2018
The moment I realised how dangerous it is to live in the middle of the city without a grasp of reality, I dial his number. I waited for a solid five minutes in my gasoline scented room only to be responded by an automatic operator telling me that the number is wrong. The number you have called is not recognised.
The mint coloured walls around me dripped into slate green. Nobody can save me now.
It was many moons ago since I met him for the very first time. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt, a pair of broken down denim, and a leather sling bag. He said hello in front of a blinding vending machine light. I call bullshit to everyone who ever said to me that your stomach would turn into hundreds of butterflies in the presence of infatuation; instead, my whole body felt warm and safe, and I could hear the walls around me shattered into mountains of dust.
We sat together on the hood of someone else’s car in front of a convenient store before we departed to the nearest food stall to get a plate of comfort food, and maybe, redemption. The smell of chicken broth and wet soil filled the open space around us. He indulged a glass full of sweet iced tea and burped. “Ever feel like you’re leading two lives?” I shrugged, fascinated with the way he paved open our conversation. “I’m positive that the “you” that your colleagues see every day at work is not the same as the one sitting with open arms in front of me.” He answered his own question. “I’m hiding behind layers of brick walls whenever they’re around” I took a bite of a fruit platter that I ordered. “You’re not hiding now?” He wrinkled his caterpillar brows. I pouted, shrugged, took a deep breath, and exhaled. He sniggered. “Don’t fall for me” I gave him my middle fingers. He laughed, and I said to myself that we’ve met before. Maybe way before fate brought us back to this world.
His curls bounced as he stretched his arms upwards. “Why are you so interested in science?” He glanced with his muddy brown eyes as he slurped down the remaining of his soup. Jakarta felt cold that night. Rainy season hasn’t even started yet. I cracked my knuckles. “Science explains everything. From the most grandiose matter, to the most banal issue like faith and religion” He gulped a spoonful of meatball. “Banal, you said.” I nodded. “Yeah, I can’t stop wondering why people keep arguing about that through verses. I mean, if you look at string theory; it’s probably the most heavily studied and the most well-known theory of everything. And there are people out there who think that this theory alone could solve and prove our obsession with the existence of a higher being!” I got a little too excited. “I’m sorry, I bored you.” He chuckled. “Go on, continue. I want to listen to this whole string theory sha-bang” I shook my head, “I could go on forever. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about your two lives”, “Okay. Where do I start?” He put down his utensils, and put his bowl aside. He took out a pack of filter cigarette, and lit one. “I hate people, but I have to conceal my hatred toward them because I work in the service industry. On one hand, I’m leading a very quiet life. On the other hand, I have to bartend hundreds of people per week. Entertain them, make them happy, never upset them.” I got a little bit lost in his swampy eyeballs. I wonder if they make a habitable zone for alligators. “I know, I know my two lives experience is not as interesting as your string theory, but at least it’s not a theory” He snickered while puffing a giant cloud of carbon monoxide, nitrosamines, and nicotine cocktail.
We spent the night strolling and talking about the universe. I loved the way his face glistened under the street light. I had no idea what he wanted from me. I’ve never seen someone so curious, yet so eloquent in the way they dig the truth out of me. I’ve never met someone so familiar that they reminded me of my childhood bedroom and the torn stuffed animals in it. The asphalt reflected back the ochre moon. I was just listening about the science of true love the day before, and how monogamous relationship was forced by society’s obsession with loyalty. “Tell me your first impression of me” he echoed to the starless sky. “You’re a black hole” I muttered. He cringed and kicked three pebbles into a puddle. “Vacuum, dark, nobody knows what’s in it. Yet full of gravitational force. You sucked me in.” I explained. The violet hue of my hair made an atmospheric sphere around him, and that very sphere collides into mine as he pulled me closer to his side. String theory says there should be other universes out there. In a multiverse; when two universes collide, it creates one new universe — when a universe splits in half it can create two universes, and that is the big bang. “Well, that sounds scientific” he muttered. “I was expecting more of ummm… I don’t know how to say it, realistic?”, “Black holes are realistic, dummy” I mumbled. He let out an audible sigh. For someone who doesn’t care about people’s opinion, he surely cares a lot. “For instance, my first impression of you is that you are lonely, detached, and desolated. Like a deer in the headlights.” He continued. “I don’t understand poetry” I rolled my eyes. He laughed and slicked back his stray hair. “You don’t fit in, yet at the same time you’re surprised by the fact that people look at you differently. You don’t have to be a poet to see how detached and distanced someone looks” He ended his sentence.
The sky grew darker. If the universe is infinite in size, and stars (or galaxies) are distributed throughout this infinite universe, then we are certain to eventually see a star in any direction we look. As a result, the night sky should be aglow. Why isn’t it? Like Olbers’ paradox, his presence that night confused me, though explainable. He came out of nowhere into my life like an unpredictable meteor crash. The closest thing I’ve had to courtship was when my friend gave me flowers to celebrate my graduation, and after years of living my life under telescope and science journals I thought I’m ready to put myself out there and test Helen Fisher’s theory on love. I was aiming on his friend who works as a science journalist, I thought he was going to be the perfect companion of my ‘red wine and cosmology’ night, but I was wrong. He only wanted the experiment, not the other parts of the research. What’s the point of keeping someone who clearly doesn’t want to be there for you?
