Johan Vaaler

Staples always felt permanent to him, despite the fact that he had accumulated three staple-removers in his five years at the desk he occupied from eight a.m. to six p.m. each week day. Maybe it was the slap of the stapler. The noise was violence, the clacking of a future bound up with other futures not necessarily in the order he’d like them to be in. The order was required.

Beyond this, there was the sinister bending in of sharp ends. He’d bled at their prick more than once; enough that he wore gloves if he needed to do any considerable work with the jagged metal fasteners. It just seemed sensible.

Hence the appeal of the paper clip.

Contact Information

One of the first things to go was lunch time IM-ing. For the first three months, they’d aligned their lunchtimes in order to have online conversations that ranged from evening plans to assessments of their respective supervisors to which member of the New Kids was the most underappreciated. It was her idea, the conversations. He’d gone along and been surprised by how happy they made him.

After awhile, the messaging slowed down, becoming an every other day thing, if that. He was disappointed, but couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Instead, he made subtle hints at home that he’d like to do it more often. Maybe he’d been too subtle.

When she messaged him a week after their first dating anniversary and said she couldn’t do it anymore, he immediately shot back a “WHY???”

“I just can’t.”

“SOMETHING I DID?”

“More like something you’ll never do.”

“ARE WE DONE?”

No answer.

3M

Once, she’d taken a ream of printer-grade paper off the table in his house, leaving a note that she’d buy him more that night. When she got home, new package in hand, he lost it. Told her she’d stolen from him. Said he had to explain why his girlfriend had felt “familiar” enough to take company property without asking. Had to meet with his supervisor over the whole thing.

When she joked that he should maybe start looking for a job that didn’t take itself so seriously, he yanked the paper from her hand, shoved her back two steps, and slammed the door in her face.

She stood on the step for a full thirty seconds, balling and unballing her fists, tears burning tracks through her makeup.

Peacock Colorburst

If there was one thing they always agreed on, it was the need for more colored paper in the world. Whiteness stultified. Black letters droned. But green ink on pink paper arrested him as much as it did her. Font choice, of course, brought contention. But the use of color was never contentious.

For their David Hasselhoff’s birthday party, it had been his idea to take some black construction paper and use pieces of red to replicate the lights of his Knight Rider car. Inspired, she pulled some more red paper and yellow accents from the plastic-wrap for an alternate homage to Baywatch. Silhouetted busts of Pamela Anderson seemed appropriate and they laughed the whole time they made them.

If only we could build the rest of our lives on such paper, he thought.

If only he made the attempt more often, she thought.

Red Marks-a-Lot

It begins bright crimson, always bright crimson. The color of Christmas baubles or prep school emblems. By bedtime it will be eggplant with its green stem intact, by morning Crusades purple, by the weekend black and so much harder to cover up.

But that’s in the future, along with his explanations and her apologies. Now it’s crimson and marks the space under his left eye. He puts a hand over it as he stares into the bathroom mirror and wishes – like always – that he could go through the next couple days like that.

Volunteers

They come into the rooms, tentative the first few times. Mostly, they’re mothers who can’t let go of their kids just yet, yet know they need to. So they come help, continuing to wipe noses and protect from germs. She is grateful for the help, dreads the interference in the work she has to do.

So when he comes in, she is surprised almost to discomfort. Men don’t volunteer, they go off to work. They don’t take an interest, the rest of the world is supposed to be interested. This one is different. He helps. Makes meaningful eye contact at meaningful times. Doesn’t get in the way, or if he does she doesn’t mind as much. Pushes in chairs without being asked.

He comes in every other Tuesday and she begins to miss him between. And each time she does, the guilt grows smaller, the discontent greater. In response, she mixes up the colors her own white board pens.

Kimberly Clark

She keeps them in the closet, stacked behind her twelve pairs of shoes, ten of which she can only wear in the late spring, summer, and early fall. The shoes rest, somewhat haphazardly in his opinion, on cheap pine shoe racks, some of the pairs mixed with others, some stacked in the space that should have been reserved for just the right or the left but not both. Mostly he averted his eyes when he had to look at the jumbled mess.

Sometimes he wonders if her sinus issues are worth bearing given what the warehouse store amount of tissues says to him. It’s not selfish. Everyone knows one stray germ could kill him. Not everyone understands that, though.

