“Arachne’s sigil, blazed on azure fields, with Crimson sinews bulging in such might—“ Gwen looked up from the sheet of paper, unable to stop laughing but almost feeling embarrassed. “Ben, are you kidding me?”
She had been assisting Ben as he sorted through the boxes in the hall closet, pulling out things like plastic light-up martini glasses and cotton Halloween cobweb packets. Since the closet had been, until this point, the place where the now ex-couple’s crap went to die, it had seemed like a good hiding place. However, the shoebox and its incriminating contents were now in Gwen’s possession. Things did not bode well for him.
“Give me that!” he said, snatching the paper from her. As soon as it was in his hands his grip relaxed, in an effort to minimize the creases on the paper. Number 133 had been a particular favorite of his. He grasped for the box, but Gwen pulled it out of reach and raced into the other room. He chased her. His athletic endurance being
somewhat weak compared to the average male, Ben stopped so he could catch his breath. “As I recall, you were just about to move out!” he panted.
“With parabolic flights you cut through skies, with insectile grip you climb to clouds—“
“Stop it!” Ben roared. Rolling his eyes, he staggered into the room.
He found Gwen seated on the couch, her face contorted with a gleeful but disgusted smile. The shoebox’s contents were laid bare beneath her hands. She looked up at him as he entered the room. “How long has this been going on?”
Ben thought it best to play things cool. “Gwen, can we keep being adults about this?”
“Somehow, Ben, having a secret box of… what are these, sonnets? Well, it doesn’t strike me as very adult.” She began rifling through the pieces of paper until she found the bottommost. Ben grimaced—number one, though by its nature groundbreaking, was clumsily written, and far from anything he would show anyone. “This one is from 2005? Ben, you’ve been doing this two years—“
“Three,” he quipped. He regretted the word the instant his mouth formed it.
“Three years,” Gwen repeated. She did not read this one out loud, not like the other, but she held it in front of her face and murmured to herself. She released the paper from her hands and it drifted to the floor, like, an oversized piece of confetti a descending pendulum. Ben dropped on his haunches to retrieve it.
“But we’ve only been going out two years,” Gwen said, turning her face to avoid his gaze.
Ben reached out his hand for the box, but Gwen ignored it. She opened her mouth to say something, she made a sound, but snuffed it out before it could develop into anything coherent. Finally, she turned back towards him. “Ben, are you gay?”
Ben was taken aback. “Gay for whom?”
Gwen gave an indignant laugh. “I’m not sitting with a box of sonnets written to me. You’re gay for… who are these for, Superman?”
“Spiderman!” Ben yelled reflexively. Then, recalling the actual question at hand, he said, “No. Yes—no. I mean, maybe—no.” For a moment, the question saturated his thoughts. “Can I be gay for Spiderman?” he wondered aloud.
“If the boot fits—“ Gwen began to say, but Ben, seeing her guard was down, snatched the box from her lap and made off with it.
***
“Ben!” she said, taking after him. To Gwen’s annoyance, he had locked himself in the bathroom. She pressed her back to the door and, sliding to the floor, let out a groan. “At least I got out before things got weird,” she said, feeling exasperated. There was some truth to that, but she did not look at the past two years as something entirely normal—just as the immediate future, while somewhat disappointing, was also a long-due relief.
“Well,” Ben countered, his voice exuding sarcasm, “one can clearly see you’re rushing to begin your new life in Houston.”
“You still have the keys to the U-Haul, Ben.” If this kept up much longer she may as well pay Ben to drive her belongings down. It was not as if he would refuse.
Her remark was met with silence. After a moment, she could hear Ben rifling through his pockets and the jangle of the keys in his hand. “Damn it,” he muttered.
“Are you going to come out and give them to me?” Gwen asked.
“Hold on.”
She felt a pressure against her lower back and jumped away reflexively. The bottom of the bathroom door was being forced outward, and she could hear the scraping of metal on the linoleum floor. The action abated, and a disappointed-sounding Ben muttered, “The keychain won’t fit under the door.”
“Why don’t you throw them out the window?” she murmured to herself.
“Isn’t that, like, sixteen stories?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said. “Besides, I was joking.”
She didn’t make an effort to interrupt the silence that followed, but returned to her seated position against the door. Barricades—physical ones—had not been a usual element in their relationship. Fights had popped up, from time to time, snappish and occasionally brutal, and towards the couple’s dwindling days it became apparent that they were both unhappy but neither was willing to walk away. Gwen’s fellowship was something of a godsend, and, with striking amiability, they recognized the impossibility of their situation—long distance relationships never worked out, as they frequently assured each other—and they let theirs die gracefully.
