2. A Different Kind of Recycling

“What do you think about recycling?” Ben asked, inching dangerously close to June’s face, prompting her to lean away in the opposite direction, away from Ben’s scraggy beard and the crustacean crumbs still lurking in them from the calamari he’d attempted to share with her earlier, only to have hogged down the entirety of the plate before she finished her first piece. She wonders whether a better use of her unfinished wine would be to rinse away her date’s beard and perhaps even that unknown yellow smudge off his bulbous nose, so that at least she can look at this poor chap’s face without wincing.

“I think recycling exists,” June says, bored, wishing that the topic would move to anything beyond recycling, a topic this man has been pursuing incessantly for the last thirty minutes.

The date had started relatively well, with them meeting near the Woodmen’s Cottage – a single-floor cottage built using Victorian elements and known prominently for the wood moldings and floral carvings on either side of the cottage’s two tall sash windows. Ben had arrived on time, worn a blue tuxedo, and was carrying a crocheted flower bouquet for her. They’d gone through the standard list of exhaustive and tiring questions to ask on a first date – oh, what’s your favorite movie? Blue is your favorite color? What are your hobbies? And the other permutations of questions designed to inquire how many of the basic human activities they both liked to perform.

They’d just gotten the awkward bits out of the way and settled into their reservation at a local arcade bar when, out of nowhere, Ben had decided to explore his disgruntled hatred towards recycling. His eyes had lit up with the maddened gaze of a heretic. While normally June would encourage someone to explore their interests in a conversation with her, Ben’s disdain of the recycling industry was more than a mere interest. It was an obsession to the point where June was afraid that if this man got his hands on a machete, he’d go brawling through each recycling center in the United States.

June’s eyes wander away, jumping from one couple to another at the table they’d reserved at the bar. Scratching at her green flannel T-Shirt, she wonders how many of these couples are in the same situation as her, exhausted by how methodical it has become to go out with someone. June is tired of not just Ben’s tirade, but of how daunting and tiring it is to meet someone new and force herself to feel a spark. She feels like she is stuck in a disco where no one is willing to be vulnerable enough to break a leg. Everybody just stands there, lifeless, frozen like a boulder, putting on a façade that June has long lost interest in deciphering. 

She absolutely hates it when her friends tell her that real love feels “simple” and “easy”.

What a bunch of nonsense. Romanticizing love as something that can magically erase one’s insecurities drives more people to run away the second it stops being easy. The arguments, the compromise, the ugly words, the crying, the hurting – no one around June is willing to put in the effort and work that goes into preserving something when it becomes hard. No one is willing to admit that love is the hardest thing in the world.

As Ben remains steadfast in his pursuit to unravel his hoax about recycling, June now notices the gold chandelier suspended in the middle of the ritzy bar, with artificially lit candles blazing sporadically and infusing the dimly lit room with a rhythmic effervescence that bounces from the red walls to the giant black wine cabinet behind the bartender. On the far side of the room, behind Ben, hang three paintings, one of which depicts a house in the middle of a forest, shrouded in thick mist. In front of the paintings is a giant pool table. A couple of sweaty men in bomber jackets are raucously spread out all over it. June admits that, at the very least, the bar itself appeals to her tastes, even maintaining the decency to have human bartenders. A cocktail made to mathematically appropriate proportions by an artificial bartender popularized in the rest of D.C. is a concept too silly and bizarre for June.

“Did you know that recycling is a sham driven purely by corporate greed?” her pedantic date says, grimacing. June is surprised to find even more crustacean crumbs stuck in his teeth than in his beard.

“No, I did not,” June sighs, turning her attention to the bartender, cuing for something stronger than the wine she’d ordered.

The bartender grins, knowingly.

The bartender’s blonde hair rolls down to her shoulders, braided strands neatly falling behind both ears. A tiny flower is gently pinned by a butterfly hairclip on top of her right ear. She wears a black T-shirt and a heart-shaped silver necklace that complements her green cargo pants. June envies the bartender’s style and, upon noting how the brown moles on the outer side of her left arm look like a constellation bright in the night sky, feels like a fresh spoon being dipped into a jar of honey. Her bones shiver, but her skin feels calmer and softer, like riding merrily on a scooter in the whirlwinds of a maelstrom. She bubbles effervescently in that small moment of limerence, ogling impetuously at the bartender’s freckled face.

“A daiquiri,” the bartender says, her voice drawn out, her posture slightly hunched. The bartender winks. June gulps the drink in one go.

And so, it is even more jarring when Ben’s voice bombards her eardrums again. “Petrochemical companies promote recycling only because they want to avoid production restrictions and public blame. Only five percent of plastic is recycled, but because of food crumbs and other waste, most of it ends up in landfills regardless,” Ben says.

“That makes no sense,” June says, her eyes still on the bartender. At the back of her mind, June knows this feeling is sadly not real. Just a small chance. A very tiny one. But so stupid. June grits her teeth. She needs a napkin and a pen.

“Exactly. Recycling makes no sense,” Ben says.

“No, what you said makes no sense,” June mutters.

“Give me one reason that recycling should exist,” Ben says, tapping his finger on the counter.

“Well, because the problem you are describing was solved fifty years ago. In fact, the plastic landfills themselves were recycled into organic resources by the Department of Memories to function as brain cells needed to reproduce memories during Erasures.”