Of course, he could ignore her shoes and the boxes piled in their shadows when he had to go into the closet. Her clothes were altogether different. No system, no method, not enough hangers to go around. Small piles of delicates mingled with cast-off jeans in need of washing and t-shirts never folded after the last trip to the Laundromat. How she lived in such filth was not so much mysterious as disheartening.

And yet, I love her. Don’t I?

Glad locks

He zips the top on the Wednesday bag, sets it on Monday and Tuesday, then peels the seal apart on Thursday. Scooping up the neat pile of pills – two to bolster white blood cell creation, one to thin his plasma, one to replace the calcium the first three took, one the iron, one to quell the nausea, one multivitamin, a Zoloft to soften the sharp corners, and a Viagra for the stress of it all – and drops them into the bag.

Zip, pass, repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Then he puts Monday through Friday into already packed lunches, folding down the tops of their brown paper sacks at perfect angles and parallel lines. Work lunches go into the pantry – nothing to refrigerate in his midday diet – ready to be grabbed when the time comes. Extra bags and the Saturday-Sunday pill sets go back in the drawer they came from in the kitchen.

He’s just turned to wash his hands when she knocks at the front door. They’ll take their Sunday run, settle in for a show or two, and then say goodnight.

But first he turns the sink on hot and reaches for the bottle of Dial Antibacterial.

Dressy-dress

He wishes I’d dress up more than I do.

He’d never asked her straight out because that would come to close to the possibility of conflict. Avoidance was easier.

But it’s in his posture as she comes to the door in jeans and what she would call a “nice” top. Fancy just isn’t important to her, nor was it something she’d put on when they first started dating. If anything, she’d gone out of her way to show her blue collar roots. Caveat emptor. But he refused to see them.

Anyway, my outfit probably cost more than his did if I throwing the shoes and the thong from Fredericks.

He, of course, is wearing what he always does on Fridays: gray wool slacks, patent black belt with brushed silver buckle, startling white dress shirt with oversized cuffs and the top button loose at the collar, gold silk tie with diagonal maroon stripes and loose at the neck to show the collar’s openness, tortoise-rimmed “nerdy financier” frames, and black leather, box-toed Frankenstein shoes. That was his casual at work and pretty close to what it was at home unless he was working out (from 6-7 each weeknight) or sleeping (from 10 pm to 6:45 am every night).

If he won’t say anything, neither will I.

Hitching up the straps of her underwear to just about the waistline of her low-rise pants, she pushed past him.

Quaker Oats

They say that hot breakfast eaters and cold breakfast eaters shouldn’t expect much in the long term. They’d ignored such logic because she didn’t eat breakfast at all and he existed on protein shakes before noon, all of which may have been more ominous if they’d really thought about it.

Bus Routes

She takes the 894 thirteen blocks south to catch the 1152, then ten blocks east before she walks the final three blocks north to her school. It’s a minimum of 35 minutes unless there’s weather or she missed the 6:30 and has to wait for the 6:50. Then it’s an hour. She’d ride an express if there were any running within five blocks of where she worked. But the expresses run through that neighborhood, not to it.

He is never awake before 6:45, never leaves until 7:45. The one time he drove her, his only comment was “I bet we could afford to buy here.”

Perry Ellis

He expected to find it sexy when she put on his shirt for the first time. Truth be told, he much preferred pictures of women partially naked in men’s wear than pictures of them completely bare. He was especially partial to the ones that included neck ties and toned, bronzed, bared legs jutting from crisp, pressed, spotless shirttails.

On her, however, his wrinkle-free white dress shirt with its delicate navy pinstripes seemed to swallow everything that usually appealed to him. Her legs looked too thin, her shoulders too angular, the rest of her lost in the billow. She looked more like a child in her father’s clothes than he was comfortable seeing.

After, he gave her the shirt and wasn’t at all upset when she began using it as a finger painting smock. Anything so long as the purpose changed.

UHU

He sees them as more humane, which is why he bought her a 100-count pack to take to work.

She suspected it was because of the soft white finger prints and stray strands of cotton balls stuck to her shirt that made him nauseous.

Like most of his gestures, he expected she wouldn’t understand.

Like most of the time, she couldn’t respond in a way that would make him happy.

TAM Stampers

Those little moist towelettes they gave her to wipe the black ink from her fingers didn’t work at all.

It would take weeks to scrub the feeling of it from her hands.

Manila

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. She said the words so often they might as well he her mantra.

Reduce: canvas shopping bag. Bicycle. Donate to the Goodwill. Leave the lights off. Single portions. Tupperware. Leftovers over takeout. More rice. Less meat. Smaller gestures. Staying in.

