Boy Oh Boy Page 12

  The boyfriend created by the boyfriend singularity strikes your ship at incredible speed, immediately piercing the hull. The whole ship rocks off its orbit for a moment, but it’s enough of a lurch to send all of you flying across the room. Later, you are relieved and surprised that injuries to your crewmates were not more serious. The soldier broke a rib, and the navigator might have a concussion. You put yourself between the poet and the wall, so while he is uninjured, you have an impressive bruise across your torso. You check yourself over and it seems like nothing is too badly injured. The navigator offers to perform the rudimentary first aid that he knows, but you turn him down.

  After you’ve all collected yourselves, you begin a check of the ship. The navigator goes to the cockpit to work on re-establishing stable orbit, while you go down to your workstation to check on life support and make sure the gravity still works. There is no engineer, and you don’t know what exactly you would do if the ship had sustained greater damage than your limited abilities could repair. The navigator, who possesses the greatest technical knowledge among the four of you, would not be able to repair, say, the engine, if it were to suddenly cease function. It was built by a room full of genius scientists, none of whom was interested in coming along on the mission once their project was completed.

  The soldier and the poet find the boyfriend lodged in a kind of cocoon of metal made of the remains of the hull where he penetrated it. He fortunately landed in a cargo bay that is not often used. It was expected that you would be doing a lot of on loading and offloading, but it seems the opposite is the case. None of you have ever so much as been down there, much less used it for its intended purpose. Where would you be taking cargo from? Or sending it to? Miraculously, the boyfriend is alive and seems unhurt. The soldier says this over the ship’s radio and you don’t believe him. You ask the soldier to bring the boyfriend to the medical bay, so you can look him over. It’s possible he was very badly injured in the collision, you say, please try not to jostle him too much or it could do permanent damage. The soldier resents taking your orders, but he does. He tells you that he and the poet are on their way with the boyfriend.

  The boyfriend is unimaginably beautiful, so much so that you feel an irrational possessive claim to him immediately. He is a strange composite of the four of you. He has the poet’s curly, tousled dark hair, the soldier’s square jaw, the navigator’s clear brown skin. You think maybe the boyfriend singularity missed you because he doesn’t have any of your features, but then he opens his eyes and he has your eyes, striking and greenish-gold. When he sits up, your boyfriend looks sure and calm, like he is exactly where he is supposed to be. He extends his hand and shakes yours, then the soldier’s, then the poet’s. He beams at all of you, and when he turns his smile on the soldier, you feel a surge of possessive anger. You don’t want the boyfriend to belong to the soldier, who you are convinced would treat him with insufficient care. You meet the soldier’s eyes and he is looking back at you, glaring with his cruel face.

  Hello, you say. Do you know where you came from?

  The boyfriend points vaguely in the direction of outside, space, the anomaly. It’s a careless gesture; his eyes, so much like your own, say clearly that he knows exactly where he came from and you know it too. The soldier widens his stance and crosses his arms over his chest. The poet, too, looks jealous, standing taller and squaring his shoulders. The tension that falls over all of you is palpable. Your boyfriend smiles charmingly. He hums a little song. You wonder how the boyfriend singularity created him, how it was able to aggregate the four of you together in that way. You wonder if, while you observed the singularity, the singularity perhaps observed you in return. It knew your schedule; the boyfriend came while you were all off-duty, unprepared. The boyfriends had previously emerged at very regular intervals, namely, one per hour, forever, or so you thought. You could track and predict each next boyfriend’s emergence with ease. That is how the navigator had managed to avoid being struck, until now. The idea that the boyfriend singularity contains some heretofore unknown intelligence fills you with dread, a dread that intrudes on your other, less complicated feelings, desire and jealousy and anger.

  You are angry at the soldier. It seems like he is always in the way. He is always encroaching on the things you have, like he would like to steal them. He stole the poet from you, you see now, and you didn’t mind at the time because you all had each other and you could share freely because you were all trapped together, the four of you, for all time. Even now the poet has taken the soldier’s side, stands beside him, while he should have been beside you. But that feeling, that perhaps everyone belongs to everyone, does not exist with your boyfriend. Your boyfriend is rare and special and clearly was meant to belong to one of you. He was clearly meant to belong to you. You do not see how you could share your boyfriend, even with the navigator, who you greatly like and respect. You like and respect the navigator less as you begin to imagine him sexually with your boyfriend.

  Without realizing it, you have begun to run your fingers through your boyfriend’s hair. It’s perfect, perfectly soft. It is exactly like the poet’s hair, which you loved, before he cut it off. In your imagination you have built a life with your boyfriend. You imagine having a small house with him, the kind of house a new couple gets, where you and he would live and garden and pursue various hobbies. You think you would like to paint; your boyfriend would write. You would have a studio in the garage where sometimes he would bring you a cup of hot tea or a glass of lemonade. On cold days, he would insist you wear a sweater. Sometimes you would go into his office and drag him away from the computer to make love. In your version of your future with your boyfriend, you and he make love vigorously, and often. You get a dog, an English bulldog with a flat, wrinkled face, ugly but good-natured.