“Yeah, but landfills still exist, and the Department doesn’t fully recycle disposed plastic-”

“-your arguments didn’t even take into account the fact that the recycling industry creates a certain number of jobs for every quantity of plastic that is recycled,” June cuts Ben off. “You can’t talk about the problem without being aware of the solution, you know? And as I said, the Department is one of the solutions to tackle the problem you described. What is your alternative to recycling?”

“I don’t know,” Ben says, biting his lips. “I also don’t believe anything that the Department does.”

What does this man believe in? June wonders. “Why not?” June asks, puzzled.

“They take your memories and use them to train clones. Did you know that?” Ben says, dipping his straw into his empty cup and swirling it like a toddler looking for a toy at the bottom of his milkshake. June rubs her temple, trying to digest this man’s arguments.

“So, you think that the memories erased by the Department are used to construct clones of the person whose memories they erased?” June asks.

“Exactly,” Ben says.

“What happens to the real people whose memories are erased?” June asks, genuinely curious about how far this man can stretch his theory.

“Well, they replace the real people with the clones.”

“But then why delete the memories in the first place?”

“To replace them with clones,” Ben says.

“Your logic is very circular. The next thing you’re going to tell me is that the moon is fake,” June says, laughing.

“I mean, the moon is real. The Department wants to set up their centers or Archives – whatever they call it – over there,” Ben argues. “The Department is also just another example of corporate greed, anyway. How do you know so much about the Department?” Ben asks, taking June by surprise, her jaw dropping. So, this man has finally decided to ask her a direct question. After one hour and thirty-three minutes, the man is finally curious about something June did.

“I work for the Department,” June answers as the bartender hands her a different cocktail, her third for the night. Their fingers brush. The cocktail luckily came with a napkin. June begins rummaging through her purse for a pen.

“You steal memories then,” Ben says in an accusatory tone.

“No, we recycle them,” June says, her pen clicking as she finishes scratching down her number on the napkin.

“That wasn’t funny,” Ben says.

“I never said it was.” June shrugs

“The Department isn’t really recycling memories into something more productive. It’s just collecting our memories wastefully, hiding them in a vault.”

“Right. For your clones,” June says. She is done with Ben.

“I am sorry if I upset you about anything,” Ben says. “Let’s change the subject. When did you Erase your first memory?”

“About six months ago,” June says, reminiscing.

She faintly remembers her first client, the fear and guilt that came with erasing his memories, then the wave of relief that washed over her when he’d seemed happier and lighter, albeit a little disoriented, while leaving the Archive. What she did had meaning.

“Where is this recycled person now?” Ben asks acerbically.

Having slipped the napkin with her number to the bartender, June decides to call it a night, pulling an egregiously fake yawn. “Alright, I’m getting a bit sleepy. How about heading back?” she says.

“To your place or mine?” Ben says. He has that smile. That stupid, dense, moronic smile that they all always had without fail.

“To our own places. Separately,” June says, rolling her eyes.

“Oh,” Ben says, slightly disappointed. “Can I see you again?”

June hopes not. “Maybe,” she lies.

The first thing that June does when she gets home is to throw her phone on her couch. The next thing she does is to throw herself on the same grey couch. She loves her couch and not because it is one of the only other pieces of furniture in her studio apartment, other than a whirring fridge, a twin mattress without a bed frame, a television too big to fit in, and a coffee table littered with coasters, her rings, two unfinished books, and a bottle of wine from last night.

Well, she could really use that wine right now. With her head still buried in the pillow, she bravely reaches forth for the wine bottle and inches her head slightly up to start taking big gulps from it. When her tummy rumbles a bit, she takes a small break to turn on her television and jump to a random channel at top volume to drown out the silence. With the studio lights off, the television’s blue and purple cascade over June like a warm blanket.

June is angry. She is angry at Ben for not asking her enough questions. She is angry at Ben for controlling the conversation like a vulture. But more importantly, she feels angry at herself for expecting anything more out of him. Skipping happily, hand in hand with anger, comes an overwhelming sense of heaviness, yelling at her that it will never get better. That after every date, this is how she will find herself. She feels alone and empty, wondering if anyone would care if she just disappeared tomorrow. Would she even care if a black hole were to tear through her apartment tomorrow morning and devour her entirely on the way to wherever it was going?

June wants to scream, but she is so drunk by now that she knows she’d just throw up. She wishes she had someone, even a friend, to convey how she felt, but in her heart, she knows no one really cared that much. But then, perhaps, there is a good reason that she is always alone. Maybe June is not worth knowing.

Why is love this tough? And who has the god-damn textbook with all the different definitions that it morphs into? There is the kind of love that molds itself into intense passion, then there is that other kind of love that comes with deep friendship, and then there’s one where it’s just a long, insatiable pining for skin. She’d read somewhere that there are eight different types of love. And another article claimed it was a circle. Someone on the Internet had even done a bijection between the different forms of love and a color wheel, trying to decide whether to classify love as a countable or uncountable infinity.

June wonders which one of these different definitions she longs to feel right now for others around her, and for herself. She wishes that love didn’t have so many multifaceted definitions. While June seeks to experience the complexities of love through a relationship of any kind, she doesn’t want to grapple with the complexities of understanding its very definition.

And then, wishing that the bartender would call her in the morning, she finally goes to sleep.

But like a broken wheel that won’t spin, that napkin that June left behind will never move past the tabletop, and the bartender, unfortunately, will never call.