Sarah Gerard - Binary Star

Starvation is a matter of privilege.

I take advantage.

I stand at the back of the classroom, a core unhardened into flesh and reanimated, cold like space, and white.

I stand at the back until the bell.

I am always in the back.

This is how things are done.

This morning I turned in circles before the mirror so that I could see my back.

I know I am air because I hear and because I can see through myself. I would not if I was not.

Most of the time, when I think I have heard something, it is only my heartbeat. Sometimes it’s so loud I can’t sleep.

That’s a lie.

At times I feel it struggle.

That’s a lie.

I would not if I didn’t have to. Do not if I don’t have to. If I don’t have, I don’t have myself.

I drive straight lines across my back. My ribs, which are curves, are straight lines.

I have mixed feelings about curves.

These are not my students. They are only students of culture. Proximity does not imply a relationship. We are only near each other. We were born of civilization.

We hear each other.

We file out in a line that is rough at the edges and curves through a door, like sheep to the slaughter.

We moved in a clustered line down a hallway, some slower and some faster, like the river that winds through the bottom of the Grand Canyon. John disliked the canyon. It was just a hole in the ground.

Really a gash.

A wound.

Once, he tied me to the bed and played knives across my skin, but did not draw blood. John is a coward.

This is the only way I can do it.

Last night I touched my absence.

Beauty can be tricked into being where it is not.

It is naught.

It is not the past. Because the longer I live in time, the less I believe in the past.

I carry it with me but I can’t carry much.

To consider.

We stand at the edge of the gash. We are there for a moment, but we see it. We see ourselves in it.

The river at the bottom reflects nothing back.

Is absent.

I found that it was absence. Only mine.

I am faint.

I’m often faint.

Our palms sweat together. The canyon yawns before us.

John takes his hand back.

He dries it on his pants.

He’s dry and I’m impaired.

I’m hungry, he says.

This summer, when John was here, I weighed myself at least five times a day. Sometimes I am already in the bathroom. Other times I just need to have a precise number. We all gain weight around each other.

It is thought that our weight can fluctuate between two and four pounds a day, depending on a number of factors, including the proximity of one’s companion.

And how much water one consumes.

In other words, how dry one is.

I have never liked water pills. I believe caffeine is enough. But still.

I’ll try anything.

I drink four cups of coffee every day. The first, I get from Dunkin’ Donuts. They know me. The rest, I get anywhere I can get them.

I find the displays in Dunkin’ Donuts especially motivating.

I drink two 12 ounce Red Bulls every day, at least. Sugar free. Sometimes I spring for the 16 ounce can.

And tea. And water.

I make this a “thing I do,” to always have some vessel with me, holding liquid.

All the time.

All time.

To train for zero gravity, I’d have to float in a swimming pool. This is not a real simulation, as water resists movement.

In zero gravity, my organs would drift under my ribcage, reducing my waist to a thin line.

In zero gravity, my hair would have body, lift off my skin.

My breasts would lift off. I wouldn’t feel them.

Shed water.

And blood.

My body thinks it holds too much.

Which I do.

Some astronauts describe zero gravity as womblike: a more primitive state of being.

The human arm weighs nine pounds on average.

Not to have arms or legs or torso.

I don’t want to stay in New Orleans, but John thinks it will be fun to go to a strip club. We park outside the French Quarter and walk through streets churning with bourbon and sweat.

There’s a man dressed like Homer Simpson with an erection drinking beer on a barstool in the middle of the street. A black-and-neon devil flashes red and blue under a wrought-iron balcony in front of a tobacconist. Four overweight Midwesterners stand around an open-air barfront waiting for daiquiris to be poured from spinning dispensers. Old women in floral prints limp along with Big Gulps next to men with frozen margaritas.

Bars follow restaurants follow bars and music pours from every entrance, jazz and zydeco, and classic rock and Rihanna. Yellow diamonds in the light / And we’re standing side by side / As your shadow crosses mine.

A girl in a string bikini dances in the doorway of a club painted red. She spreads out, holding the doorframe, and rubs herself catlike against John.

What brings you here?

Celestial navigation.

You’re funny. Ten gets you in.

Together?

Separate.

John pays for us both and orders a Red Bull for me and a Dewar’s for himself. We follow the leather curves of the club through legs pointing toward the edge of the stage, and sit at a table. Above us, a woman in a silver thong and tassels turns in circles around a pole in the shape of a star. John throws his Scotch back and watches her until he gets dizzy, then stands to order another.

You good? he says.

Not really.

What’s wrong? This is fun.

I don’t want to be here, John.

Just enjoy it. You never enjoy yourself.

He leaves me and moves toward the neon corner that marks the bar. The song changes to Britney Spears’s “If You Seek Amy” and the dancer spins in tighter concentric circles around the pole. Then she stops, facing me.

She points her legs away from both sides in a perfect cross. Her skin is shining. She’s radiant. Sexy.

She rotates slowly on her axis and slides down, crossing her ankles. She puts her hands on the stage, bent backward.

Mirrors surrounding the stage reflect her body from eight different angles. Every reflection is ideal, every line a smooth curve joining every other into a full form. She twists her feet to the ground and crawls toward me like a tiger, her hair covering her face.

Do you feel objectified? Disrespected?

No. Never.

Her eyelashes burst in black flames.

You have an accent. Where are you from?

I am here for winter from Russia.

Do you like it?

It’s the same. Shallow, cheap.

The room spins and bodies move around us but we remain still. She brings her hands to my face. She touches my mouth.

You’re beautiful, I say.

You like me?

How do I get it? How do I know when I’ve gotten it?

Do you see how she moves? John says.

He puts two Coronas on the table.

This is fun, isn’t it? he says. Do you want a lap dance?

He pulls a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and hands it to me. He’s slurring his words. He’s had drinks at the bar.

Are you drunk?

I am not.

You know we still have to drive tonight.

Yes.

I can’t drive. I can’t see, John.

And I thought you weren’t drinking.

We’re at a strip club.

You’re a liar.

You’re a liar.

I give him back his fifty and say that I’m going outside to smoke.

One more drink, he says. Then I swear we can go. Here, drink your Red Bull.

You can drive a little bit, if it makes you feel better.

It doesn’t.

Bourbon Street is a hot mess.

I drive us past the Superdome and out of New Orleans and pull off I-10 just after Gulfport, Mississippi, seeing out of one eye. We stop at a Best Western that’s full except for one room with two twin beds. It comes with a bible and a TV Guide in the bedside table, an assortment of Ghirardelli chocolates, and a refrigerator fully stocked with Coca Cola products marked up two hundred percent. The top drawer of the dresser has a guide to local restaurants that top out at P.F. Chang’s.