Chapter Nine #2
“I asked Sandrine where she used to go to make out with her old boyfriend Marco in high school. She wasn’t sure it was still here, or if it had gotten overgrown.”
“You took your chances.” It was one of your things, your life mottos.
Number one was your belief in connection, and number two was your belief in taking a chance, in why not, in you never know.
There was that quote from a Carl Sagan article that you loved, how somewhere, something incredible was waiting to be known.
I loved the idea of that, but it was the opposite of what anxiety told a person.
Why not? You never know…Well, there were distinct and logical reasons why not (danger, and you might die).
So you’d better know. The never knowing was precisely the problem.
Both of your life mottos, the connection, the why not—they came from that guy in the turtleneck on your nightstand, and from the makers of the Golden Record, you told me.
They took their chances with a huge why not.
They had no real evidence that extraterrestrial life even existed, let alone that anyone might actually one day find that record.
It was hope, that’s all. Hope and goodwill, the hope and goodwill of every single individual involved, from Carl Sagan himself to the scientists and engineers and producers and each individual voice giving each individual greeting.
Enough to create an everlasting outreach, an object that will last a billion years, one of the most enduring things ever created.
“We took our chances,” you said. “And here we are.”
A crow stared down. A fern tickled my bare ankle, and I jumped and swatted it away. A woodpecker fired his bird nail gun, da-da-da-da. In the deeper part of those woods, there weren’t tigers, but there were cougars and bobcats and bears.
You kissed me, and I forgot about those. And why not? In space, there were super-voids and gamma-ray bursts, black holes and white dwarfs. And still, a pair of gold records sailed on a tiny spacecraft, ready with greetings of peace and good wishes.
I let go of all of it—the worries of thorns and bugs and not-cute underwear, of being found by other hikers.
You’d almost had sex with Ella, but you hadn’t, and so we were two virgins in a forest, like humans from the beginning of time.
That only occurred to me later. Right then, I was just thinking about bodies, yours and mine, where things went, a rock under my hip bone, smells and sweat, and how fast that was.
How I wanted to try that again, slower. With more experience the next time, so I could not think instead of think so much, and when we did just that, it was better.
Afterward, when we just lay beside each other, my head on your chest, your arms looped around me, it was like waking up. Like we’d both been on some storm planet together and had now suddenly landed back on Earth.
“I’ll never forget this,” you said. Not in a sappy, momentous way, but just happy, a happy fact. Your eyes gazed upward through the limbs of the trees toward the sky. “No tigers, just us.”
“I’ll never forget this, either. This head.” A kiss landed on it. “Or this shoulder.” There, too. “Or this.” I poked his chest.
“Check out those abs.”
We laughed. You didn’t really have any.
“Or this.” Your penis.
“Flubber blub,” you said.
Now we really cracked up. Haha, the perfect name, as it slumped there all squishy and tired. My head rode up and down on your chest as we laughed.
“Oh my God, what time is it?” I’d forgotten where we were, almost. When I opened my eyes, the forest was a surprise.
I was in a world of your limbs and my limbs, stickiness, the heat of our breath, and when I untwined, a shocking coolness hit.
The real world, and the afternoon air of…
three-thirty, shit! I had to get to work.
“Oh, jeez!” You scrambled, gathered up our stuff. We were disoriented, not ready for this place. We’d been on our own new planet, the two of us. Back at our old one, it now seemed inhospitable, too sudden and glaring.
We had to run. We reached your car and drove back, stuffing our faces with snacks.
I was so, so hungry. It seemed completely inexplicable that someone could ever deprive themself of something as essential as food.
God, I wanted a burger and a milkshake and just more of everything.
I was worried about getting back in time, walking into Papa Angelo’s with this confession all over my face, but I could feel something else rumbling underneath there, too.
A sense of…Whatever. Not rebellion, exactly.
More that nothing could matter that much, nothing could really touch me now that you had.
Something had shifted. Not just from having sex, but sex and love together, and you and me…
Well, I remembered how, when I was a little kid, I couldn’t imagine ever leaving home.
How I thought I could live there forever.
And even more recently, as much as they got on my nerves sometimes, a life apart from them, my family, seemed terrifying.
But now—I could suddenly see it, I could truly understand, the way we grow up and have a partner and even create a new family together, away from our childhood one.
The way we make our own life on our own little planet.
I missed you already, in the car heading back, and we hadn’t even left each other yet.
When we said goodbye, I felt a wrenching.
We were two travelers now, buckled into the same ship.
Even when you drove off and I stood there watching you go, we were.