The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

  Oh, yes. Vampire Weekend.

  But halfway through the meal I said something she found funny, and when she laughed, I had to say, “Wow, you two have the same laugh. Did one of you get it from the other, or have you always laughed like that?” And we were off. She said she hoped I was more successful in sharing a bed with you than she had been on your junior year road trip, when you would take up all the space and snore so loudly that one night she went and slept in the bathtub. You didn’t notice, and the next morning you turned on the shower without noticing she was inside. She still didn’t know who screamed louder. And I told her about the time that I got so tired of you stealing the sheets that in my sleep-weary logic I decided the thing to do was to tie them around my legs, knot and all, and how, when you attempted to steal them that night, you ended yanking me into you, and I was so startled that I sprang up, tripped, and was nearly concussed.

  “That’s how you end up when you’re with our dear one,” she said wryly. “Nearly concussed.”

  It wasn’t like we held hands during the concert. We didn’t go out for wine or shots or milkshakes afterwards. But I liked that she was no longer entirely yours. We had four hours of history without you.

  only, adj.

  That’s the dilemma, isn’t it? When you’re single, there’s the sadness and joy of only me. And when you’re paired, there’s the sadness and joy of only you.

  P

  paleontology, n.

  You couldn’t believe the longest relationship I’d ever been in had only lasted for five months.

  “Ever?” you asked, as if I might have overlooked a marriage.

  I couldn’t say, “I never found anyone who interested me all that much,” because it was only our second date, and the jury was still hearing your case.

  I sat there as you excavated your boyfriends, laid the bones out on the table for me to see. I shifted them around, tried to reassemble them, if only to see if they bore any resemblance to me.

  panoply, n.

  We stuck to the plan: you had your bookshelves and I had mine. Yours simply had books, most of them from college, while mine was overrun by souvenir thimbles purchased by my preteen self, compact discs that had been orphaned from their cases, mugs from colleges attended by forgotten friends, and jam jars of quarters (just in case, for some reason, I had to quickly launder everything we owned).

  You never seemed to mind. Although one day you did say, “If our shelves were a seesaw, my things would be stuck in the air.”

  I didn’t know whether you were being judgmental or self-pitying. But I had learned: there’s no good answer to either.

  peregrinations, n.

  I’d never had to teach someone how to travel before. Drugging you up for the airplane, dragging you hither and thither through Montreal, Seattle, San Francisco. Your parents never took you on trips as a kid, not when they were together and not when they were apart, and I think this left your sense of exploration stunted. At least, that’s my theory. Eventually I won you over to the geography of wandering. Although I will admit that for you the best part is still the napping in the middle of the day.

  perfunctory, adj.

  I get to sign some of your Christmas cards, but others I don’t.

  persevere, v.

  Those first few weeks, after you told me, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it. After working for so long on being sure of each other, sure of this thing, suddenly we were unsure again. I didn’t know whether or not to touch you, sleep with you, have sex with you.

  Finally, I said, “It’s over.”

  You started to cry, and I quickly said, “No — I mean this part is over. We have to get to the next part.”

  placid, adj.

  Sometimes I love it when we just lie on our backs, gaze off, stay still.

  posterity, n.

  I try not to think about us growing old together, mostly because I try not to think about growing old at all. Both things — the years passing, the years together — are too enormous to contemplate. But one morning, I gave in. You were asleep, and I imagined you older and older. Your hair graying, your skin folded and creased, your breath catching. And I found myself thinking: If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. Your memories will be my most lasting impression.

  punctuate, v.

  Cue the imaginary interviewer:

  Q: So when all is said and done, what have you learned here?

  A: The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.

  Q

  qualm, n.

  There is no reason to make fun of me for flossing twice a day.

  quintessence, n.

  It’s the way you say thank you like you’re genuinely thankful. I have never met anyone else who does that on a regular basis.

  quixotic, adj.

  Finally, I said, “It’s over.”

  You started to cry, and I quickly said, “No — I mean this part is over. We have to get to the next part.”

  And you said, “I’m not sure we can.”

  R

  rapprochement, n.

  I remember my grandmother saying, “You have to let the cake cool before you frost it.”

  raze, v.

  It sounded like you were lifting me, but it all fell.

  recant, v.

