You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

by Alexandra Kleeman

borrowing brought you closer to other people, while buying mostly made you lonelier.

Maybe she was saving her stomach for something that didn’t yet exist.

This was one of the things that made our relationship work so well: he always assumed I was happy, too, even when I wasn’t. With C, I could sit there and cycle through hurt, anger, sadness, ambivalence, acceptance, all without disturbing the comfortable rapport between us. As a result, he called me easygoing. And at times when the inner corners of my eyes burned and I knew I was about to spill, I had only to look over at him and his utterly normal grin to feel like I had grossly misread my own situation. Then whatever feeling I was feeling would hollow itself out, so that all I felt was that I no longer knew what I felt.

This is happiness, I thought as the air-conditioning droned behind me like a single monstrous insect.

He was a graceful consumer: he could consume without being consumed in turn.

They didn’t want the gift-curse of recognition by those they loved and who loved them back, one consequence of that love’s durability being that they would be recognized and loved aggressively even on days when they couldn’t stand to recognize themselves in the mirror, even on days when merely remembering themselves made them sad and want to sleep. Love that made every day a day that they had to live in a handcrafted, artisanal fashion, rather than being outsourced to someone who could do it happily and efficiently for a third of the price.

The single image splits into two, which occupy the same space without sharing it. Or maybe it’s the opposite: the two objects find themselves in shared space, and the thought of one after the other in the mind of the viewer’s eye, vase face vase face vase face vase face, makes them grow together.

But in the end I decided that it had to do with the thinness of the present. At any given present moment a person was doing one thing, maybe three things. They were lying down, and they were reading a sentence, and possibly they were thinking about what they were doing. Or they were reaching for someone’s shoulder, and noticing a mole on someone’s back, and feeling their own breath leave their chest. Any piece of time is lonely and pale in isolation, and moments resemble other moments, so that sometimes you feel that you are a memory being called to mind by someone else.

He was thickening the moment by laying fantasy upon reality upon fantasy.

And then I wanted C gone, wanted him gone so that it would be impossible to want him, so that there would be nobody else that I wanted things from and nobody else to disappoint me.

I had to solve it the way other problems of scarcity and desire were being solved: by finding something new to want and pursuing that wanting instead. Baby monkeys taken from their mothers will form attachments to fake mothers made of cloth or electrified wire, ducklings with no parents will imprint on a cardboard box with an alarm clock ticking inside of it. Wanting things was a substitute for wanting people, one of the best possible substitutes.

And if he succeeded, how would I ever know whether he had done it to help me, or hurt me, or something in between the two. Loving someone was no guarantee of how they would treat you. All it did was raise the stakes.

pop songs with all the words gouged out.

Show me what you are when you’re not around me. Let me see how you look when I’m not looking at you. Tell me everything I’m not supposed to know, and don’t leave out any of the things you don’t know yourself.

I’m talking about you,” he said. “I’m talking about who’s running you. Is it you, yourself, or someone adjacent, so similar that even you can’t tell yourselves apart? Tell me, do you ever look in the mirror and mistake that face for your own?

Recall, BUT DO NOT THINK OF the Dark feelings of that time, which are now gone: feelings of loving them too much or not enough, never loving them the right amount, of wanting them to give you space and then feeling unloved, of saying you understood what they were saying when what they were saying only made you feel more confused and more alone. Remember: DO NOT REMEMBER your past. PERCEIVE your past as you would perceive a dark stone or flower resting at some distance from you. THEN CAST IT FROM YOU WITH FORCE.

C used to play a game with me called “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” where he’d ask me that question and I’d try to tell him.

CONSIDER THOSE WHO THINK OF YOU IN THIS WAY, AND THE GHOST OF YOU THAT IS MADE GET THERE FASTER: BE YOUR OWN GHOST

Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative.