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Love Will Tear Us Apart Again:
An Extended Metaphor of the Physical Manifestation of a Broken Heart, or A Bloody Requiem for the Might Have Been



1. Love is Stronger than Death
After his Consuelo killed herself by inserting a handgun into her vagina and firing it, Simon could no longer sleep, because when he did, his dreams made him throw up. This was normal, the new therapist was telling him, and these pills should help and eventually he would no longer need them. This was just shock. Just a symptom of the shock. Of course it would take years, decades, to come to terms with--

"The pills don't help," Simon said. "They are the same fucking pills Dr. Fuck-a-face gave me and I took fifteen of them and I didn't sleep and I didn't even wind up dead."

The therapist looked at him and slowly moved her head from one angle to another, left jawline forward to right eyebrow forward. The "are you kidding" gaze, though it was really supposed to mean "I empathize." All therapists did that to him. That and the supposed-to-be-incisive glare. He'd been through three therapists since his Consuelo died two months ago. None of them did any good. Therapist, he thought. Therapist: two words. The rapist. They were rapists, of sorts, weren't they. Pillaging their way through his thoughts, when all he really wanted was--The rapist tapped her foot. "Simon."

"What."

"I'm going to give you another prescription to help you sleep. But I really think that if you tried these breathing exercises, as well, and let go of some of that anger, if only for a moment, they'd only enhance--"

"Nothing is going to help me sleep. Even if it did, I'd still wake up and vomit because of the dreams. Give me something to fix the fucking dreams."

She sighed. Her hair was dyed the same color as the yellow stripes on the yellow-and-tan-striped wallpaper. It was cut short and curled under in a way that made her head look very round. It emphasized the muppety look she got when she talked. Flap flap flap went her mouth. Come to therapy. Talk more about the dreams. Let it out. Emote, emote. The only solution. Work through it with me. Flap, flap, flap.

"I'm never gonna sleep again." He meant it as less of a promise than as a simple fact. Guilty feet have got no rhythm. Sax solo.

"Well, you're going to be awfully tired if that's the case, Simon."

Fucking name user. She would be. He hated name users.

"You know, I am awfully tired already, lady." He knew he could get away with calling her "lady" because he was old enough to be her father. Or at least uncle. Maybe uncle.

She pursed her lips. It was supposed to be a gesture of sympathy, maybe, or exasperation, but it made her look like she was imitating a duck. A duck or a giraffe. An ugly one. That goddamn round head perched on that long neck. Simon wanted to snap it, and then felt guilty. She was only doing her job, he thought. He wondered if he'd hate her as much if she weren't a blonde.

Later, back at home, he sat on the dusty hardwood floor of Consuelo's little walk-in closet and cried. He did this just about every day. Her closet smelled more like her than anything else in the apartment. He slid his hands inside her shoes and felt with his fingers the indentations made by her toes Her shoes were big for a woman's shoes. Nearly as big as his own, but then again, he was a small man with small feet. Simon's sobs shook his body so that he fell sideways to the floor and curled himself into a fetal position, a grey New Balance sneaker still on his left hand. His right arm reached up and grabbed at Consuelo's long skirts, pulled them down from the rack, and let them fall in a clang of hangers, burying his head in the soft cotton and rayon and wool. He loved her clothes, how she dressed. All long, flowy fabric. Not like other women.

Nothing about Consuelo was like other women. At least not the other women Simon had been with, which numbered at more than a few. One thing was that she was always so quiet and purposeful, no giggling, no chatter, no upward inflection in her voice when she said things. No being annoying. Another was the way she looked at him--no coy little glances, no furtive little smiles. She had a steady, calm gaze. Those dark, opaque eyes that never showed any emotion. God. Sure, yeah, so she was a dancer at Pumps, which was the strip joint three blocks from Simon's apartment, where he'd spent every Friday night for the past five years, drinking beer alone in the corner and watching the girls out of the corner of his eye. That she was a dancer had to mean she was something like at least those women, he knew, but even then: he thought she was special the moment he first saw her.