  I want to take back at least half of the “I love you”s, because I didn’t mean them as much as the other ones. I want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you, because you didn’t get it and said it was hipster trash. I want to take back what I said about you being an emotional zombie. I want to take back the time I called you “honey” in front of your sister and you looked like I had just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it was a nice wineglass and the argument would have ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people who got the car after us, but because it was massively uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic and I should have just said you’d hurt my feelings. I want to take back the secrets I told you so I can decide now whether to tell them to you again. I want to take back the piece of me that lies in you, to see if I truly miss it. I want to take back at least half the “I love you”s, because it feels safer that way.

  reservation, n.

  There are times when I worry that I’ve already lost myself. That is, that my self is so inseparable from being with you that if we were to separate, I would no longer be. I save this thought for when I feel the darkest discontent. I never meant to depend so much on someone else.

  rest, v. and n.

  Rest with me for the rest of this.

  That’s it. Come closer.

  We’re here.

  retrospective, n.

  I catch you checking out some guy on the street. This is no big deal, because we both like to look at other people when we’re walking around. But this time it’s not an observational thrill on your face. You notice me noticing, and you say, “He just looked like someone I know.”

  A week later, we’re going through photographs, and there he is, hiking through Appalachia with you. It wasn’t him on the street, but it was definitely him on your mind. I wonder why you said “someone I know” instead of “someone I knew.”

  Two days after that, I’m walking along alone, and I see someone who looks like the someone who reminded you of him. I feel the irrational desire to pull this stranger aside and make sure he doesn’t know you.

  reverberate, v.

  Why did your father leave?

  rifle, v.

  You told me to get the mo
ney for the pizza from your wallet. So I had permission, I swear. You were five dollars short, but your driver’s license photo was worth me making up the difference. And then I found the photo behind your health insurance card: you and me in front of the bay in San Francisco. I remember you stopping that woman and asking her to take the picture, and how she had no idea how to use the camera on your phone. You gave her the full tutorial as she oohed and aahed. I stood there in the wind, shifting from foot to foot as the photographer counseled the assistant, and all I could think was that I should have been the one with the camera, because the two of you were such a funny picture. Instead, we have this blurry, happy shot, which must mean something to you if you carry it around like this, folded to fit.

  rubberneck, v.

  It’s not only car accidents. Why is it only car accidents? It can also be when I lean over you in the morning, trying to see through the sliver of open window shade to find out what the weather is like. Cranes, the birds with the rubber necks, don’t always find carnage. Sometimes it’s just rain.

  S

  sacrosanct, adj.

  The nape of your neck. Even the sound of the word nape sounds holy to me. That and the hollow of your neck, the peek of your chest that your shirt sometimes reveals. These are the stations of my quietest, most insistent desire.

  sartorial, adj.

  “I’m so tired of those slippers,” you said.

  I shook my head, and you had the nerve to say, “Well, that’s not very nice.”

  And I explained, “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at your unintentional quoting of Hedda Gabler.”

  “You want to see Hedda Gabler?” you asked. Then you threw my slippers in the fire.

  It escalated. I lunged for the hideous scarf your great-aunt had sent you — it would have been spared had she knitted it herself, but I suspected foreign sweatshop labor. You retaliated by burning my “sleeping T-shirt” (American Idiot tour), a patchwork of stains and holes. I topped that with your unbearable tennis sneakers — until the rubber started to burn, and the smell made us stop.

  “I loved those slippers,” I said.

  “I assure you,” you said, “they did not love you back.”

  scapegoat, n.

  I think our top two are:

  1. Not enough coffee.

  2. Too much coffee.

  serrated, adj.

  And you said, “I’m not sure we can.”

  solipsistic, adj.

  Go ahead, I thought. Go ahead. Go ahead. I got stuck there. Go ahead. Go ahead. Because I genuinely couldn’t see anything after that.

  sonnet, n.

  (NOTE ON THE LEAP: How rough and worn the weight of flight — the soul, when gathered, forms its own twinned claw and wing, each severed arc, the nape — all grown inside the body, left. Alone with loss, life rises: emblazoned air, trembling star of made faith. The fall that forms in the gut blooms in the arms before the mind, remembering how dangerous and hard the world is when shut, opens its doors so air can cool what light arrives. The chest unhinges, strong from panic, and the loch that is the heart begins to fit. The wind grows sturdier, its skin gigantic. The room that was the source becomes the field, opening out, the stage a hoard revealed.)

  — Billy Merrell, The Proposals

  stanchion, n.

  I don’t want to be the strong one, but I don’t want to be the weak one, either. Why does it feel like it’s always one or the other? When we embrace, one of us is always holding the other a little tighter.

  stymie, v.