Ben made no response. After waiting for what seemed to her like an appropriate amount of time, she asked, “So, why Spiderman?”
She heard a flush of the toilet. Over the dull roar of the running water, she heard Ben ask, “Did you say something?”
A sense of revulsion flittered in her head. “Did you go to the bathroom when I was talking to you?”
“I am in a bathroom.”
“But… I’m talking to you.”
“Yeah, while I’m in a bathroom.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure we were doomed from the start, if I’m finding reasons to break up with you after I’ve already broken up with you.” Gwen was insulted enough to consider backing off the topic: she had been raised a ‘pretty girl’ by her family, had socialized and fraternized with the proud and the elite in high school and college. Ben had been both a joke and a dare placed on her—though handsome enough, his somewhat eclectic style, less-than-handsome friends and bizarre, pun-filled bar-talk was a far cry from the men her friends normally set her up with. However, his need to prove himself worth her attention had, at first, been flattering. He was intelligent and charming, at points: they connected well at some levels. But Ben had remained at heart the eclectic and silly person she met in that crowded bar two years ago. She would not have put it past him to maintain a box of sonnets for a superhero —but that he had actually done so, especially while dating her, was a blow to her pride as well as her understanding of his feelings. “Besides, it’s not as though you wrote any sonnets for me.”
“That you know of.”
Gwen paused for a moment, and wished for once that Ben had a less-than-perfect pokerface. “What, really?”
“No.” He laughed a little at that.
“You can be a real jerk sometimes, you know that?”
“What does it matter? You’re moving out.”
“Which would be easier to do if you gave me the keys, already.” The world spun around her as she said this— Ben opened the door while she was still leaning on it. He did not look alarmed to see her lying on the ground like a turtle on its shell, but if he found it amusing, he didn’t let on.
Gwen tried to regain some gracefulness as she stood. “So, something I say get through to you?”
“None of it,” Ben said, grinning sheepishly. “It’s just kind of, um, smelly. In there.” He hustled her into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He dangled the keys in front of her. Gwen sneered at him, and snatched the keys from his hand. She went back to the hall closet to parcel out the stuff that neither of them wanted to keep.
***
Ben walked back to the living room and sat on the couch, being careful not to sit where Gwen had been sitting some minutes earlier. He placed the box of sonnets in front of him and looked out the window. Second Ave was bustling at this point, and though the sun had come out for the afternoon, everything still glistened with a wet finish from the morning’s rain. Everything he saw had flaws —it was less than brilliant, or wondrous. The city outside and all its people struck him as mindless servitors of monotony. And still it was the closest he could come to the ideal, to the dream-like New York where robbers had metal octopus arms, where the women were all beautiful, red-headed and understanding, and where a weedy, wisecracking young man could swing on webs, free from gravity and the painful gravitas of the real world’s problems. Though he assumed that he had actually known all along, he realized around six weeks ago that Gwen was included in those outside problems.
“Do you want the pepper grinder?” Gwen asked as she walked into the room. It was shaped like a penis.
“I think you’d have more use for it than I would,” Ben answered.
“Well, after today, I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Ben rubbed his temples. “Move out already!”
“Fine!” Gwen said. “But will you tell me one thing? What’s so special about Spiderman?”
“Well, he doesn’t insinuate that I’m gay once we’ve broken up, for one—“
“I was being serious.”
Ben knew that she was. He had known Gwen long enough to realize that the box of sonnets was not only incriminating for him, but insulting to her as well. For two years he tried to dote on her and be someone deserving of her affection—there had not been a point in the relationship where he truly felt that his status as boyfriend was secure. But there was no real way for him to say anything to Gwen and have it sound genuine. His relationship with Gwen was like his Spiderman thing—even he was unsure what to call it— in that respect: but the devotion was different. With Gwen, he tried to be immediate and obvious in his adoration, even if it was false. With Spiderman, it was so personal, so private that he could squirrel away scraps of paper for years at his leisure. It wasn’t romantic—though maybe somewhat Romantic, as Ben liked to think—but what was it? Ben might have cried a Pygmalion influence, how the imitative world of Spiderman only accentuated the flaws in this one, the original. But he refused, mostly on the grounds of seeing My Fair Lady with Gwen not three weeks ago. He did not want to confuse his intentions.
