On being in a power-couple

Inter / intra dynamics of sizzle and pop

You may have never known that you were once or currently are a power-couple. Power-couples are socially concentric; you are a power-couple in your subdivision but not yet the world. The reach of your influence extends as far as the charity ball you’ve been toning your calves for, and the Sunday-only paper documenting your small business success with homemade gelato. Gathering strength from varied communities and vicarious individuals. Amal and George may carry the weight of a million minds yearning for a taste of stubble alongside backless Gucci, but you are more at-large in much smaller ways. Your best friend two years ago saw the way you were draped across each other two beers deep at the pizzeria, witnessed the forehead kiss before a chilled dawn 10k in October, and silently declared you a power-couple, followers now totaling 1. To admire a power-couple is to dream of one’s own hopes in a relationship, to reckon with whatever is current and rugged and lacking the aesthetic of well-conditioned bodies and hair. Power-couples have ease in conversation, arguments that careen only towards solutions, babies sponsored by Gerber and mornings entirely devoid of cereal. You may think power couples are born in Los Angeles and do not take the subway in New York. That they have not heard of Albany. They are page 1, on the evening news, the mid-life turn of the American Dream. This is short-sighted. Power-couples are born in dive bars in liberal-arts college towns. They are born on the sidewalk as they bump…