home with you
Top: piano varnish, soprano drama heart: apples, cherries, pain (crescendo) base: hill grass, runner’s sweat, loneliness giving way to choral feast
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Main Accords: Laundry linen, metallic heat at the end of an exhaust pipe, palm lines browned from an increasingly camera-shy sun
An antenna bent sideways to catch the last of kate bush. Love letter to the decrescendo.
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his ly, but not impossible). Over his thong, he wears a thick, furry coat because his boyfriend lives on the cold side of the planet.
After this breakup, Quinn will have no more reason to visit Mars, except maybe the laundromat. He has already decided for himself: no more dating people from Mars. They’re all kind of one-dimensional and needy once you get to know them. Quinn has arrived at this conclusion from the small sample size of just his boyfriend.
Quinn meets his boyfriend at the laundromat. The last time he was here was for his last breakup.
“Hi,” says the boyfriend as Quinn enters. He is sitting atop a machine that is mid-wash. The soapy water swirls beneath him, looking more and more like a vortex the longer Quinn stares. The boyfriend’s name will not appear here because Quinn doesn’t want it to.
“Hi,” says Quinn. Seeing his boyfriend in the flesh, Quinn feels a slippery sad thought climb into his brain: does it really matter that he’s so onedimensional and needy? Doesn’t love trump all? Shouldn’t he love his boyfriend despite his one-dimensionality and neediness? In fact, he does. He knows he does.
The boyfriend clears his throat. “I want to break up, ” he says. Never mind, thinks Quinn. “Fine. I want to break up too.”
“Fine,” says the boyfriend.
Quinn stands across from his boyfriend, looking at the washer beneath him instead of his face. At certain intervals of the spinning, Quinn is almost certain that he sees his boyfriend’s face in the bubbly vortex.
“My eyes are up here,” says the boyfriend, interrupting Quinn’s whimsical train of thought. “I can go in the washing machine, if you want.”
“You sure?” says Quinn. It is a great offer of generosity on his boyfriend’s part. All of his exes in his entire lifetime have demanded that Quinn go into the washing machine, all wanting instant release from the memory of him. Never considering how much Quinn could benefit from the instant release of his memory of them. Quinn could benefit from the instant release of the memory of most things, he thinks.
“I’m sure, ” says the boyfriend. “You’ve never done it before, right?”
“What?”
“Don’t you want to talk about anything? Shouldn’t we have more closure?”
“I already have all the closure I need,” says the boyfriend.
“What about me?”
“You’re watching me in the machine, remember? In an hour you won’t have any need for closure.”
“I don’t know, it still feels weird,” Quinn begins, but his boyfriend has already climbed into the machine. “Can we please just talk a little bit longer?”
His boyfriend closes the machine door. “I have all the closure I need, Quinn. You’re not going to need it in an hour, remember?”
“Please come out of there,” Quinn says. He looks around at the empty laundromat. “I thought we were going to have breakup sex. ”
“No shot,” says the boyfriend. “Don’t make this more painful than it has to be.”
“I’m gonna miss you. ”
“No, you won’t. Just press the button. Quinn, it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”
This small moment of tenderness is too much for Quinn to bear, so he does as he’s told. He presses the button. The machine makes a whirring noise, and a steady stream of water begins to trickle in from the back. Soon the water is up to his boyfriend’s neck and murky white. Quinn has been in the machine enough himself now to know that there is no breathholding necessary. He watches as the water overtakes his boyfriend’s face.
The vortex is a nice soothing place. Quinn doesn’t expect this. After years of being crammed in the machine time after time, the vortex is a much more preferable place to be, he decides.
The swirl of the water comes out of the machine to greet him. It stops a foot away from where he is standing and flattens into a path.
Let me take you on my magic carpet ride, it says. Quinn giggles. He didn’t expect the vortex to have a personality. He steps onto the path, now black and white and undulating beneath him. As it stretches endlessly before him, the sky becomes a delicate cornflower blue. Suddenly he can smell again: the soft fragrance of the apple orchard, the sprigs of lemon balm, the delicious breeze on his neck. He knows exactly where he is: summertime on earth. Quinn remembers his lessons about summertime on earth as well as anyone else: how if you ’ re a good person, you might get to see it someday after you die. How the sprawling markets descend into the streets, how bulbous fruits adorn every vast field and every cul-de-sac. How the air is temperate enough to be touched.
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says the shorter one. Why?
“See ya never, ” he says. “I’ll never be back. Except for the laundromat. The laundromat’s cool. So let me revise that:
see you maybe. If you ’ re ever at the laundromat that is.”
Neither says anything. They exchange moves an inch away from Quinn. Th he’s saying crazy things.
On the bus ride back to Neptune, Quinn texts his only friend Rafael. Dude, what did you see when you went to the laundromat? I just saw some crazy shit I literally saw earth. In the summer!! The fucking vortex served me a charcuterie board.
Rafael is one of Quinn’s favorite people. To be fair, Rafael is one of the only people with whom Quinn still keeps in touch. Friendship has been difficult to maintain since interplanetary travel.
