Beard Burn

(for Niel)

The second time we kissed I got a beard burn. A small red inflamed patch above my upper lip that felt new and strong. I pressed an iced bottle against my left cheek to cool it down. Summer was almost there. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things, and I remember opening my eyes a few times during the kiss. Theo’s chin was freshly shaved, rough and warm, which didn’t hurt me right away but scarred the philtrum so subtly, that I only came to notice the next morning. On my way to a boxing class I tried to ignore the burn. My arms and thighs were sore from the functional training the day before and as I dragged myself up the staircase along a broken escalator, I thought at least I could use that as a distraction. The discomfort I bore within seemed as fresh as another Monday, which I knew was what I wanted. Something new and different.

Theo and I met the week before I left for New York. He’s one of those punctual and disciplined locals, a physics senior soon to graduate, and is one year younger than me. Me, an East Asian girl floating around the Central European area, lost and bored in the middle of a phd. I speak English in a German-speaking country, and I breathe in the same amount of air as my neighbors. Having plumbed or rather, stumbled through numerous foreign contexts in my twenties, I’m now living on daily doses of self motivational pep talk that I, no matter what, will eventually dropkick myself to a place I’d call home. Austria doesn’t seem to be home. I had no idea what could possibly happen.

About two years ago I went out with another Austrian who approached me at the tram station. He was learning Chinese and I was too naive to not offer some free Mandarin tutorials. I didn’t know what else to offer, nor was I aware that I didn’t owe others anything. We met at a cafe three days later, mostly he sharing knowledge about Chinese culture and politics, and it took another weird downturn after we grabbed drinks at a beach bar, when he suddenly proposed to go nude swimming in the Danube. Of course I said no thank you. No I’m not wearing the proper clothes. And no, I don’t want to. So he had to swim alone in the dark, as I sat on the bank facing streams of water with scarce glitters reflecting the light from the other side. After a while he got up and sat closely beside me, his left arm around my shoulder. I didn’t move at all. I wondered if I was supposed to feel irritated but in fact I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t even curious.

Theo and I had fun talking during the first date, and after my conference trip we agreed to meet again. I had changed a lot from who I was two years ago but still, I needed Theo to clarify what he was looking for–a fashionable exotic piece of tie clip or something else. It was not easy to frame such questions, and I had nothing to validate his answer when he said, no, he was not targeting people of a certain race. This time I felt like an unprofessional interviewer who walked in with chapters of background briefs but stuttered out the garbage question. What else could he possibly reply with? I remembered the feedback from a writing group, that I was telling too much in the stories but showing too little. Perhaps in return I had always asked to be told rather than be shown. Wasting our time felt awful, so I blurted out, ok, as if I were instantly convinced by his defense and ready to proceed forward. Barney (Theo’s cat) was also there when we did the video call, and at one point I almost hoped he could help speak my mind rather than just lie there, having our attention during these difficult conversations.

The third time Theo started to talk about politics. That a far-right party like FPÖ is still in sight is blatantly ridiculous, he thought. He knew a few people who supported FPÖ but they parted ways as life rolled on. A few days later I sent him a paper echoing what he argued for that night, about how differently post-war Austria and Germany denazified themselves and how the public erased or reformed their collective wartime memory. We are both young enough to learn about world wars from lectures, but not sophisticated enough to comment on the regional wars ongoing at some corners. The corners of us, the homes of others. As we mentioned the radicalized stance towards immigration policies, I said it was a brutally interesting time for us wanderers. “Us” does not include Theo, which I doubted if he noticed at all. But I do like Theo, to an extent that I was comfortable meeting him again and again and debating on things I don’t hold a strong opinion towards. The second “but” here, leads to a clause that I don’t know how to deal with yet. BUT, dating Theo has made me more confident because he is very confident by nature. Theo enjoyed describing his jujitsu record of beating the other in five or six seconds, and I enjoyed winning in mini-golf by one point as an absolute beginner. We are same-level competitive, and the instinctive reflex to master up my confidence when I’m with Theo, resembles the diplomatic need to declare one’s boundaries with tougher arms for an upcoming war. That became a healthy shell that I never really had. A healthy shell designed and manufactured in a place far from home; between that and my solid core from the past is a vacuum layer that smells splendid.

The smell motivated me to keep seeing Theo in the next few weeks. We shared a 1.2m desk in a library with no AC, smiled and tapped the arms of each other during a Mozart/Vivaldi concert, and kissed in front of midnight fountains surrounded by neoned mists. It almost looked like we knew each other very well. Three weeks into dating I resumed reading Capitalist and Patriarchal. Before sending the last bedtime message to Theo, I would read about multiple definitions of patriarchy, whether and how it got intertwined with capitalism, and the pages-long discussions on privatization of domestic labor. Then I would think about my mom, whose marriage was simply tragic, and very shortly I would feel bad about dating ever, about being secretly cruel to Theo. Then there came the shame aloud in the air, something sweet and familiar, that I would want to rebel more than I want to be loved, to disappear from all photos rather than be the smiley “lawful” girl as what my colleagues would describe, and that perhaps I just wasn’t prepared to have something like this. I’d also read Sally Rooney from time to time and refuse to be one of the characters, reread proses by John Ashbery and remember how he’d describe stationary, “as the plant grows older it realizes it will never be a tree.” Then I would pause, turn off the light, and let the evening eat the remaining thoughts. What was there to find out? What was there that I do not understand?

