Both are terrifyingly equal

“It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English — up to fifty words used in correct context — no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.”

― Carl Sagan

“I thought I wanted to be a physicist in high school until I learned that there was much more math than philosophy in it. I assumed I would just sit around all day and think.”

— Bo Burnham

“I’ll be honest, I expected it to be more impressive. But a more impressive one would have killed us, right?”

He chuckled and squeezed my hand in his. “Pretty much. What are you thinking about?”

The view of the distant supernova seemed kinda dull to me. Yes, a very bright star. Dying. Uh, dead. Perhaps had fried some unfortunate planets and neighboring stars nearby, including some G-type yellow dwarf or two or ten. Whatever. No one lived on those planets, anyway. Most certainly not anyone sentient and self-conscious. Not for millions of years.

Rather than look at the stars, I preferred to look at Wakuu looking at the stars.

“Just remembering some stuff.”

“Like what?”

“You and I stood right over there and waited for Dimitra to arrive. Because of the naming thingie.” I pointed up. “I was remembering that day. And some stuff that preceded that day. And some stuff that followed.”

~*~ I open my mouth to scream, but jokes come out. All throughout my life, I kept on trying to scream, and trying and trying and trying — because we humans start screaming immediately after facing this world for the first time, in feckless protest against the terror and pointless suffering we were brought into without our consent, and then we go on screaming and do not stop screaming until we’re dead, and we scream when we’re in pain, we scream when we’re scared, we scream when we’re in danger, we scream for help, we scream for help, we scream for help — and more and more jokes were pouring out, out, out instead.

I stood in the dining room, by a groaning table, trying to scream. ‘My daughter is such a funny little girl, I don’t know how she comes up with all these jokes, must be her father!’ I stood in a classroom, trying to scream. ‘Oh Astghik, could you stop being the school jester for just one hour!’

I tried to scream during a wake and got called an obnoxious and disrespectful piece of shit. I screamed in an auditorium and got complimented for my witty presentations. I ascended a stage in a land far-far away and screamed into a microphone, because I thought that maybe sound amplifiers would help — and people laughed. I tried and tried to scream into a microphone, and people praised me for making them feel better.

But when he told me a joke, I heard him scream. When I told him a joke, he heard me scream. And then?

Then he proceeded to do something invaluable for me. For us.

He reminded me that people also scream when they’re cheering. When they’re excited. When they celebrate. When they feel good.

~*~ I looked at my watch. Ben also looked at my watch.

“How’s he still so lucid?” Ben marveled, tilting his head back to the left and scrutinizing Wakuu as one would a unique curio. “That was almost five grams.”

Wearing baggy trunks, sunscreen, a bandana, impatience, a tacky nose patch, and anxiety, Wakuu paced and paced along the line of water, poking at the wet sand with his toes from time to time, and waving a pink paper fan in a manner too brisk to be considered meditative. Occasionally, he would throw glances at us and shrug, conveying: ‘I don’t feel anything!’

Ben and I sat cross-legged on two neighboring towels spread on an elevated patch of sand, at the middle point between the bowing palms and the tide line. A desolate beach on the other — much less inhabited overall and uninhabited by humans — side of the island.

Prior to today, Ben had been coming here alone, usually in solitude. This place lacked artificial wave breakers, was narrow, colder, and never cleaned. Not to mention, remote; no going around in a boat on most days, the walk was exhausting, and without his guidance we would have gotten lost either way.

Most other islanders frequented the accessible beaches framing the town. Tourists were just fine with the well-maintained zone around the waterfront inn; why bother going anywhere or doing anything when you can stay inert.

By now, Ben was so settled here out in the wilderness, that he had a tarp canopy, a tent, a stash of supplies hidden in the jungle, and a designated fire pit. And the other pit. Well, and one foldable deckchair. Vacant at the moment.

Right now we were in the vicinity of the fire pit, some distance away from the rest of the ‘amenities’. The sun would be setting soon-ish, so we’d built a fire beforehand, but weren’t lighting it just yet. The only thing we’d lit was the thick bug-repellent spiral. Ben was making those by hand, out of balsamic-smelling herbs he (also) cultivated in the communal gardens on the western side of the town.