In his comfy five bedroom apartment that he lives in alone because no one wants to live on Neptune, Quinn looks up “what do people see in the laundromat” and “what does it mean if I see earth in the summer. ” Much to his simultaneous dismay and thrill, there is very little online discourse about seeing earth in the summer. There are, however, lots of people who have talked to the vortex, and have discussed extensively what all that could mean. Quinn spends the rest of his night in this rabbit hole until Rafael texts him back: Yo what the fuck that’s fucking crazy. You feeling alright dude?
Come hang, says Quinn. You can crash on one of my beds. I’m lonely and miserable.
Hmm, might be busy tonight, says Rafael.
Busy with what? This is uncharacteristic of Rafael, who is usually down for anything at any time. Quinn, to his knowledge, is also Rafael’s only friend.
What about tomorrow?
Tonight or bust. Come on, my fridge is stocked with snacks and booze. What are you so busy with anyway?
Fine, says Rafael. But I’m going home before morning. I like sleeping in my own bed.
You can literally have your own bed, says Quinn I have five But fine Quinn puts on a movie when Rafael arrives. It’s a movie Quinn has seen more than twenty times by now. He doesn’t remember the name, but it is set on fake-earth. There is not much of a storyline it’s more of a nonsensical montage with a bunch of speculative shots of what earth probably looked like. There is a character Betty who is supposed to be the archetypal earthian. She can be seen lounging on multiple blankets on multiple grassy fields throughout the movie, holding a book in her hands. Watching the movie now, Quinn decides that his vortex vision was better.
Rafael is rummaging through Quinn’s fridge. “You weren’t lying when you said you have booze and snacks. Stock up on some real food, will you?”
“What’s it to you?” says Quinn. “Let me be.”
Rafael does not seem appeased. “You’re telling me you ’ ve just been living on dino nuggets for the past week?”
He pours himself a glass of vodka. Quinn and Rafael watch as TV Betty walks across the street and into a porta potty. On the toilet, she takes out the book again from her purse and begins to read aloud to herself: “It was a long, wicked morning on the Babylon…the rivers flowed green and purple…”
The movie is nothing like Quinn’s vision, which he finds far more profound. He pauses the movie. “Wanna do some memory-watching instead?” he says. “I’m feeling sentimental.”
“Sure,” says Rafael. “But let’s do yours. I don’t feel like watching my own right now. ”
Quinn fetches the probe from on top of the TV. He places it on his temple. The movie flickers for a second, then transitions:
It’s Quinn and Rafael in their old Venus neighborhood. They are biking on the dirt path Quinn still has training wheels. “You know, I have some tools back home. I can help you take off those training wheels.”
Then it is years ahead: Quinn and Rafael in the same homeroom. They are sitting far away from each other in their assigned seating. Rafael scribbles something on a piece of paper and folds it into a paper airplane. Throws it Quinn’s way. It glides toward Quinn but veers toward the teacher’s desk at the last second.
Then it is years ahead again, this time not too far from the present: Quinn and Rafael in a Mars bar. Quinn is sipping a gin and tonic. Rafael, a sparkling water with lime. The bar is quiet save for the soft jazz notes in the background, and the breathy noises of the candle between them.
“Huh,” says Quinn. “I forgot all about that bar. What was it called again? We should go back there.” He removes the probe from his head and hands it to Rafael. “Your turn.”
Rafael’s eyes flicker around the room, then back to Quinn. “Nah, not today. I’m not feeling it.”
“C’mon, please. You really want to go back to watching that trash earth movie?”
“We could play a game or something. Go somewhere.”
“Go somewhere?” says Quinn. “You just traveled all this way. C’mon, it’ll be fun.” He places the probe on Rafael’s temple, and Rafael doesn’t pull away:
The TV flickers again. This time, it’s Quinn and Rafael in an abandoned aqueduct. Quinn hands a pipe to Rafael, who takes a puff, then immediately coughs as if exorcizing a demon. Quinn hands him the water bottle. Rafael turns it down. “I’ll be okay,” he says between coughs.
Then Quinn and Rafael lying in a snowy expanse. What planet, Quinn can’t be sure. “I mean, Neptune’s not that far away, ” says Quinn. “We’ll see each other around.”
Then Quinn and Rafael in Quinn’s five bedroom apartment. They are on the couch, the same couch they are sitting on now. They are very close to each other on the couch, closer than Quinn can remember. Rafael gives Quinn a kiss on his forehead.
Rafael removes the probe.
Quinn turns toward Rafael very slowly. Rafael is still staring at the TV. “Dude,” says Quinn. “I know who you are. ”
Rafael turns to look at him. His eyes are full and wet. “You do? You remember me?”
“You’re that vortex, aren’t you?” says Quinn. “You’re the fucking vortex that brought me to earth and gave me a charcuterie board and shit.”
“Oh,” says Rafael. There is something like sadness in his eyes, but Quinn decides he must be imagining it.
“God, where have you been?” says Quinn. He is so ecstatic he could faint. “I’ve been searching for you all my life.”
