“Love Interbellum”

Ever since my mother’s death, which had also been the death of my entire family, falling in love had become a completely different experience for me. My old love affairs could feel deliciously fiery or drenched in sorrow, like tiny ripples or amusing experiments. And sometimes they were purely physical. But for the past year, it was as if my entire existence depended on romantic infatuations.

They were like enormous waves engulfing me with loneliness and a crippling fear of separation. The waves would also wash over other people, and relationships I knew would ultimately lead to nothing, relationships that were almost guaranteed to fail. It made no difference if a relationship failed after one night, a week, or a few months. I went all in for love and failure.

Because at some point, right after it failed, after the worst kind of heartache, just as I thought I could no longer live with the horrific physical pain—the pain of reliving the death of my mother—after three, four, five weeks of crying on the couch, in the shower, on my bike, and secretly behind the counter at my part-time job, or lying on a bean bag in the basement, after the mourning had been felt in every fiber of my being, an immense feeling of freedom and fresh opportunities would glimmer on the horizon.

If I happened to walk into a cold and empty bar, and the floor was still wet and sticky, filled with the promising scent of wet mops, old adventures, and spilled beer, I’d get the feeling that new experiences were about to engulf me. And in my life—a life that had seen my mother’s presence wrung out of every mop—there was nothing better than that feeling.

“You’re addicted to the time between relationships,” an ex told me.“The love interbellum.”

“Some people are into re-birthing,” said a friend,“you’re into re-mourning. It’s almost as if you enjoy forcing yourself to mourn again and again.”

There were theories galore.

All the waves and the mopping pushed and pulled me in every direction. I was more than happy to let myself be tossed around.

*

I liked the physical side of new love just fine, even if my relationship with it was somewhat complicated.

“Do you want me to take you hard or soft?” my ex-lover had whispered in my ear during our first night together.

I had to think about that.

“How hard is hard exactly? And what do you mean by soft? And by take?”

“Yeah, just . . . hard. We could do it softly too. And by take, I mean sex.

That I would take you.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Why don’t we watch some porn?” suggested my ex-lover.“It’s made for moments like this!”

I looked at it askance.

“Is she older than twenty-one? She looks so young. And it seems like she’s having a tough time.”

“It’s hard work. Of course it looks like she’s having a tough time.” I wasn’t so sure.

“I’ll put something else on,” he said.

“Why aren’t they using condoms? They could contract HIV or syphilis.” My ex-lover sighed and put on a different film, then went and stood beside the TV with a pencil in his hand. “Look, these people are definitely

older than twenty-one.”

It was obvious to me they were much older than twenty-one. That wasn’t what concerned me.

He pressed the tip of the pencil against various points on the screen. “They’re all wearing condoms, see?”

I could see that.

“Now, wait a minute,” said my ex-lover, “keep watching.”

The people on TV were all giving the thumbs-up and smiling. “They’re enjoying themselves, see? They’re sticking their geriatric

thumbs in the air and smiling so widely you can see their dentures. They’re also using lots of condoms. Are you happy now?”

I was no longer in the mood.

My ex-lover was incredibly handsome. I’d never felt so many muscles or touched such taut skin. He seemed sculpted out of amber and everything looked good on him. But whenever I pressed my cheek against his body, I felt pain.

In any case, my body was rarely overcome by waves of lust. To be honest, it never really was.

“You need to learn to let go,” said one friend.

“You need to fully focus on yourself,” said another.

“You need to be a little less focused on yourself,” said my ex-lover. All the conflicting advice didn’t make it any easier.

*

“You do understand that a woman’s orgasm doesn’t lead to conception, right?” said my ex-lover. “It’s essential that the man has an orgasm; the rest of it is pretty much irrelevant.”

“When it comes to conception, you mean?”

“Yes, the rest is actually quite unnatural.”

My ex considered lots of things unnatural. For example, two men together.

“It’s unnatural.”

“And two women?”

“For some women it’s a viable choice, but it is unnatural.”

I clapped back at him for that comment. “That’s ridiculous. The things you say are so ignorant. There are examples of same-sex couplings everywhere in the natural world. Don’t be such a stupid, prehistoric hick.”

“You’re so arrogant,” said my ex-lover.

To soften his hard body, my ex-lover smoked quite a lot of weed.

Afterward he’d get into his car and drive home. I held my breath, always afraid he would get into a crash and kill himself.

