In the beginning, God created man–but He didn’t do it on purpose. His goal was to create a person. In truth, it’s insulting to refer to God as “He,” because it implies that God is only half of a unity. When God created man, God was neither a man nor a woman, and didn’t have a preference for one or the other. God simply picked one, and it happened to be man.
So, God made Adam out of dust. In time, Adam realized that he wasn’t complete, and the time came for God to create Eve. God could have made Eve out of dust just as easily as Adam had been created, but they wouldn’t have loved each other. As the first man, Adam WAS perfect, and in such a state, he gave his perfection away to create another.
And then there was Eve.
Their love came so easily you could call it cheating. They were perfection, split in half. Their bodies were made from each other, so they were complete only when they were together, and only their their unity could they attain their combined, intended, God-given perfection. When they were apart, Adam could feel the empty space inside, the piece he had given away to her. Adam gave part of himself to make Eve, and he never regretted it. Eve would have done the same thing, had she been first.
That’s what most people don’t know, and that’s why most people don’t understand the nature of love.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
When Corey woke up, it was around 10:00. He walked downstairs in the pair of plaid Volcom skate shorts and shamrock belt he had fallen asleep in, and saw his roommate, Jared, through the tinted glass of the patio door, smoking a cigarette. After pouring himself a glass of breakfast juice, Corey went outside to join Jared for his breakfast cigarette.
As Corey stepped through the door, Jared already had the pack open, offering it with a fresh cigarette already dangling from his own lips.
With the spark from the lighter and the first inhale of smoke, Corey started the conversation.
“You’re up early. Did you come home last night?”
“Nope. I’ve been up since 8.”
“Were you at Rachel’s?”
“Yup. We got early and made toast and drank coffee, and then I had to be gone by 9:00 because her boyfriend was coming over.”
“Hmm.” Corey nodded, and performed one of his signature movements that illustrated introspection, curling his lips into his mouth and causing the blonde hair on his soul patch to spike out as he took a prolonged pull from his cigarette. “Soooooo, what’s the deal between you two?”
Jared responded with his own pre-vocal smoking gesture, filling his lungs with soothing nicotine, and then speaking halfway through his exhale, so that smoke dramatically peppered his first few words. “I have no fucking clue.” He took another quick drag before continuing, “I slept with her in her bed again.”
“Did you have sex?”
“Nope. We didn’t even kiss; we never do anything. We just sleep, and cuddle, and usually talk a lot.”
“That’s cute,” Corey smirked.
“I know. That’s why I’m sitting out here chain smoking. I’m trying to balance it with disgustingness.”
More smoke.
“Does her boyfriend know about this?”
“Fuck, no. I kind of wish he did, so he would flip out and get mad and dump her. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with this ‘pretend boyfriend’ shit that I’ve been doing.”
Corey started laughing, which quickly degenerated into a brief coughing fit through which he tried to continue the conversation. “You’re definitely a pretend boyfriend. It’s like you’re her gay friend, except you don’t even get to have sex with men.”
“Thanks, asshole. Yes, I realize I’m not having sex with anyone. Thank you.”
“Doesn’t it drive you fucking crazy sleeping next to her every night at not doing anything?”
“Not really… I don’t even think about it when I’m there. It’s like that’s not a part of our relationship anymore, you know? In a way, I feel like if she offered, I wouldn’t deserve to have sex with her because of the way I treated her the last time it happened.”
Corey leaned forward and ground out the butt of his cigarette into the cast iron ashtray on the ground. “Well, then you’re certainly paying your dues, always being around and doing all the shit you do like taking care of her when she’s drunk, and driving over and giving her hugs when she’s crying about her douchebag boyfriend, and all that shit. Maybe if you keep doing all this crap as her pretend boyfriend, you’ll work you way back up to Sex Status.”
