Sarah Gerard - Binary Star

By now Ive read

Binary Star

twice, and Ive become so entwined with it that Im reluctant to talk about the subject at length. Let me just say that Ive never read anything like it.

HARRY MATHEWS

Two lost souls hurtle through a long, dark night where drug store fluorescents light up fashion magazine headlines and the bad flarf of the pharmacy: Hydroxycut, Seroquel, Ativan, Zantrex-3. Gerards young lovers rightly revolt against the insane standards of a sick society, but their pursuit of purity ideological, mental, physical comes to constitute another kind of impossible demand, all the more dangerous for being self-imposed.

Binary Star

is merciless and cyclonic, a true and brutal poem of obliteration, an all-American death chant whose chorus is I want to look at the sky and understand.

JUSTIN TAYLOR

I am a white dwarf.

I spend all my energy, compress my core, I ionize electrons.

Each night, I find the burning center of my hunger alone in my apartment. The walls breathe the space between them and the distance tastes metallic.

If I stare at Johns painting on the wall, those walls left and right expand and cool.

Everything has a shimmer, including me, and I am empty. I find my emptiness in the center of the room: the dead space.

I and the dead space are most alike.

The sounds of Earth below reach me on the futon. I sit in a way complementary to my thighs: one crossed over the other, leaning more on the right hip than the left: a perfect balance.

There is work to be done, but I wont do it. I will curve around the empty space between the work and me, and we will fall toward each other but continue to orbit.

I will study the main-sequence chart on the wall, the one John gave me. That Johns parents gave me.

The total mass of a star is the principal determinant of its fate.

A star is held together by its own gravity.

When I visited John in Chicago last spring, I awoke to his urine in the bed. He cant wake from the Seroquel he takes to fall asleep. Its pointless to try to make him. Even if I succeed, hes delusional.

That time, he was angry. He thought Id spilled something.

What time is it? he asked. Late is not a time.

Its four in the morning. You wet the bed.

No I didnt.

It smells like urine. You peed the bed.

No I didnt. Snoring.

I blow smoke into the center.

I lie on the cold leather couch his parents bought him. Leather isnt vegan, John.

I didnt buy it. They did.

John is not responsible.

At two oclock today, I ate half a bag of sunflower seeds and drank 20 ounces of coffee. At six oclock, I had half of a raw carrot. I had a Red Bull at eight oclock.

All morning, I tried to work the TV. John slept until four in the afternoon.

How many pills did you take?

What I was supposed to take. Two.

Whatever.

He has been alone for too long.

I dont have keys. I cant leave when you sleep this late.

So?

A revolution.

I cant be responsible for you.

Because what if you werent okay? No, I dont blame you.

Of course not. How could I blame you?

Well get used to this.

Well find a balance.

Closer to you than you are to me. You are massive.

We need to do things on our own.

I cant.

I was alone in a second empty apartment with Dog.

To own a dog is cruel, John. To own a living thing is cruel. Its not vegan.

It takes time.

We only have so much time. It is only a matter of time until.

I do away with all of my possessions, including myself.

The scale in the bathroom sits partially on the bathmat. I move it to the hallway and set it on the wood for absolute accuracy. Zero. Give me zero. I was 92 yesterday.

91. One oclock. Some of that is urine weight.

Soon, I will disappear into the wall.

Soon, I will be light as gas.

There is work to be done.

Think of class.

Tomorrow, I will go to the school where I intern.

My students will take in matter about stars. I will radiate it toward them.

They will expand and harden at the center.

Convect new matter.

They arent not my students.

Theyre interred. I have to study.

Its late, I have to sleep.

I wont sleep. I never do.

To sleep is lazy. I feel guilty when I sleep. I dont need it like you do, John.

Just being awake burns calories. Just being awake brings me closer to you.

To perfection.

Tomorrow, I will work for free and then go to class where I take in stars.

A stars luminosity is determined by its mass. I am faint.

I feel faint.

I am reeling. I shine.

A binary star is a system containing two stars that orbit their common center of mass.

Binary stars are gravitationally bound.

Gravity is the way we fall together.

In personal time and in universal time.

Tonight is the end of all time.

Tonight I want to stop time.

My time, John. Your time.

John and I follow our paths into the center but we never reach the center. We are objects drawn to each other in space. We are space.

We fall together.

I am tired but awake. I eat nothing.

I eat nothing but time.

John is thousands of miles away but I feel him.

He doesnt call me.

Nobody calls me.

John calls me sometimes.

I try not to lie.

I just lied.

John loves me.

I take two Hydroxycut and sit on the red futon. I smoke and blow my smoke into the center and buzz. Sounds of Earth below reach me rolling like fog through the windows. Im alone. I am always alone.

Im disgusting.

Hunger burns and rises in the chest.

Up the ladder.

Tomorrow, I will lead a test on starlight.

1. Stars are born in clouds of gas and

a. Thighs

b. Arms

c. Tummy

d. Ass

Stars are born of gravitational collapse.

Stay away from the vodka, John.

One more.

Two less.

A hundred.

More.

A dense, hot core.

The total energy radiated by a star per unit time is its luminosity.

The more massive a star, the more luminous it is.

The brighter it burns.

High-mass stars rapidly exhaust their core supplies of energy.

And burn out.

I feel that this is the end of suffering.

I feel that I will be extinguished.

This is the end of indecision. Of two desires orbiting the empty space of why.