But the more apparent it became that we weren’t a good fit, the more I worried that he’d kill someone else.

“A child,” I said. “Or a baby.”

“What kind of baby crawls across the street at night?” my ex-lover asked.

“A baby animal then,” I said. “A kitten, or maybe even a human adult.”

I no longer wanted to be in a relationship with this kitten killer but wasn’t quite ready for the devastating, soul-destroying re-mourning that would happen after we broke up.

*

“I don’t think we’re a good fit,” said my ex-lover.“You’re kind of always bitching about me.”

Intense grief wasn’t the only thing that instantly washed over me. My ego was also hugely wounded.

“Bitching?” I sniffed from my small sofa, where I was curled up, crying. “Me?” I whined to my dead mother as I sat under the shower. Ready for the re-mourning to begin.

*

Frank never asked if he could take me hard. In some ways, I found that a shame. But his body was considerably softer, and when I laid my cheek against it, I didn’t feel any pain.

Occasionally, I’d still smoke weed but it always made me so self-conscious. “You get totally para,” people told me. “That’s what it’s called when you

get completely over-the-top paranoid. Para!”

Oh my god, I am completely over-the-top paranoid, I thought. People think I’m para. I am para. Para. Paranoid.

I preferred the buzz from alcohol; it had the opposite effect on me. And I also loved bars. I’d loved them since I was a teenager. There was no better combination than being tipsy in a bar with a crowded dance floor.

It made everything softer and easier: interacting with people, talking to people, dancing with people.

Just people in general.

*

My mother was bisexual and had taken the space to allow herself to be something other than the norm. Before my mother’s husband came along, there were my mother’s women, and if she hadn’t passed away, she might have dated women after him too. Hopefully this would have been the case, even if I’d always questioned my mother’s taste.

“Do you still love me even though I’m apparently just a boring heterosexual?” I asked her. “I’d like to be able to fall in love with people, but I only ever fall for boys. It’s just the way it is, so I’ll have to learn to live with it.”

“Boys are people too,” said my mother.

*

The first time I took Frank home, we found a Simply Red record lying on my sofa.

I’d left it there during my last heartbreak, at the height of the depression, the re-mourning, during the love interbellum.

“No,” said Frank. “No, no. I’m going to save you from this hideous depression and his red curls. What do you call those disgusting, woolly, red curly things you use to wash the floor?”

“A mop?”

“Exactly, I’m going to save you from this mop. We’ll simply remove him from the couch and throw him in the trash.”

While Frank was showering, I quickly retrieved the album from the trash can and put it back in a secret place amidst the rest of my records.

*

The love interbellum is a precarious time. New love shouldn’t come along too quickly. First, you must dance in celebration of your reclaimed freedom. The dents in your ego should be smoothed back into place, and you need to be able to shake off any residual guilt.

The overwhelming feeling that nothing you do depends on anyone else should be given free rein. Dancing barefoot, riding with new friends to the lake at night to swim and sleep there overnight, climbing over a wall into the convent garden, leaving the line at the liquor store or the 24-hour bar to jump on your bike or the metro to go and eat breakfast at IKEA.

With every sip, I drank away my ever-present inhibitions. Para nothing! Ha!

Still, new love shouldn’t arrive too late either. Not when pressure has built up and the dents could reappear at any moment, when regrets are starting to creep in again. Above all, it shouldn’t wait until there is enough space for real bereavement, when you begin grieving for something other than a lover.

*

A big part of the love interbellum is having love interbellum sex. It can be the best kind of sex, but also the worst. Like everything else in my life, it was exacting stuff. I worked hard to ensure that everything was set up for it to go well.

Interbellum sex is all about finding the right level of intimacy.

Specifically, there should be very little, or none at all. Or it should be only fleeting because who actually wants to be in love? Nobody wants that.

Desire is what you want, not disappointing reality.

It was the difference between a hot, desiring mouth and a tepid slug forcing itself upon you. My mother’s romance novels set the standard.

It all depended on the situation. Not everything was satisfying. Not everyone could satisfy me.

Vulnerable men satisfied me, unkind men did not.

“Hard or soft?” he asked. He pressed firmly against me and waited for my answer.

__________________________________

Excerpted from Love Interbellum by Ine Boermans, translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey, published in Michigan Quarterly Review 63:4, the Fall 2024 Translation Issue.