How do you make love to a physicist? You do it on Pi Day—pi is a constant, also irrational—but the groundwork is laid months in advance. First you must meet him in passing at a STEAM conference. As a middle school art teacher, you are there to ensure the A(rts) are truly represented and not lost amid the giants of Science, Technology, Engineering, Math. But as a Black woman, you are there playing Count the Negroes, as you do at every conference. He is number twelve, at a conference of hundreds. On the first day of the conference, you notice him coming down the convention center escalator as you ride up. You try to guess which letter of the acronym he is there to represent. His face and baby dreads give you equal parts “poet” and “high school math teacher.”
On the second day of the conference, you see him again at a breakout session, “Arts Integration and Global Citizenry.” He’s chatting with the presenter—a sista, number thirteen—before the session begins. From what you overhear, you glean that they know each other from their undergrad days in Atlanta in the early nineties. They have a lot of people in common at their respective alma maters. They promise to catch up again before the conference is over. You notice she’s wearing a wedding ring, and he is not.
As you’re leaving the breakout session, he notices you noticing him. His smile is brilliant; you smile back. He falls in step with you, extends his hand, and introduces himself. He says “Eric Turman,” but you hear “Erick Sermon.” And your eyes widen and then narrow because you think he’s joking, in a weirdly esoteric way.
“No, Eric Turman,” he says again, laughing. “Not the guy from EPMD.”
“Got it,” you say. “I’m Lyra James. Not to be confused with Rick James.”
Eric chuckles. “But often confused with Lyra, home to one of the brightest stars in the
night sky.”
The compliment takes you by surprise, and you’re probably doing a shitty job of hiding
it. “So you’re . . . a science teacher?”
He is not a science teacher, nor is he a poet. He’s a physicist and chair of the education programs committee for the American Physics Society.
You make small talk about “Arts Integration and Global Citizenry.” He asks what brings you to the conference and you tell him you teach middle school art—sculpting, printmaking, painting, fiber arts, ceramics. He asks if you will tell him more over lunch. And you do. And then the conversation continues over dinner—you learn what the chair of the education programs committee for the American Physics Society does—and then in the bar of the conference hotel, over drinks. And then on a sofa in the lobby. You each share your top five MCs. You debate Scarface vs. Rakim for number one.
You notice his thick eyelashes, large hands, and a little scar next to his right eyebrow. When he lifts his newsboy cap a few times to scratch his head, you see the baby dreads are neat and well moisturized.
He tells you about his job, the one that pays the bills, where he develops astrophysics and cosmology theories, and conducts research to test those theories. “I aspire to be an astronaut as a side hustle, but NASA won’t return a brotha’s calls.” He shrugs. “What about you?”
“Me?” you say. “Oh, I just have the one job.”
“And your aspirations?”
You take a deep breath and spill your dreams. “You know that school LeBron James started? I want to start one like that. A bunch of them, actually, all over the country. But I’ll start with one, serving entire families. That’s really the key, you know?”
He knows. And then before you know it, it’s after midnight, and you’re both still wearing your conference lanyards, and together, you are solving all of public education’s problems, but for want of an end to systemic racism, abolishment of the current system of school funding, and a few billion dollars. Eric has pulled out his phone, made a few calculations, recorded the recommendations you’ve given him—of artists, works of art, books, public school advocacy programs. He is curious and he’s listening.
At 2:13 a.m., he says, “Well, you are refreshing.” And you feel anything but, because those French 75s you had at the bar have made you drowsy. And because it’s 2:13. But you want him to keep talking, to keep listening. Maybe invite him to come up? No, too soon. You don’t think he’s a serial killer; that’s not it. It’s that you don’t want him to think you’re that kind of woman. The kind your mother warned you not to be, so you have not been. You are forty-two.
Maybe ask him to meet for breakfast in the morning, then? No, too presumptuous.
Your eyes must’ve glazed over as you debated yourself, because he says, “I better let you get some rest. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.”