“Are you sure he’s not some superhuman?” Ben mused, and I watched his high forehead creasing like a sand dune under a breeze. “Hmmm. Am I sure this batch is goo-ood?”

He grinned at me, revealing the joke in case his delivery in an ostentatiously slurring tone hadn’t done the job. His whole ‘most people take one look at me and conclude I’m a blissfully baked beach bro, and I love to play into that stereotype so I could then one-up them if need be’ schtick.

In truth, Ben was quite sharp-minded. And never baked. There were better ways of making peace, and better substances.

“Chill,” I said, massaging my aching ankles. “In case you’re actually worried, I assure you, this batch is like any other.”

“Then what the heck?” Ben raked back his overgrown, sand-blond hair, nodding at the demonstrable evidence that was Wakuu’s skinny form. “He’s an ectomorph!”

“Culturally induced, shame-based limitations and the curse of self-awareness. Most likely.”

“Hmm? Control issues, you mean?”

I sighed and chuckled at the same time. “Yeah. And ingrained emotional constipation. He’s blocking himself. Just give him a few extra minutes, he’ll get there.”

Meanwhile, Wakuu stomped a few more steps, swung around, folded the fan in his fist next to his thigh, hunched up his shoulders, craned his neck, and yelled in our direction, his expression and tone indignant, “When will it start kicking in!”

I patted the towel. “When you sit down and start breathing normally.”

Usually and for most humans, the uttered-out-loud question ‘when will it start kicking in?’ was the turning point. The moment of realization: ohhh, it’s kicked in.

Not in his case.

“Nyeh!” decided Wakuu in his best petulant-princess tone. This particular human continued meandering back and forth like a floppy pendulum, angrily fanning himself.

Ben cupped my left shoulder and rocked me. “Ever trip-sitted before?”

“Not in a traditional sense. I was a second to a psychiatrist during a clinical trial, though. Like you are my second now, but legally. You?”

“Ah, heaps a’times. No talking, just making sure no one breaks any windows.”

We shared a chuckle. The bogeyman ‘if you take psychedelics, you’ll believe you can fly and thus jump out a window to your death’ was common enough to have wormed its way into our shared context. Even the followup ‘if you believe you can fly and don’t take off the ground, you’re an idiot, so good riddance’ joke had.

“D’you still feel bad about, you know, that whole no-prescriptions thing?”

“About my failure to become a doctor? No, I don’t.”

“Nah. The no-prescriptions thing.”

Another soft chuckle burst out of me. “I do!”

“Psychiatrists are lame,” declared Ben with hardly any segue. “Worst vibes.”

“How so?”

Wakuu sauntered towards us, carefully sat on the interlacing edges of our two towels, dropped the fan, pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them, looking out into the distance. We abstained from bothering him.

“I get it now, I get that ‘being different’ isn’t always a medical condition, but I went to see a psycho and got diagnosed,” Ben said, “when I was around thirty. He went: here’s some meds, see ya in three months. Meds are good and all, but I was dying to have a talk, I said, I’m devo, mate, feel like my best years are lost, I wish I’d known earlier there was nothing wrong with me, that I was never slow or stupid or man-child, or too sensitive, or a loser, so what do I do, mate, how do I cope. And he said, don’t be sad, my oldest patient is in his seventies, only just found out and got the right meds, imagine how that is, you got it easy! Fuck me dead, how’s that helping? Just made me devo for the old man too.”

Ouch. “I’m really sorry, Ben. Yeah, using social comparison in this situation is uuh. Not the best thing to do and not the best option. I hear you.”

“You do,” said Ben and fist-bumped my shoulder over Wakuu’s back, yet his smile faded in a moment. “Why was he like this, though?”

“I wouldn’t know and I hate to generalize. Maybe tell me more about the circumstances, the man?”

“Nah, come on, just say what you think, real quick.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. Societal norms based in hyperindividualism? Raised to be competitive by parents raised to be competitive? Other goals, other priorities? As in, an entirely different course load? Maybe he was desensitized by then. Being a doctor is much harder than, well, not being one. Takes a certain kind of person to be involved without getting too involved. I don’t know.” Realizing something comical, I chortled. “Man, lately I’ve been feeling like I’m the designated scryer or wisewoman of this island. Everyone is asking me questions about other humans, all of the time, like I’d always know the answer. Come on, you need a philosopher for that.”

