How They Met, and Other Stories
Page 24

The crests of every relationship, Sallie figured, were always followed by troughs (and crests again, if you had the patience—which she didn’t). She imagined their attraction turning to repulsion, just like that between a pith ball and a like-charged rod.
My God, she thought. Would I polarize him?
She thought of all the work that it would take to maintain equilibrium. She had only so much potential energy to give.
Would it be enough?
Meanwhile, James was having thoughts parallel to Sallie’s. The look in her eyes had given him a shock. He started to wonder if their “going out” would reduce to zero everything they had. Friendship had long been the basic element of their relationship. Now, both of them contemplated change. Yes, as Lenz had observed, change can turn on the source that created it, creating a force opposite to the best intentions.
James knew that the road to a simple harmonic relationship would be a hard one to follow. The critical point could only be reached through the passing of three states, each one causing a change in speed and the refraction toward or away from the norm.
And James seriously doubted that he and Sallie had the chemistry—or, in this case, physics—to make it.
If it is to be assumed that Newton was correct (as is the general consensus), to every action there is always opposed an equal action. That is to say that love always goes against a certain gradient. Sometimes risk. Sometimes popular opinion. In this case, regret.
Yes, James feared that liking Sallie would lead him to regret. He would regret liking her in the first place. He would regret breaking off their friendship. He would regret it when, after the statistically assured breakup, they would avoid each other like oil and water.
James did not want Sallie’s and his friendship to consist of meetings between classes and periodic waves in the halls. He knew that if their lives had to revolve around each other, they’d grow bored (not to mention dizzy). The damage would be done—the recoil irreparable.
After the initial impulse, James wondered, would the momentum remain constant?
Sallie’s doubts were only reinforced by her textbook. It defined a “couple” as “two forces on a body of equal magnitude and opposite direction, having lines of action that are parallel but do not coincide.”
Would we ever intersect? she asked herself.
She feared fusion would only bring fission, with the mass deficits too great and the energy spent too consuming to make the romantic endeavor worthwhile.
James, having a larger surface and cross-sectional area than Sallie, was worried about the strain that would possibly put a damper on their combined molecular activity. He calculated that as the length of their involvement grew, so would the tensile strain.
He also feared the work that would be needed when he and Sallie wouldn’t be together. Using W = Fd as his guideline, James figured out the work that it would take to keep their relationship at a constant force when he and Sallie were more than a mile apart. Furthermore, if he wanted to reduce the force (and, therefore, the work), he would have to slow down love’s acceleration by massive proportions.
With a girl like Sallie, a constant velocity with little to no acceleration would not be acceptable (or so James thought).
And yet a velocity increase would require an energy increase. Energy that James would find hard to muster up in this, his hardest year in high school.
Even simple harmonic motion, that romantic-sounding phenomenon, said that acceleration was proportional to negative displacement, which was not an encouraging thought.
Would we lapse into inertia without constant acceleration, requiring a larger force? James asked himself.
Even batteries would be sources of potential difference, thought Sallie.
I don’t even know if she’s a conductor or an insulator of emotion, James realized.
Boyle’s law soon served as Sallie’s guide.
According to Boyle, if the velocity of their affair decreased, the pressure would increase proportionally. Sallie was not prepared for this. Her heart had only a certain capacity for crisis.
Finishing her calculations, Sallie finally computed that the stress and strain of a romantic bond with James would be merely a waste of power, damaging the caring she had for him in the past.
She did not want the universe’s ever-growing entropy to interfere with her love life.
And thus, James drifted out of the focus of Sallie Brown’s affections.
And, in an action so simultaneous that many scientific minds would have been baffled, James Helprin took Sallie out of his romantic-life equation. He knew the friction of a merging of their hearts wouldn’t be beneficial. It would be theoretically and realistically wrong.
The next time they found themselves looking at each other, James and Sallie both smiled.
In the end, friendship was proven to be the dominant force. The head and the heart were found to be the joint sources of true romance.
It has been demonstrated.
WHAT A SONG CAN DO
If I didn’t have music, I don’t know
if I could ever be truly happy.
Happiness is music to me. Like when
I am in Caleb’s room, playing
my guitar for him, watching him
close his eyes to listen and knowing
he understands what I am
singing. That is all I need
to make a room full of happiness—
two boys, one love, and a song.
I think the reason my parents wanted me
to play classical music was because
it didn’t have any words. They would keep me
as a sound, not a voice. But I had
other ideas. I blew off the recorder,
did not bow to the violin, benched the piano, saved
up for a guitar. Then I used it to write
love songs for boys, and sad songs for love.
