The Lover's Dictionary
Page 3
“The thing about champagne,” you say, unfoiling the cork, unwinding its wire restraint, “is that it is the ultimate associative object. Every time you open a bottle of champagne, it’s a celebration, so there’s no better way of starting a celebration than opening a bottle of champagne. Every time you sip it, you’re sipping from all those other celebrations. The joy accumulates over time.”
You pop the cork. The bubbles rise. I feel some of the spray on my skin. You pour.
“But why?” I ask as you hand me my glass.
You raise yours and ask, “Why not? What better way to start the day?”
We drink a toast to that.
circuitous, adj.
We do not divulge our histories chronologically. It’s not like we can sit each other down and say, “Tell me what happened,” and then rise from that conversation knowing everything. Most of the time, we don’t even realize that we’re dividing ourselves into clues. You’ll say, “That was before my dad left my mom,” and I’ll say, “Your dad left your mom?” Or I’ll say, “That was right before Jamie told me we should just be friends,” and you’ll ask, “Who’s Jamie?” I’ll swear Jamie was on that initial roll call of heartbreak (perfect for any second date), but maybe I forgot, or maybe you’ve forgotten. I swear I told you I was allergic to sunflowers. You might have told me your sister once pulled out a handful of your hair, and you were both terrified when your scalp bled. But I don’t think you did. I think I’d remember that.
Tell me again.
clandestine, adj.
Some familiarity came easy — letting myself laugh even though I guffaw, sharing my shortcomings, walking around the apartment naked. And some intimacy came eventually — peeing in the toilet while you are right there in the shower, or finishing something you’ve half eaten. But no matter how I try, I still can’t write in my journal when you’re in the room. It’s not even that I’m writing about you (although often I am). I just need to know that nobody’s reading over my shoulder, about to ask me what I’m writing. I want to sequester this one part of me from everyone else. I want the act to be a secret, even if the words can only hold themselves secret for so long.
cocksure, adj.
We walk into a bar, and you’re aware of all the eyes on you.
We walk into a bar, and I’m aware of all the eyes on you, too.
For you, this translates into confidence. But me?
All I can feel is doubt.
commonplace, adj.
It swings both ways, really.
I’ll see your hat on the table and I’ll feel such longing for you, even if you’re only in the other room. If I know you aren’t looking, I’ll hold the green wool up to my face, inhale that echo of your shampoo and the cold air from outside.
But then I’ll walk into the bathroom and find you’ve forgotten to put the cap back on the toothpaste again, and it will be this splinter that I just keep stepping on.
community, n.
You feel like you’re getting to know all the people on the dating site. It’s the same faces over and over again. You can leave for a year and then come back, and they’re all waiting for you. Same screennames with the same photos looking for the same things. Only the age has changed, mechanically adjusted as if it’s the only thing that’s passing. If you’ve gone on bad dates, they’re still there. If you’ve gone on good dates that eventually didn’t work out, they’re still there. You cancel your subscription. You sign back up. You think this time will be different.
It’s demoralizing and intriguing and sometimes sexy and mostly boring. It’s what you do late at night, when your brain has given up on all the other things it has to do — relationship porn. You scroll through. How genius to call them thumbnails, because what part of the body tells us less? (And yet, this is how I find you.)
Every now and then it would happen: I would see someone from the site on the subway, or on the street, or in a bar. A fellow member of the community, out in the real world. I’d want to say, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” And I’d want to say, “Don’t I know you from nowhere?” But ultimately I wouldn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure I wanted them to be real.
composure, n.
You told me anyway, even though I didn’t want to know. A stupid drunken fling while you were visiting Toby in Austin. Months ago. And the thing I hate the most is knowing how much hinges on my reaction, how your unburdening can only lead to me being burdened. If I lose it now, I will lose you, too. I know that. I hate it.
You wait for my response.
concurrence, n.
We eventually discovered that we had both marched in the same Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Your first time in New York, feeling like you were marching through canyons, the skyscrapers leaning over to peek down at you and your trombone. Me, farther back, crashing the cymbals together, preparing my smile for the minute we’d be on TV. What if Katie Couric had turned to me and said, “The love of your life is here in this crowd”? Would I have believed her? Would it have even been possible, if we’d met then?
confluence, n.
The first time our mothers met: my birthday, our apartment. My father, your sister, her kids. How unreal it seemed at first — unreal and forced. It’s one thing to share kisses and secrets and sex and a bed. But sharing families marks the meeting of the rivers. I think it was my dad and your niece who bonded first, over Chutes and Ladders. I can remember how thankful I felt for that one small interaction. My mother tried; yours, not so much. We kept talking and talking, filling the room with words, trying to make a party out of our voices.
contiguous, adj.
