The Lover's Dictionary Read online

  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.

  elegy, n.

  Your grandfather dies a few months after we move in together. There is no question that I will go with you, but there are plenty of questions when we get to the funeral. I know you haven’t slept. I know you’ve spent the night on the computer, trying to pin down what you feel. I know why you didn’t accept my offer to help, just as you know why I felt I had to offer it anyway. On the car ride down, you practice what you’re going to say. You use the word confliction when you really should just say conflict, and you use the word remarkability, which I’m not sure is even a word. But I don’t say a thing — I just listen to you say them over and over again, because they are what you need to say.

  Then we get there, and the first words out of your mother’s mouth are “Nobody’s speaking at the service.” That, more than anything else, throws you off, makes it seem like you’ve been bequeathed a bad patch of gravity. I’m bombarded from all sides — most people don’t know my name, and nobody knows what to call me in relation to you. Something more than a boyfriend, something less than a spouse. I met your grandfather once, and he was nice to me. That’s what I can contribute — that I met your grandfather once, and that he was nice to me.

  Something happens to us that day. It’s there during the service, when you don’t let go of my hand. It’s there back at your mother’s house, where we retreat to your childhood bedroom and go through your old chest of drawers, where we find stale jellybeans and notes from high school you hadn’t wanted your mother to unearth. It’s there when your mother bursts into tears after most of the guests have gone, and I don’t need you to say a word to know I am not to leave the room until you’re leaving it with me. We have fallen through the surface of want and are deep in the trenches of need.

  That night, driving home, I ask you to tell me stories about your grandfather, and as we travel farther and farther from your mother’s house and closer and closer to our own apartment, you unspool the memories and turn them into words. From behind the wheel, I learn the difference between a eulogy and an elegy, and discover which is more vital, in life and in death.

  elliptical, adj.

  The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It’s as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen.

  encroach, v.

  The first three nights we spent together, I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t used to your breathing, your feet on my legs, your weight in the bed. In truth, I still sleep better when I’m alone. But now I allow that sleep isn’t always the most important thing.

  ephemeral, adj.

  I was coming back from the bathroom. You had just checked your email. I was walking to bed, but you intercepted me, kissed me, then clasped my left hand in your right hand and put your left hand on my back. We started slow-dancing. No music, just nighttime. You leaned your head into mine and I leaned my head into yours. Dancing cheek to cheek. Revolving slowly, eyes closed, heartbeat measure, nature’s hum. It lasted the length of an old song, and then we stopped, kissed, and the world resumed.

  epilogue, n.

  You walk into the doorway just as I’m about to finish. You ask me what I’m writing.

  “You’ll see,” I say. “I promise.”

  These words are now mine, but soon they’ll be ours.

  epithet, n.

  I think the worst you ever called me was a “cunt rag.”

  “You mean I’m a tampon?” I asked. “I’m a tampon for not letting you drive?”

  I laughed. You didn’t. At least, not until you sobered up.

  ersatz, adj.

  Sometimes we’d go to a party and I would feel like an artificial boyfriend, a placeholder, a boyfriend-shaped space where a charming person should be. Those were the only times when my love for you couldn’t overcome my shyness. And every degree of disappointment I’d feel from you — whether real or of my own invention — would make me disappear further and further, leaving the fake front to nod, to sip, to say, “Finish your drink, we’re leaving.”

  ethereal, adj.

 
You leaned your head into mine, and I leaned my head into yours. Dancing cheek to cheek. Revolving slowly, eyes closed, heartbeat measure, nature’s hum. It lasted the length of an old song, and then we stopped, kissed, and my heart stayed there, just like that.

  exacerbate, v.

  I believe your exact words were: “You’re getting too emotional.”

  exemplar, n.

  It’s always something we have to negotiate — the fact that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.

  You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren’t bad secrets underneath.

  F

  fabrication, n.

  In my online profile, I had lied about my age. Only by two years — I don’t even know why. I changed it to my real age the morning after our first date. If you noticed the incongruity, you never mentioned it.

  fallible, adj.

  I was hurt. Of course I was hurt. But in a perverse way, I was relieved that you were the one who made the mistake. It made me worry less about myself.

  fast, n. and adj.

  Starvation and speed. Noun and adjective. This is where I get caught. A fast is the opposite of desire. It is the negation of desire. It is what I feel after we fight.

  The speed does us in. We act rashly, we say too much, we don’t let all the synapses connect before we do the thing we shouldn’t do.

  You make it a production. Slam doors. Knock things over. Scream. But I just leave. Even if I’m still standing there, I leave. I am refusing you. I am denying you. I am an adjective that is quickly turning into a noun.

  finances, n.

  You wanted to keep the list on the refrigerator.

  “No,” I said. “That’s too public.”

  What I meant was: Aren’t you embarrassed by how much you owe me?

  flagrant, adj.

  I would be standing right there, and you would walk out of the bathroom without putting the cap back on the toothpaste.

  fledgling, adj.

  Part of the reason I preferred reading to sex was that I at least knew I could read well. It took your patience to allow me to like it more. And eventually I even stopped seeing it as patience.

  fluke, n.

  The date before the one with you had gone so badly — egotist, smoker, bad breath — that I’d vowed to delete my profile the next morning. Except when I went to do it, I realized I only had eight days left in the billing cycle. So I gave it eight days. You emailed me on the sixth.

  flux, n.

