LOOKING AT YOU, LUCIEN by Isabelle Yang
It's not fair that I get to be sick while my boyfriend gets to be healthy. Gets to live life horizontally—flat, always lying, perpetually still—bent in an angle like that of a slant. Like the longest side of a pudgy triangle, the hypotenuse, sinking slowly. Centimeters of neck crouching inwards—up and down—as he swipes his fickle dickle sucky whucky thumb—up and down—as he fries his brain—up and down. Tweet and twit and twat. Stick and root and rat. The kinds of sounds he watches, the kinds of sounds he makes from the other room. Our only room in our only bed that only stores his body. A body that is writhing without putting up fights. My boyfriend will die soon. I know it.“Lucien,” I say. “Lucien.” Always in that tone that swings between concern and entire holes of it.Sometimes, when I stare into his eyes, the nothingness is so nothing it becomes something. Something like ignition or excitement or shock from an unwarranted stab. It’s usually just a reflection of me in those black nothing pupils, and suddenly I remember how thin and sick and close to dying I am—dying in a different way than his eventual death. My death will be quick and pleasant because I would have lived a life full of suffering while he would have lived one of instant pleasure.My boyfriend’s name is Lucien. Or Luth-ien, because he has a lisp. My boyfriend says dating me is like having a full-time job. If he had a full-time job, he would know how inaccurate that is. His days involve watching acres and acres of green turf across screens. He watches games all day. Games that require consistency and power and stamina. Also ambition because how can my boyfriend forget ambition. Wowee wow wow. Wishy wish woosh. Sounds his willy whoopy body makes while mimicking a golfer’s swing, panting, getting tired, lying down again. I have a full-time job, so I can’t lie down. I can’t stretch time or take multiple showers or learn how to whistle. My days are dictated for me, albeit short days, days closed multiple times because no gallery is open all week. “Why are the walls so white?” he asks when he visits, scratching his face. It’s not fair that Lucien’s skin mimics porcelain while mine mimics concrete. Cracking in the middle of day, in broad daylight, for everyone to see. When I rush to the bathroom, I don’t wonder if any art will get touched or stolen or lit on fire at the cost of my absence. Every day is a secret wish to get fired, to kick-start my life in a new way. When I’m at the gallery, I can’t wait to go home to Lucien. And when I get home, I can’t wait to die.At home, I look at his face—his porcelain face—and find new ways to improve it. Lucien’s nose bends like a Bastard sword recently retired from battle, swooshing away at anything nearby. Sometimes, I panic in the middle of the night, because I think he’s stopped breathing, stopped swooshing. When I look at his face in the darkness, I don’t think it can improve any more, because his is the kind that will leather beautifully as he grows older. The kind that will get glances from twenty-five-year-olds ten years from now, and ten years after that, and ten years after that. Now, if he could only grow up. When my boyfriend hears these complaints, he says I should write about things I love instead. But I love to complain—it might be the only thing I love—so I, technically, am doing what he says. I make him so happy.“How can I make you happy,” he asks me again and again. Something my last boyfriend would say. So would the one before. I don’t know how I keep finding the same person again and again. They are all chunks of flesh from one body, regurgitated at different points in my life. Each one hoping to endure a little longer than the last. It’s a race to nowhere, especially if none of them qualify.Qualifying only for dates to dinners where everyone stares. Probably because Lucien is over six feet tall, and I hide perfectly in his shadows. In the cusps of his shoulders where no one can touch me. I grab his deltoids as if they’re soft grenades and wait until he asks to be seated. I feel the closest to God, like God, against his cashmere back.Cherry cheesecake, napoleon shake, small sirloin steak. A floating coke, a perfect sundae, a sticky toffee pudding. Cutie patootie, loopy canoopy, woffee toffee coffee, cherry berry cheesecake. My boyfriend and I don’t have these kinds of nicknames. He has a name. I say it the way you’re supposed to. “Stop.”“Stop what?” “Stop fidgeting. You’re making the table shake,” I say and point to his leg. “I have ADHD, iths not my fault that—”“It’s.”“What?” “It’s pronounced it’s. Is being dyslexic also a symptom of ADHD?” Sometimes I wonder if I create these fights so we can drone on in silence. Cruise through whole dinners, whole days, whole lives together like this. I used to think eternity was short until I met Lucien who makes everything feel long and useless and almost even redundant. Whenever I get overwhelmed with the feeling of spending forever with him, I imagine what would happen if he got in a car crash. Immediate relief gets immediately replaced with fear and regret and eventually remorse. The amount of remorse depends on when the crash happens. Tomorrow, I will still be young and gorgeous and can start over. Twenty years from now, I can’t say the same. Maybe Lucien is my lesson, my meditation in life. His mouth is often half-open, equally ready and not ready to stutter something life-changing, something that will completely slice my heart in half. “I just…I…” “Your words, Lucien,” I say. “Use your words.” A waiter watches us complete each other’s sentences. Lucien likes to collect commas, showing them off whenever he talks. “I, I find you, like, impossible,” he manages. True! I think, but I am trying to focus on things that won’t shatter my heart. A futile attempt when I can still feel the waiter’s presence hovering nearby, secretly taking Lucien’s side of the matter. “You don’t even know him,” I want to spit out to her. You don’t even know how I color-coordinate his life, how I spend hours rearranging shades of taupe and gray to match his complexion. How he’s everything because of me and nothing without. Outside, autumn is crinkling into layers of ice. I think of how it will take Lucien every inch of his brain to not want to slip. There is never a moment I don’t think about him. Phee hooo weee. Whooo whooo. Phee hooo weee. Whooo whooo. Practice makes perfect, and my boyfriend loves practicing his whistle. All of Tribeca and all of Manhattan and all of New York can hear him. The children on Crosby poke their heads out, trying to smell out the tune. My boyfriend waves at them like Elvis or Kennedy, and the children cheer back. Their toothed smiles will be engrained inside our memories forever, remembered as the time we saved lives. We pretend to be united, hand in hand, and continue to walk in leisure until my boyfriend grabs at the chance to sit down. If there is something he’s good at, it’s whistling for a cab.One or two or three hours later, my boyfriend is ready to go into bed. He can synchronize with nature like this in ways he can’t with himself. But reaching unconsciousness can sometimes be an entirely separate effort, so yes, sometimes even he needs help falling asleep. Won’t do so unless I sing him a lullaby. One abundant with rhymes and sounds that can be diced into cubes. And because this is my boyfriend, because I love him, I wedge between him and his pillows and begin singing, watching him drift, as he digs deeper and deeper into a dreamscape, as he finally rests in peace.
Lucien, Lucien, a love I invent,
Lucien, Lucien, wrapped in linen and light, tucked deep in cement,
Lucien who loves little white cries and custard-filled pies and whom I despise,
Last quickly like lust,
Persevere alone if you must,
Lucien, Lucien, a boy I deny,
Lucien, my Lucien,
I lie lie lie.