Once upon a time there were two young people at a birthday party. They were named Eve and Raymond. Some of the guests were swimming in the pool, some were snorting adderall at the dining table, but Eve and Raymond were standing in the kitchen. It was apparent to both of them and likely everyone observing that they were smitten with one another, but though they’d been talking here by the china cabinets for hours, nothing amorous had yet been admitted aloud.
Eventually they went outside for air, which is a thing people say like it’s an activity even though there is air everywhere. On the porch Eve and Raymond confessed two things. The first was their shared attraction. The second was that back in the kitchen where they’d spoken for hours, neither of them had actually listened to a single word the other had said. That’s how large the feelings were. They simply did not care about the words, they just liked to watch their mouths become new shapes, so mesmerized at just the fact of the other existing. Eve said she particularly loved his teeth. She’d eat them in a bowl, his teeth. With milk, with toast. And Raymond agreed — he felt exactly the same.
After a moment of self-conscious hesitation, for maybe these were bad things to admit, being completely uninterested in what your sweetheart has to say — they posited that actually it might mean their feelings were purer than regular person feelings. It meant they expected nothing from each other. They had seen so many young people fall victim to doomed relationships, the planned obsolescence of it all. Many of the young people who are smitten are smitten with the wrong people, wasting themselves like fruit in a bowl. How could Eve and Raymond be certain, certain to the sky, that they would be different?
So the next day, trusting their guts, Raymond and Eve cut off their ears and sold them on the black market. They made some good cash. If they lived in this unadulterated awe of each other permanently, then there’d be nothing in their way, none of the typical complications. And obviously this is pretty generic stuff. Smitten people are always rummaging through knife drawers to cut away pieces of themselves. They can sometimes spend hours doing the sharpening, and then more to pierce the skin and saw through the rest. Then finally they can look at it, warm on the table. Van Gogh cut off his ear too, remember? We all remember that.
And remarkably, judgers be damned — it worked. Eve and Raymond were really happy together and never had hard times. The routine was good, there was chemistry. They had a lot of sex in multiple positions. They lit sandalwood candles and used coasters. They danced at the discos. The only bad thing was that sometimes there were migraines because of the gaping spaces on both sides of their heads. The migraines were not good obviously and were often so painful that it made them want to die. They wore tourniquets for the bleeding, like in the war. Every morning they woke with sore throats, having screamed so loud all night. They had cough drops with their coffee. The neighbors heard, but they didn’t.
Eve and Raymond built a wonderful life this way. Young people who are smitten often lose steam around seven months or so, and then again around two years. They are lazy and don’t try hard enough. But not Raymond, not Eve. What worked so well was that they knew nothing of each other outside this life. There was no past. The brush with anorexia, the dead rabbit in the basement, the time she choked on a Jolly Rancher. The ACL tear, the goth phase, the time he fainted into a lake and could’ve sworn he saw God. All these things, they never happened. No one ever died before now, no one ever lived before now. They howled in agony through the early hours, they smiled with adoration the remainder of the day. And here now isn’t that such a precious pearl-like thing. To believe in love so fiercely that nothing else matters and you’re constantly taking an Advil.