For one thing--and it was the first thing he noticed, given the context--she kept a full bush. That impressed him. All the other girls were completely shaved, skinny and coltish and pale with their big, improbable fake tits and dyed blond hair. Not Consuelo. He'd always hated that stupid shaved look. He liked a real woman with a real pussy, he'd told her one of the first times they'd fucked. "Is that why you like me?" she asked. No sarcasm, no teasing. She meant it as a real question. And yeah, the answer was yes, back then, but he'd lied to her and said no. "Really," she'd replied. "It's why they like me over at the bar." It was always "the bar." As though they both didn't know what she did for a living. "Steve says it's novel, changes things up a bit. None of the other girls are allowed, though."

"I love it," he said.

"All right."

Simon found it touching how Consuelo never learned how to reply to compliments. He thought that in her line of work she'd have had to learn. That in a strip club, her na€ve candor would be a detriment.

"I love how you say all right to that."

"Okay." She laughed a little. Her laugh was funny, sounded like someone sneezing.

And now she was dead.

It was his own fault. His own fucking fault. She'd come to him a few days before, all serious, and said that she was pregnant. She was pregnant and it was his and she wanted to keep the baby and she wanted to get married and move to a little house in Queens, here, she found one in the paper.. She said all this in a manner that was completely dignified and straightforward, as though she could not conceive of his answering in any way but the affirmative. As though she believed he had something she would call honor. She'd actually circled a house in the newspaper and brought it over to show him.

He hadn't known what to say. He knew he did not want another kid. He already had four of them, and they all lived with his ex-wife Lydia, in Seattle. He hadn't seen any of them for years, and a good chunk of his paycheck got sent out there every fucking month, to support those kids who didn't even call him up on Father's day or reply to emails he'd send them while bored at work, "how's school? How are you? Love Dad." What he'd wanted with Consuelo was simplicity. Love and fun and simplicity and sex. He was too old to have any more kids. He knew what happened when there were kids: complications. Fighting. Ending. He could see it now. Three years later and Consuelo would move with the kid back to her family in the Dominican Republic and he'd have another child he didn't know. No. Not gonna happen.

So he'd told her to get rid of it. That he'd pay to get rid of it.

She didn't cry. She didn't react with emotion at all. She said "I thought you had some honor."

He'd replied, "I said I'd pay for it."

"You don't need to do that," she said. She was quiet for a minute, while she looked down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. "I did believe you had some honor, though."

"We can still move to the house in Queens. If you want to get married, we can do that. I'll marry you. I just don't want another kid."

"Oh."

"I love you, Consuelo," he'd said, hoping it would help.

She had never told him she loved him back. Just like every other time, she replied "Okay." Looked up at him with those round black eyes. Unreadable, as always.

"So..." he'd said then. Reached across the table--they were in their little kitchen, all fluorescent lighting and yellow formica countertops, too cheerful for the mood--and ran his fingers through her hair. She had the most beautiful long, black, wavy hair. It reached her waist. The most hair he'd ever seen on a person. She didn't move or react or say a word. Just looked straight at him, unflinchingly, until he stopped. Then, she nodded, slowly got up, stepped over to the sink, and started to wash the dishes from last night's supper.

He thought it was settled and she'd get over it and they'd go on living happily in their little apartment, cooking dinner together, having sex on the floor, against walls, on the kitchen counter, in the bathtub. Or maybe they really would move to a little house in Queens, and maybe they'd have a wedding, even. Three days later, she left herself to be found by him, dead in the bathroom. Blood everywhere. No note. Tiny handgun in her vagina, nestled in that bush of hers. The first thing he'd noticed about her. What a thing to notice. Fuck.

Consuelo had moved in with him on the same day a famous celebrity-couple had started to appear on tabloids together. Just over a year ago. They'd been at the grocery store and "NEW LOVE" had been printed over a picture of them on the cover of a magazine. He'd pointed to it. "Hey, just like us," he'd said. "Ha." Consuelo had thought for a moment and nodded. One thing that was great about Consuelo is that she had no sense of humor, so she didn't notice when Simon's jokes were not funny or not really jokes at all.