I felt silly for even mentioning it, but once I did, I knew I had to explain.
“When I was a kid,” I said, “I had this puzzle with all fifty states on it — you know, the kind where you have to fit them all together. And one day I got it in my head that California and Nevada were in love. I told my mom, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I ran and got those two pieces and showed it to her — California and Nevada, completely in love. So a lot of the time when we’re like this” — my ankles against the backs of your ankles, my knees fitting into the backs of your knees, my thighs on the backs of your legs, my stomach against your back, my chin folding into your neck — “I can’t help but think about California and Nevada, and how we’re a lot like them. If someone were drawing us from above as a map, that’s what we’d look like; that’s how we are.”
For a moment, you were quiet. And then you nestled in and whispered,
“Contiguous.”
And I knew you understood.
corrode, v.
I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one night I left the window open, and it started to rust.
covet, v.
This is a difference between us: you desire what other people have, while I desire the things I used to have, or think I might have one day.
Sometimes, with you, it’s stupid things. Like shoes. Or a bigger-screen TV, like the one we see at someone’s apartment. Or a share in the Hamptons, even though we can’t afford a share in the Hamptons and would hate it there.
But every now and then I’m caught off guard. Like when we’re over at my cousin’s house and her kids are running everywhere. Her husband brings her coffee without her asking for it. They seem exhausted, but you can tell the exhaustion is worth it. And the kids — the kids are happy. They are so happy on such a base level that they don’t seem to understand that it’s possible to have anything other than a base level of happiness. I catch you desiring that. For your past? For your present? Your future? I have no idea. I never know what you really want, if I can give it to you, or if I’m already too late.
D
daunting, adj.
Really, we should use this more as a verb. You daunted me, and I daunted you. Or would it be that I was daunted by you, and you were daunted by me? That sounds better. It daunted me that you were so beautiful, that you were so at ease in social situations, as if every room was heliotropic, with you at the center. And I guess it daunted you that I had so many more friends than you, that I could put my words together like this, on paper, and could sometimes conjure a certain sense out of things.
The key is to never recognize these imbalances. To not let the dauntingness daunt us.
deadlock, n.
Just when it would seem like we were at a complete standstill, the tiebreakers would save us.
If Emily’s birthday party and Evan’s birthday party were on the same night, we’d go to the movies instead of having to choose. If I wanted Mexican and you wanted Italian, we’d take it as a sign to go for Thai. If I wanted to get back to New York and you wanted to spend another night in Boston, we’d find a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in between. Even if neither of us got what we wanted, we found freedom in the third choices.
deciduous, adj.
I couldn’t believe one person could own so many shoes, and still buy new ones every year.
defunct, adj.
You brought home a typewriter for me.
detachment, n.
I still don’t know if this is a good quality or a bad one, to be able to be in the moment and then step out of it. Not just during sex, or while talking, or kissing. I don’t deliberately pull away — I don’t think I do — but I find myself suddenly there on the outside, unable to lose myself in where I am. You catch me sometimes. You’ll say I’m drifting off, and I’ll apologize, trying to snap back to the present.
But I should say this:
Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.
disabuse, v.
I love the idea that an abuse can be negated. And that the things most often disabused are notions.
disarray, n.
At times, I feel like I’m living with a ninety-year-old, finding a box of crackers in the laundry hamper, or a pair of socks by the vodka. Sometimes I tell you where I found things, and we joke about it. Other times, I just put them back.
dispel, v.
It was the way you said, “I have something to tell you.” I could feel the magic drain from the room.
dissonance, n.
Nights when I need to sleep and you can’t. Days when I want to talk and you won’t. Hours when every noise you make interferes with my silence. Weeks when there is a buzzing in the air, and we both pretend we don’t hear it.
doldrums, n.
The proper verb for depression is sink.
dumbfounded, adj.
And still, for all the jealousy, all the doubt, sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we’re together. That someone like me could find someone like you — it renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood of such a turn of events.
I didn’t tell any of my friends about our first date. I waited until after the second, because I wanted to make sure it was real. I wouldn’t believe it had happened until it had happened again. Then, later on, I would be overwhelmed by the evidence, by all the lines connecting you to me, and us to love.
E
ebullient, adj.
I once told Amanda, my best friend in high school, that I could never be with someone who wasn’t excited by rainstorms. So when the first one came, it was a kind of test. It was one of those sudden storms, and when we left Radio City, we found hundreds of people skittishly sheltered under the overhang.
“What should we do?” I asked.
And you said, “Run!”
So that’s what we did — rocketing down Sixth Avenue, dashing around the rest of the post-concert crowd, splashing our tracks until our ankles were soaked. You took the lead, and I started to lose my sprint. But then you looked back, stopped, and waited for me to catch up, for me to take your hand, for us to continue to run in the rain, drenched and enchanted, my words to Amanda no longer feeling like a requirement, but a foretelling.