I sang myself to find myself
in a language far from my parents’
expectations. I taught myself the strings,
the chords, the fretting. But I did not
have to teach myself the words.
They’d always been there, notes to myself,
waiting for the music to bring them out.
All I had to do was recognize the possible
music and the songs were everywhere.
It is not something I have control over,
no more than I can control the sights
that appear before my eyes. I will be staring off
in class, barely hearing the echo of
my teacher’s words, when suddenly
a verse will arrive free-form in my thoughts.
when I look out a window
I wish for you on the other side
even if you’re not there
I can see you in the clouds
As I transcribe the words in my notebook,
I can hear the sound of it in my head.
Many teachers have caught me strumming
an imaginary guitar, trying to find the chords
before they vanish with the next thought.
The first time I went out with Caleb,
this happened to me. We were talking
in the park, having a conversation that lasted
the afternoon and the evening,
finding all of our common coincidences,
baring some of our unfortunate quirks.
At one point he went to get us sodas,
leaving me with my thoughts and the trees.
I was elated to have found someone
who could be both interested and interesting.
My thoughts revealed themselves
in the terms of a song.
you could be
the leaf that never falls from the tree
you could be
the sun that never leaves the sky
this might be
the happy ending without the ending
this might be
a reason to try
When he returned to me, he had two bottles
in his hands, and I was making furious leaps
into my notebook, playing the ghost guitar
and singing solos to the birds around me.
I apologized, embarrassed to be caught
showing myself so early, but he said
it was charming, then asked me if I needed time
to finish my refrain. Perhaps it was because he said
something so perfect, or perhaps it was because
the song made me brave, but I asked him
if he wanted to hear it, and when he said yes,
I sang to him, accompanied only by
the guitar in my head and the beat
of my heart. When I was done, there was
a moment of absolute silence, and I felt
like the ground had been pulled out from under me
and I was about to fall far. But then the ground
came back, as he told me it was wonderful,
as he asked me to sing it to him again.
It is a sad fact of our present times
that it’s nearly impossible to turn on the radio
and hear a g*y boy with a guitar.
Where are the indigo boys, to show me the way?
Caleb teases me, because while
he has a g*y music collection—pop queens
and piano boys—I am, he insists, a closet
lesbian. So I play him some Dylan, some Joni,
some Nick Drake, and I tell him there is
room for me to sing about the two of us
tangled up in blue under a pink pink pink
pink moon. Music, like love,
cannot be defined, except
in the broadest of senses.
My father complains, my mother stays silent.
My father says it’s not the music he minds,
but that I play it so loud. They want me
to sing in the basement, but I can’t think
with the laundry and the cobwebs—
down there, all my songs begin to have
pipes. So I become a bedroom Cinderella
on a tighter deadline, allowed to sing loud
until the hour-hand tips the ten. Then I strum
softly, sing in a whisper.
I think they would like the songs better
if I left out the names, or changed
the pronouns.
No more danger.
Time’s a stranger.
When I’m in his arms.
In his arms.
He could break me.
But instead he wakes me.
When I’m in his arms.
In his arms.
I am not the first person
to avoid the second person.
But I am certainly the first person
to do it in my house.
I never thought I would end up with
someone who wasn’t possessed
by music in the same way I am.
I imagined a relationship of duets,
of you play me yours and I’ll
play you mine. Caleb doesn’t
even listen to the music I like. He dances
instead, frees himself that way
while I prefer the quieter corners,
the blank pages. Part of my music
is being alone, having that time
to shut down all the other noises
to hear the tune underneath.
Sometimes I retreat when he
wants me most. Sometimes
he wants me most when I
retreat. I will let the phone ring,
let the IM blink, and he will know
that I am there, not realizing I am
also in another place. I still sing him
songs before I am ready, sing him
back the moments he has missed.
as if to say, this is where I was
when you couldn’t find me.
The sound of my voice means
I have returned to him, ready
for a different kind of duet,
that delicate, serendipitous pairing
of listened and sung. He accepts that,
and wants more.
black ink
falls on the blue lines
spelling out silences
harboring words
you think
my love’s not the true kind
unanswering questions
do not disturb
but I’m not leaving you
when I leave you
I’m not forgetting
that we’re getting somewhere
I’m just trying
to figure my part of this
my place in the world
with you standing there
with you standing there…
Our local coffee hangout decides to throw
a weekly open mic night. I decide to go
as a member of the audience, unsure
about playing in a town that knows me
unwell. A local band snarls through