The couple had the same age difference as Simon and Consuelo, too--the man was in his fifties, the woman, about thirty. Simon had pointed that out to Consuelo and she'd rolled her eyes and said that it was usually that way, wasn't it. Now the celebrity couple was all over the tabloids again, this time, because they were getting divorced.

He wished, more than anything, he would have told Consuelo he'd think about it. He wished he would have thought about it. He thought about it now, enough. Pictures of the three of them ran through his mind. Navigating the subway with a stroller. The baby would have had dark, curly hair like his mother. Or her mother. Maybe Simon's pug nose, the same as his other kids. He wished he would have said yes. He would do anything to undo. Anything. The frustration of being unable to undo sent shivers of pain through his every organ, every muscle. His regret was so intense and palpable that he dry heaved. This had become usual. He figured his stomach was trying to rid his body of the poisonous regret. Good luck, stomach. There was no easy biological fix for this. His gagging and moaning were muffled by all the fabric over his head.

Her skirts smelled spicy and sour, a mix of her sweat and her lotions and perfumes and their laundry detergent. Intoxicating; the saddest smell in the whole world. He clasped the fabric to his face and breathed in so hard that he wound up with a mouthful of skirt. He let it stay there, become wet with his saliva. The fabric did not taste like her. He briefly wondered if her underwear would, but then remembered the handgun inside her vagina, and he gagged again. This could not continue. The alternating waves of okay and utmost despair. This somehow had to stop. He was so tired. He could not sleep.

Those fucking dreams.

He'd had to describe the dreams to so many therapists now that they felt less like his dreams and more like movies he had to watch and then sum up for a bunch of friends who didn't want to shell out the $11.75. The first two dreams were in turquoise. The third was a dark, dark red. Simon was not sure what they meant--and neither were any of the therapists--but he did know one thing: he had to figure out the Good Time Girl. She was the key. A big, bright smile, kind of vampiric in its hunger, its coy sincerity. Its redness. Those mean black eyes. Dark hair and bangs. The therapists all said she was supposed to be Consuelo, but he knew, he was sure in his gut, that she was not. She was not Consuelo at all. She danced while chained to a wall in the first dream and she cried underwater in the second. In the third, in which he was paralyzed and naked and tied with chicken wire to the wicker settee in his friends' apartment, which in the dream, was gutted and charred, she straddled him and, with her fingers, cajoled him--for he was hopelessly flaccid, always, in every dream--into penetrating her. She was cold and hard inside. His eyes widened, repulsed. He cried out. As soon as he did, she leered at him, leaned over, and whispered, "I'm your good time girl!" and he woke up and vomitted. The Good Time Girl.

He hadn't been able to sleep at all since the third dream. Before the third dream, he was having trouble, waking up and puking all over himself, but now, he could not sleep at all. Fifteen days now. Fifteen days, ten hours, and a collection of minutes. He did not keep track of the minutes. Details pained him, made him nauseous. They reminded him of Conseulo's funeral. It was all details. This casket, that one. These flowers, those. Call these people. Wear this suit. Do you want this or this or that for hors de oeuvres? Hors de oeuvres at a funeral. Eating while purging our dead, he thought. All the little choices he made on the spot without thinking, but still: details. He could only think in big, shadowy forms now. The world now manifested itself to him in the form of giant thunderclouds.



2. Fuck the Pain Away
It was around noon, a few days later. Simon stood waiting for the train at Herald Square, on this way to see yet another therapist, when the homeless guy sitting on a bench a few feet away spoke to him. "Hey, guy," he said.

Simon turned around. He was the only one on the platform. "Hey."

"What's eatin' you. You don't got nothin' to be sad about. Lookit you in your little suit, your wing-tip shoes."

Simon was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. An old pair of Nikes. He shrugged apologetically, not sure what else to do.

"I said what's eatin' you. The fuckin' question, man. Answer the fuckin' question."
"Nothing, I'm fine,"

"Bullshit. You got an aura the color of swamp water. You got a sick soul. You are in some trouble, man."