  In your imaginary life, you and your boyfriend can’t agree what kind of sofa to get for your new home. Your old one needs replacing. Before you, it belonged to an old lady who had wrapped it in plastic for forty years. You bought it for a few dollars on Craigslist after she died. Your boyfriend hates the couch and you have to admit that you aren’t in love with it, it was just a cheap thing that someone else agreed to deliver. But now you are making a life with your boyfriend. He smiles at you warmly as you walk in the furniture store. In your imaginary version of your life with your boyfriend, you both sit on various couches and imagine your lives with the new couch. Your boyfriend would like to get something tall enough that the dog can’t climb on it. You would like to get something large enough that the two of you could nap on it together, your boyfriend nestled into your body. You say you would be like two spoons, and your boyfriend agrees with you. He always agrees with you. In your imaginary version of your life with your boyfriend, you never fight or disagree. You never go to bed angry or feel angry at all. He loves everything you do, and he never does anything that would make you upset. It is the perfect life.

  You don’t consider that, in the middle of space, in your spaceship, it is unlikely that you will ever return home to Earth. Nobody even knows which way it is. The navigator has some chance of finding a way back, maybe, but it would take hundreds of years, and anything could have happened on Earth and anything could happen to you on your way to Earth. You are in a part of space that is not just uncharted but has not even been theorized, and you are alone there, you and the soldier and the navigator and the poet and, most importantly, your boyfriend.

  We should take him to the crew quarters and let him get some sleep, you say.

  He doesn’t look tired, the poet says.

  Why do you get to decide what we do? the soldier says.

  Fine, you were prepared for the possibility of an altercation with the soldier. In fact, it was inevitable. The soldier is a bully and you are a hero, and it is the job of heroes to stop bullies from being bullies. You have a strong sense of right and wrong.

  I’m in charge, you say.

  Says who, the soldier says, you’re not the captain.

&nb
sp; It’s true, you aren’t the captain. There isn’t a captain on the ship. It was assumed you would all interact with each other symbiotically and that you would arrive at decisions as a group. You were all selected because your personality profiles integrated in such a way that you would get along. The navigator is extremely reasonable, the soldier is decisive, you are intelligent, the poet is passive. Decisions were to be reached by consensus, and anyway, there are no decisions. The navigator decides where to go; you decide what to study; the soldier decides when there is danger; the poet makes unknowable aesthetic decisions.

  I’m in charge of studying the singularity, you say, and he is part of the singularity. I’m in charge of studying him.

  The soldier bristles, stands up tall, clenches his fist. You aren’t the captain, he repeats.

  What’s going on, the navigator, who has returned from the cockpit, interrupts.

  I’m just trying to bring him to the crew quarters, where he can rest, you say.

  He’s not going anywhere, the soldier says.

  What do you intend to do with him here, the navigator asks.

  The soldier has no answer. The poet pipes in to argue that there should be some discussion of the stranger on your ship and what should be done with him. The navigator agrees, but also says, in the meantime, you should walk your boyfriend back to the crew quarters.

  When you take your boyfriend to the crew quarters, he smiles at you. It’s the same smile you remember from before, from your life together. Before you know it, you’re dragging the boyfriend by the arm, headed for an escape pod. You have no plan, other than the possibility of pointing the escape pod in the direction of Earth, and your future life together. It won’t be easy; the escape pod has little food and few supplies for the journey back to Earth, but you think there must be another planet closer. You don’t need food or supplies anyway, or at least you don’t think. You think you’re immortal. You think that the boyfriend can survive long journeys through space. You want your life with your boyfriend anywhere. There are other planets that have little houses on pretty streets where two people who are in love can live together. After all, there’s no evidence your boyfriend was even supposed to come to your ship. He could have been headed anywhere, to another planet that happened to be in your same direction. It would be difficult but you could find a place for you and your boyfriend to be together.

  When you get to the escape pods, though, you find that they’re all gone and the soldier is waiting for you with one of his long-bladed knives. He used to collect them, on earth. You have admired this particular knife before. With one arm, you push the boyfriend behind you, although you know what the soldier wants and that he won’t put the boyfriend in danger. Instead, you and the soldier have an altercation. You narrowly avoid getting stabbed, but you’re also unsuccessful in blowing the soldier out of an airlock. He’s thought of that. The controls are all jammed. Instead, in the scuffle, you trip him, and as he falls backwards you break away and run as fast as you can, your boyfriend in tow.

  You make your way back to the common area, grabbing a large wrench from a repair kit along the way. The soldier, who is bigger and slower than you, arrives a moment later, and the navigator and the poet rush in from the other direction.

  Let’s just calm down, the navigator says.

  I am very calm, you say.