“Aren’t you one?” piped up Wakuu, turning his neck to face me. The corners of his lips were ever-so-slightly upturned.

“I guess maybe I am,” I conceded, shrugging. “How are you feeling?”

“Yeah, you on, mate?” Ben grinned. “Is it kicking in?”

Narrowing his eyes at the horizon, Wakuu considered. “Kicking in, huh. Kicking down, actually. Kicking down the door I keep locked. But I don’t need to wait for that violent entry. I can treat this visitor not as an enemy trying to break in, but as a friend knocking. I can just open the door.”

“A-and it’s in,” said Ben through a signature placid smile.

Wakuu stretched out his legs and leaned back, arms poled behind him. “Why break a window when you can take off from the ground.”

“Damn, mate,” marveled Ben. “That’s what I always say.”

“That’s what she always says too.” Wakuu addressed me, “Now what?”

“Now you and I talk. If you wish.” With my knuckles, I softly rubbed up and down his cheek.

His eyes fluttered closed; he found the touch pleasurable. He was fine.

“Or you talk, and I listen. Or neither of us talks. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Looking calm, he nodded. “I think I’m ready to open this door.”

~*~ The fear of losing a friend in him seemed far more painful to me than the fear of losing a lover. Despite how far our places of birth were removed from one another, despite the drastic differences in our cultural backgrounds... We both kinda got it.

In all honesty, though, unless one of us would get filtered out of existence too soon, I doubted we would break up.

Sure, maybe this conclusion was rooted in arrogance and wishful thinking on my part, yet I’d come to believe this conclusion to be a logical extrapolation based on, well, reality. Because in the current reality and in the prevailing collective perception of the denizens of this world — the world that had concluded that the best sex was the first sex and everything always went downhill from there, the world that still believed love was a feeling when love was actually a skill, the world where every other individual was forgetting the meaning of self-awareness while being steadily coaxed into self-obsession, the world where having compassion for yourself, or being okay with what you are and what you have, was a faux pas — our relationship was boring as fuck.

Our relationship was Kiahee.

And that was really quite reassuring. In my line of work, any relationships dubbed ‘boring’ (the other traditional labels: vanilla, mundane, lame, pathetic) by the wide world, lasted the longest, felt the best, and yielded no cash whatsoever.

No one would sing songs about us during or after our demise. A romantic comedy about us would flop. Nay, it would not be filmed, because romantic comedies require a grand second-act breakup. A romance novel? Would absolutely crash and burn. Except, it wouldn’t be published. Hold on, published? No, it wouldn’t even be written.

What kind of a sad sod would bother writing a romantic comedy with no plot and no conflict and no second-act breakup, where the protagonists act like communication is their religion?

What the actual, genuine fuck would be the point of writing such an idiotic thing?

Doing that would be so damn absurd.

~*~

“You and I stood right over there and waited for Dimitra to arrive. Because of the naming thingie.” I pointed up, at the bright smudge in the night sky. “I was remembering that day. And some stuff that preceded that day. And some stuff that followed. It was fourteen years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Fifteen. It was fifteen years ago.”

“Oh. Sixteen overall, then. Wow.”

“I saw.”

“What?”

“Your face. I saw. The expression. Now come on.”

“Hmm? What?”

“You know what, come on.” His eyebrows twitched.

“It’s a quip.”

“I know.”

“Bad and dirty.”

“It’s all about delivery,” he argued, teasing. “Come on, I want the quip, give me the quip.”

Pretending to be annoyed via an eye-roll, I let out a long-winded sigh and started to drone, “Ohhhh wo-ow, sixtee-een, our relationship has just reached the age of conse-e—” Then we both broke. Into pieces.

~*~ Following Wakuu’s long monologue comparing God and aliens — mostly musings on how many people avoided talking about god(s) and yet every atheist was comfortable giving an answer when asked about aliens, and this answer never was ‘I don’t believe in them’, because they perceived aliens as something scientific, even though by now aliens occupied the place in contemporary mythology previously occupied by fairies; even though there was just as much proof of aliens existing as there was proof of god(s) — there was a long stretch of silence. Ben broke it.

