The ♥ is a Metaphor — ANDREW STOUT

THE ❤ IS A METAPHOR: THREE GYRES

originally published by Publication Studio in Weekday Journal, September, 2014.

IN LOVE WITH SLEEP

10.

Wake up, I tell Dia. It’s your night to keep watch.

There’s a city and a building in the city and two girls live there.

Two women.

No, girls.

Sorry—ladies.

Or maybe it’s “ladies.”

At least that’s what we call each other.

Hey, lady.

How’s it twerkin’, ladypants?

That kind of thing.

Come on, lady, I say. I really need you to get up. It’s my night to sleep. Remember?

It’s summer. Our window’s open now. On the glass, an intermittent dog show of sorts projects from the nearby dog park, as it does all year round. Our drapes are old bedsheets and the old bedsheets are pulled back. We removed the blinds our first day in the apartment. Now they keep company with two busted lamps and a boombox that eats Prince tapes, under the kitchen sink.

In this light, the view into our room must be as clear as any Edward painted of Jo Hopper, on the dozens of canvasses that taught the world to see alienation and solitude as a sublimely American thing, as awesome a subject for a painting as the view from the top of some mountain in Germany.

At least that’s what I’ve read.

But dark has started to fall on the city. Our space is getting dim now, with the occasional flash from my phone throwing fast white onto our olive walls. I’m too slack to turn on the last working lamp; and Dia has passed out. The room smells of two very different candy scents: Coco Mademoiselle (which Dia wears too much of) and Cap’n Crunchberries (yum). Cluttering the carpet between us is a cereal bowl half-filled with peachy-pink mush and six cans that, a couple hours and a dozen degrees ago, contained beer.

Dia, I say.

Come on, I say.

Wake up, I say.

Dia shushes me. Her yellow-stained middle finger, made pretty by freshly applied jade nail polish, parts her lips, as her head veers left, then right.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. Sleeping nooooow.

But it’s my turn to sleep. You slept last night. So, it’s my turn, dear.

Ruuuuuuuuuuuuth. Sleeeeeeeeeeeee—ping. Ten minutes, pleeeeeeease. Give me ten minutes. Pleeeeeee.

I figure Dia has been asleep for nearly a half-hour already. Drunk sleep, too. The hardest sleep to burgle.

A deep breath. I jerk Dia’s phone from her fist, hoping against hope the force of my lunge will wake her. My deep breath.

Only once before did I have to resort to this tactic. And it took Dia the rest of the winter to forgive me.

I search the unsent emails on Dia’s phone. I open one called “nightwatch log.” I whisper the words into Dia’s pink and platinum split ends. I round each vowel, for fear of starting the next one. Dark has fallen over the city. A slow dazzle of caresses tells me so. All around me: LED fuzz.

November 19, 2008. I’ve never kept a diary past the second day—

Stop it, Ruth.

—so I kinda doubt this will turn out any diff—

I said stop it. And give me my fucking phone.

Oh, who’s adorable when she feels exposed? I say.

You’re a fucking bitch.

And you’re only half right, I say. I could just kiss you on the mouth. Smooch, smooch smooch, smooch.

Get off me.

I attack Dia’s inner thigh with an army of baby kisses.

I said off!

Oh, don’t be mad, Dia. You know I have to wake you. It’s my night to sleep.

And it’s my night to hate you.

Oh, you break my ❤, ladypants. You break my ❤. See? Look! One ❤. Broken.

I laugh.

Now afterdark is falling on the city. As it will. As it has. The time when Edward puts his brush down and asks Jo to stop being his model for a while, so he can start being her husband again. Soon, Coco Mademoiselle and Cap’n Crunchberries will retire to their conjugal bed, too. They will be rinsed from our room by a too-clean chemical smell that enters through the courtyard, from the building’s sprinkler system, which comes to life, all on its own, just a little after midnight, to water the lawn. As it did last night. As it will—now.

November 19, 2008.

I’ve never kept a diary past the second day. So I kinda doubt this one will turn out any different. But with the new apartment, it seems a good time to try again. I’m doing this because I realize this agreement I have with Ruth is sort of weird. But then maybe it isn’t. Maybe all BFFs take turns guarding each other’s sleep and, like Ruth and me, just don’t talk about it to everybody—IDK. So I thought keeping it here might help me tell one way or the other. Also, Ruth tends to have really fucked-up nightmares that will be lost to forgetting unless I write them down. Also, maybe my efforts to keep her nightmares away will add up to something bigger. What does Ruth call it? An epiphany. Ha.

November 21, 2008.

[No nightmare.]

November 23, 2008.

[No nightmare.]

November 25, 2008.

[No nightmare.]

November 27, 2008.

[No nightmare.]

November 29, 2008.

Ruth’s first nightmare since we moved in here. A colony of ants came tapping at our window, offering to sort through Ruth’s overdrawn checking account and make it right again. I sprayed the glass with some lukewarm beer and they went away.

December 12, 2008

[No nightmare.]

February 15, 2009

[No nightmare.]

July 6, 2009

[No nightmare.]