And you both stand and stretch. But then you just stand there, looking at each other, not leaving.
“I hope I’m not being too presumptuous,” he begins, “but would you like to meet for breakfast?”
How do you make love to a physicist? On the flight home from the conference, you tally all the things you have in common:
You’re tired of people asking why you’re still single.
You care about children, but don’t want any of your own.
Fall is your favorite season.
You’re not a fan of Tyler Perry, and you’re tired of people insisting you become one.
You both have terrible vision and had to navigate your childhood being teased. (“Your glasses so thick, you can see the future” was a perennial favorite.)
The first Aunt Viv is your favorite.
In the case of Prince vs. Michael Jackson, you got Prince.
You took all your meals with him for the rest of the conference and talked for hours and hours but left so many things unsaid. Like how you had a high school sweetheart and a college sweetheart and a grad school sweetheart. How men chose you, and you devoted years to the relationships, but never quite felt at home in your body with them—an understanding your therapist has helped you to articulate. You didn’t tell him how you stayed until those men decided to leave you for women more at home in their bodies, more sure of themselves, prettier.
You didn’t tell him that, as corny and clichéd as it sounds, you’re more accustomed to speaking through your art. Paintings and sketches you framed and gave as gifts, or framed and hung in your own house. But these days, you mostly just pour yourself into your students. It’s safer that way.
You didn’t tell him how, one by one over the decades, you’d lost all your good girlfriends
to marriage and motherhood, your friendships reduced to children’s birthday parties and the rare
Girls’ Night Out.
You didn’t tell him that aside from the occasional online dating fling, plus some fumbling around with a childhood friend when he’s between women he would actually date, you’re celibate for months at a time.
Later your therapist will ask why any of those things needed to be said to a man you just met. You know she has a point, but you have no answer other than that maybe you’re the kind of woman who should come with a warning, a disclaimer.
If Eric had withheld even a fraction of the things you withheld, that would be a lot of stuff. By the time your plane touches down, you’ve resolved that you will never know the real him, or if he was even sincere. At baggage claim, you’ll decide that it had just been the excitement of the moment, that he’d get back to his life and forget all about you. And you should try to do the same. So you delete his number from your phone.
That night, when you are back home in your own bed, you send your colleagues in the math and science departments a long email detailing your desire to collaborate with them in the coming school year.
How do you make love to a physicist? You take out your charcoal and sketch his face from memory. You tell your therapist about him and how he didn’t forget you, but you’re allowing his phone calls to go unanswered and leaving his texts on “read.” Because you’re not good at stuff like this.
“Stuff like what?” your therapist asks.
“Men. It never works out.”
“But you’ve sketched his face. And told me about him. Why?”
“Because we had a great moment. But that’s all it was.”
“Then why is he still texting you?”
“Just being nice.”
She tilts her head in that Girl, please way she does right before she challenges you. She asks, “Is this another example of you talking yourself out of potentially good things?”
How do you make love to a physicist? You continue reading his text messages, even though you don’t respond to them. He’s been texting for weeks, undaunted. He asks how you’re doing, tells you how he’s doing and what he’s doing. He’s presented his proposal to his board for an arts and sciences summer camp and family retreat. He thanks you for the inspiration.
One Sunday after church while you are at your mother’s for dinner, he texts you a picture of a deep orange and red sunset with the caption, Best scattering of light rays ever. You don’t realize you’re smiling until your mother asks, “Why are you smiling?” She sounds more suspicious than curious. And you wonder when she last saw you smiling, this woman who insists on sending you home every week with enough leftovers for ten people then asks when you’re going to lose some weight so you can meet a man.