First, though, he cupped Wakuu’s nape, tipped Wakuu’s head towards himself, and placed a lingering kiss on Wakuu’s cheek.

“I’ll give ya some privacy.” Slapping his knees, Ben smiled and got up.

I felt grateful to Ben for not arguing and instead deciding to withdraw further. The right thing to do.

“Thanks, Bennie.”

Wakuu objected, “Why? You don’t have to.”

Ben just chuckled and swung around, hands in the pockets of his white cotton sweats.

Wakuu made a sound of frustration as he watched Ben retreating towards the beach’s bend and then behind the swaying palms.

“Unnecessary,” he insisted.

With his inhibitions stripped off, right now Wakuu believed he didn’t need that privacy, even though prior to alien-fairies, he talked about his history of depression.

We watched him go until Ben disappeared behind the bend.

“I guess I understand,” Wakuu said out of the blue, nodding, his eyes flitting back from the palms, to the Burny Jogurt-fearing Ball saying goodbye, to me, to the sand. “There is no use in ruminating on things that we cannot change. The secret is to not think about it. If I can’t stop thinking about it, then I need to learn new ways of stopping my thinking about it, and then stop thinking about it. But.” He hesitated through a shorter stretch of silence.

Well, that was fast.

“But?” I urged at some point.

“Isn’t that just... gaslighting yourself?”

Very much so, yes.

“Starlighting yourself,” I offered through a crooked smile.

He mirrored that smile. “How does it differ from a faith in a higher power, then?”

“Well, what do you think?”

Wakuu shrugged. “I think it doesn’t. I think everyone copes in any way they can. I think the lives of people who believe in God or aliens are much easier, though.”

Oof. Ditto.

“I envy them sometimes,” he added, eyes cast down.

Hard same.

He sat on his side, propped up on his bony elbow, facing me.

Another out-of-the-blue: “But what do you think?”

“Me?” My heart jolted. I felt the way I felt back when he first asked me about my day.

“Yes.”

What I thought: “All lives lack meaning, apart and together. All loved ones die. This happens for no reason, and accepting that it happens for no reason and is irreversible doesn’t ease the pain, and the final benefit of all of the education, developed intellect, and quote-unquote growth is that you come to realize that not only there’s no outside help coming, but there’s also no straw figure to blame this pointlessness on. Your loved ones just die. You die. Everything, everyone suffers and then dies.

“There is nothing else. No god, no fairies, no aliens, no afterlife, no point, no purpose, no higher plan. Even if there is some kind of a plan, you’re smaller and less significant than one quark in this plan. Nothing you do matters in the grand scheme of things. Although there likely isn’t a grand scheme. Or a non-grand scheme. Or things. There is just randomness.

“And so, human reality is to be born into a pointless and meaningless life, preceded and followed by billions of lives just like that, then suffer while facing the inevitable death which every human is aware of and can’t escape. You are born alone, you live out this terrifying knowledge alone, and you die alone.

“But we are, all of us, united in this knowledge. We are, all of us, alone together. Together. And sunsets look beautiful. Hugs feel great. Tacos are delicious. Since we’re already here, might as well stick around and have some.”

And so on.

What I said: “I was nothing before and I’ll be nothing again. But in between these two nothings I can have some tacos. I can pet a Taco. I can love and be loved. I can have some tacos with someone I love. And I suppose that's the whole point. Most of the time, that’s enough for me. As for when it isn’t enough, well, rewind to what we discussed just now.”

Wakuu’s face lit up as he grinned at me. We bumped noses.

“You know what else I think?” he continued calmly, swaying away. “Maybe that’s why the Universe was created.”

“For tacos?”

