matchbook

ou tell your sister you’re going to fuck your way into the textbooks. Her sigh sounds like she’s right next to you at the crowded bar instead of 2,500 miles away at her kitchen table in Bethesda. 

The man you will make history with isn’t career NASA. He isn’t even a scientist, not in the way you are. A middle school biology teacher from Rhode Island who made it through every round of the application process. A man algorithmically chosen to be your perfect match.

*

It’s never really dark in space, not like you imagined it would be when you were a little girl looking up at the stars.

*

There is a risk of breakdown on every long-term mission. All your training can never fully prepare you for the loneliness of space, the terrible brightness. NASA psychiatrists have found that when an astronaut breaks down, they either turn in on themselves—melancholy, depression—or they lash out at mission control. They never turn on their partner.

Love is different in space. Not just the act of bodies joining, the emotion itself. The way you feel about this man, the only other human you will see for three months. His face and body becoming more familiar than your own, even though you’ve never seen him fully naked. You rely on him for company, to keep you sane. You rely on him for survival. You cannot live without him.

There are stories of cosmonauts cracking up mid-mission, writing synth-pop love songs to Earth and leaving their partner to finish out a four-month mission on their own. Stories of the old timers, hard-ass fighter pilots from the Gemini days, cussing out Mission Control over the smallest things—a blinking light on the control panel, crumbs from a freeze-dried meal.

*

Your love is an experiment. Someone watches your every inhale and lip bite. Notes the hitch of your breath when he runs his tongue along the shell of your ear.

*

Early on, you tell each other about your first times. First kiss. First drink. First broken heart. You tell him about your first spacewalk, routine maintenance on an ISS panel. You tell him about your wrench fumbling from your grip, and the panic you felt as you watched it cartwheel into space. The relief of the tethers that attach your tools to your suit. The foolish flicker of joy when you pulled it safely back to you.

*

In the first days, he’d whisper the opening monologue of Star Trek into your ears when he entered you. To boldly go. All winks and arched brows. He’d hum “Satellite of Love” after, while you logged your fluid output, rated orgasms on a scale of one to five. It only takes two weeks for him to start to break down. Now he can barely make eye contact.

*

There’s no real privacy on a shuttle, but there are times when you are less watched. Night on Earth, at least night at Mission Control, becomes your night. Shuttle lights dimmed like on a red-eye flight. You unzip his sleep sack, but he doesn’t wake up until you take him limp in your mouth.

It’s never really dark in space, but you can close your eyes. You can work him to a hardness with your mouth and your lips. You can buzz “Satellite of Love” on the tip of his shaft. Run your tongue down his length until you feel his hands in your hair. You can watch him floating away into the vastness. You can make yourself a tether. You can pull him back.