  The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature of the shower changes.

  Accept this. We must accept this.

  fraught, adj.

  Does every “I love you” deserve an “I love you too”? Does every kiss deserve a kiss back? Does every night deserve to be spent on a lover?

  If the answer to any of these is “No,” what do we do?

  G

  gamut, n.

  When I was eight, I was the lead in our third-grade musical, a truncated version of The Sound of Music featuring only the numbers in which the Von Trapp children appeared. I was Kurt, and my whole family — grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, even some family friends — showed up to see me bid adieu, adieu to you and you and you. My mother took hundreds of pictures, one of which found its way to our apartment — me in a green floral shirt, meant to approximate curtains. I am smiling, so proud of myself and my role.

  You saw this and told me that when you were eight, you were a tree in the school play. You can’t remember the name of the play, or the story. Only the cardboard branches that you cut out yourself, because your mom was busy and your father didn’t think it was his job to help you. They promised they would come, but your mother ran late and your father said he forgot. That night, you tore up your costume into tiny little pieces, but nobody noticed. You scattered the cardboard in the forest on your way to school the next day. You can’t remember what the play was about, but you can remember the sight of the trail you left.

  gingerly, adj.

  Your grandmother dies a few weeks after we start seeing each other, and there is no question that you’ll go to the funeral without me. Your father calls to tell you while we’re having breakfast, and keeps the conversation short. I take you home, help you pack, help you book your ticket. You won’t cry, and that makes me want to. I take the subway with you to the airport, even though you tell me I don’t have to. Then I stay home and wait for you to call. I cancel my plans, keep the ringer on high. The minute you’re alone, you call me, and I talk to you for five long hours, tethering you to your life back here so you won’t be pulled back into theirs. I don’t comment on your lack of tears, but then you bring it up, say, “I guess I’m so used to a dying family that this doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.”

  You leave the phone on beside you as you fall asleep. I sit in my bed and listen to your breathing, until I know you are safe, until I know you no longer need me for the night.

  gravity, n.

  I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I’m just imagining it.

  gregarious, adj.

  Soon I was able to measure the alcohol and its effect.

  One drink and you’d unwind a little, and always order another.

  Two drinks and you were happily unsettled. You’d loosen or lose a layer of clothing. You’d talk effortlessly with our friends.

  Three drinks and you started to get going. Encouraging everyone else to drink. Joking around with me, if you could tell I was in the mood to joke. Talking to strangers. Saying you loved life.

  Four drinks and you stopped reading my cues. You joked regardless of my mood, sometimes mercilessly. Everyone was now your friend, except maybe me.

  Five drinks and you were the funniest person you’d ever heard, and you were charismatic enough to make everyone else believe it, too. Sometimes, at this point, you’d tell everyone how much you loved me. Or you’d ignore me.

  Six drinks and you were ready to fall.

  Of course, it would all depend on the drink. But eventually I learned to take that into account, too.

  I would always wait to take you home.

  grimace, n.

  Yes, I keep the water next to the bed in case I get thirsty at night. But it’s also for the morning, so you can take a sip before you kiss me.

  guise, n.

  It was a slow Sunday. You were reading the paper, and I was cleaning up after breakfast. The light between the slats of the blinds was making your hair glow in a pattern that shifted every time you moved. You sensed me watching, looked up.

  “What?” you asked.

  “I just wonder,” I said. “How do you picture yourself ?”

  You looked down at the paper, then back at me.

  “I don’t know,” you said. “I don’t ever really see myself. And when I do, I’m usually still an eighteen-year-old, wondering what the hell I’m doing. You?”

  And I told you: I think of a photograph you took of me, up in Montreal. You told me to jump in the air, so in the picture, my feet are off the ground. Later, I asked you why you wanted me to do that, and you told me it was the only way to get me to forget about the expression on my face. You were right. I am completely unposed, completely genuine. In my mind’s eye, I picture myself like that, reacting to you.

  H

  halcyon, adj.

  A snow day. The subway has shut down, your office has shut down, my office has shut down. We pile back into bed, under the covers — chilly air, warm bodies. Nestling and tracing the whole morning, then bundling up to walk through the empty snowdrift streets, experiencing a new kind of city quiet, then breaking it with a snowball fight. A group of teenagers joins in. We come home frozen and sweaty, botching the hot chocolate on f
irst try, then jump back into bed for the rest of the day, emerging only to wheel over the TV and order Chinese food and check to see if the snow is still falling and falling and falling, which it is.

  happenstance, n.

  You said he wasn’t even supposed to be at the convention, but one of his co-workers had gotten sick, so he was filling in at the last minute. He wasn’t supposed to be at the bar when you went there with Toby, you told me. As if that in some way made it better, that fate hadn’t planned it weeks in advance.

  harbinger, n.

  When I was in third grade, we would play that game at recess where you’d twist an apple while holding on to its stem, reciting the alphabet, one letter for each turn. When the stem broke, the name of your true love would be revealed.

  Whenever I played, I always made sure that the apple broke at K. At the time I was doing this because no one in my grade had a name that began with K. Then, in college, it seemed like everyone I fell for was a K. It was enough to make me give up on the letter, and I didn’t even associate it with you until later on, when I saw your signature on a credit card receipt, and the only legible letter was that first K.