Overheated fate

Leech, Cosmic Dark Star and Laika

I think I’m allergic to weddings. I was invited to my acquaintances Patricia and Adam’s wedding last weekend. Before the wedding, I had felt like a raisin, drained from the intensity of my teaching. Students wrote long emails implicitly complaining about my blunt critiques and overly demanding assignments. The institution that hosted me was evasive and vampiric. At one point, I started questioning once more if I’m “too much,” and if my vow to never dilute myself again after Nick’s death was too absolute.

The church ceremony was beautiful. The red color of the painted saints on the stained glass windows made me realize how spiritual loftiness was always tied to blood, sacrifice and martyrdom. A sinister undertone for a Holy Matrimony. After the official ceremony at the church, we walked together as a group to the dinner venue. The summer heat was brutal. I was walking by myself, in a black and red velvet Qipao, and I did not feel like talking to anyone. Right before we arrived, a young woman started making conversations with me. She said “I like your outfit. I can always tell who’s Patricia’s friends. They’ve got great fashion.” I looked at her, and her pale, freckled face with faintly asian features reminded me of Nick. She said, “My name is Lauren, my boo is Adam’s friend.” I looked over her shoulder and saw a slim, bald white man with oval, metallic framed glasses. Something about him reminded me of Tom Felton. Lauren asked me, “What do you do?” I said I photograph naked people. She told me her partner and her are both writers. They write about lesbian couple protagonists. I noticed that on her inner right arm lied half a fig, cut open, about 3 inches long. On her outer left arm there was a tattoo of two elongated pitcher plants, which I thought were swords at first. “It’s from a Chinese artist.” She disclosed. She said she is also a botanist working at a botanical garden, and her friends are all older lesbian women.

I assumed Lauren was going to leave me alone after we started eating, but she kept engaging me. A part of me was thrilled that I didn’t have to float around awkwardly at a social gathering, despite my distaste for mingling. We had appetizers together at a table far away from the crowd. She was very curious about my family. I told her my mother is a complex woman. Without revealing further information, I asked her what her mother was like. She said her mother is a complex woman too. Married three white guys. Hyper feminine, and doesn’t get her the way she wishes a mother would. Her dad is an evil white banker who married multiple asian women. I said I think asian women have a problem of seeking legitimacy from white men. But I guess it makes sense that wasians like her would be with a white man because at least they share something in common. She laughed, “Savage!” and confessed that she enjoyed my bluntness. I actually noticed Lauren the night before, at the wedding reception, and thought she was very cute. Lauren said she noticed me too. I was alone on the white couch.

Later that night i didn’t want to dance and was sitting at my dinner table. Everyone was either preoccupied with the dance, their partners, or their electronic devices. The wedding confessions, tears, the grandiose performance of commitment, singularity and permanence pressed against my most private wounds: my dead friend, the 59 years old man whom I achingly want but cannot be with, my exes, the precarity of my career in this foreign country. Lauren circled back to me from the dance floor, and asked me to go to the balcony with her. I said this wedding made me deeply sad. She looked at me and sighed, “You have such a bleak outlook for love.” I asked her, “Why are you not with your partner?” She said her partner is always hanging out with the groom’s crew. They all went to Tufts University. I said, “They sound like an inseparable chemical compound.” She thought for a second, and said, “Pretty much.”

From the balcony, the sunset over the river became less and less pink, and more and more blue mixed with orange. The atmosphere was burning with an unspoken longing. As we were aimlessly speaking, she mentioned she has a dog that she left at home in Virginia. “Who is taking care of him, or her?” I casually remarked. “I need to find someone to take care of my cats when I’m back in China in November.” She opened her eyes wider, “You have two?” and she asked what their names were. “Leech and Cosmic Dark Star.” She asked, “Peach?” “No, Leech.” I was a touch offended by the thought that she would imagine me using such a soft pet name—a stone fruit. She looked amused, perhaps by how I extended my self-authorship to my pets’ names. Her dog’s name is Laika. The soviet dog who got overheated and died in space. A martyr. A ghost. A cosmic loner. Something in me was touched. And I started looking at her with a renewed perspective. She said, “Now she can be reincarnated in a happy home, not drifting in the vast universe.”

Laika in 1957, the first animal to orbit the earth. She was beautiful

Before I left, Lauren wanted to exchange numbers. “You should come to Richmond.” she asked me earnestly. I smirked and said, “Are you asking all the Asian people you talked to to visit you in Richmond?” I could tell she was blushing, although it was barely visible, she said, “No I’m not. Just you. ”

I looked at her hyphenated last name on my phone screen. Half Korean, half Jewish. I knew that we would never text each other. But I still typed my name and sent it.