Now, 2012, if I could have you please step away from the giveaway shoebox, it would be greatly appreciated. 

* All items/memories taken from the shoebox are non-returnable. New owner assumes all responsibility regarding activities/judgements made after aquisition of materials — human, fictionally emotional, or otherwise.

I want to crumple you up into a receipt, like a piece of over-chewed gum. Put you in my purse and never let you out. Then your life will become a universe of guitar picks, bobby pins, loose change and wrinkled wads of other receipt coffins. But these coffins have words on them — words on the back, dummy. Not the ones printed on the heat-sensitive side, though I do like it when they say the word tender. 

Tender is a such a greasy, daddy word. A word best only at describing steaks and youngish girls. But those paper pine boxes aren’t talking about that kind of tender. I know that. Cash sounds boring. It is boring.

The words on the other side, the non-potentially-tendered side, are mine. They are probably about you. They are probably about how you don’t call (enough, though you call me all of the time, almost daily, and tell me all sorts of day-to-day stuff you think I don’t want to hear but sigh so secretly every time you tell me because it feels like you are telling me things all of those other people who follow you around like puppies will never know, and for the record, I am mostly jealous of those puppies).

When you do call, it might be 78% what I want to hear (but the other 19% of what I want is so much more than one-thousand coffee dates and three-hundred dinner table conversations about previously opened legs you’ve seen while examining the television over her head while I, back in the saddle across from you at a boring and half-empty restaurant, not on the floor where her head butts up to the television, am staring, from your patchy beard to your zipper, and thinking gross thoughts about meeting relatives and little spoons and a of slew bossy allowances I will take involving folding your laundry, and the other 3%? I wish it was just nasty, repeat-offender phone sex). But I can’t blame you for anything. Especially when I have you cornered and coddled at the bottom of my purse in a register tape prison. 

I told you today on the telephone, before I wrapped you up in a minty parchment blanket, that I was thinking too much about sex. I’m a catholic. I’m too catholic. I say things, desire penance almost immediately, and then wish I had never said them, let alone thought them. Dirty cans of worms are the hardest for me to open, mostly because I do it with my eyes closed (like when I turn in a piece for final edits, knowing I haven’t run even the single obligatory spell check). Luckily for me, you let the dirty words bounce off my tongue and right back into my throat. You’re an ace at knowing when I’ve unleashed something I should only share with a pen and a grease-stained piece of paper. You pretend not to notice. I pretend I haven’t just thanked you. With an inner dialog that couldn't use the word tender without laughing, externally, if it tried.

How can two people talk so much, when one of them is being held hostage inside a piece of paper that isn’t even folded nicely?

The cord wrapped around her foot, corkscrewing up her calf and pressing into her thigh like a rubber band. Skin and telephone wiring swirled together, the twisted electrical fibers leaving red indentations in her smooth white flesh like a peppermint stick with a faint map of blue veins underneath. A cheap and scuffed pair of heels sat under the desk next to her bare feet. One tacky crimson block of plastic stood upright against the rotary dial cradle, the other on its side like a fallen game piece. Her toes felt their way up the bottom of the metal office chair as she shifted her body to the edge of the seat.

 

Faye Pascal was not a terribly fancy or well-mannered girl, but she knew the importance of good posture in the work place. Her spine pushed into an upright position, chest out, her smallish belly protruding to let the air in as she gripped the receiver. She moved her foot over to the base of the red telephone, using her toe to open up the awaiting call. "Hello, hello and thank you for calling Berkshire Industries. How may I direct your call?" Her repetition of the word "hello" was a secretarial signature. She thought she invented it. 

 

Faye sat seventh in a row of a dozen operators, three telephones at her feet. She liked all of the desk space to be free for her to take necessary notes, and to collect and stack papers appropriately. The red telephone was the general line for incoming calls, the green one was a direct line to Mr. Lancer's office, and the third was a yellow telephone, the Yellow Line. The Yellow Line only rang for deaths.

 

When bodies were brought to Berkshire Industries that did not meet the required parameters, a Death Allowance Technician would pick up the Yellow Line. It rang directly to the yellow rotary telephone at Faye’s feet. Once a call was placed, the proper paperwork would be dumped from the ceiling chute onto her empty desk. Exactly six minutes after the call was concluded, Faye was to process and file away all of the necessary dropped documents.

 

The defective body’s file was then sent to Mr. Lancer for final appropriations. Mr. Lancer was a very thin man, but a handsome one. He didn’t like to leave his office except to use the restroom, and he had a tendency to act overly concerned about the dead bodies when it was entirely unnecessary. Faye watched his body language through the wall of glass between their desks. She found his compassion attractive.  Once Mr. Lancer approved the Death Allowance Technician’s diagnosis, he would raise one finger, signaling for Faye to call a car to pick up the defective body.

 

As Faye processed the last body of the day’s paperwork, a call from the green telephone startled her. It was too late for any bodies to come through. As she stared through the glass at Mr. Lancer, she could see his knuckles gripping the green receiver with force. She hoped he was calling for other reasons. She hoped he wanted to see her outside of the glass.