October 21, 2009

The sister nightmare again. Knocking at our window was the old woman—looking even older this time, like a hundred or something—who again said she’s Ruth’s lost sister. I asked for I.D. then pushed her off the ledge and into the shrubs and the courtyard.

May 3, 2010

[No nightmare.]

April 14, 2011.

After a long time away, the sister nightmare returned again. This time, she was disguised as a four-year-old girl. Came flying up on training wheels. Must have taken all this time to make her costume and unlearn all the mannerisms that really old people learn. But I wasn’t fooled for a second. Back she went—over the shrubs, onto the pavement.

RUTH’S MISREADING OF EROS AND PSYCHE Once upon a night there lived a king and a queen who had a hundred-million daughters. The third of these sisters, Psyche, was so weird, her beauty upset the order in the stars above her.

Aphrodite, the goddess of luxury goods, took Psyche’s strangeness as a challenge to her authority, and ordered her son, Eros, to capture it for her, so she could sell its secrets to lawyers in Burbank. But when Eros found Psyche, he fell in love with her, and she with him.

Psyche, having read all the magazines, knew with each orgasm a mortal receives from the heavens, the mortal ages a thousand years. So Eros, after each petite mort, and upon leaving Psyche’s body, stayed by her side and watched her sleep, protecting her from the crowd of years that was gathering, hour-by-hour, outside her window. His presence, he assured Psyche, would keep her from aging a single moment. Yet, as dawn approached, Psyche saw her beauty had begun to fall away, despite no discernable change in her appearance.

It was then Psyche knew if she were to reclaim her beauty, she would have to become mortal again. She would have to release herself to the mob of years waiting outside, in the dark of the coming morning. At last, when Psyche dared walk to her window, there she recognized, clear and complicated as day, all hundred-million of her sisters.

There’s a city and a building in the city and two girls live there.

The city isn’t so much a city, I guess.

It’s more a town.

A large town.

Or a small city.

Or an enormous bazaar.

Or an expensive bank of lights.

Electricity that’s eaten by more beautiful electricity when one or another girl falls asleep.

In the original Eros and Psyche myth, Psyche is put into a “deathlike sleep” after peering into something called a beauty box. To this day, whenever the myth is re-told, no one seems to know quite what this beauty box contained.

Every night, Dia and Ruth take turns watching over each others’ sleep, for fear one or the other will stop breathing.

“Do you realise how much sleep costs?”

—Jeanette Winterson, from “Disappearance I.”

Dark and after dark.

Reciprocal love.

Years.

ADORABLE CRIMES

10.

The ❤ is the locus of action, and Ted is on the case. As he has been for some time now.

Ted—known variously as ‘Cupid,’ ‘Eros,’ ‘Kama,’ ‘Dusty Springfield,’ and silence—sits on a patio outside a tea emporium, at street level, eleven floors directly below her office.

Ted is dressed as his company requires him: business-blues blazer and diapers. Black shoes.

Ted prefers to work within the law. But is compelled to play around the margins today. Desperate Cupid, he whispers to himself. Not for the first time this morning.

Three months have passed since he was put on their case. The end of spring; the start to summer; the senses swelling with pollen; the thoughts returning to other bodies; the imagination sketching a prototype of pleasure; the ❤ perfecting the model. On sidewalks, over baked plum, off hours, in flagrante delicto: Boom time for Cupids.

But now? Imagination’s running out. Money, too. All over town. Rain pours. Gazes drop, inch-by-inch, from browlines to handbags to heels—day-by-day. It’s nearly autumn now. A time for reflection, a time to turn inward, a time to tighten your belt. Autumn is not a time for new love, unless we mean new self-love. Which is fine. But self-love is everybody else’s gig; the foundation of commerce. The short bet. Cupids’ transactions happen upon the Long Tail; along with chewed-up Prince tapes and I ❤ MY VAGINA coffee mugs. Like these things, new love is a cottage industry, if you like.

Ted says winter is a much easier time than autumn to open new accounts. A counter-intuitive claim, maybe. But the data backs him up. If for no other reason, Ted figures, than all the break-ups winter inspires. Brilliant break-ups! Stunning splits! Extraordinary estrangements!. Lovers drawn to each other by little else than a faith in security and a solid sense of self. Such superstitions are exposed in cabin fever. And once the lovers’ belief begins to crack down the middle, their wills, habits, schedules, means of diversion—like continental plates—drift apart and become much easier for Ted to maneuver into other, truer geographies.

But autumn? Woe to the Cupid who aims his bow between sunshine and snow. So goes the wisdom of the trade, anyway.

Autumn is not for forging new bonds. Autumn is for difference. And change. Moving targets. Slippery souls. New strength born from new insights; and maybe new hobbies. Autumn hobbies, like communing with nature and shopping on Etsy. Just ask yourself: Have I ever fallen in love on October 1st? On October 2nd? On October 3rd?

Go ahead. Take a minute to consider the question.

Be thorough.

And while you think it over, I’ll draw a

♡

So. Ever fallen in love in autumn?

