For Valentine’s Day we decided to go as a group, even if neither of us were couples, except for Danny who (displeasing me greatly) brought his lover, a woman he met at the office and for whom he broke off our highly lucrative (for both of us) secret relationship, though it took place mostly thru chat, in constant roleplay. But the roleplay was sexual in nature, at times merely romantic (the most desperate times), and so he had to stop when he found someone to truly love. And so I was going to have to spend Valentine’s Day being reminded of this.

Although Danny and I never loved each other, the way a couple would, we still engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship, in that he sexted with me in exchange for gifts and money. I suppose one might call it a sugar-type relationship, although we simply called it mutually beneficial, which it was. But real, actual love appeared in his life, and whatever we had, and no matter what he gained from it, amounted to nothing in comparison. That is what true love is, and that is what true love does. It is bigger than the entire universe—much bigger—and so it is easy to betray one for the other.

We had hotpot, which was a concept towards which I was gravely suspicious: Is it not soup? In Europe during Medieval times when food was scarce, they put anything and everything edible they found into a pot and boiled it continually for months or years and hoped that there would be some nutrients in it, somehow. They called it pottage. We were essentially going to eat peasant cuisine and pretend that it was something we wanted, which was a slap in the face of every peasant who had to starve to death or die of malnutrition. But no one cared about the peasants anymore. No one but me.

We had to line up because as always the group chat ignored my constant reminders to book a reservation. And I certainly wasn’t going to do it, because I didn’t want to go anyway. If we decided to eat at Miyazaki or that Korean place where we always went, then I would be happy, but instead we had to “try something new.”

All of us sat at the chairs lined up outside to wait for our name to be called. There was a crowd there: families, couples, groups of friends. The hotpot place was in one of the new strip malls in the area, and seated there we had a view of the street where cars and pedestrians passed. The night was cool, and the moon was waning.

I was seated next to Danny to his right. Valerie, his new girlfriend, was to his left. She was beautiful, and I understood why he left me for her. She wore tight shorts and a shirt, and somehow it did not seem at all slutty or suggestive, because of her face and her demeanor, both of which possessed a kind of innocence and feminine virtue. She was a chinay with a pert nose and a full bosom and might be considered attractive enough to be a model. And most of all she was warm and friendly and deferent to the older members of the group, which was most of us. She called us “kuya” and “ate.” I liked her as much as I despised her; her charm was so overwhelming that it affected even me.

Danny leaned towards me and showed me his phone. “Have you heard about this?” He pointed at a news story about a small black hole being created as a result of new experiments in CERN. People in Reddit were having a field day making jokes about the end of the world. “They say it’s going to suck in the world and destroy it.”

“One could only wish,” I said.

Then he turned to the other side to tell Valerie about it, too.

On my other side Emily had one hand tucked under the opposite arm, while the other hand scrolled through reels. The usual insignificant trash that we all delighted in. Most of the reels were about Valentine’s Day. About people who didn’t have anybody on that day, and people who did. I wish I had somebody. I wish I had a valentine. Instead I had these people and my clone. I saw it (he) and Elmer speaking in the corner, standing. God knows what they were talking about. I thought that Elmer must have been interrogating him about his body, about whether he felt stable. We did not know how long clones were supposed to live for. If they were truly exact matches or if they began to diverge after they were created.

I did not care and wanted my clone to go away. I wondered if murdering one’s clone was the moral equivalent of killing a person. Surely, that was a new moral category for which I could become some kind of pioneer. And I could do that by murdering my clone and seeing what the courts would say about that.

My parents were surprisingly very accommodating to the clone. At first they treated him as a scientific marvel, a kind of miracle of technology. They inspected him, spoke to him, touched him. This lasted a few minutes. Then, they treated him like a guest. They invited him to sit and eat. They gave him drinks. They gave him the guest room. A few days later, they were talking to him the way they spoke to me, like they had known him their entire lives. But the clone was more polite, more deferential than me, perhaps assuming the role of guest out of caution—something I would do. Though we were the same person, in real terms, he was still “another person.” And he knew that, though my family did not seem to think so. Sometimes, my dad would talk to me just as I came in the kitchen and my clone leaves, continuing the conversation they were having. When I say I don’t know what he was talking about, he would say: “What do you mean? I just told you.”

“That’s not me,” I would say.

And he’d shrug and continue talking and expect me to follow the thread.

At this point I thought they would be disappointed, at least, or even furious if I killed him. They considered him a part of the family. And perhaps even the better part of me, because he was very accommodating, the way I would be if I were a guest. And so my family did with him the things that they have always thought I should be able to do: dinners during Saturday, church on Sunday, trips to the supermarket in the morning to help carry the groceries.

So although I was the original I was not even the favorite of me in the house. I had mixed feelings about this. I felt that it was good for me because my family could get the best of me, all the while I don’t need to do anything at all. On the other hand, that was not really me. And while in many cases this was a moot point, the fact that essentially I was not my clone still bothered me.

