#9 What is love?

The beating heart is like a fist, squeezing tighter until it has to let go.

When I saw your shapeless face with traces of stubble I thought of an unshaven rabbit.  Every other day you’d come into my office and say hi in a flirtatious way and take every chance of telling a dirty joke.  I felt like I should be offended but that was simply your way of saying hello.  I’d ask you about the lab renovations, you’d say yeah, yeah, yeah, and after you’d left you’d forgotten everything I’d said.

 

One day you caught me by surprise and said “I love you.”  To which replied, “I hate you too.”  We both lied. 

 

I knew you didn’t love me, you’d sweet talk other women in the same way.  You’d address them as “Honey”, “Sweetheart” and “Dahhhllling” as you sashayed down the department corridors blowing kisses into the stale building air.  You had a reputation for falling in love with anything with b***s and two legs.

 

But I did love you - mostly for listening to what I had to say.  Of the times you listened, fifty-percent of the time you responded.  Of the times you responded, in half you spoke as if you cared.  Between those thoughtful utterances, you offered a solution to half of the issues that needed to be resolved.  Half of your solutions fixed the problem and the other half didn’t.  When I came across something I asked about that was working again or cleaned, I saw it as an act of devotion.  Then I hugged that 1/32 piece of my heart that belonged exclusively to you.

 

Then came my worst day. The I.T. Director shouted accusations at me for withholding information, the Student Center Director called, furious about the noise and dust from the construction work, and the Head of Operations called me a b***h. I needed to a quiet place to cry, but the leak in the Paleobiology Department couldn’t wait.  I walked into the specimen closet, home to the prehistoric whale skeleton, albino alligators and two headed pygmy lemurs, and wedged the door open with my clipboard.   It fell, and I was locked in.

 

I called the Locksmiths, no answer.  I called Public Safety, the entire department was out for a fire drill, call 911 for emergency the recording said. I called every contact I had for my department and no one picked up. I started to leave a message on your phone as the power on mine died. I was trapped in the company of dead things, some that emitted an iridescent glow, as the chilled water line leaked from above.

 

By the time I started hallucinating about the Ice Age, I heard the sound of keys rattling through the slot. There were about fifty attempts until the cylinder turned.  When you unlocked the door, I was curled up in the fetal position, babbling about wanting to travel to an era where buildings and humans didn’t exist. You pulled me up and spoke to me quietly as you led me out of the abyss, one step at a time. Then you offered me an oil-stained towel to dry myself, and a brown paper bag to breathe into.  You became the hero of my story and rescued me when no one else would bother to look my way.  I kissed you and wrapped my arms around you. I said I love you, one hundred percent.

 

The next day, I rode beside you in the golf cart tagging along through your rounds.  I watched as you flirted with every woman you saw, secretaries, professors, techs, telling each one “I love you.” You ignored the work requests and conveniently forgot I was even there.  As we returned to the office in the golf cart, you hit the curb and sent me tumbling out. You didn’t notice that I fell, no less remember that I was sitting next to you, as you continued to drive.  I laid on the pavement - minutes, hours, days and months, without being discovered. My love for you shrank in converse proportion to the time it took for my last breaths to leave my body, back down to the 1/32 of my heart, then 1/64, 1/128, 1/256 … until I could no longer count in fractions.  I became roadkill until someone noticed an outline in the pavement that bore a faint resemblance to my stoop behind the computer.

 

I believe love expands and contracts like a beating heart.  And the beating heart, one med school professor once told me, is like a fist. It occurred to me that the only memories I kept were in the moments when my heart was contracted into the ball of a fist, squeezing ever tighter until it had to let go.