The Hypothetical Girl by Elizabeth Cohen

Author:Elizabeth Cohen [Cohen, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-583-9
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2013-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

Limerence

There was an everything and then there was a something.

This something that had invaded Larry’s heart appeared to have brought a suitcase. It had unpacked and left its socks and underwear and hairbrush out. It clearly intended to stay. It didn’t care about all the things that he had previously done or cared about. It was a selfish something and wanted every acre, hectare, and mile of him.

The something chased the everything away.

Some days, Larry liked the something, let it tell him stories and play out elaborate filmstrips in his mind of lovely situations. Other days it was mean to him and taunted him with feelings of rejection and loss. He was completely owned by it; it had him.

And that was a feeling he did not like. No, not at all.

“Blame it on the Internet,” said his therapist, Jonathan. “You should avoid going on at all costs.” Larry had admitted to himself that he was addicted to the Internet and meeting people on it, which was why he had sought psychological counseling. In addition, once a week he went to a support group Jonathan had told him of. The support group met in a rather dingy room in a Methodist church. People sat in uncomfortable chairs around two long tables that had been pushed together to make a larger table, and they went around the room saying the first half of the Serenity Prayer, and then each one responded with a brief anecdote about how something in their lives felt out of control and how they were working on it. All the people in the support group were owned by the something. They felt helpless and wanted someone there or everyone there to jump right in and tell them what to do or just say “I get that,” or “You are not alone.” He liked the support group because everyone in it had met the something and seen how it could be so disrespectful of them. They would sit in a circle and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about the something, with brief breaks for coffee and cigarettes. You would have thought these people were strung out on heroin. But they were not. It was the something. It was like a drug but it was not a drug.

In Larry’s case the something had a specific name: Louise. She had found him there in the ether of the magical darkness of online love, and the beginning was so innocent. “Like your smile,” Louise wrote.

Such an innocuous little compliment. Such a tiny sentence even. Three words long. It was barely a sentence. It had a verb, “like,” and a noun, “smile,” and then there was that complicated and oh-so-very-stabbingly personal pronoun, “your.” How many times had that sentence been reviewed? It was uncountable. The sentence was turned inside out and then back outside in, and flipped over to see if there was any mud on its feet. It had had its hair combed and its pockets searched for loose change. It had

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