  That ten-letter word for moderate in eating or drinking — first letter a, fourth letter t ? I knew it all along, but was so entertained by your frustration that I kept it to myself.

  suffuse, v.

  I don’t like it when you use my shampoo, because then your hair smells like me, not you.

  sunder, v.

  Nobody ever told us, “Save it for the bedroom.” But isn’t that what we do? All those times you’ve wanted to strike me — by which I mean, all those times I’ve wanted to strike you — haven’t we translated it into the shove and twist, the scratch and press, the capture and hold? There are times when I look in your eyes and realize you mean it. We’ve lost track of the game. We’re communicating in earnest now, all the things we’d never say.

  T

  tableau, n.

  We go to visit two friends who’ve been together for ten years now, five times longer than we have. I look at the ease with which they sit together on the couch. They joke with each other, get annoyed with each other, curl into each other like apostrophes within a quotation mark as they talk. I realize that two years is not a long time. I realize that even ten years is not a long time. But when it seems insurmountable, I need reminders like this that you can get used to it. That it can take on the comfort of the right choice. That lasting things do, in fact, last.

  taciturn, adj.

  There are days you come home silent. You say words, but you’re still silent. I used to bombard you with conversational crowbars, but now I simply let the apartment fall mute. I hear you in the room — turning on music, typing on the keys, getting up for a drink, shifting in your chair. I try to have my conversation with those sounds.

  tenet, n.

  At the end of the French movie, the lover sings, “Love me less, but love me for a long time.”

  transient, adj.

  In school, the year was the marker. Fifth grade. Senior year of high school. Sophomore year of college. Then after, the jobs were the marker. That office. This desk. But now that school is over and I’ve been working at the same place in the same office at the same desk for longer than I can truly believe, I realize: You have become the marker. This is your era. And it’s only if it goes on and on that I will have to look for other ways to identify the time.

  traverse, v.

  You started to cry, and I quickly said, “No — I mean this part is over. We have to get to the next part.”

  And you said, “I’m not sure we can.”

  Without even having to think about it, I replied, “Of course we can.”

  “How can you be so sure?” you asked.

  And I said, “I’m sure. Isn’t that enough?”

  trenchant, adj.

  You never let things go unanswered for too long. Emails. Phone calls. Questions. As if you know the waiting is the hardest part for me.

  U

  ubiquitous, adj.

  When it’s going well, the fact of it is everywhere. It’s there in the song that shuffles into your ears. It’s there in the book you’re reading. It’s there on the shelves of the store as you reach for a towel and forget about the towel. It’s there as you open the door. As you stare off on the subway, it’s what you’re looking at. You wear it on the inside of your hat. It lines your pockets. It’s the temperature.

  The hitch, of course, is that when it’s going badly, it’s in all the same places.

  unabashedly, adv.

  We were walking home late from a bar — and the term walking is used loosely here, because you were doing something between a skip and a stumble — and suddenly you started singing out your love for me. My name and everything, loud enough to reach the top floors of all the buildings. I should have told you to stop, but I didn’t want you to stop. I didn’t mind if your love for me woke people up. I didn’t mind if it somehow sneaked into their sleep.

  You grabbed my hand and twirled me around, two sidewalk sweethearts. Then, very earnestly, you stopped, leaned over, and whispered, “You know, I’d get a tattoo with your name on it. Only, I want you to have the freedom to change your name if you want to.”

  I thanked you, and you resumed your song.

  V

  vagary, n.

  The mistake is thinking there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.

  vestige, n.

  The night after we decided to move in together, we stayed over at my apartment. I looked at the things on my walls — the unframed posters from MoMA, the Doisneau kiss that
had followed me from college, the album covers with push pins pressing into their corners. I had never had any desire to change anything, but suddenly I knew it was all going to change. I knew that when it came time to roll them up or pack them away, they would never be seen again.

  I told you this, and you suggested that we go for a beginning instead of two continuations. Why try to angle together the wall souvenirs of our new-to-New-York lives, when we could invent new hieroglyphs to represent us? The lamp could stay and the lime-green couch could continue to park itself in front of the TV, but the postcards would be mailed into drawers and the wreath my mother sent last Christmas would be shown another door.

  And this is what happened. We both took it as an opportunity to peel the wallpaper from our lives. The only thing I kept out were the photographs of my friends and family, placed on a wall with photographs of your friends and (less so) family on the other end, as if they were meeting for the first time, still too shy or wary to mingle.