We played the game of opposites in a pizzeria and nailed a few good pairs. The opposite of a cave is galaxy. The opposite of a chair is gravity. The opposite of regret is regret. One thing led to another, and finally a touch on the family topic on the fourth date. When Theo said he felt safe with me, it was impossible to not reciprocate with another level of vulnerability. So we both thresholded our degree of self-disclosure and talked about what brought us here. Things were complicated, Theo said. My dad was just not a kind person, I said. The Irish pub we went to that night had a corner seat, where I hugged him tightly to see if there was a chance to get closer. Theo looked like a gentle baby elephant under the toplight, and we joked about not being a football fan during a UEFA season. There was a poster with match scores right in front of us. And neither of us likes beer. Later I found myself recalling our first conversation on the app where we met. He was role-playing a detective and I, the suspect of a candy store robbery. I was then into this idea of writing about disappeared entities, and sadly I couldn’t work out a single storyline. It’s not that one has to write a crime bestseller to get over it. What was lingering was the fact that everyone travels through a reality brought together by disappearances. Sometimes writers create plots to offer a sense of omniscience, so people get used to the void that consumes them badly, but that was not my plan. I just wanted to write about the unimportant loss, the mundane kind that we effortlessly survive through. One wouldn’t know which office the person who helped press the floor in the elevator had since gone to, whether or not she would be promoted, how well her family was doing, etc., and people wouldn’t care. Latent sides of one’s everyday encounters ensure an order, a boundary between knowing and not knowing, between your gaze and mine. When my attention crosses that boundary, the disappearance begins. That night I wondered if I was about to step on the edge.

Since I complained about the beard burn Theo would bring with him a lip balm to our later dates. I would also try to moisturize more, Theo said. It’s funny to pronounce “moisturize”, I thought, moi-stu-rize. A unique expression of thickness. Like the summer air when one stands still. The later kisses, less painful and more demanding, led us to a point where I couldn’t help wondering if this was what I needed. It was very hard to tell. The question of short- vs long-term soon emerged, as I explained how much I hated established frameworks and grammars of a relationship, and cunningly exchanged the solid ground of formal rules for some contract of freedom and flexibility that appears to be lofty. I never wanted to be lofty, but the risk of counting on someone else frightened me more. So when Theo said he wasn’t sure about putting too much in I thought yes, it makes perfect sense to just dip the water and keep our cores away from each other for now. Then I would once more open my eyes when we kissed. There were different shades in the night sky too; for those who are used to a complete darkness, recognizing these shades means discovering the capability of seeing more colors. More nuanced colors, more granular veins of introspection. I would walk with Theo and quietly double check my new skillset. Theo would look at me too and think about his evenings.

Theo lives further away from the city center, so after we wave goodbyes and watch the subway cabin carrying one of us out of sight, I’m usually the one who gets home earlier. One night we were around the neighborhood closer to Theo’s, and finally there’s a chance for him to win the race. That chance apparently exhilarated Theo, “I laughed like a maniac while running,” he texted, and I too, rushed home with overwhelming happiness even though I lost the race by about half a minute. There were a few other moments like this when memories were coated by ecstasy, which I know manages to insulate what I hoped to remember from what I actually experienced. The moment when we had to gulp down melting ice-creams after a fresh rain, or when we lay flat on the Burggarten lawn syncing the breaths of each other. I hope to remember pure delight, but something else is there. Something that scratches me easily–that he dropped my hand when coming across a gym friend on the street, or that he would like to settle in Vienna long-term–seems very inherent of Theo. Like his beard, that one cannot debate against.

At some point we discussed unconditionality. Theo thinks that the existence of conditions in almost everything makes conditionality a de facto, while I’m on the other side of an ideal yearning for unconditional love and acceptance. Our disagreement reminded me of Anne Carson’s “Love is not conditional. Living is very conditional.” Which option am I choosing? This question became even more relevant a few weeks later when Theo’s ex-girlfriend suddenly reached out. She texted about their unpleasant breakup, which was pieced together with some friendly but confusing warnings. It wasn’t entirely unexpected since Theo mentioned her once when we were out, but hearing and talking through this were very exhausting. I wanted to write about disappeared entities, I thought. What had disappeared or was disappearing between them and between us is mundane and beautiful, as people who are too afraid of declaring anything out loud in love, shouldn’t be surprised by missing the chance to see each other. It is nice to disappear, and it is precious to be seen.

As I recovered from the beard burn, a skin layer peeled off and at first it was searing heat from a small concentrated spot on my face. Five days later it was completely healed, and I remember touching the new skin, a small new patch above my lip, looking the same as it was before I met Theo, but fresher and cleaner. And it is indeed a blessing that humans can never converge in full. Such a gift. Such a burn.