"What?"

"What you got?

"Nothing." Simon dug in his pockets to try to find some change. He found three dimes, held them out to the guy. "Here."

"Don't give me your fuckin' pennies, man. Did I ask you? Did I ask?"

"No. Sorry."

"Well, now, I'll take 'em anyway." He laughed. "Why's your soul fucked up, man? I can smell it all the way over here."

Simon handed him the three dimes. "It's a long story," he said, relenting.

"I bet it's lady troubles, eh? Eh? Yeah? Love her so much it keeps you up at night, huh?"

"Something like that." Simon supposed, on a small scale, it was.

"Here, I'll show ya somethin," the guy said, and he reached in his pile of bags and pulled out a rat. "Watch this. This'll fix ya."

"Whoa, shit!" said Simon, jumping back a little.

"Yeah, watch this," and he pulled a butcher knife from a Filene's Basement bag, held the rat with his left hand, stomach up, and used the knife to slit it down the middle. The cut was deep, expert. Blood flowed in a thin stream and dripped onto his pants like sauce from a taco. Before Simon could do anything about it, the guy unzipped his pants, pulled out his dick, which was surprisingly large and hard, and shoved it into where he had cut the rat open.

"Jesus Christ!" Simon covered his eyes with his arm, gagged.

He could see, peripherally, the homeless guy's arm move in the familiar rhythm of masturbation. He was fucking the thing. He was actually fucking it. A bloody, murdered rat. There was a groan and then a stillness. Simon uncovered his eyes. The rat lay splayed on the ground; its intestines, shockingly tiny and pink, in a whimsical knot, resembled silly string.

"You're fucking insane, man," Simon said, backing away.

"Come back."

"Why'd you even do that? Why'd you have to do it and show me?"

He laughed maniacally. "A man's got needs! A man's got needs! We get what we can! We do our best!"

"Jesus God why!" Simon noticed that the man's lips were red with blood. He'd kissed the thing after he fucked it.

More laughter. "Hey, at least I ain't got no lady troubles! No lady troubles here! Want a rat, guy? I can get you a--" Simon started to back away again. "COME THE FUCK BACK HERE!"

"Go to hell!"

"HEY!" Simon ignored him. "HEY!" Continued to walk. "SIMON!" He stopped. He hadn't told the guy his name. "Don't you want to know where to find your good time girl?!"

He turned around. "What?" he called back.

"AHhhh ha ha ha. Now you turn around. Now you want to talk. Now you want to chat." He pulled a rat out of the Macy's bag.

"Holy fuck. Again?! Please--" Simon covered his face in preparation.

"Hey, I am unstoppable! Fucking overload of testosterone. I can get right back on, yeah, right back on!"

"Where can I find her?"

"Who?" Feigned innocence.

"You know who."

"Do I?" He wiggled the rat at Simon. The rat's mouth opened and closed. Simon briefly considered a rescue effort.

"You said it while I was over there."

"Oh, yeah. Your good time girl. The best time in the world. " He pulled out the knife again. The other rat's blood decorated it in repulsive globules.

At the appearance of the knife, Simon said "Fuck this," turned and ran as fast as he could. Behind him, in discord with a high pitched squeal, an address was shouted, over and over again.


3. Love Like Blood
That night, Simon knew he had to go there. Lower East Side. He looked it up. Some sort of club or lounge, he wasn't sure. Not his scene. Before Consuelo, there was only Pumps. After Consuelo, he didn't really go out. They stayed home, rented movies. Played Chinese checkers. Fucked.

He showed up at eleven. He figured that was a decent time. He was the oldest guy there, by far. A bunch of kids. Guys in black pants and striped dress shirts, hair done in little spikes, girls in backless little dresses and boots, wearing too much eyeliner and grinning the sloppy, stupid simpers of the overboozed.

Simon walked around for fifteen minutes, felt increasingly ill at ease, and was about to decide to give up and leave, when, wonder of wonders, there she was.