Jared sucked the last drag from his cigarette, feeling the heat of the filter between his fingers as it started to burn, and dropped the butt into the same ashtray. He stood up, and pulled open the patio door. “It’s fucking hot out here. I’m going to go make some iced tea.” Jared stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
Corey sat outside by himself, listening to the Waste Disposal trucks making hell for the late sleepers in the neighborhood and watching his roommate mull through the kitchen with empty eyes. He couldn’t help releasing a little sigh of pity. “What a dumbass.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Eve didn’t always sleep through the night. Often, she would wake up to a blanket of stars and wander through the garden, following the moon to find plants and furry little animals they had yet to name. When she thought that she’d found something beautiful, she would take a token of it, and return to where Adam was sleeping. He would wake up to the scent of a flower petal, or Eve caressing his earlobe with a fuzzy leaf that she had selected. When she took the fruit, it was just such an occasion.
It was a summer, so Adam had made their bed on a patch of long grass on the western side of a grove of trees so that the shade would shelter them from the morning sun. When Eve crept up on her knees, Adam drifted out of his sleep, but kept his eyes closed so that he might innocently await whatever texture she had found to bestow upon his senses. Instead, she whispered his name. Adam awoke from his farce and saw her, half-covered by grove’s the shadows cast by the moon, her hands cradling something in her lap. He propped his body up on one elbow and gave Eve his attention as she began to tell her story.
Adam spoke with God regularly, though many mediums. On occasion, God spoke to the two of them at the same time. The couple had no reason to keep secrets from each other, and Eve had never mentioned God speaking to her alone. But on this night she told Adam of the animal that came to her as she was walking through the garden. The animal told her that previously this fruit was forbidden, but if she ate it, she would be given wisdom she would never know otherwise. None of the animals could speak on their own, so it seemed apparent to Adam that God had come to Eve. She surpassed trust, and when she presented the fruit to him, he took it into his hands and smiled. Adam dug his thumbs into the core, and tore it into two pieces. Juice dripped down his hands and onto the grass between them. The aroma was a thing of beauty; an experience unexperienced by any other living thing. Adam offered half of the fruit to Eve, and when she took it, he moved close and shared a kiss with her as the scent of their meal bloomed in their hands.
“Thank you,” he whispered through the touch of her lips.
Eve and Adam took a bite together. It was delicious.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
When Jared opened the door to the darkened bedroom that he shared with Corey, he was surprised to find him awake, talking on the phone. Jared closed the door behind him, and slid to the carpet, audibly dropping his head back against the door as he sat down. Corey glanced toward the sound his roommate had made, and wrapped up his telephone conversation with his girlfriend. He hung up, and the two of them sat in the dark silence.
There was an edge of suppressed cruelty to Jared’s voice. “You got off the phone in hurry. Valerie must have been sober.”
Corey knew that his roommate was a bit of an asshole, but usually didn’t say things like that to his friends unless he was feeling like shit, so he let it slide. “Yeah. She was just calling to say goodnight.”
More silence.
“So, how’d things go with Rachel?” Corey sat up a little as his eyes started to focus in the dark, and could smell the whisky on Jared’s sigh that preluded his response.
“Well, we talked for a long time, and we both cried a lot, and I told her she had to make a choice. In the end she decided that she didn’t want to hurt her boyfriend because she’s put too much time into her relationship. So, I told her that I can’t see her for awhile, and I don’t know how long it will be until I can talk to her again.”
Jung would have said that Jared had found his inner Anima, but Jared would say that he couldn’t contain what he felt, so a river formed on his face. “I think it will be better this way, you know?”
Jared pounded the back of his head against the door, not caring if he woke up the other roommates in the house. “At least I can call an end to it. That’s it. I don’t have to do this shit anymore. I don’t have to pretened. I–” Jared took such a sharp inhale of breath that he hoped it would cut his lungs, and end all the bad things. But he had no such luck.
Corey was unable to move, regardless of his hand falling asleep from leaning on his elbow. “So, what did you tell her?”
“That I was moving, and that she had a choice,” Jared choked out words, trying to save his masculinity between his sobs. “I told her that I loved her, and I would give her everything, and every part of myself if she decided to call it quits with her boyfriend. And we cried a lot, and did a lot of bullshit hugging. But she told me that she couldn’t do that. That she would have given me the world a year ago, but it was too late.” He hit his head against the door again, in a frail attempt to hurt himself. “But…” He dissolved into tears, and butted his head against his knees. “So, it didn’t work. I lost, Corey. She said she loves me, and we cried a lot, and we did stupid hugging, and I hate her and I love her, but nothing’s different. I still can’t fucking win. The douchebag came out on top. He treats her like shit, but he was there when I wasn’t, so he wins.”
