The Lover's Dictionary (4 page)

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.

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.