Whenever Elmer was with us, he and the clone spoke a lot and intimately. And knowing myself I knew that my clone relished that attention. In any case, Elmer was not a bad looking person, although I was not naturally attracted to him. He had a kind of twinky charm. Although his features were unremarkable, he could be handsome, especially when he abandoned the old jeans and shirts and wore something expensive, as shown by pictures from weddings he had attended.

It made me wonder if Elmer was or could be interested in my clone if only because he was a clone. I knew that intelligence could drive a person to twisted and novel desires. Would he ask me, too? That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Or would he only want the clone?

Now, I watched them as they spoke against the lights of the passing cars. Elmer was nodding and periodically saying something. But it was my clone who was doing most of the talking.

I was hungry. Juno was also with us, and she was sitting there minding her own business on the other side of Emily. She was also facefirst into her phone. The glow of whatever she was watching splashed against her face.

Emily whispered something to her, and Juno whispered something back. Emily gasped and acted incredulous to whatever she heard.

“I can’t believe it!” she said. She leaned back to include me in the conversation and said, “Her mom is really going through with it. They’re going to move to Cordillera.”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s not going to do that. Where would they even live?”

“She’s already looking for apartments,” Juno said. “She’s going through with it. She’s packing our stuff and selling our furniture.”

Juno’s mother believed that the end times were imminent. Although she obviously wanted to be there for the last part, where Jesus comes down from heaven crowned in glory and judges the living and the dead, they would prefer to live through the calamities that presaged the Second Coming. So, she was making preparations. She was a doomsday prepper.

I said, “We can still instant message. It’s fine. And you work from home anyway.”

“I don’t want to live there,” Juno said. “It’s foggy. I’ll get sick and die.”

“You’ll probably meet us soon after,” I said. “When the dead rise.”

They finally called Emily’s name. We all rose. Elmer met my eye, and I beckoned them to us so that we could come in.

The restaurant was spacious, with decorations for Chinese New Year as well as Valentine’s Day. All around the room, there were shelves, trays, and counters of food that you could incorporate into your soup. Every table had a heated pot, into which you add your ingredients and you season your own soup. I’ve heard about this type of restaurant many times before, but I’ve never tried it because of the (perhaps erroneous) belief that because all the food was going in the same soup, they’d all taste the same.

In any case, I was assured that there would be dimsum, and if the soup was not to my liking I could order a la carte. We sat and looked over the menu and got the big platter for our soup. We decided collectively that it would be a little spicy, but not too spicy. It was hot in there. Despite the fact that there were air conditioning and fans, the heat from the pots made the place sweltering. I was already in a bad mood, but the heat was agitating me.

“Guys,” my clone said, addressing the table. “By the way, I’d like to introduce to you my clone.”

“Shut up,” I said.

Snickering.

Juno said, “Wait, but who’s who? For real?”

“I’m me,” I said. “He’s the clone.”

Juno looked at me and then at the clone and then me again. “Is there no way to distinguish you two? Apart from the clothes?”

The waitress came to ask if we were ready to order.

“Elmer didn’t have the foresight,” I said.

Elmer pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “It was a prototype. I’m thinking that the clone would have some kind of indelible mark. Or maybe all the clones would share a specific feature – like an extra finger or birth mark.”

“A birthmark that says ‘Made by Elmer’ right on their ass,” the clone said.

Elmer nodded and pointed at him. “Exactly.”

Emily ordered. As usual, we ordered a feast for ourselves, with the idea that Danny was going to eat anything and everything we were not able to finish ourselves. And in any case his new girlfriend was here, and I’ve read somewhere that men tend to show off their masculinity to potential mates by eating much more than they normally do. Some quirk of the vestigial reptilian brain.

I looked around, and at a table in front of us, there was a very handsome man. He must have been in his late 20s, wearing glasses. He had a beard and curly hair and olive skin. He was with a girl who was very obviously his date. She was also very beautiful. In some backwards way, I suppose one could say they were meant for each other. Although, of course, looks aren’t everything, and all that. My friends and my therapist and my conscience have many times, and in regular intervals, reminded me that there is more to a person than their physical appearance, and I know that. And in fact given the way I myself look I depend on that.

Still, I am very honest with myself regarding my impulses. And if I need to readjust my beliefs or take other things into consideration, then I could do that consciously, rather than leaving it to chance or, worse, allowing these impulses to be buried among the various processes of repression, sublimation, projection, &c., that constituted the subjective mind.

I met my clone’s eye and made movements with my eyebrows towards something behind him. He seemingly understood immediately and turned behind him quickly and looked back at me, with a smug look on his face and making a thumbs up.

“August, August.” Emily tapped me on the arm. “Tell them about our deal.”

“What deal?”

“That when we’re forty…”

“Oh god…”

Emily laughed. “We’re going to get married, right? For political and economic purposes.”

“I was coerced into that deal,” I said. “Nonetheless, it does make sense. It is a kind of alliance. Also, it would be nice to have somebody there for when I lose my mind.”

