Sarah Gerard - Binary Star

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.