 

“Faye, I have some bad news. I, I…” Mr. Lancer’s voice trailed off. He was not calling to ask her for dinner, like she hoped.

 

The Yellow Line rang, the green receiver still hanging from Faye’s ear.

 

“Please excuse me for a moment, Mr. Lancer. It seems the Death Allowance Technicians still have one more body to process before close of business today.”

 

She held the green handset in her right hand. Mr. Lancer watched as Faye leaned down to pick up The Yellow Line with her left hand, his face crumbling into a red mess as her head ducked under her desk.

 

“This is Faye, may I have the name of the defective body for processing please?”

 

“Faye Pascal,” the technician responded.

 

 

 

The dirt was the cool kind of damp, just enough to make his fingers uncomfortable with the slightest breeze. As he dug into the cottage cheese-textured soil, her heard her voice. Only the key phrases rung out enough for his ear to catch.

“Satisfaction,” she said.  ”Is withstanding,” she said.

His head hung heavy over the collar of his shirt for a moment. 

“Gratuitous gestures,” she said.

He craned his neck, peering through the rose bushes, catching the angle of her chin between two buds. His fingers sunk deeper. Her jaw moved so gracefully, dropping with strong syllables, bouncing back up as her lips met. 

“He has no presence,” she said.  ”He is in a perpetual state of insecurity” she said.

The P’s in “presence” and “perpetual” bubbled out of her lips like air from a deflating ballon. She had wads of spit for him from behind those lips too, he knew. She lobbed them at the gutter once when they were fighting outside of a drug store. But her listener now, the man on the other other side of the rose bushes with her, he would never have to see her saliva hit the tar and cement. She was reserved for him, the damsel card was being played at the moment, but soon she would retreat to his arms.

And he would watch from the ground, low beneath the flower bed in the park by their house.

“Tired,” she said. “Exhausted from his lovelessness,” she said.

The man was going to hold her now. With knees grinding into the topsoil, he watched as the other man held his wife. He held her so naturally. He cupped her thin figure in a way that meant he had done it before. This was not a stranger’s embrace. This was the embrace of a man who was familiar with someone else’s wife’s body. 

The thing about a myth is, beyond it, there is a truth.

And the truth about monogamy is, well, everybody fucks.

Head down, my hands press into the sticky pages of The September Issue. My eyes are secret, scanning the hard, plastic bench seat running the length of the train car. Her thigh hits my vision. Her imperfect thigh. Tallish, thinnish, with black eyeliner and boots. Symmetry and parallel lines, her skinny frame hides her imperfect thighs. I trade looks; eyes to the glossy paper, eyes on her legs. The legs in Vogue are bent and angled. No drips of skin, no puffs of health and fat. The legs, her legs, look like Vogue legs when she stands up. But on the bench, they are puckered. They dimple like mine. Her thighs and mine mirror each other. But when I stand, its easy to see my silly little gut push out. My western height and hands, my out-of-shape and tired glasses. My coarse and uneven figure burns bright like a sore thumb under the fluorescence and metal poles of the subway car. When she stands, the truths of our matching bodies disappear. Upright, her lines are clean. Her clothes are safely dark and textured. Her hair drops down below her chin, jutting out from her jawline and hanging over my normal, ratted ponytail. We stand close as the train car pours people in and trickles them out. I clench The September Issue with my bone-in fingers, and hide my eyes on the floor. Our puckered, dimpled, sunless, girl thighs are real. But she is not. She is gone.

I wonder what its like to sit inside a seashell. Down the cavernous opening, past the sea sounds is a turquoise waiting room filled with the sick and dirty, on a list to fill the needs of television hits and prayers. What if rapture brought an end to the senseless sound of crashing waves? 

Where the sea ends, the folding chairs begin. Down the hall with a checker-tiled floor, past the white hat reception desk, beyond a pile of magazines they sit. The hall is lined with burns and scrapes. Babies with croup and sand in their hair. Seaside pleasure and injury sit and wait to see the doctor. Propeller cuts, damaged fins, coughs and tears of skin. Everyone is waiting.

There are no pens and paper at the sea. There is no place for me. No way to write foolproof prescriptions for imaginary disease. There are no sign-up sheets or requests for care inside this seashell waiting room. Without a notebook, I'm left in salt water. I write in air, share a wealth of thoughts with the sand. 

When the shell has closed up for the night, and the tide has died down, will you still fight for my care? Three hots and cot is all I ask. Will you to reach across the desk and shake to abide by the ocean rules? Or are you content to stay in this seashell waiting room forever?