The needles in his arm and the pain of his friend combined drew Corey to the edge of the bed. He swung his legs out onto the carpet that was the seat of Jared’s misery. “Are things done, then?”
Jared looked up, and the stream of tears caught the moonlight in the bedroom. “Yeah. It’s done.” The defeat in his voice overwhelmed the Atlantic on his face. “Um, do you have a cigarette that I can have?”
Corey shifted his position on the bed as he reached toward the nightstand and retrieved the half-pack of turkish blends. “Yeah. I owe you.” He tossed the cigarettes to Jared, and as his friend retrieved them in the dark, asked, “You want any company?”
“No. Thanks. But it’s okay. I’ve got cigarettes, right? They can keep me company.” Jared scraped the pack off of the ground and reached up to turn the doorknob and, opening the door, crawled off into the light beyond the room.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Life was hard for Eve and Adam, but they survived. They enjoyed longevity to the point of accepting suffering as a part of existence, but they never forget the garden of their youth. It became a kind of myth to the both of them, and so they told it to their children to make it more real for themselves. When they had their first son, Adam and Eve tried to explain to him what they had given up. But, being a child, he didn’t understand their sacrifice. But they had more children, for the sake of hope; always they tried to describe the perfect world they had together before they had given life to another, but always it was not understood.
Eve and Adam were very old when they realized the truth of their lives in the garden. They bore many children since their exodus, but had failed to recognize that before the serpent had told them of the secret of the fruit, they were eternal. Together, they were the alpha and the omega of mankind. It wasn’t until they were fated to mortality that Eve would bear a child. Perfection was something that they could reach together, but it wasn’t until their first child that Eve and Adam knew that they hadn’t lost perfection: they had been forced to pass it on. And they knew that their firstborn wasn’t perfect, neither was their second, or their third. Each daughter of Eve had a piece of perfection, as did each son of Adam. And they knew that eventually, the pieces would meet to create the same love they had felt in each other, which is why they both toiled after the garden.
Eve never saw the same wonder of nature as she had experienced in the garden, but when she still woke up in the middle of the night, Adam was always the most beautiful thing she had seen in her life. Adam knew that if he was never given the gift of Eve, he would have either eaten the fruit and died alone, or, worse, lived forever alone.
His choice was with him when Adam was dying. The children were raised and gone, tilling lands of their own. The only one by his side was Eve. When Adam was created, the only one he knew was God. And God left Adam because of his sin, but Eve, his Eve, his completion, was still by his side. Sometimes he thought that he could blame her for the loss of his youth, or the loss of his paradise, but he had seen the joy on his children’s faces, and the joy on Eve’s face when she looked at him, and felt the joy in his own heart when he saw her, and he knew what could have never been if he were still alone in the garden. She had helped him through decades of labor for the sake of food, and he had held her hands as she cried as she birthed their children. In their old age, they remembered everything they had gone through together. As Adam coughed out one of his last breaths, Eve was there to wipe the blood that dripped onto his chin. Adam’s face was dry, until Eve’s tears dropped down onto his cheeks. She looked into his eyes–the most familiar sight in his life.
“I’m sorry,” she offered, “we could have been together forever; if I wouldn’t–”
Adam stifled his cough, so that Eve wouldn’t have to clean up after him again so soon. “No.” He lifted his hand just enough to brush against her cheek. “If it was different, I would have never grown old with you.” Adam smiled. “Thank you.”
He rested a feeble hand on Eve’s lap and closed his eyes. Eve dropped more tears onto his face as she leaned down to kiss him one last time. His lips were coppery with the taste of blood, but Eve didn’t care.
At that moment, she was alone for the first time. She understood why Adam had given up eternity to have her. She wished she could tear a piece out of herself to get him back.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The party continued to be lame, and that was why Jared walked out onto the balcony, closing the door behind him. He sat down on a dusty rocking chair, knowing that his black slacks had suffered worse abuse and would forgive him for the transgression. Corey was already there, sitting alone, and he offered Jared his lit cigarette, which was declined with a wave of the hand.
“No thanks. You know I quit.” Jared started rocking in his chair as Corey shrugged, and took another drag.