Exactly. Which is why this morning Ted has hacked into her phone. It’s gotta happen now. He’s switching Jonelle’s number with one Ann will surely dial now. The dermatologist now. The marriage counselor now. The mom and dad now. Doesn’t matter now.

Desperate Ted, he whispers to himself. It’s only for an hour or two. Then? He will change it back. Promise.

It’s funny how, in playing with fate, the tiniest input can lead to such a big output. It takes only a little swapping of some info, ten digits in all, and you’ve reassigned the routes of two lives. You’ve managed their destinies; merged them, made them one. And so, this is how these two strangers will fall in love and leave their husbands.

Maybe.

Maybe after an Indian summer courtship and a November to brood over the likely consequences, Ann and Jonelle will listen to their ❤s. Maybe they’ll do it during the holidays. Maybe they’ll announce it all to their friends at their respective Christmas dinners. Or maybe they’ll wait a while more before they make their move. Maybe they’ll wait and wait, then when they can’t wait any longer, they’ll press their decision firmly against the monochrome of New Years, and upon the blank sheet of January.

Ted—known variously as long, leisurely afternoons spent talking and fucking, or silence—can hardly wait.

The ❤ is a collaborative playlist.

9.1 Anyone Who Had A ❤

9.2 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.3 Crazy ❤

9.4 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.5 Every Christian Lion ❤ed Man Will Show You

9.6 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.7 Greasy ❤

9.8 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.9 In Every Dreamhome A ❤ache

9.10 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.11 Kickstart My ❤

9.12 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.13 My ❤

9.14 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.15 Open Your ❤

9.16 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.17 Queen Of ❤s

9.18 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.19 Sheer ❤ Attack

9.20 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.21 Universal ❤-Beat

9.22 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.23 War❤

9.24 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

9.25 Your ❤ On Your Sleeve

9.26 (think of a song title and say it out loud)

Thank you.

My ❤ is a container you fill with water. Sometimes, I feel as though the water will tip over the cup’s brim. And on those days, I take special care to keep busy so I can avoid your texts and dodge your calls.

Sometimes, you demand an explanation: Are you fucking with me? you say. It’s not you, I say. It’s just that I require a lot of space these days.

But, truth is: it’s not me, either. As I live on my own in a studio apartment, across the street from an open field, and only one minute by foot from the Willamette, I already have plenty of space, I think. It’s the cup that needs a timeout. It’s the water that needs an extra day or two to vanish some, so the vapors can cool the Earth, before you replenish the cup, with more water, still

Okay, you say. Just don’t fuck with me, and we’ll be fine.

Okay, I say. Call you later, ‘gator. Love you. Miss you. B-bye now.

"The ❤ was like one of the literally thousands of different kinds of apple tree that have disappeared from the British Isles in reasonably recent history because of the way the supermarkets only really like to sell about five kinds of apple."

—Ali Smith, in Artful.

❤s moves slowly

and drift apart, yeah.

Another ocean

floods a city.

The ❤ is an enfeebled metaphor. Somebody should nurse it back to health.

The ❤ is the locus of action, I say.

The ❤ moves you.

The ❤.

Yes.

THE BODY IN PAIN

Her second tweet was a link to another video she’d taken during her visit home. A parade outside Cork; talkie but silent; moving yet still; 1080p.

Throughout the video’s 45-minutes, my phone filled up then cleared out with an adorable procession of geriatric bodies in fuzzy hats. It all looked perfectly choreographed. Each little achy step or arthritic gesture, made as if on her cue. Locals, crossing the street and screen, always from right to left. About half of them peering into the camera before judging her too harmless to take offense.

Watching my phone, I felt her corporeality more than at any time since we met; more than during any of our Skype sessions; more than while studying her handwriting on the back of our postcards; more than in any of the the selfies I’d found, scattered here and there, on social networking platforms she’d abandoned years ago. More than during her stay in Portland, even, when we shared eleven meals, three newspapers, two cameras, and one bed.

Her absence from the video seemed to intensify her presence in my mind. It was then I texted her:

K. So u r a girl. But what‘s a girl?

In my private hard drive (since gone public), there’s a folder labeled ANIMALS. And within that folder is another folder labeled ILA. And within that folder, a file I must have listened to a million-billion times already this morning.

From the mp3, I hear the white noise of distant traffic; the occasional klank of porcelain and spoons; the quiet before a neighborhood begins another of its daily mutations, from business hours to hunger hours; the middle of an afternoon in a big Syrian city, all from my desk in a small American city. Through my headphones, I hear winter take hold in summer and a car skid off the side of the road. But, above all else, I hear a boy.

All around us, while you type these words and I read them, there are people consummating their love for one another. They do it in beds and against walls and on countertops. Around here, they mostly do it in lofts or in cubicles. But once, you saw them do it in broad daylight, right there, only inches from your plum Supergas, while you sipped a refreshing white peony and documented the whole thing on Instagram. Clever birds.

What I would give for a tablet connected to a cloud that hosted a searchable archive of all the pleasure and pain you’ve known.

I’m a boy. But what’s a boy?

Chewed-up Prince tapes.

Monday, Tuesday.

Faraway.

END