Cutting Off My Ear
Van Gogh created his masterpiece Starry Night, a year after he had a mental breakdown and cut his ear off. Many don’t contextualize the beauty emanating from his pain. Knowing that makes the deep blues of the sky, brooding. The firmament engulfs the town in disproportion. And the potential plant from the edge of the canvas morphs into a hand clawing from darkness. It’s all in perspective.
The other person who cut off an ear in a psychotic break was the Apostle Peter. Peter didn’t cut off his own ear, rather a soldier’s who arrested his beloved savior. His anger and hurt motivated that impulse and hysteria: love muddled. Later on in the book of Love, it says, “The ear might say, ‘I am not an eye, so I don’t belong to the body.’ But saying this would not make the ear stop being a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, it would not be able to hear. If the whole body were an ear, it would not be able to smell anything. If each part of the body were the same part, there would be no body. But as it is, God put the parts in the body as he wanted them. He made a place for each one. So there are many parts, but only one body.” Perhaps, cutting off someone who felt like a part of me is the very thing that causes my madness.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.
What do I do with the carnage of yet another failed relationship? Our story converges a few times. We attended primary school together—his mom did my hair from Kindergarten to 8th grade—then reconnected years later because his mom posted a baby picture of him on Facebook and I started wondering how he was doing these days in a platonic way (well, until I saw how hot he was). It felt like kismet. Divinely timed. He was someone I could let my inner child frolic with. I drew on my middle fingers kitschy facsimiles of his tattoos, we drew portraits of each other — he was repulsed by mine but it ain’t my fault my proportions are way off. Drawing figures has never been my thing. We threw on the wheel together with a famous potter; my cheeks turned upward when I remember the potter was impressed by his big hands. We went on artist studio visits. We even shared the connection of his sewing teacher, whom I knew as a minister. He marched to the beat of his own drum, unapologetically. Certain phrases replay his voice in my head. I loved our kisses or when he pressed me against the wall. He did stupid shit, but it didn’t make me feel less. Once he clogged my toilet with used condoms and I had to shit in a bag and piss in the shower while waiting for my landlord to fix it. I was so forgiving of him doing that stupid shit because I was head over heels.
He broke up with me on our five-month anniversary. How can someone fall in love in five months? It’s because our story began way before that time. I loved how he was a handwashing-dishes-purist. I loved his Thai curry shrimp. I loved how he’d always have his sketchbook, pen, and canvas bag at any moment, ready to move toward inspiration. I loved his photo documentation of protests. I loved when he gave cursory notes on my writing. I loved how he knew Pop Smoke and the Arctic Monkeys. I loved his impressions of Italian mobsters and how he’d maintain it in conversations yet randomly called out: LISAN AL GAIB!
He once called me a Christmas miracle like we were in a Hallmark movie. We had a perfect combination of differences that made us right for each other, even down to his dark core fashion sense versus mine, which was 70s-inspired with bright colors. He caressed my short hair and massaged my scalp and I played with his locs, curling them in my fingers. I was frugal and he had diabolical frivolous spending habits that were oddly inconsistent—buying scratch-offs at the store while taking Ubers because public transit didn’t make him feel wealthy.
I loved how we shared a healthy view of when someone was acting crazy, it’s their bullshit and not ours to carry. I loved how we visited our elementary school teachers together almost twenty years later and one cried tears of joy. I loved how I knew about the story of him bringing a screwdriver to school when he was bullied in middle school to defend himself. Our secret. I loved beating him at air hockey, watching him dominate billiards, and seeing his celebratory dance after bowling. I loved how he quoted My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s scene of “He’s vegetarian” (the whole room halting to silence). Then Aunt Toula said, “He don’t eat no meat? That’s okay, I make him lamb. Come. Come.” I loved our extemporaneous recitations of Ratatouille. I loved how our politics flirted with conspiracy. I loved the off-kilter things he’d say. I loved telling him the list of baby names I’ve been compiling forever—he loved all of them. I loved his stories that began with “When I was on ayahuasca…”
Our love was incredibly specific and beautiful in my mind, but he’d never known romantic love before and didn’t know what to compare it to.
“You’re a coward.” I told him, when love was near, he’d run away. I said that my biggest fear was him leaving me heartbroken. And he did. He recoiled to my touch. I felt my aorta dislodge. I tried giving him space but now, it pains me to think that I didn’t take every chance to consensually touch him. I hope that my hesitation did not confirm in his mind his resolve to end things. As he held my hands when we chatted downstairs, I couldn’t help the torrential downpour. I felt jilted out of the time we deserved to realize our full potential. It was as if I was in a nightmare from which I couldn't awake. My appetite no longer felt important.
No more majestic, intersellar sex. We both agreed that it was the best we ever had. When our bodies intertwined it felt like a celestial dance. We had a symbiotic relationship with each other’s metabolic temperature — when he was cold (rarely but it happened), I’d warm him up, and when he was warm and I was cold (more likely), he’d warm me up. His constellations of freckles were where my kisses could land. Any and every position was ecstasy. How we only used Lola brand condoms that were best for my pH makes it all the more sweet. And the immaculate sleep I got beside him. I can’t sleep without the lull of his soft snores. I loved his gap-toothed smile (asking to kiss it every day). I loved the way his locs cascaded down his back when he slept. I remember being skin-on-skin and sitting criss-cross applesauce with our pelvises aligned and flowing together like ocean waves with the delightful slight friction feeling of his pubic hair rubbing against mine, almost like sand.
He’s the only guy I considered fucking me raw. As if taking birth control pills religiously, risking a pregnancy scare, was no biggie. I could wear a sexy bodysuit but I will never forget the caress of his eyes when I wore a long Scooby Doo shirt, fishnets, and thigh highs. He worshipped my thighs and hungered for what’s in between them. I did a sexy dance for him and was the wettest I’ve ever been in my life. I miss the cuddles, the thrust of his hips in the morning. The quickies and the lovemaking. How he pushed me to the side as he angled himself diagonally across the bed. His warmth. His soft kisses on my neck.
When I look up at the stars, time is cyclical. While we measure time by the sun, the sidereal day is based on time as indicated by the stars. While that is fast in earthly time by being just under 24 hours, one day in sidereal time indicates 59 days. Written by Peter but inspired by the divine, he penned, “But, beloved, do not be ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years as one day.”
I was prepared on my premature train ride home to chalk up my tears to grieving a loss — very true although people would accept my swollen eyes from 24 hours of tears from someone’s death more than a breakup. They wouldn’t question it. I was gonna try my damndest. He promised to teach me E-Trade, play me in chess, and let me into his world of DnD, along with many things that have not yet been fulfilled.
Hope is the most dangerous thing, the sibling of delusion, that keeps me from despair. It flickers within me. We are meant to be. That’s what scares me most about just being friends. It may torture me with hope. But I would rather that flicker claw at me than not at all. It feels impossible to cut off that part of me.
1 John 18
2 1 Corinthians 12:16–20
Photo by Sydney Sang