When you go back to school to set up your classroom for the new year, there is a package from Eric in your box in the faculty mail room. You wonder how he knew where to find you, then you remember the name of your school was printed on your conference lanyard. He has sent you Overview: A New Perspective of Earth, a collection of more than two hundred stunning, high-definition satellite photos of Earth that focus on how people have altered the planet. The collection is named for the “overview effect,” the sensation of overwhelm, awe, and new perspective astronauts report upon looking down at Earth as a whole. An aerial view of a planned community in suburban Florida is a colorful mosaic. A shot of retired military and government aircraft in the aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base resembles a collection of Native American arrowheads. Tulip fields in the Netherlands look like fiber art.
You display the book prominently in your classroom library. You send Eric a text message: Thank you for the book. It’s wonderful.
Then you respond to his last text, which was about his board approving his summer camp proposal with full funding. Congratulations on getting funding! you write. And he replies, You’re welcome! And thank you.
That night, you read Overview cover to cover. And the next night, you start painting again. You stay up late, getting your rhythm back.
The weekend comes, and you call him, because you’re really not a fan of texting anyway, and because maybe it’s time. He answers right away. He doesn’t ask what took you so long. He’s happy to hear from you. And you’re both breathless.
You talk. About his summer camp proposal, about what you’re each making for dinner and what your weekend plans are. You talk about the new Toni Morrison documentary and what she meant to each of you. You talk about loss.
You continue to talk daily, to have virtual dates, thanks to video calls. And they’re better than any real date you’ve been on. You binge-watch TV shows together, cook together, drink wine, and watch each other do laundry. You talk for days and nights, and nights that turn into mornings.
Sometimes you wake before dawn, and he’s still there, his sleeping face filling your phone screen. Then you settle again, your breathing in sync with his, and you drift off.
How do you make love to a physicist? Ask him if he believes in God. Ask him if he thinks it’s possible to reconcile science and religion.
“Physics principles support the notion of God because they tell us that you can’t create something from nothing,” he says. “Something must have created all of this, unless you believe that we have always existed, that there’s no big bang, no beginning point to the universe. I don’t know what the mechanism is, but it’s some higher power. All that energy had to come from somewhere.”
“Oh. I assumed you were an atheist.”
“Even Einstein wasn’t an atheist,” he says. “He talked about God all the time. Now, he didn’t believe in a god that was concerned with human behavior, which is the church’s obsession and the reason it uses guilt and shame to enforce Christianity.”
“You don’t think God cares how we treat each other and the planet?”
“I think that’s the most important thing. But human beings are capable of doing that outside of the purview of the church. I’ve studied the Bible cover to cover. So much hinges on translation and interpretation. I grew up Catholic, and I love the ritual of it all. But I’ve come to understand that belief in a personal god is not essential. Not for me.”
You ask, “What about heaven?” But what you really want to ask is What about hell?
“What about it?”
Heaven—getting into it, avoiding the alternative—is the whole point of living right, isn’t it? Your mother speaks longingly of Judgment Day and the final accounting of who’s allowed past the pearly gates, certain that God’s accounting will mirror hers. “It will be a very small number,” she’s fond of saying. “Only those who walk the straight and narrow path shall see the face of God.”
And you realize that if God were to welcome everyone into heaven, your mother would abandon Christianity immediately.
You don’t know how to answer Eric’s question about heaven without sounding like you’re quoting a fairy tale about good and evil, reward and punishment.
You take a moment to soak it all in. You think of your mother and the small version of God she clings to, the only version you’ve ever known and the one you’re afraid to let go of. Then you think of how your daily calls with Eric are a kind of ritual, and how when you finally meet up again, it could be a kind of consecration. You are thrilled and terrified at the prospect. Terrified because all you’ve ever known of religion is that it demands more than you can ever give.
“I guess a person could have heaven right here on earth,” you say.
“I do,” Eric says. “Every time I see you smile, or hear you talk about your students. And even when you’re quiet and painting or just . . . folding towels.”
“Heaven is me folding towels?”
“Okay . . . maybe it’s you folding fitted sheets. Miracles abound.”