“Thought you’ve already lost it,” Emily said.

“Oh, please… The worst is yet to come.”

The appetizers arrived. Typical of these places, there was a huge assortment. Seafood pancake, marble potatoes, kimchi, pickles, rolled omelets, and so on. It was a Chinese place, but the stomach did not distinguish between nationalities. Only flavor. We were all hungry, so we dug in.

The handsome man was laughing now. He fed his lover some kind of vegetable from the soup using his chopsticks. She was smiling too widely that it was apparent even while she was chewing. It looked like a bad commercial. She fed him something in return.

I loved my friends dearly. They have taken so much shit from me, especially when my myriad of mental illnesses had not yet been diagnosed and therefore not treated. Still, they remained loyal, compassionate, understanding, and caring towards me. Still, I would walk right off and join that handsome man if he wanted me to. I would invite them to the wedding, and many times we would all hang out. But I was sure they would understand. They would understand that all my life all I wanted was to be loved in the way a woman was loved in the most vulgar, basic, and instinctual sense: in a protective, somewhat jealous, caring way. I wanted someone who would cherish and defend me. I have looked for that all my life, and I have never, ever found it.

This is why I hated Valentine’s Day. I have always hated it because it was a stark, powerful reminder of my distinct, specific unhappiness. Of the fact that all my life no one has desired me in the way that I wish I would be—in the way that was reserved for beautiful people, which I was not. No amount of reassurances regarding my looks will convince me against my ugliness. I had no qualms about my appearance as such. What bothered me was what this entailed regarding the capacity of men to love me. To desire me.

I knew exactly the nature of my hideousness. I could see it right there, beside my view of the handsome man. My clone was overweight, with wild hair, beady eyes. A nose that, while not especially large, was bulbous and not attractively shaped. Thick lips that were not luscious or enticing but instead out of place on my stout face. There was a kind of austere gravity because of my beard, but that was about it. That was all that was good about the way I looked, which mattered only in certain cases, mostly academic or professional.

Elmer was whispering something into my clone’s ear. Elmer’s chopstick that was holding a piece of the seafood pancake stopped right before his mouth. Then, the clone finished what he was saying, and they both laughed. Elmer used the knuckle of his forefinger to push his glasses up again.

Juno had asked Danny and Valerie how they met. Danny was saying that they had been working on the same project for a few weeks. Someone had a birthday party, and they got to talking there. Eventually, what they had evolved into a romantic relationship. I couldn’t bear to listen.

I took out my phone. No one had sent me a message. I sent David a message, wishing him a happy Valentine’s Day, but that was more than six hours ago. He was online but wasn’t saying anything. I didn’t mind double texting, degrading as it was. But I couldn’t help but feel that I had gone as far as I would ever get with David. And the source of the small, insignificant kernels of affection I gleaned from our conversations had run dry. I had helped him during his time of emotional turmoil. Now that he had recovered he had no need for someone with which to chat. He wanted someone new to hold and fuck and adore. Occasionally I sent him gifts to ease the turbulence of a life in transition after his major break up. This entitled me to some of his time and kindness. But as time went on I was beginning to feel that he was ready to move on.

I messaged Kiran. I asked: “Do you have a Valentine?” He was online, but I didn’t hold my breath. He barely had any time for me anymore. But I was hoping for some kind of attention from someone I found attractive. If I couldn’t have a valentine I was hoping that at least I felt some type of affection. But the possibility of that grew more remote as the evening went on.

Every year on this day I felt so alone. Unconsciously I would surround myself with people, perhaps in a vain attempt to abate that feeling. Of course it never did. It distracted me. Allowed me to think about something else. But ultimately between the conversation and the jokes and the longwinded, stupid stories the loneliness prevailed.

I looked at my feed. Everyone was talking about the black hole. The coverage had become more and more hysterical. Apparently CERN had released a warning that the black hole did not dissipate as anticipated – a one-in-several-billion chance – and the lab had to be evacuated. It seemed the black hole would continue to grow and consume the planet over the course of the next few days, maybe next few hours. International agencies were working together to find some kind of solution. 

None of my friends seemed to have received this news yet. I decided not to say anything. I did not want to go through the panic or terror or anxiety this may provoke in them. I was unhappy enough as it was. And in a way, in some stupid, stupid way, I was thankful that the world would be destroyed. And I and everyone else and the handsome boy and his girlfriend and my clone and David and Kiran and this hotpot place would be destroyed, torn to shreds as we are compressed into an infinitesimal point. I was thankful that this was it. I did not like being here anyway. And given everything I saw around me, the things I heard about day by day happening all around the world, maybe this was for the best.

Juno’s mom was right. It was the end times, and this was a manifestation of God’s providence. It had to be. And that comforted me. My friends stood up to get food for the hotpot. I did not stand up. I was too lazy. I was going to eat whatever they put in the pot. It would all be the same anyway. It was the same pot. It was the same soup. It didn’t matter. It was all the same soup.