“Do they have milk glass?” Thad asked.
“I don’t see any.” I answered.
“Why are they so hard to find?”
“I don’t know.”
Thad walked off and I continued to stare at the myriad of pulls. Who needs so many varied drawer pulls? Just give me a basic antique white- milk glass-farm house drawer pull, and I’ll be happy. But no dice.
I looked around and sighed. There was no one to help me.
It is a sad lot when the highlight of a weekend is a trip to look at drawer pulls at Home Depot. What happened to the excitement? The verve? The 80’s and 90's dance clubs with their pulsating, pulsating lights and the smoke machine belching out vicious soap-smelling fog? The drinks and the people laughing, me the center of all of the attention, spinning, spinning, spinning.
It’s my age. Forty is a horrible, horrible thing indeed, and 41 was wearing on me like a pair of ill-fitting underpants. I was finding that past 40, you were just looked on as a hop, skip, and a jump away from demented oblivion. Forty is the final bell that says “Wake up! You’re an adult! Now start acting like it.” And 41 is a damn, damn mean age, petty, full of whiny pomp and back pain, and necessitates having to get up in the middle of the night to pee.
I saw Thad pass at the end of the aisle, talking to himself, as he does, and realized: this was all his fault.
We had dated on and off for twenty years now, more off than on, but he had always been my only real boyfriend, the only one I would stop dancing for long enough to take seriously. So when we got back together three years ago, I think we both realized that we were finally old enough to take ‘us’ seriously. That and the stank of old age was creeping into our sock drawers in ominous whiffs and neither of us wanted to die alone.
So we merged, much more successfully than we had ever before. It was the fourth or fifth time, but we have yet to settle that argument. Whatever the case, we merged in much love and commitment, in a thrill of dancing and drink and parties and an explosion of confettied happiness. The first two years were like New Years Eve: we were dressed-up, it was fun, we were out, we were drunk, then there was a misunderstanding, someone cried, someone took a swing at the other, we fought and then passed out, and then woke up the next morning not remembering everything, but feeling terribly ashamed by all of it. But it was such fun, yet after about a year-so emotionally draining and tiring on our aging bodies, that we had to slow down. So once the ‘new dating’ smell had worn off, we decided we needed to get ourselves in order… and began abandoning of all the childish things we loved so dearly.
The first things to go were the cigarettes as they were expensive and we knew they were killing us. I still miss them every day. And now he has started back up, but pretends I don’t know, running off to smoke in the backyard, like I can’t smell it on him. But I allow it, as it was the least terrifying of his multitudinous panoply of vices.
The liquor went quickly after the cigarettes, as what was drinking without smoking? It was like nachos without cheese; and nobody likes just a damn plate of hot chips. Plus we would just get loaded and fight, so it was for the best.
But with the loss of drinking, came the loss of our drinking social circle, i.e. friends, as well as all the bars and clubs, as who wants to be around drunks when you’re sober? Drunks always want to touch your face, which was great while you were drunk too, but sober it’s mortifying.
And with those sacrifices, the fun rather died, all by our own conscious murdering hand.
So here I now stood on a Saturday night, two years cigarette free and one year alcohol free, looking down the aisle at the man who ruined my life.
Obviously oblivious, Thad walked off.
“Are you finding everything?”
I turned. It was a Home Depot employee I recogonized. He who looked like the handsome plumber from Desperate Housewives, and had worked here a while. Being the jealous type, Thad had informed me a number of visits ago that I was no longer allowed to speak to him, and that I could, “just go find a helpful lesbian if I really needed advice on which edger to buy.”
“Antique white-milk glass-farm house drawer pulls?” I said plaintively, looking around to make sure Thad was gone, so he couldn't launch himself on us like some sort of trap door spider.
“Huh, let me see.” The guy turned and bent down, to start digging around the drawer pull bins. He was very handsome, probably about my age, but very rugged in that Americana kind of way that is so popular in these parts.
“I’ve been looking around, but haven’t found exactly what I want. I found some peacock blue ones at Lowe’s, and Target has clear glass, but I want the milk glass.” At this point I was just blathering. I was sillily loquacious around handsome men, not knowing when to hush up.
“Milk glass is white, right?”
