Part 1: Do you remember how it felt to be young and in love?

Deana Lawson’s 2009 photograph Binky and Tony Forever is a portrait of young love in all its glory. “There was something about their names […] that I felt was a great coupling,” Lawson says. “It represented young love without actually saying it.” The title conjures up vivid images: names carved into a tree trunk, initials enclosed in a heart affectionately spray-painted onto a concrete wall. The singer Dev Hynes (also known as Blood Orange) used this photograph for the cover of his album Freetown Sound, which is how I was introduced to it. The artwork’s recontextualization as an album cover demonstrates its power; it has the ability to go beyond the high art world and be accessed by a wider audience.

Despite seeming like it merely portrays a scene of domestic mundanity, the photo’s composition is imbued with a certain grandeur, while still conjuring an instant sense of familiarity and nostalgia. This speaks to Deana Lawson’s discerning eye and artistic genius: not only does she curate the elements and stage the scene in such a way that still feels candid and organic, but she also captures it evocatively — even though you aren’t Binky or Tony, the tenderness they display conjures up similar feelings and memories.

Although this photograph was taken in Lawson’s bedroom, it feels like Binky’s domain. She’s the centrepiece of the photo; it’s her space, her gaze, her lover. Traces of femininity can be detected throughout the room — bottles of nail polish in various shades of pink, yellow flowers carefully placed in a glass bottle, gauzy mint green curtains, the bedspread’s delicate lace trim — yet the heavy chartreuse colour overpowers the photo. Binky’s femininity is undoubtedly present, but she uses it for power rather than submission: her lover, with tenderly closed eyes, rendered nearly helpless in her arms; her standing over him despite her diminutive height; and the intoxicating stare she shoots at you, almost making you feel like you’re interrupting something.

Young love is intense, but it’s often ephemeral. Nevertheless, when you experience it, something permanent happens to you. Does your first love ever really go away, or do you eventually just learn to manage it? There’s an especially poignant line in Junot Díaz’s short story “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” that answers that question: “The half-life of love is forever.” The graffiti may be scrubbed away, but if you look closely, you can still see its faint outline. Just like the love it represents, this portrait is transient — a fleeting moment in time. But it’s bigger than that. It serves as a template for intimacy, longing, and adoration, a visual adage that perfectly encapsulates the timeless, lingering feeling of being young and in love.

Part 2: How do you find love, and how do you make it last?

Illustration by Jeffery Decoster

How do you find love, and how do you make it last? “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” a short story by Dominican-American writer and professor Junot Díaz, tries to answer just that. It’s an intimate and unflinchingly candid exploration of personal shortcomings, character flaws, and the difficulty of reconciling the impulse to self-destruct with the complex, intense feelings of guilt and isolation.

The very first paragraph reveals the reason why Yunior, the narrator, and his long-term fiancée broke up: she found out that he had cheated on her with 50 (!!!) different women over the course of their six-year relationship. The story is divided into six sections, with each one recounting a different year of Yunior’s life immediately following the breakup and detailing his physical, mental, and emotional collapse. It highlights Yunior’s often futile attempts to curb his propensity for infidelity and mendacity, as well as his Murakami-esque attitudes towards women: Yunior is unable — or worse, unwilling — to imagine them as fully human. For example, the fiancée is represented almost entirely by her absence in his life, and the reader only gets to know her through the occasional glimpses of Yunior’s enduring attachment, rendering her a vague and nebulous concept. Over the course of the narrative, Yunior grows increasingly frustrated by his inability to maintain romantic relationships, even though he’s nearly always the reason for their demise. He craves intimacy intensely, yet he behaves in a way that sabotages any effort to achieve it (i.e. reveling in his sexual freedom and remaining emotionally detached).

Díaz is a master of subtlety — close and careful reading is necessary to glean clues about Yunior’s success. He’s a published writer and a Harvard professor, but these details aren’t explicitly divulged — for the most part, you’re only told about his misdeeds, personal failings, and all the ways that he screws up. Despite this, Díaz doesn’t try to make you feel any particular way about him; his characterization is realistic and forthcoming rather than overly moralistic or sentimental. Yes, Yunior does shitty things, but still, you can’t help but root for him. You can tell he wants to change, and you want to witness his escape from the downward spiral, even if you recognize that his misery is almost entirely his own doing. This almost irrational attachment to the protagonist is largely the result of Díaz’s use of second-person narration: Yunior is talking about himself to himself, and the reader fills that role, making his transgressions and emotions feel as if they were your own.

Another interesting technical aspect is Díaz’s choice to forgo translation or even italicization of the Spanish, which conveys a fluidity between the two languages in the narrator’s mind. Although one might think this choice would alienate the reader, it has the effect of putting you in Yunior’s head. He also doesn’t use quotation marks in dialogue, implying a fluid relationship between thought, words, and action — and, since the stories are recollections, the imprecision of memory.

In the story, his ex-fiancée discovers his infidelities by snooping through his emails. It’s an apt symbol for what it feels like to read this short story — you know it’s fiction, but you can’t escape the feeling that you’re spying on someone’s journal and their most secret, private, and embarrassing thoughts, or even hearing their confession. The similarities between Díaz and the main character make you wonder how fictional this story really is, and which parts he takes directly from his own life — is this a confession?

There is no definitive lesson in this story — it isn’t trying to be a cautionary tale, and that nuance and ambiguity are precisely what makes it so perceptive. Near the end, Yunior finally faces his wrongdoings and guilt and displays a newfound self-awareness, offering the reader a faint but undeniable sense of hope. “The half-life of love is forever,” he scribbles in a notebook, beside his ex’s name. Perhaps that aphorism sums up the moral of the story: you may not be able to get the love you once held for someone completely out of your system, but you’ll eventually accept its permanence and learn to live with it. And — if nothing else — it’s a start.

It takes a while. You see the tall girl. You go to more doctors. You celebrate Arlenny’s Ph.D. defense. And then, one June night, you scribble the ex’s name and: The half-life of love is forever.

You bust out a couple more things. Then you put your head down.

The next day, you look at the new pages. For once, you don’t want to burn them or give up writing forever.

It’s a start, you say to the room.

That’s about it. In the months that follow, you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace—and because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.