It was her. There was no question. Simon couldn't believe it, but it was really her. The address was right. The ratfucker, somehow, knew.

She was sitting alone on one of the plush velveteen couches, holding a drink, and looking alternately across the room and down into her lap.

Before he could change his mind, he walked across the room with a confidence he had never before exhibited, and sat beside her. He half expected her to turn to him with surprise and then leave, and he half expected her to recognize him. Maybe, he thought, scorning himself for the romance of it, he was showing up in her dreams too. Maybe he played her role. The thought excited him. Maybe he was her Good Time Boy. He caught his reflection in one of the many mirrors around the place, and negated that idea immediately. He wasn't bad for fifty-six, slightly balding, slight paunch, shoulders a little too sloping, a handsome enough face, though, but still--he was fifty-six. She had to be in her twenties. He examined her, hoping that she'd turn to him and at least ask what he was looking at. Or say hi. Or leave. Or something.

She didn't leave. She didn't do a thing. She acted as though he had not sat down at all. She continued to stare into her drink and occasionally stir it. It was cola and something.

"Um, what are you drinking?" he forced himself to ask.

She turned to him, not surprised at all. "Soco, grenadine, and coke." She held the glass out to him. "Why, want to try it?" Half smile. Brilliant red and white, just like in the dream.

He shook his head. I was going to ask if you wanted another. Say it. "I was going to--"

The smile again. "Sure," she said.

He returned with two drinks. He'd gotten the same thing. Easier to order two of the same.

"What, copying me?" she asked.

"No, I--"

"Relax. I tease. What's your name? You don't come here much, do you? I'm here, like, every night. I practically live here. I love this place."

"Simon. What's--"

She raised her eyebrows and clasped her hand over his mouth. "Don't talk," she said. She laughed. "You've said enough."

But realized he'd spoken perhaps four words to her.

"My name is not important," she said. "Drink your drink and we'll go from there."

He drank his drink and looked at her more critically. She was very skinny, just like in the dreams. He was not very choosy about women's bodies--he liked them all--but in general, he preferred them to be more voluptuous. Consuelo was ideal. This good time girl was less than ideal, he told himself. Too skinny. The kind of skinny where the arms are kind of bone shaped, wider at the elbows and shoulders than in the middle. It grossed him out and excited him at the same time, the same feeling he had when he once walked in on Consuelo fucking herself with a bodega candle, the kind with pictures of saints on them.

She stared at him and slowly, purposefully, licked her lips. The lighting in the lounge was red and dark, and it pronounced the shadows in the hollows of her face. She tucked her hair behind her ear and flashed another brilliant smile in his direction. Her hair was sleek and black and just barely reached her shoulders.

Simon could tell when a girl wanted it and he knew she wanted it. It was obvious. Weird, but obvious. And had she been less pushy, less strange, perhaps he'd be actively wanting it too, pursuing her instead of sitting there, drinking his dumb little drink, and waiting to see what she had in store for him. He didn't much care if what she had in store included sex, and it wasn't only because he couldn't bear to imagine fucking someone other than his Consuelo. The good time girl was very beautiful and how often can a man say he's met the girl, literally, of his dreams, and yet--there was something scary about the way she was looking at him. Her eyes bored holes into his own. When she leaned over to speak into his ear, it felt less intimate than it did predatory. But when she touched his thigh, just barely dug her fingernails into his pants, his flesh, and said "Let's go to my place now?" he could not think of a good reason to say no.

"Her" place turned out to be a room at the Howard Johnson on Houston. "My apartment's being fumigated for bedbugs," she said, upon noticing that he looked suspicious.

Simon flopped down on the bed closest to the door, and, trying to be casual, picked up the remote and flipped on the television. Some entertainment show. The good time girl went to stand by the window, her back to him. She was undoing her dress. The celebrity-couple, the one who got together the same week Simon and Consuelo had moved in together, was featured on the television show. Why they were getting divorced, who cheated on who.

"I wish they'd just make up," Simon said. He was uncertain as to whether he spoke aloud or in his head, until she turned around and laughed a little. She slithered out of her dress in a quick wiggle and threw it onto the bed Simon was not on.

