Lovers of Today

Love is a liquid that adheres to the shape of any vessel it is poured into. Either it be mother and child, a long-lost lover, your partner, a possible suitor, or your pet; love quenches our collective searching soul.

Henry is an animal behaviorist and caregiver to Eliza, a two-hundred-and-fifty pound gorilla who is versed in American Sign Language and the intricacies of solitaire. Together they share a psychic space like the eye of a hurricane where there is calm while all around them the world contrives to tear them apart. Either it be Angie, Henry’s supervisor, who is forever concocting plans to pervert, publicize, and subsidize Henry’s research. Or then again, there is Lanuola, Henry’s past lover who wants to rekindle their own flame. Junior, Eliza’s son, is inordinately possessive of his mother. And lastly there is Tracy who is awash in the fluidity of her/his/them’s sexuality of who she/he or them actually is.

All of them are lovers of today.

WHEN ONE LOVINGLY gazes across the room at their child, pet, or (for that matter) their partner, one wonders what exactly are they thinking? In my case, it is a ten-year-old, two-hundred-and-fifty- pound gorilla who is versed in ASL, so all I have to do is sign and ask her. “Thinking what?” I gesture. Eliza returns my gaze and shudders, meaning in the universal language of exasperation, leave me alone. She then refocuses on the computer screen. I snicker, which acknowledges that I get it.

I’d like to think of myself as the “Piaget of Primates.” I have been working with Eliza since her infancy. I had her accept the bottle hours after her birth. I held her in my arms tenderly as she grappled with the assimilation of simply being alive, just as any parent would for their child.

We live in three adjoining trailers on a hill in an undeveloped parcel of land outside Palo Alto. There Eliza is allowed to roam freely in the parched fields of high grass. She prefers chocolate milk to five-percent low-fat milk. She likes cartoons. She knows how to count and comprehends the abstract significance of numerals. She used to play with Barbie dolls as most little girls do: unclothing them and ultimately beheading them. Slowly, she grew out of the Barbie stage of her development, yet she still loves Cheerios as most toddlers do. Eliza is a slob who does not clean up after herself. I do that. That is my job.

My current task is teaching her how to play solitaire. We do this on an oversized keypad and iMac desktop. There are a number of skills she learns from this besides mastering the mouse. She learns sequencing in regards to numbers and suits. She is forced to strategize on how to outwit the machine. Sometimes she wins, but most times, she gets frustrated, which is also a modicum of success because it illustrates an awareness that she lost the game.

Why, I wonder, am I teaching her a game that most lonely people play when they have nothing else to do with themselves? Do I envision a lonely life for Eliza? Hardly, because I am always around. Maybe it is my subconscious dictating that I should give her something to do after I die.

Lovers of Today

Gritty, funny, thought-provoking. In Lovers of Today, James Trivers gifts readers a rare treat to come eye-to eye with the soul of the characters in this novel. Feelings of deep longing are underscored, as each character demonstrates their unique insecurities, and sense of isolation in their need for love. Henry, with a checkered past, is an animal behaviorist tasked with teaching a 250-pound gorilla to communicate with humans. He has long crossed the line from animal behaviorist, to asking himself, “What have I done?” From the intern whose gender pronoun is, “They”, to the animal activists who fail to see the irony in taking a life to save an animal, the characters in this novel come to life. Ultimately, Henry finds that being loved can make anybody, feel like somebody. And you can’t teach that.

Diane Shell