You pop the cork. The bubbles rise. I feel some of the spray on my skin. You pour.
“But why?” I ask as you hand me my glass.
You raise yours and ask, “Why not? What better way to start the day?”
We drink a toast to that.
circuitous, adj.
We do not divulge our histories chronologically. It’s not like we can sit each other down and say, “Tell me what happened,” and then rise from that conversation knowing everything. Most of the time, we don’t even realize that we’re dividing ourselves into clues. You’ll say, “That was before my dad left my mom,” and I’ll say, “Your dad left your mom?” Or I’ll say, “That was right before Jamie told me we should just be friends,” and you’ll ask, “Who’s Jamie?” I’ll swear Jamie was on that initial roll call of heartbreak (perfect for any second date), but maybe I forgot, or maybe you’ve forgotten. I swear I told you I was allergic to sunflowers. You might have told me your sister once pulled out a handful of your hair, and you were both terrified when your scalp bled. But I don’t think you did. I think I’d remember that.
Tell me again.
clandestine, adj.
Some familiarity came easy — letting myself laugh even though I guffaw, sharing my shortcomings, walking around the apartment naked. And some intimacy came eventually — peeing in the toilet while you are right there in the shower, or finishing something you’ve half eaten. But no matter how I try, I still can’t write in my journal when you’re in the room. It’s not even that I’m writing about you (although often I am). I just need to know that nobody’s reading over my shoulder, about to ask me what I’m writing. I want to sequester this one part of me from everyone else. I want the act to be a secret, even if the words can only hold themselves secret for so long.
cocksure, adj.
We walk into a bar, and you’re aware of all the eyes on you.
We walk into a bar, and I’m aware of all the eyes on you, too.
For you, this translates into confidence. But me?
All I can feel is doubt.
commonplace, adj.
It swings both ways, really.
I’ll see your hat on the table and I’ll feel such longing for you, even if you’re only in the other room. If I know you aren’t looking, I’ll hold the green wool up to my face, inhale that echo of your shampoo and the cold air from outside.
But then I’ll walk into the bathroom and find you’ve forgotten to put the cap back on the toothpaste again, and it will be this splinter that I just keep stepping on.
community, n.
You feel like you’re getting to know all the people on the dating site. It’s the same faces over and over again. You can leave for a year and then come back, and they’re all waiting for you. Same screennames with the same photos looking for the same things. Only the age has changed, mechanically adjusted as if it’s the only thing that’s passing. If you’ve gone on bad dates, they’re still there. If you’ve gone on good dates that eventually didn’t work out, they’re still there. You cancel your subscription. You sign back up. You think this time will be different.
It’s demoralizing and intriguing and sometimes sexy and mostly boring. It’s what you do late at night, when your brain has given up on all the other things it has to do — relationship porn. You scroll through. How genius to call them thumbnails, because what part of the body tells us less? (And yet, this is how I find you.)
Every now and then it would happen: I would see someone from the site on the subway, or on the street, or in a bar. A fellow member of the community, out in the real world. I’d want to say, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” And I’d want to say, “Don’t I know you from nowhere?” But ultimately I wouldn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure I wanted them to be real.
composure, n.
You told me anyway, even though I didn’t want to know. A stupid drunken fling while you were visiting Toby in Austin. Months ago. And the thing I hate the most is knowing how much hinges on my reaction, how your unburdening can only lead to me being burdened. If I lose it now, I will lose you, too. I know that. I hate it.
You wait for my response.
concurrence, n.
We eventually discovered that we had both marched in the same Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Your first time in New York, feeling like you were marching through canyons, the skyscrapers leaning over to peek down at you and your trombone. Me, farther back, crashing the cymbals together, preparing my smile for the minute we’d be on TV. What if Katie Couric had turned to me and said, “The love of your life is here in this crowd”? Would I have believed her? Would it have even been possible, if we’d met then?
confluence, n.
The first time our mothers met: my birthday, our apartment. My father, your sister, her kids. How unreal it seemed at first — unreal and forced. It’s one thing to share kisses and secrets and sex and a bed. But sharing families marks the meeting of the rivers. I think it was my dad and your niece who bonded first, over Chutes and Ladders. I can remember how thankful I felt for that one small interaction. My mother tried; yours, not so much. We kept talking and talking, filling the room with words, trying to make a party out of our voices.
contiguous, adj.
I felt silly for even mentioning it, but once I did, I knew I had to explain.