How do you make love to a physicist? You invite him to visit in the spring for your first solo art show at a local gallery. It will be a collection of colorful abstract paintings influenced by your reading of Overview, Rumi, and the Qur’an, and your rereading of Morrison’s Song of Solomon. You title the show Whatever I Say about Love, a line from Rumi’s The Masnavi. You’re painting now more than you ever have.
The show is still three months away, and already you’re imagining your mother wandering around the gallery muttering under her breath, “What is that supposed to be?” the way she did when you lived at home and she’d barge into your bedroom/studio unannounced. You never gave her your framed work as a gift. You stuck with perfume and jewelry.
You ask your therapist if it would be wrong not to invite your mother to the show. She answers your question with a question: “Do you want her there?”
“If I’m honest, the answer is no.”
“Then don’t invite her.”
You’re silent, and after a moment, she asks, “How do you feel when you hear me say that?”
“Frightened.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Everything.”
How do you make love to a physicist? You start to have sex dreams about him, very, very detailed sex dreams. For the first time in your life, you crave sex. For the first time, you are curious about a man’s body, about how you will feel above and beneath him.
But then you remember the sex you’ve had, and how you had to disappear into yourself to endure it. How you thought about your stomach and your thighs the whole time, wishing you were someone else, imagining he was wishing the same. How sex, for you, was just a way to be touched, a means to an end. How all you ever really wanted was to be touched. But men always want more.
Eric, like any man, would eventually want more, more than you could give. And he would be disappointed, probably disgusted, with you for leading him on.
So you do one of the hardest things you’ve ever had to do: you delete his number from your phone again, but this time, you also block it.
How do you make love to a physicist? Forget your home training. Ditch the girdles your mother taught you to wear to harness your belly, your butt, your thighs, your freedom. God forbid something jiggle. God forbid you are soft and unbridled.
Sleep naked.
This is all your therapist’s idea. At first you’re skeptical and resistant. But when she asks you to just humor her, because what’s the downside, you can’t think of one.
You take long, hot, soapy showers, catching the water in your mouth until it spills out the corners. You rinse, step out, and rub lavender oil into your still-damp skin, from your scalp to the bottoms of your feet. It’s winter, so you bundle up beneath blankets and explore. Use your hands to study the contours and curves of your body, your topography. To study them as fact, without judgment. Pleasure yourself, but slowly, to savor and discover. Every morning and every night.
On the weekends, you sleep in, then wake up and cook hearty comfort meals from scratch—no boxes, no cans, no fast food. Crab and kale omelets, roasted red potatoes, seafood linguini, ginger turmeric butternut squash soup, caramelized Brussels sprouts, roasted beet salad with goat cheese, coconut curries, beef Wellington.
You cook and paint and nap and stroke yourself to sleep at night.
And as your body begins to feel like a home, your courage grows. It grows bigger than your mother’s chastisement in the parking lot after service the first time you go to church unbound. She asks why you aren’t wearing a girdle, why you aren’t sucking in the way she taught you thirty years ago, and how dare you come into the house of the Lord that way. Your mother, who complains of women in the church nowadays committing the sin of visible panty lines, reminds you that she raised you better than this.
And you say, “I’m tired of holding my breath.” Then you promise you won’t come to church that way again. And you keep your word because you won’t go to church again at all.
How do you make love to a physicist? You send him an apology in the form of one of the many sketches of him you have made, in a silver frame. He doesn’t respond right away. And you’re okay with that; you knew the risk you ran, disappearing the way you did. But when he does reach out, you’re both quiet on the phone for a long time before you say, “It’s just something I had to do. For me. I didn’t have the words for it then, and I’m not entirely sure I do now.”
“I need you to use your words, though,” he says. “If we’re going to do this, I need you to try. And I promise I won’t ever do anything to make you regret trying.”
You try to remember the last time a man made you a promise. You decide it doesn’t even matter. This man is making you one now. That’s what matters.