Boyfriends. Drugs. None of the above. No means no. No means maybe later when I feel less better, and I can say with my whole heart that yes, you are the binder. The holder, the manipulator, and the man who is a boy who is the supreme alienator. I feel sad when I want Rock with You, I feel sad when I want to Nights of the Living Dead with you. I feel bad when I want to  think that the Music Sounds Better With You. I see a dance floor in my dreams, and under the spotlight on the hi-gloss you hold one hand over my mouth. The other hand holds some obscure record that holds more meaning than a hand. A hand in the hold, your speech in the fold. If I lay your speech patterns out, if I tear them out from the fold, you can see why I thought you were telling me the truth. Your thought patterns were tests, ounces of strength to keep my mind in a vice grip and my heart at unease. Did you ever notice how our skin was the same color? Our body's freckles almost matched in size and hue. Our genetics were so close to the same, but my heart and your brain, they felt like unequals mashed together into a bloody pulp. The bloody pulp that wandered around like two pieces placed on a playing board as friends. There was me, and there was you, two pairs of glasses, a fight, the sex you had with all of my friends, and not enough control to keep the insides from hanging out. My insides are gross, as faded, curdled, and cellulited as my outsides. 

What kind of a bar provides paper cups for water? I hate drinking water. When it's cold and icy, and not in the form of tea, I hate it. And I dislike it so much more when I become a second class citizen in a bar, not worthy of a pint glass with a straw and a lime. I know water doesn't cost money. But I used to give you so much money, more than I had. I used to give you other people's money for beer. I tipped with other people's money. Isn't that enough? Is it too much to ask for a dignified glass, more than a mere paper cup sitting on a dirty ledge next to a football-sideline orange jug of frigid water?

I had given up.

Now I stood there with my paper cup, next to you, keeping my physical distance as to not get too close to you. I know we are dating, you said it yourself. But around them, around your Awesome Friends, I am a benched girl, a third-string watcher waiting for my chance fall in line. 

You and the Awesome Friends are always doing killer, awesome things, partying until dawn, eating pills, collecting musical instruments that belong to other people, throwing impromptu dance parties with all your rare 7-inches. Together, you and your Awesome Friends have dozens of records.

I gave you all of my vinyl a few years ago, so I have no records to play at the awesome dance party even if I was there. 

I must be working or asleep when the Awesome Friends come knocking on your door to do such rad activities, because I never seem to be there. When I am with you, at night, you are sleepy. Or you just want to watch movies and eat sweets. Or I am tired from working all day, so I sleep on your watch, and you sit connected to a keyboard with the television blaring in the background.

When your most awesome of the Awesome Friends begins to regale us with awesome stories of the previous night, I start to crush the paper cup in my hand. My face gets red with each awesome detail, and I peel up the curled lip of the white waxed cardboard of the cup. That cup fucking hates me.

You try to explain that such massively excellent activities were totally impromptu. The Awesome Friends meeting was spur of the moment, and that's why I wasn't there. You had no idea things were going to get so awesome, you know? Bree, things just ended up that way. You were probably covering a show or something. You're a writer, remember? I think that's Awesome.

The cup is in pieces. I excuse myself from the last-minute Awesome Friends meeting to find a trash can. I drop the cup in a bin by the side of the bar, and think about sticking my head in it.

 

Drug bed. I was in a drug bed. Not your drug bed, no. I saw that bed. It looked like his bed, ten years ago. On the floor, cold, no sheets. Except he had a television next to his bed that was blaring American Psycho when we fucked. This bed was above it all, and by all accounts clean. But when we sat on the edge of this high bed, neither your bed or his floor bed, it became a drug bed.

I propped my right arm behind me, my wrist meeting the small of my back holding my twisted frame like an easel, so that we could be close. With my arm behind me, it was almost like you were close to me for a reason. My eyes, five inches from your face. It didn't feel close. When we're that close, I can examine things like scars and facial hair growth patterns and wild notions your exacerbated pupils are trying to tell me about that your lips can't. Maybe it isn't really about wildness, as much as it is about sustained suspension of reality. 

Wild pupils make me wish your lips were wild. But wild lips aren't a side effect or purposeful result of drugs in the drug bed. Wild lips would be a result of either A) My forced execution of an overtaking of your body. But you would mostly just want to sit there and take it, not participate enough to make wild really wild. Or B) Best case scenario, you would be clean, and have a desire to interact with me on your own free will. Now, that would be wild.  

But B is highly unlikely, considering I know your plans for the future. They have nothing to do with park bench conversations, phone calls and car rides, dinner talks or pleasant introductions. Your future plans have nothing to do with ordinary hand holds that lead to neck and forehead contact and maybe, just maybe, a case of wild lips. A case of natural serotonin levels rising with an interaction involving me, the accredited, fully potentialed night nurse.

But as a night nurse, I've rested my head at the foot of so many drug beds, when I see yours, on the floor, my neck hurts. It spasms with memories. Memories of every past sleeping arrangement I've had with a drug bed. From the first, coated in t-shirt sheets and housing a weekend roller for a boyfriend. To the next, a flop house mattress in the corner owned by a plump, part-time punk who taught me to read Lester and understand the importance of vinyl. 

To this bed, this drug bed, a bed full of nothing but a desire for me to be your night nurse, the woman with a clipboard and a concern for your well-being. A pressed white cotton maid to check on your flight arrangements and religious concerns. Maybe if I knew you better, I would take on such a responsibility.

But I don't think I've got an inch of headspace in this ward to devote to you or your drug bed.