“Got an answer for me?” she asked.
“He’s perfect.”
“Oh. Well, in that case…” she left the novelty pepper grinder on the table. “I don’t know if it’s my third dimension, or my lack of super-powers, but I’m pretty sure I’m as good as you’re going to get in the real world.”
Ben soured at this. “Why are you so upset?”
“Well, it really isn’t that awesome finding out I’ve been competing with Spiderman for your affection for the last two years. And apparently I’ve been losing pretty badly.”
“Look, we managed to stay civil with each other so far.”
“Obsessing over a costumed man behind my back seems pretty uncivil to me! For two years the Other Woman was a fictional man bitten by a radioactive spider!”
Ben had had just about enough of the argument. “Oh, how bitter and melodramatic fate is!” he cried, craning his neck backwards and placing the back of his palm on his forehead. “Well, now’s your chance to find a new beau, far superior to stupid old me.”
Of all the things Ben had considered saying to her, this had seemed to him to be the most innocuous, the least likely to be anything more than a re-statement of fact. They had reached the decision to break up together, but he had always secretly assumed that his own inadequacies were the underlying, unsolvable problem that had forced them to the point. However, he saw that his words did not just wash over her; Gwen’s face looked heavier with frustration than it had a moment before, and the prettiness that both lured and repelled him initially was replaced with a scowl; the vibrant blue eyes seemed darker and almost hidden under a furrowed brow.
Ben instinctively leaned backwards into the couch. “You’re not going to slap me, are you? I detest getting slapped.”
Gwen stood where she was. “I loved you,” she said. Seeing his face, she said “I did, Ben, for a while, I did. I maybe—maybe you loved me too, I don’t know. ” She paused, trying to find the right words to say. But her mind was robbed of them, or they didn’t exist—either way, she found herself unable to communicate to Ben about the guilt she was feeling, whether she was a bad person, or he was, or they both were. “Sometimes I get the feeling, that in a perfect world, we would have worked out great together.”
“In a perfect world,” Ben echoed. The thought of it drove him crazy, that he might live another sixty years in this world of flaws instead, chasing windmills just to feel like he was slaying giants. “There are so many things in a perfect world…”
Gwen took her seat next to Ben on the couch, smiling but sounding glum when she said. “I might have been Spiderman.”
Ben looked at her, trying to gauge which emotions were worth reading and which were fakes. “Spiderwoman might have worked out better. Or at least would have helped counter the image of, you know, homosexuality.”
“Is she just like a female version of Spiderman?”
“Kind of. Not really. She has weirder powers.”
Her face did not change. “Oh.”
They were silent—neither was quite sure what to say, and both were very willing to let the other begin talking. After a moment, Ben said, “Well, there’s one less thing I have to worry about now.”
“What’s that?”
“Holiday cards. Do you know how much shit my brothers gave me for ‘Ben and Gwen’?”
Gwen laughed. “I know! What were we thinking?”
“Benjamin and Gwen?”
“Gwendolyn and Ben?”
When she stopped laughing, Ben asked, “So, I may be wrong, but maybe we want to take a step back? Reconsider?”
Gwen smiled flatly at him. “No, Ben. Even if you come to Houston.”
Slightly embarrassed, but relieved, Ben said, “Yeah, I figured as much.”
She stood up and walked to the hall. Leaving the sonnets on the table, Ben followed her. Gwen surveyed the pile of boxes and bags flowing out of the closet. “Well, I guess I know why we had so many cotton spider-webs now,” Gwen said.
“So clever this one is,” Ben murmured.
She looked at her watch, and realized how late she was running. “Look, I really should have been on the road an hour ago.” She glanced at the contents of the closet strewn along the floor. “If I end up actually needing something from here, just ship it to me, ok?”
Ben wasn’t in the mood to debate the issue, so he let it slide. “Ok.”
Gwen walked to the door, and, half grinning, said, “Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“I guess. There’s only, what, three hundred million people in this country?”
“I figured I’d just look for the guy swinging from the rooftops.”
“Maybe not quite yet. I’m probably going to do some experimenting into the weird and exciting world of celibacy.”
Gwen laughed politely and closed the door behind her. Ben locked it and, walking to the living room, grabbed the shoebox of brightly colored paper. He carried it back to the hall closet, stepping over Christmas lights and old bags of clothing, and placed it on the top shelf, where it belonged.
***
Tom Murphy is a video game writer based in Baltimore, MD. He strives to remain unprofessional.
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