Everclear and Yonic
Love, Mostly
Two bows, big looping satiny bows were on the box, but the knots that held them together were tight.
Like Esther didn't want anyone to open it, or Chad to open it early.
4 years together.
Laughs that seemed to blend into new laughs.
True love, as far as Chad could measure.
This was the year.
Chad felt it, beyond a hunch, a premonition:
In that box was the title and key to the fishing cabin they coveted.
Bliss.
Solitude, but togetherness.
Esther, slightly addled from Pomegranate and Everclear Trailblazers, wobbled.
Chad reached to catch her, the faux Lancashire University class ring he bought at Wyandotte Pawn and Tool Exchange catching in Esther’s mesh tank top.
In the ensuing embrace, Chad breathed into her ear “I'm gonna try to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Esther, attempting to extricate the ring from the mesh she shoplifted from Madrigal’s Larger Woman and Discount Brassieres and trimmed down to her mediumesque frame with a steak knife,stopped, wondering if by “ try,” Chad meant he was going to quit doing meth to live longer or he was going to quit getting little lightning bolt tattoos on his inner thigh hoping that Brittany Laubwald would accidentally touch his penis.
“Quit making promises and open your Bolo tie, Gulliver,” she said, using a nickname Esther had given him in a panic when she forgot his real name after the fourth or fifth time they had sex.
Bolo tie my chickenpox scarred ass, Chad thought. I don't wear Bolo ties.
Chad felt like he could smell the metal of the key to the fishing cabin.
He shredded the bows with his Leatherman, and yanked open the box.
There was a black Bolo tie with a shiny, sterling silver clasp.
“The clasp is modeled after my real cooch,” Esther said.
Chad picked it up and stared. It was unmistakeably a vagina.
“I had it 3D printed,” Esther said, making a drunken new hole in her tank top with her finger.
Chad stared at the clasp again, wondering...
“ Happy Birthday, Chad,” Esther said. “ I hope you like it. You gotta wear it to kickball every Thursday, for good luck, and so Seth Bagnozzi knows we're still together.”
***
And they say Romance is dead.
Oof! I just relived the excruciating disappointment I felt when the big box I unwrapped contained a doll, rather than the game “Green Ghost” that I had coveted and just KNEW was in there. I’m guessing he added to his tattoo collection shortly thereafter.