He gave me a light shove. “For someone to figure out how to get past the Filter. Maybe this is our purpose. To be a test run. One of millions.” The last traces of his smile disappeared. “And we might just be a tiny step towards this goal. But we are a step. We are a part of something bigger. The next civilization will be slightly better than us. And the next, and the next.” I watched his eyes welling up with tears. “Little by little. And then someone will finally make it through. And figure out how to guide every next emerging civilization safely past the Filter. And then they’ll do that. They’ll defeat all of the Filters. Maybe also evolving into beautiful space dolphins in the process. Thus truly becoming a benevolent God.” Tears now running down his pale cheeks, he said, “Yes. I am nothing. But that is everything. I do not matter. But we do.

We matter.”

“Yes,” I lied, hoping there would come a day when this answer would no longer be a lie.

By the time we were mostly done talking, the sun had set. The sky was clear. The fire was burning some distance away.

Wakuu studied the sand, gathering and releasing scoopful after scoopful, clearly fascinated by the tactile input.

“I don’t know why I was so scared of death,” he said. “Death is a part of life, of nature. Death is natural.”

What I said: “Yeah.”

What I did not say: “The Appeal to Nature is a fallacy in more ways than one. We’ve somehow come to believe, or have convinced ourselves out of necessity, that not only does ‘natural’ equal ‘good’ or ‘better’, or ‘beautiful’, but that nature also equals ‘benevolent’, which is the non-obviously worst part of the fallacy. In truth, nature is The Ugliest Evilest Thing Ever. Nature is brutal and cruel. Nature is nonsensically, irredeemably, unimaginably evil. Nature is built and runs on fathomless suffering, and nature cannot exist without suffering. Nature is made of suffering. Nature is eldritch. Nature is the primeval monster. Nature is terrifying, and nature hates us.”

I did not say that, because I did not hate him. And because the hardest lesson to learn in communication is that some things are better left uncommunicated. Because Being Right hardly matters when nothing matters. Because Leave Your Goddamn Ego At The Door Or Face The World Alone. Well, and because these words and this outlook were the exact outcome slash change in perception I had hoped for when offering Wakuu to gobble up some shrooms.

What I thought: “That’s terrorsplaining! Hahaha, I abstained from terrorsplaining!”

What I did: chuckled and kissed his cheek.

He kissed mine. We both lingered. Our faces stayed close. I slipped to the left, left, almost tasting his mouth as my lips grazed the convergence of his lips, and his lips diverged. At first, there was only a soft, slow glide; his eyes remained half-open, like mine. The tips of our noses bumped, the tips of our tongues bumped with more insistence. We moaned at that last one, instinctively pulled each other closer, and there we went, kissing each other breathless.

During the few short moments when his mouth slipped from my mouth and down the column of my neck, I managed, “Two existential nihilists walk into a bar...”

“Two absurdists,” corrected Wakuu and shut me the fuck up again.

~*~

“What's the most optimistic one?”

“Hmmm?” Wakuu looked from the supernova-ed skies to me.

“I know all the pessimistic theories regarding aliens. But I just realized I never asked you: what’s the most optimistic?”

“Oh. The opposite of the Filter, in a way. There’s many worlds. Many civilizations. Even now. Almost everyone manages to make it through the bottleneck. We’ll manage to maneuver through the growing pains too, we’ll grow beyond all of this, we’ll become better people. We’ll get rid of capitalism. We’ll leave our solar system and meet other civilizations and form some sort of an alliance with them. Or join the one they already have. And, the most important part: there are millions of worlds like ours out there, millions of humanoid civilizations, and some of them are so similar in life's evolution and cultural development that they're almost like our twins, except there’s one or two fun differences.”

“Wow. That seems beyond improbable.”

“You said, the most optimistic.”

“Fair enough.”

~*~ I knew reality would intervene. I knew there would be an ‘aaaah, a crab!’ or ‘I think I’ve sand in my ass’ or ‘my knees are chafed’ at some point. Of course there would be. At some point.

I just made an effort not to think about Some Other Point. To stay in the Now.

Licking a line across his cheek, I opened my eyes. The next second, he let out a long, blissed-out moan into the towel and the sand and my ear, because he felt my muscles seizing around his cock and was not aware of the reason. The reason: I accidentally peered up at the starry sky and got petrified.

My only thought, at first half-conscious, then overpowering every other thought in an instant: he needed to see. To really see. Again. With those eyes.