“When I was a kid,” I said, “I had this puzzle with all fifty states on it — you know, the kind where you have to fit them all together. And one day I got it in my head that California and Nevada were in love. I told my mom, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I ran and got those two pieces and showed it to her — California and Nevada, completely in love. So a lot of the time when we’re like this” — my ankles against the backs of your ankles, my knees fitting into the backs of your knees, my thighs on the backs of your legs, my stomach against your back, my chin folding into your neck — “I can’t help but think about California and Nevada, and how we’re a lot like them. If someone were drawing us from above as a map, that’s what we’d look like; that’s how we are.”
For a moment, you were quiet. And then you nestled in and whispered,
“Contiguous.”
And I knew you understood.
corrode, v.
I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one night I left the window open, and it started to rust.
covet, v.
This is a difference between us: you desire what other people have, while I desire the things I used to have, or think I might have one day.
Sometimes, with you, it’s stupid things. Like shoes. Or a bigger-screen TV, like the one we see at someone’s apartment. Or a share in the Hamptons, even though we can’t afford a share in the Hamptons and would hate it there.
But every now and then I’m caught off guard. Like when we’re over at my cousin’s house and her kids are running everywhere. Her husband brings her coffee without her asking for it. They seem exhausted, but you can tell the exhaustion is worth it. And the kids — the kids are happy. They are so happy on such a base level that they don’t seem to understand that it’s possible to have anything other than a base level of happiness. I catch you desiring that. For your past? For your present? Your future? I have no idea. I never know what you really want, if I can give it to you, or if I’m already too late.
D
daunting, adj.
Really, we should use this more as a verb. You daunted me, and I daunted you. Or would it be that I was daunted by you, and you were daunted by me? That sounds better. It daunted me that you were so beautiful, that you were so at ease in social situations, as if every room was heliotropic, with you at the center. And I guess it daunted you that I had so many more friends than you, that I could put my words together like this, on paper, and could sometimes conjure a certain sense out of things.
The key is to never recognize these imbalances. To not let the dauntingness daunt us.
deadlock, n.
Just when it would seem like we were at a complete standstill, the tiebreakers would save us.
If Emily’s birthday party and Evan’s birthday party were on the same night, we’d go to the movies instead of having to choose. If I wanted Mexican and you wanted Italian, we’d take it as a sign to go for Thai. If I wanted to get back to New York and you wanted to spend another night in Boston, we’d find a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in between. Even if neither of us got what we wanted, we found freedom in the third choices.
deciduous, adj.
I couldn’t believe one person could own so many shoes, and still buy new ones every year.
defunct, adj.
You brought home a typewriter for me.
detachment, n.
I still don’t know if this is a good quality or a bad one, to be able to be in the moment and then step out of it. Not just during sex, or while talking, or kissing. I don’t deliberately pull away — I don’t think I do — but I find myself suddenly there on the outside, unable to lose myself in where I am. You catch me sometimes. You’ll say I’m drifting off, and I’ll apologize, trying to snap back to the present.
But I should say this:
Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.
disabuse, v.
I love the idea that an abuse can be negated. And that the things most often disabused are notions.
disarray, n.
At times, I feel like I’m living with a ninety-year-old, finding a box of crackers in the laundry hamper, or a pair of socks by the vodka. Sometimes I tell you where I found things, and we joke about it. Other times, I just put them back.
dispel, v.
It was the way you said, “I have something to tell you.” I could feel the magic drain from the room.
dissonance, n.
Nights when I need to sleep and you can’t. Days when I want to talk and you won’t. Hours when every noise you make interferes with my silence. Weeks when there is a buzzing in the air, and we both pretend we don’t hear it.
doldrums, n.
The proper verb for depression is sink.
dumbfounded, adj.
And still, for all the jealousy, all the doubt, sometimes I will be struck with a kind of awe that we’re together. That someone like me could find someone like you — it renders me wordless. Because surely words would conspire against such luck, would protest the unlikelihood of such a turn of events.
I didn’t tell any of my friends about our first date. I waited until after the second, because I wanted to make sure it was real. I wouldn’t believe it had happened until it had happened again. Then, later on, I would be overwhelmed by the evidence, by all the lines connecting you to me, and us to love.
E
ebullient, adj.
I once told Amanda, my best friend in high school, that I could never be with someone who wasn’t excited by rainstorms. So when the first one came, it was a kind of test. It was one of those sudden storms, and when we left Radio City, we found hundreds of people skittishly sheltered under the overhang.
“What should we do?” I asked.
And you said, “Run!”
So that’s what we did — rocketing down Sixth Avenue, dashing around the rest of the post-concert crowd, splashing our tracks until our ankles were soaked. You took the lead, and I started to lose my sprint. But then you looked back, stopped, and waited for me to catch up, for me to take your hand, for us to continue to run in the rain, drenched and enchanted, my words to Amanda no longer feeling like a requirement, but a foretelling.