“Yeah, yeah…” I launched into a long and pointless story about the Venetian origin of milk glass as the man shifted around the floor in front of me. He had a very expansive back, wider than most. Thad was clearly more handsome, as I had always found him to be, but this man’s back was very interesting to me. It appeared wide enough that it might have settlements, borders, hemispheres, even an equator.
The man rose, “Well, I don’t see any.”
“Okay,” I smiled, looking into his eyes, looking to the floor, looking back into his dreamy Plumber from Desperate Housewives eyes, then looking back to the floor.
“No problem,” the guy said, then “This might sound weird. And I’ve seen you in here before, but did you use to work up at clubs in Oklahoma City in the late 80’s, early 90’s?”
“Why, yes. Yes, I did.” My face lit up with fireworks: I loved it when my past societal notoriety flared its fabulous head. I looked right at him, taking a super hero stance there in the drawer pull aisle. “I worked the door at Roundelay, that dance club up in the Paseo in the City, and I hosted some raves up there, and even worked a few clubs down here in Norman, back in the day.”
“I thought that was you! The guy laughed. “I went to that old Paseo club two or three times with a fake id! And I thought I recognized you before, but you were the doorman, weren't you! You wore some mean outfits! That’s so cool that it’s you. That was a great club.”
“Yeah, it was totally great.” I laughed loudly, like an imbecile. “It was really, really fun working there.” My entire world was now again full of cigarettes and liquor and dancing and laughing girls and sunlight and sassafras and everything else that was good and pure in the world, as I was once more magnificent.
Then I saw his face go dark, like all the happiness in his life had suddenly been extinguished, like a Harry Potter Dementor had just stuck a finger in his ear. And I knew Thad was behind me. He must have sidled up and seen me talking to the big backed Plumber from Desperate Housewives. I could now even hear him breathing, a ragged crazed in and out, in and out.
“What you doing?” Thad said in a voice of possession.
I turned quickly. “Nothing. Just asking about drawer pulls…” was all I could eak out, red faced. The little golden vision of myself was gone with a ‘pop.’
Thad’s bright blue eyes narrowed to slits and his full lips were pulled crazy small, like he wanted to stick his hand right through my chest like a Wes Craven villain. I always found his jealousy to be endearing, right up until the point he caught me flirting with someone. I would never cheat, and he knew that, but he still could not control his anger over even the slightest hint of a possible flirtation. And now, right here in the drawer pull aisle, I was not finding it terribly cute at all.
“Sorry we don’t have them,” the worker said, “You might try back in a month or two to see if any come in.”
“Thanks,” Thad said snappishly, inserting his body between me and the man.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said, turning. I wanted to shake the worker's hand, to introduce myself, but knew Thad would eviscerate me if I even attempted flesh to flesh contact.
“Come.” Thad said, and we turned to sulk down the aisle.
Thad didn’t speak until we were in the parking lot. “So, did you make a new friend?” The word ‘friend’ dripped with acidic alien blood.
“No. I just asked him about drawer pulls…”
“Just stop it!” He cut me off, hands up in full diva attack, “I heard what you were talking about! And I don’t want to hear it!”
“Oh for God’s sake, nothing happened. He came up to me and asked me if I needed help…and then he brought up the clubs I worked at in the 90’s. He recognized me from Roundelay.”
“You’re kidding. He really recognized you from back then?” Thad said with a tone that I took as an implied stab at my impressive weight gain since I was 22.
Hurt, I continued anew, “I wonder which of my outfits he saw me in? The blue fun fur Cookie Monster Cossack? The vinyl bell bottoms? The giraffe pile overall short shorts?”
“Stop it. That was, like, twenty years ago.”
“I know,” I frowned. “But still…”
“But really.” Thad said decisively.
“I used to be fabulous. I used to work clubs…I used to work fabulous.”
“’Used to’ ” he snorted.
I frowned, feeling less than less, and hating Thad for ruining me.
Ruining me.
We walked to the car in uncomfortable forty year old silence and drove for a few minutes before he said, “Want to go to Marble Slab? I’ll buy. ”
“Oh, can we?” I giggled and clapped my hands. And with that my sadness and hatred slid away, as ice cream mixed with candy made any night Saturday night a real Saturday night. Even with the horrible boyfriend who ruined my life.
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