heavy and at the same time liquid.

  I drive toward the silver gas of the city and the road’s margins.

  I can’t do this. Mom, help me.

  I shake and swerve and pull into another lot. I am always entering another lot. I am always arriving somewhere I didn’t intend to be.

  I put the seat back and the car spins around me. John wakes at the sudden movement. He’s looking for what?

  Where are we?

  I don’t know. Mercury.

  John, I can’t do this on my own.

  My mentor finds me in the supply closet clutching coffee in one hand and a tissue in the other. Bits of tear-soaked tissue cling to my face. I am leaning on the pencil shelf.

  What’s wrong?

  I have a thyroid disease.

  My last night in Chicago, I helped John design our distro’s logo. We’re calling ourselves Black Masque. We’re selling zines, t-shirts, messenger bags, and the ideology of veganarchism.

  And general Earth liberation.

  We print the zines for free from the Internet and then we take our printouts to FedEx and
make as many copies as we think we’ll need — 25 or 50. We keep them on shelves in his apartment.

  We buy solid t-shirts from American Apparel because American Apparel doesn’t use sweatshops. We screenprint them with white ink if the shirts are black. If they’re earth-tones, we use black ink. The ink is vegetable-based and nontoxic, and wasn’t tested on animals. We ordered it online.

  Our messenger bags will be sewn together from old jeans. I’ll sew them myself, this winter, after the school year is over. Then, I’ll mail them to John for screenprinting.

  Most of our screenprints are the Black Masque logo: a freestanding figure holding a dog, wearing the signature mask. Other screenprints are anarchist slogans — some we found and some we devised:

  Today’s empire is tomorrow’s ashes. We are the crisis.

  People are not profits. Longer leashes / larger cages.

  One direction: Insurrection. One solution: Revolution. This is my favorite.

  In Arms! with a picture of a revolutionary hugging a rabbit.

  We’re planning to put the money we raise into a new project, one that’s still crystallizing.

  We wake at dawn in the parking lot of a Sealy mattress warehouse, hearing a tap at the window. A police officer asks us to step out of the car and show him identification. My keys are still in the ignition and my headlights have been on all night. A line of crusty drool has dried to the side of John’s face. I motion for him to wipe it off but he doesn’t see me.

  I haven’t eaten in over twenty-four hours and it’s apparent that we’re both hung over. I lean against the car for balance. My head throbs. My hands shake. I’m faint. I feel like crying.

  The officer leaves us standing with his partner by the trunk of the car and takes twenty or more minutes checking our records. When he comes back, John is rubbing the flesh between his eyes and looking around impatiently. He spits on the ground.

  What brings you to New York?

  Her.

  What about you?

  I go to Adelphi.

  He hands our IDs back.

  You all out drinking last night? Had a little too much?

  We nod. He looks at John.

  You got in trouble a few weeks ago, yeah? Assault? Drunk and Disorderly? Think maybe you should lay off for a while?