“That creeps me out, by the way,” Corey said through a puff of smoke.
“What does?”
“Mr.-I’m-a-Chain-Smoker-and-I-Quit-in-a-Day. You make me feel like maybe cigarettes aren’t really addicting, and I’m just a loser.”
Jared chuckled and smiled at Corey. “Nah. I just found something better to do with my mouth.”
Corey took a spiteful lungful of smoke and glared at Jared. “You make me want to puke sometimes.”
“That’d be pretty cool, right? If you puked, you’d have to do it off the balcony, and see if you could get more than one apartment on the way down. It’d be hilarious.”
“Yeah, right?” Corey sighed his first deep breath of the conversation that didn’t involve a carcinogen. “So, you’re leaving. To pursue better things for your mouth.”
“Yeah, but I’m also hoping that I will get to do better things with my hands, too.”
“I’m going to vomit in your lap, and it won’t be funny.”
“I don’t know… if you were vomiting in my lap, and then at the same time it made me puke on the top of your head, that would be pretty amazing, right?”
“Yeah. I guess it would be. But seriously, when are you leaving?”
“A couple weeks. After I get my paycheck from work and buy a plane ticket. I’m going to maybe stay with a friend until the end of the month until Rachel and I can find a place together. I don’t want to, but she doesn’t know if her roommates would be OK with me sleeping there.”
“What are you going to do, other than disgusting things with your mouth and hands?”
“Get a job, try to scam people out of their hard-earned money by selling them expensive wine. You know… that’s after the first month or so. Rachel and I kind of know that we’re not going to leave the house for a couple weeks.” Jared gave his friend an evil grin, hoping to cause more alleged nausea. “It’ll involve lots of hands and mouths, and basically we’ll be forced out into the light of day to avoid starvation. One way or another, I’m sick of it here. Living on the other coast will be a good change. People read books over there! It’s crazy!”
“Yeah, pretty crazy.” Unaffected, Corey snubbed out his cigarette on the concrete of the balcony. “Speaking of crazy, is her ex-boyfriend still completely batshit-clingy?”
“He would be, if Rachel was still around. But that’s why she left when she did. So she’d have a few months to be alone, so it wouldn’t be like she was just rebounding into a relationship with me.”
“Well, to be fair, she broke up him to be with you.”
“Yeah. But, you know, it’s all semantics. But I understand it. She wanted to be technically ‘single’ after she moved, but she hasn’t dated anyone or anything like that since she moved. But, technically, I’m not her boyfriend.”
Corey gave him an incredulous look. “You’re moving in with her.”
Jared hated that look. “Well, yeah. When that happens, I’ll be her boyfriend. Yeah. It’s goofy. But it’s ok. I’m OK with goofy. Yeah.”
Corey sat still for a long moment. “Aren’t you scared of moving in with someone that you’ve never been in a relationship with?”
“A little. But she’s been my best friend for years, and we’ve been through a lot together.”
“In a way, the two of you have already gone through the hardest part of your relationship.” Once again, Corey did that thing with his goatee in an attempt to articulate the profundity of his statement.
Jared chuckled, leaned back in the rocking chair, and smirked at the rafters of the awning above him. “Yeah, I suppose that’s very true. We went through the shit before we were even together, and came through in the end.” Jared dropped his smiled, and looked at Corey. “We’ve been through a lot together, too. You’re a good friend.”
“Thanks. You’re pretty good, too. You disgust me with your cute lovey-lovey crap, but you’re still pretty good.”
“Thanks. I’m sure someday you’ll make me want to puke, too.”
“We’ll see. You know what, Jared? If it was anyone else, I would think they were making a huge fucking mistake. And since I broke up with Valerie, it’s kind of been my mission to make everyone else’s life miserable. But I can’t really do that with you because I think you’re truly happy. And that kind of creeps me out, too. But I think you and Rachel will be really happy together.”
“Thank you. I think so, too. We’ve earned it.” Jared smiled at his friend and suddenly jumped up from the rocking chair. “You know what?! I don’t smoke anymore, but we can still drink those damn kids under the table! Let’s go inside and embarrass their livers!”
The roommates left the balcony for the apartment, poured two glasses of Irish whisky, and for their last toast they echoed each others words: “To the future.”