  The soldier, who is not calm, rushes you again with the large knife. Maybe it’s more of a machete. You fight him with the wrench, which is almost the size of your arm. Though you manage to hold your own, you feel like the soldier will overwhelm you soon. You are not a soldier, have never really had the stomach for combat. But you see, out of the corner of your eye, your boyfriend standing beside the navigator, his brow furrowed, a sad look on his face. Your heart breaks for him, and with renewed strength, you manage to break the soldier’s arm.

  He clutches it, growling and glaring at you. You can see a glint in his eye that tells you he is imagining his life with the boyfriend too, maybe in the very same house on the very same street. You set your jaw. You can’t let that happen. You grip the wrench with both hands, thinking you might kill the soldier, a quick blow to the head, when the soldier pulls an energy weapon with his off hand. He must have had it on his person somewhere. Immediately, you think that he’s gone crazy. Only a crazy person would fire an energy weapon in here. You aren’t even sure if they work. They were inconsistent in testing and they gave you two of them, for emergencies or threats that defied conventional means. You don’t even know how the soldier got one out of its case; it should require two keys to open.

  Okay, the navigator says, holding his hand out, in a placating manner. Okay. Let’s be rational about this. Only a crazy person would fire one of those things in here. If you hit a wall, the cabin depressurizes, and probably we will all die.

  The poet is crying. Please, he says, please. You can’t take your eyes off of the poet, or your hand off of your boyfriend behind you.

  The soldier holds the gun steady. Likely, he does not intend to miss, and you don’t think he’ll miss either. The navigator is still speaking in a low, calm voice, trying to convince the soldier to stand down. The poet is still crying, big heartbreaking sobs. Otherwise, the room is still and quiet, until suddenly you feel your boyfriend’s hand on your back. You think he intends to push you out of the way.

  After that, three unrelated things happen at once: you turn to grab your boyfriend, the soldier fires his weapon, and the entire ship lurches violently. One of the stabilizers, which had been damaged with the boyfriend’s impact, fails, and as a result the entire ship is suddenly on its side. You manage to put yourself between your boyfriend and the wall, and as a result, you crack your head on the metal of the hull and lose consciousness for a few minutes.

  When you come to, everything is quiet. You check first for the boyfriend, who is alive, but has some bad bruises. The soldier is just returning to consciousness, and the navigator is hunched over the poet, who, you can see, has died. The soldier’s shot went wild when the ship rolled; the poet was in the way. You kneel, next to the navigator, over the poet. His chest and stomach are covered in blood. Without thinking, your hand goes to his head. You run your palm over his recently buzzed head, feeling the bristly hairs on your fingers. You vow never to forget the feeling.

  The soldier is standing over you; he’s sniffling like a child on the verge of tears. He keeps saying that he’s sorry, that he just loves you so much, and he couldn’t bear to lose you that way. He just wanted to keep you. He didn’t want anyone else to have you.

  You are thinking of the poet and it takes you a moment to realize that you’re crying, in fact, howling. Your whole body heaves. The poet was awful and you realize suddenly that you loved him so much, right to your core. You are awful too. You and the poet were meant to be awful together.

  Weeping over the poet’s dead body, you imagine a world where you and the poet never left earth. You lived in an apartment together, you both taught at a local college. You would have two cats. One is Sandy, the other is Olivia. They’re both named after Olivia Newton-John, in a way. You didn’t have much, and you fought all the time. You would fight over everything. Your house is too small. You would fight and then you would make love, or sometimes you would just fuck. Sometimes you are so frustrated with the poet that you just hatefuck him, right there on the old lady’s couch you bought for a few bucks off Craigslist from her grieving son. Sometimes he’s so frustrated with you that he tries to hatefuck you back. But to you he is everything, everywhere. When you imagine life with the poet, he is the whole world, and he is also something very small that lives inside your body. Sometimes when you look at him, when you imagine a different you looking at him, the whole world changes and then you change. You would live the worst life with the poet, in sad jobs you hate, drinking beer by a lake. It feels like it should be awful, but as you watch the whole scenario spin out before your eyes, it seems like you’ve never felt better in your life.

  VI
II

  You Are Waiting for a Foundation to Crack

  The Village with All of the Boyfriends

  THE VILLAGE WITH All of the Boyfriends is where all of your boyfriends wind up eventually. You built this Village for them and they can’t leave and neither can you. You are not allowed inside, but you wait in the desert at the edge of town, you pace, sometimes you stomp a sleeping leg until it wakes up, sometimes you sit cross-legged in the dust. You spit and the ground soaks it up.

  You try not to watch the boyfriends but you watch them.

  The boyfriends ride motorcycles. They go to the beach and eat hot dogs with mustard and drink diet soda. The boyfriends learn to solve mysteries from TV. Some of them write poems and some of them post their political writings on blogs. They laugh easily. They get drunk and kiss. They go to the gym, spin class, yoga, water aerobics, ballet. They write long letters to their mothers, who like you even less now.

  The Village is overflowing with boyfriends. There are boyfriends on every street, in every house, boyfriends crowding the General Store and gossiping in line at the Bank and behind the counter at the Laundromat. Boy friends serve meals to other boyfriends packed into tiny booths at the Taqueria.