How do you make love to a physicist? On March 13, the night before he comes to town, you stay up late, taking turns playing old-school hip hop and R&B music videos, talking smack about who’s going to get served at your dance-off, Googling your astrological compatibility—your Virgo to his Aquarius—laughing, giddy.
Then Pi Day arrives and you shower while he’s en route to the airport. Once he’s in the air, his six-hour flight (including layover) feels to you like an eternity. His walk from the plane to your car at curbside takes as long as a pilgrimage. You imagine him kissing the western wall of Sbarro, weeping at the Cinnabon, leaving an offering at the feet of Auntie Anne.
After he drops his luggage into your trunk and closes it, he turns to you and says, “Finally.” And you say, “Finally.” And he draws you into his arms and kisses you. His lips are as soft as you thought they would be.
At your place, you make omelets and home fries, which he devours. His appetite is magnificent. Then, even though you’re both exhausted and sleep deprived, adrenaline kicks in and you win the dance-off by a mile. This man cannot dance to save his life, despite talking much shit.
“What’s my prize?” you ask.
Eric pulls you down to the couch and kisses you again. “Oh, so we both win,” you say. “Here’s a participation trophy.” You go in for more kisses, and you think, God, let him be forever.
You both begin to doze. At some point you wake up, with your head in his lap and your mind in overdrive. You think about your art show opening tomorrow. You imagine looking at him from across the gallery floor as he looks at your work; introducing him to your girlfriends, your colleagues, your students. And your mother. You think that even if today and tomorrow were all there was, that would be okay. But then you hear your therapist’s voice asking what you feel, not think, right now. And you struggle at first to find the words before settling on warm, hopeful, joyous, full.
Eric strokes your furrowed brows until your face relaxes. You say, “Rumi said, ‘Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.’ Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know,” he says, then yawns. “Sounds like a mystic’s take on fated love, and I don’t believe in fate.”
You deflate a little. You want him to be the one you’ve been waiting for, and you want him to feel the inevitability of you as well. You want to be his default, not an option. You want the promises of a new religion.
You chide yourself for walking too far ahead—for regressing into eighties song lyrics territory so soon.
But then he says, “The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way recently sparked seventy-five times brighter over the course of a two-hour period, and twice as bright as it’s ever been in the twenty years astronomers have been monitoring it.”
By now, you’re used to him talking science, but you’re not sure where he’s going with this.
“One theory,” he continues, “is that the event was caused by a star about fifteen times bigger than the Sun getting close to the edge of the black hole, disturbing some gases, heating things up, increasing the infrared radiation coming from the edge. But get this: that all happened about a year before we observed its effects. It took that long for the light to travel to the telescopes here on Earth.”
“That shows just how vast the universe is, how enormous the distance,” you say.
“Exactly. Distances, plural. The distance between the star and the edge of the black hole, and the distance between the black hole and Earth. So . . . I say all of this to say that sometimes wheels are set in motion long before the spark is manifest. Is that the same thing as fate? I don’t know, but I do know that rare, brilliant events take time.”
He sighs. “Which is why I didn’t trip when you didn’t respond to my messages at first. I figured if you’d wanted me to leave you alone you would’ve said so. But you didn’t. Now I did trip a little when you ghosted me, but”—he shrugs and pulls you closer—“I figured you had your reasons.”
How do you make love to a physicist? When he unbuttons your blouse and asks, “Are we going to be the type of people who sit around talking about Rumi and black holes, or are we going to get naked?” you answer, “Both.”
You stand up and pull down your skirt and panties. “Rumi wrote of an intuitive love of God, and he was a Muslim,” you say. “But people like to strip away the Islam from his work.”
He runs his hands over your thighs, your breasts, your free stomach.
How do you make love to a physicist? With your whole self, quivering, lush, unafraid.
Deesha Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, and elsewhere. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, her collection of short stories about Black women, sex, and the Black church, is forthcoming from West Virginia University Press in fall 2020.