Pouring And Holding And Drinking and Thirst
After letting it just sit there in my car—being evocative—for three weeks, I threw it away. I told myself it was just a styrofoam cup but I was lying. Nothing is never what it is. The stuff of our lives—each thing is made of its own particular past and future and mood and everything else that it’s not. Styrofoam is not plastic or fog or a pair of pearl ear rings, but it’s informed by these things, all things. And a cup’s only a cup because of pouring and holding and drinking and thirst.
You sipped soda from that cup in a Mexican restaurant when we were still smiling in spite of the inevitable. You left it in my car that night after the long talk, the last time I saw you.
And for three weeks it sat in my car, a partner in my travels in between places. This cup, once in your hand, your lipstick on the straw, a talisman, somehow the receptacle into which my memory of you poured. I dumped the stale water, once ice, and threw the cup away. As memories of you begin to fade, the cup remains in my imagination. I see it perched high atop a landfill, a crown on a heap of tightly clutched waists, vicious kisses, and thirsty women.
*
Valerie, my fourth romance since my divorce, is also the fourth woman who wasn’t being treated the way she deserved to be treated. I’m wary of women with prepackaged agendas for what they deserve, especially when what they deserve is constantly broadcast in contrast to the way I’m acting. Since being divorced, I’m pretty attached to doing whatever I want and this doesn’t bode well for compromise. But then again there’s my thirst. God damn I’m thirsty.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Reader Comments (20)
I'm not sure great writing deserves whatever it wants, but sometimes, like here, it does. It takes a long time for Styrofoam to decompose, no?
Someday a woman will come along who you will instinctively and without coaching treat exactly how she wants and needs to be treated. And she'll do the same for you. And your heart will be so full, compromise will be desireable and natural.
When this finally happens, I'll probably cry a little out of happiness for you.
It's wrong til it's right. And even then it isn't always right. Just right enough to make up for the wrong.
By turns gorgeous and uncompromising, with a thread of dark humor tying it all together.
Your writing in a nutshell, really.
Be gentle with Styrofoam. The bitemarks don't come out, no matter what you do.
I would love to be the object of such passion. All I ever ask for is the heat of the embrace. Why doesn't anyone bring the heat anymore?
I could totally imagine crashing against you. I hope that doesn't bother you too much. ;)
Test. Are you guys getting stupid captchas?
butthole
This is a test comment per twitter request
Butthole
i love you
My favorite butthole.
No captcha BTW, butthole.
Hot gay soup.
in 5 days....
Lordy.
I wish my husband loved me as much as he loves his xbox.
Stupid talismans. Mine was a bowl with brownie batter traces in it that I left joyfully on the counter that night, saying, come here, I don't want to waste a handsome man like you on housework, I'll just do those dishes tomorrow, baby. Tomorrow was three weeks later and then it still wasn't tomorrow but I had to clean the mold out of it. The same damn brownies we always made when we made love those two times a month and felt each others' laughing ribs. These objects, these bowls and cups and coffee spoons, I wonder - if we never touched them and never left them anywhere, would the breakup still have occurred. I like you, BHJ, but I'd never like you tamed by styrofoam. All that can be said is, "thank you, cup," and then chuck the fucking thing.
Important edit: 'not treated the way she *thinks she* deserved to be treated.
One has no control over how they are treated, but some control over the people who give them treatment.
You don't deserve to have Styrofoam cups abandoned in your car.
Or do you?
I throw these symbols away now. Since my divorce, I can't stand the new painful memories. I chunk them in the trash. Because if I don't, my room will be covered, my truck full of empty cups, beer bottles, movie stubs.....it is unbearable at times.