If Wakuu had by now forgotten all about why his child self had experienced that primeval fascination and allowed the fascination to shape him, if the spiritual and worshipful intent was beaten out of him by the grind, the cramming, the paperwork, the dawdling of rich douchebags’ porches, the bad coffee and the rote-learning in stuffy and skyless and windowless rooms, by the grant-hunting, the begging, the humiliation, the protocol, the whole motherfucking rotten-to-the-root a-ca-de-mi-a, by the filthy, sticky, earthly, muddy, mundane ground below, if he was having trouble remembering his Reasons Why, or if he ever would forget those reasons in the future... He needed to see.

With my palms splayed on his chest, I gave a gentle push upwards, and he took the hint and helped me roll himself over. With his hands kneading me all along, I climbed the saddle of his hips and rolled mine, and rolled and rolled and rolled, wave after wave, through bliss and sadness and longing, all the while witnessing the change rolling and rolling across his face: how he gave me his signature cute and bright and playful grin, how for but a moment his gaze slipped absently past the star-limned outline of my body, and how that smile dissolved. Another roiling movement, and his hands dropped off my hips, Lucy-heavy.

At once, Wakuu turned oblivious to my presence. A notion I was not taking personally. Because how could one human, by any name, compare to the sky?

I knew what happened; the exact outcome I thought would happen. Once Wakuu was on his back, the weighted net made of stars descended, pinned him to the ground, and annealed him head to toenails.

His eyes and mouth were agape. Awestruck and terrified, scorched and paralyzed, he lay there, looking into the Up Above, his expression made of unfathomable reverence and bone-crushing terror.

I could have pinched him, scratched his skin, called his name, called him to reality, to myself, but the self-effacing part of me objected: did I even have the right to make him choose?

I could have pretended that I was worried about his sanity and thus bore an obligation to pull him out, but in my heart of hearts I knew his sanity had too firm a grip on him.

So I renounced responsibility and guilt. I passively waived active action. I let him be. I closed my eyes, half out of mercy for myself, and half because I was overwhelmed by the vibrancy of the sensations.

Another rolling of my hips. Another two.

“Your hair is spilling stars,” said Wakuu.

I opened my eyes.

His were now on me.

Hooking my thumb over his lower lip, I briefly dipped into the searing star stuff.

“I love you,” we both said together.

~*~

“He-ey look, there’s Surya. Hi, Surya!”

Although he stood nearby, Surya the Marine Biologist neither responded to us, nor even made a hint at turning in our direction. In the typical Surya fashion, he wasn’t letting anything distract him from his main passion.

Even though he could not hear a whisper, I remembered not to use the controversial ‘insensitive term’ in his presence when I commented, “Dolphin-spotting. Oblivious.”

Indeed, at least a dozen dolphins had emerged to the surface in order to observe the supernova.

Their dark hair, long arms, and naked torsos were adorned with seashell bracelets and braided algae. The expressions on their almost human faces were awed, although a couple of them clucked and clicked towards the skies, alarmed by the sighting and giving in to their self-preservation instincts. One even threw a sharp tool at the skies. The tool sploshed nearby.

After that, all activity petered out and they simply watched, while Surya fanboyishly watched them.

What a borefest. And even they were more entertaining than the supernova. Wakuu lost interest too.

“I’m tired,” he admitted, looking at me, not up.

“Same.” Cracking my shoulder blades, I pointed towards the cable car station built where my flimsy cottage had once stood. “Wanna climb home?”

“Yes.” He rose up ahead of me and offered me his hand. “Let’s climb home.”

~*~ [the audience is in pieces]...so can we say goodbye now, guys? I wanna say goodbye to you, for good.

I don’t wanna be here anymore monologuing at you to make you laugh and forget.

Now that I’m older, I found a better way of coping. I found a better way of accepting that I’m a nobody. I like being a nobody with no higher purpose, at least not one known to me.

And all I want is to continue being what my dad could never be: average.

Until I’m filtered out, I want my life to be Kiahee.

Thank you, and good night.

[the audience is in pieces] [the pieces get scattered in the wind] [these aren’t crickets, they’re cicadas] [there is no audience] [the spotlight goes out] [and isn’t that a beautiful thing]