The giant cell phone billboard reflected on his dilated pupils. We stood in silence as a grey cloud passes us, and we could hear a sound of thunderstorm roaring in the distance. There was a family of four next to where we were standing; sleeping in silence inside a wooden cart. “What causes a thunderstorm?” He asked “Cumulonimbus clouds, fun fact, lightning bolt is actually hotter than…”, “Can’t you just say something simpler like: Indra, the god of heavens is angry” He spoke over me. “There is a reason why I look distant; I don’t know how to function in the presence of other human being” I muttered. He raised his eyebrows, and it started raining. He walked me home that night with his umbrella that was made out poetry and surrealism, everything that can hardly be explained by science. He tucked me into bed and put a blanket over me, and I woke up alone with zero recollections of the rest of the night.
I kept his number in my pocket. For some reasons, I decided not to save it on my phone because I didn’t see the importance of keeping someone else’s number if they would leave me in the end. There are only two certain things in life; death and taxes. So, no matter how far we’re going to fly this spaceship, he would eventually leave me for death. Besides, I’ve never had the chance to call him. He would always find me in the most unexpected places. Also, unwittingly, I’ve never asked him specifically about his place of work or his residence.
We went out every Thursday night. We cruised around the city under the rain. He seemed to be very weirded out by how people look at us; in confusion, disgust, always shaking their head, sometimes they glared at us like a school of goldfish trying to smash open an aquarium. “Do I smell bad?” He asked one day, and I, obviously, said no because he smelled like a pine forest under February’s rain. His interest in literature made me fill the empty spaces of my bookshelf with works by Whitman and Poe. Especially Poe, since I found out that he contributed to Olbers’ paradox. He would read me poetry before I go to bed and left before I wake, with no trace except several empty bottles of whiskey. I’ve never had any problems cleaning up because he told me that the bar he worked in is trying to get rid of some undesirable brands to maintain their stockings.
Everything went swimmingly for a couple of years. Loneliness left me ever since I met him; like Sputnik leaving the earth for the very first time. I proved Helen Fisher’s core brain systems for human mating wrong. There was no lust, no nothing. We went straight to an electrostatic attraction, and then that very attraction gave me nothing but warmth in my chest and belly, and eventually, attachment. He possessed me as much as I possessed him. It was almost like we were destined to be together like two oppositely charged ions.
“Love: I recognize the emotion for what it is, an irrational self-destructive impulse, which is disguised as joy.”
It was not a book definition of love; Tesla was right, it was a self-destructive impulse. It started to hurt me physically to be away from him. We began seeing each other almost every other day. He always knew when to pick me up for a joy ride. At the first initial meetings he was only wearing his brown or black uniform, but I guess he got promoted. He started to wear other colours; green, blue, various shades of brown, and even white. I loved him in white. The first time I saw him in white, I went straight to the nearest neighbouring galaxy. I’ve never seen such angelic being before. Maybe I would even start believing in god, no matter how nonsense the verses are. We were so madly into each other that our neighbours would bang their walls to shush our noise. Yeah, things went out of control sometimes. We would gaze to the stars and made new discoveries about the universe. I remember telling him that I would record every little thing that we saw in the night sky, put them in a book, and credit him once I receive my Nobel prize. He laughed, and the whole damn universe laughed with him.
I wanted our joy to last forever, but as I said before, nothing is certain in this world. Not even his presence, his curls, his body heat, his wild thoughts. Not even the departure of my loneliness.
The moment I realised how dangerous it is to live in the middle of the city without a grasp of reality, I dial his number. I waited for a solid five minutes in my gasoline scented room only to be responded by an automatic operator telling me that the number is wrong. The number you have called is not recognised.
The mint coloured walls around me dripped into slate green. Nobody can save me now. There was a wild knocking on my door. I could hear the voice of my neighbours cursing at me, my mother crying in agony, and some other unfamiliar voices yelling at me, forcing me to open the door. I threw my phone out of my apartment window and curled in the corner of my room. I needed him. I wanted him. There are no mathematical calculations in this world that can describe precisely about our relationship. It was a beautiful disaster while it lasted. We understood each other. For once in my life I felt accepted for who I am, and the universe and every living cells and atoms in it decided to take him away from me. For a moment in that corner, I could feel how Pluto felt when a group of scientists exclude him from our solar system. Loneliness struck me harder than that meteorite that struck South Africa billion years ago. I felt like Sputnik, floating alone in a vacuum space.
The door cracked open. I closed my eyes as a group of people took me away from my room, placed me on a cold metal bed, and drove me to the nearest hospital. I could still smell his neck as they injected some chemical into my body. I could still feel his presence as my consciousness slowly drifted away to the galaxy. As I flew out of the building, I faintly heard the voice of my neighbour jabbering to my mother.
“She started drinking religiously again two years ago. Talking to the bottles, laughing, screaming, crying. At first it was only on Thursday, but I believe she began drinking every single day last year and maybe even snorted some type of drugs. I don’t know! I can’t handle her noise anymore! Nobody wants to hear a Shakespearean recital at three in the morning! Who the fuck wants that? Only that woman, her obsession to understand the universe, her inability to fit in, and her loneliness!!!”
And then it was black. I was fully consumed by his gravity. He has always been a black hole, and I, a dying planet ready to burn.
Loosely inspired by Just Like Heaven by The Cure
