One of the members of Anti-Love is a psychoanalyst, a fact rarely mentioned in our meetings, though the language of this fact—safe emergency—edges in. The psychoanalyst is from Buenos Aires, where an hour of therapy can cost the same as a burger; as a result, a large portion of the population is in treatment.

We absorb such unverifiable facts from conversation, and they become a part of us, they become us.

(Without the beginning, it is also necessary to have a picture of the second surround, some 150 miles away: a table in a room that is open to the public, dirty floor, a radiator that leaks. A village view out the window: gas station, neon lights, small mountain just behind.)

How are we to know who started things? At its peak there were ten of us in Anti-Love; we’d sit around the improvised wooden table, peer at one another over mugs of coffee or of beer. The idea for the group came from me, I’ve been told, though I remember it as always having been there. Not always, in the strict sense. It appeared when I needed it: an acquired taste. Tonight I met a man who was beautiful and tall, who wore capitalism like a well-fitting suit. Anti-Love recognized him, shone a light. For example.

Love was different. You wonder if I have a story to tell. I was invited to Love. The way salt is invited to the early-winter road.

I was invited and I said Yes, I said Send me the syllabus, I said I am only partially fluent in your language. I was told I was welcome nonetheless. Meanwhile, the neighbors were setting each other on fire. California was also burning—actually burning. The neighbors, aflame, sat on their stoops, extracting the burrowed tick of love from one another’s skin.

It’s everywhere in the news reports—swipe, swipe.

You don’t have to believe me, but you can.

FACTS

I can’t know what you believe.

I can offer you parable after parable, tale after tale.

I can tell you the one about Porous and Anemone, who came together over a shared sense of the word expectation. Anemone wanted things from Porous: a lack of friction mostly, but also small noises, an elbow extended into its vulnerability. Porous wanted everything to be decided (elbow in the ribs, far in). One day in the vestibule of one of their apartments, Porous had a change of opinion, which is not the same as a change of heart. The story ends there, with Porous leaking predictable tears, Anemone predictably backing out the door.

There is a theory of the psyche that claims life narratives are necessary to the formation of a coherent subjective self.

This theory has always terrified me. Maybe I’m afraid of stories. Or of selves.