Lessons in Chemistry

I find Cupid in the chemist’s lab. “People don’t like to think of me here,” he says as he titrates. “It ruins their idea of natural love. They don’t know how much fuckin’ effort it takes to make this shit happen.”

I don’t want to insult him by telling him how I think of love: like caffeine. Like dependence. “Well, I’ve heard that one before. Your love is my drug. It’s right in some ways.” He raises his eyebrows meaningfully at the pipette in his hand. “You can fall into it as much as you want, but honey, you’ve got to be giving them something back.”

I have hypotheses about why I love the way I do. It always comes down to fear. I’ve spent a quarter life bouncing around to things that give me the biggest high, and all it takes is a car ride, a late night, to toss me back in. I leave when I feel I’ve moved on, and they can’t leave me back. Safe and secure in the ideal gas container.

“But you always say you feel like you’ll explode.”

Because it’s not real. Because I can adore things from a distance, but such momentary collisions always leave me wanting more.

“Well, now, it seems like you want all of the gain with none of the risk.”

And is that what love is? Game theory?

“I’m saying,” Cupid drawls, “that Marie Curie may have been a Nobel prize winner, but she died from radiation poisoning to prove a point. Hey, don’t look at me like that. There’s nothing callous about it—she loved chemistry, and it loved her back.”

Okay, okay, I get it. I’m going about it all wrong.

“You’re not going about it at all.”

And he’s right.

The solution he’s mixing is turning, of course, an obnoxious shade of pink. He shoots me a dirty look when I scoff. “What, you want love to be dandelion yellow? Some of the stereotypes are perfectly fine. Everything worth celebrating needs a symbol.”

Like you?

“Like me. You’re having an imaginary conversation with a filtered-down Roman deity to soothe your discontentment about having no romantic prospects. I’m not the silly one here.”

Done mixing, he dips litmus paper into the solution. When it bleeds into a violent shade of red, he pulls an arrow from a pocket dimension and delicately dips the point into the solution. Blows on it to make sure it really absorbs.

“You’re probably wondering if these hurt? I’m no medic, but I’ve heard they’re a lot more painful if your body rejects the wound. As in, if the body recognizes it as foreign. Sends the white blood cells to attack it or whatever.”

I thought you said I should be hurting more.

“You’re putting words in my mouth. I said you should embrace some risk. That doesn’t mean bleeding out on the street like some martyr. Do me a favor, yeah?” He shrugs off the lab coat, strips off his gloves. His hands are covered in chemical burns. “Stop making my job fucking harder. Don’t come looking for me again. Next time, you won’t see me coming.”

It’s not a promise, I don’t think. Or a threat. It’s just a theory, and the best scientists know theories can’t be entirely proven. Even the ones they give their lives for.

But I suppose that’s the point. Cupid disappears from the lab, and like all the most famous deities and cats, I can’t be sure he was ever really here.