"I always believed people mostly want good things to happen to other people so they can still somehow believe that good things might happen to them," she said, reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. It was black and see-through, and he noticed her nipples were surprisingly large for the small size of her breasts, though it was hard to see her since only the bathroom light was on. "Don't you agree?"

"Um," Simon said.

"We really are just all entirely selfish, and we all might as well admit it."

"Well, I think it's possible to genuinely want people you love to be happy." He wasn't sure if he really thought this, as he'd never considered the other option before.

Ah ha. You love them?" she pointed to the television, kept her other hand on her hip. She wore some sort of black lace contraption over her crotch, some sort of girdle-panty thing. Simon always hated that stuff. He'd been relieved that, although she was a stripper and wore that stuff on the job, Consuelo wore plain cotton underwear at home.

"No, but." He didn't know how to properly explain himself. How he sort of, in a small way, loved everyone. Goodwill for humanity or something. Not the kind of thing you talk about to a girl like this, at a time like this, he thought.

"Hmm. I see." She sat next to him on the bed, moving with the slinky precision of a cat. He was hard immediately. "How generic." She said the word like she'd just learned it. "I love being proven right." She crawled closer to him and unbuttoned his shirt, which was the only dress shirt he owned anymore.

Simon did not want her to think she was right. "Well, maybe I do love them. Maybe there is something about them that--"

"It's easy to want good things to happen people you love." She hadn't even been listening to him. She was looking into the mirror that hung over the television. "Because in love, your fortunes are the same." She clasped her hands in a clumsy demonstration. "Or at least we hope."

"I don't know." Her hand began to stroke his chest, rhythmically, up and down, further down each time. He wanted her to either stop talking or stop touching him.

"In love we aim to be one. Love is an exercise in exclusive transcendence. We become part of something larger than ourselves, but something we feel only we and our lover have ever experienced. It's the bliss of togetherness and the bliss of solitude all at once. It's the becoming of one entity, so of course we want our lover to be happy."

"I didn't say they were my lovers. There's more than one kind of love."

She laughed. "Shut up. Don't talk to me about love. I'm not the girl you're going to love." She slid on top of him and held his hands over his head, hard, against the headboard.

"Hey," he said.

"Well, I'm not."

He wanted to leave. She squeezed his hips with her legs and flicked her tongue inside his mouth. She tasted like licorice.

She bit him behind the ear, hard. He cried out. "I'm your good time girl," she hissed, undoing his pants with the deftness of an expert. He tried to scream "wait!" but nothing came out. He couldn't breathe. Her hand was surprisingly small and cold on his dick, which was still helplessly stiff. He felt her envelop him in one quick impalement, he heard her laugh, he felt a sudden pain to his head, and all was black.


Simon regained consciousness when the sun was just rising. The first thing he noticed was the brightness of the room, which was wallpapered in the typical muted seafoams and mauves of hotels. Then he remembered where he was and what had happened. The second thing he noticed was that he was alone. The third thing he noticed was not a thing to notice, but a realization he had anew every time he woke up: Consuelo was dead. Oh. The fourth thing he noticed was that he felt sticky all over. He looked down, and saw red.

He rose to his knees. There was blood darkening the sheets, darkening his skin. It was on his hands and running down the front of his thighs. A pool of it had collected where his legs parted, another pool where his armpit had been. He was completely naked, and where she had thrown his clothes on the floor, there was nothing. Even the blankets had been stripped from the bed. And of course, she was gone. He lay back down, overcome by a wave of dizziness.

There were many things he could and should do now, Simon thought. As he tried to decide what to do first, he started to feel himself falling asleep. He tried to stave it off at first, but then he succumbed, realizing the whimsy of finally sleeping not at home but here, on this blanketless bed covered in blood of questionable origin. He closed his eyes. The room was impossibly bright. He slept there naked, his limbs splayed; on his face, a playful, sad, bitter, stupid smile. [an error occurred while processing this directive]