Reuse: canvas shopping bags. Insulated lunch box. Old shirts. New quilt. Wear same jeans twice before washing. An extra sixty miles on running shoes. And extra five minutes squeezing what’s left of the old dish soap into the new. The same smile. The same tears. The same tone of voice. Folders with last year’s student names crossed off for this year’s.

Recycle: canvas shopping bags. Swizzle sticks. Yogurt containers. Insulin needles. Dryer sheets. Aluminum foil. Comments on papers. Comments on conversations. Batteries, all sizes. Friendships. Glances.

Single-sided Scotch

He wouldn’t mind the stickiness if it weren’t for the sound. As it was, the unspooling squeal and the grabbing of teeth he seemed to feel every time they were together anymore was getting to be too much. It was merely moving from one binding coil to another, the only difference that being flattened out by expectations made the clinging much more difficult.

In his singular loop, there was the weight of himself and the gravity of bending inward to keep him anchored. It was almost comfortable in its easy familiarity. It was ordered, the circle perfect in its continuous connection with itself; the unbrokeness of the center.

But every pull reminded him of two things: he was responsible and getting thinner every time she touched him.

Goldfish

They only started having people over when there were not enough words to fill the night. Parties, then, seemed the next logical step in their progression, the adult thing to do. So they’d invite over four or twelve other people and then spend the time between the invitation and opening the door arguing over the details.

On most issues they were alright. What movie to rent, that was his domain. Splitting up the chores for getting their tiny studio ready, that was hers. Store runs they did together.

Food, however, was always an issue. Not all food, though their usually compatible palates suffered a general distrust of the others across the board when it came to a party’s menu. But the true location of the trench warfare that would become their relationship was most apparent in the snacks. She wanted simple, cheap, easily forgotten in the face of cold drinks and whatever food she really wanted people to pay attention to. Chex Mix and cheese cubes seemed adequate.

He thought this was a cop out, proof of her lacking training in etiquette. She had, of course, grown up in the southern suburbs and not the western ones, he reminded her without really having to. And then there was the fact that she found his choices – bruschetta, crab puffs, mini-quiche – too pretentious for the people they inevitably hung out with. She told him this too.

And so it went, from the time they called their friends into the car and to the store, through the aisles both frozen and fresh and back to the apartment until there was no more time for argument because the first knocks were vibrating the door.

What may have been most telling, however, is that their guests were never aware any of it was going on. He liked to think they were doing the job of keeping things personal that should remain that way. She thought their friends just weren’t very observant.

Expo

Why does he do it? How could he possibly care that much? About something that small?

This is what she thinks, looking up for the first time at the impossibly ordered row of multicolored soldiers, caps tight against their bodies, aligned with an equal two-fingers-width between. They run the rainbow in exact order, ROYGBIV written underneath the correct private in each corresponding color, though she’d call the VIOLET actually PURPLE if she thought he’d even hear the distinction. She wonders why the BLACK pen resides next to the RED without a label of its own.

His block script is martial, menacing in its unnecessary capitalization. “I LOVE YOU SWEETIE!” it screams like an email with a tin ear, an instant message too heavy on the instance.

If they still had feet, would they march this way? If he’s this concerned with his pens, what does he do with his clothes? The answers are too much to take in, early in the we as they are. Instead, she reaches up and switches green for blue. The experiment might be telling, or, it might already be told.

Purell

They both kept a bottle in their bathrooms. His large, hers portable. His prominent, hers covert. His half-empty, hers rarely touched. His medicinal, hers in case of emergency. His name-brand, hers from the discount bin. His with a pump, hers with a childproof cap. His reserved for personal use, hers available to her three roommates who seemed to need it more than her. His part of an absent routine, hers always stinging.

Stickers

She puts them on papers, unconscious to everything save that they saved her the work of writing Wow! or Nice Work on thirty separate sheets of practiced q’s and f’s. Lower case is more difficult than capitalization and she sometimes means the adhesives she pulls from piles and piles of sheets filled with quaintitudes. Sometimes she even smiles and thinks about the angle she will position them with. She gave up long ago on making them straight, however.

He finds them stupid. Said so aloud when she put one on a Post-it note and stuck it to the inside face of his briefcase. It read, You’re the Best! She’d meant that one two, or she told herself it was at least close to how she’d put it. So it hurt when he came home angry, the note stuck to his palm like something he’d pulled up from his lungs and spit out to show the doctor. She tried to explain but couldn’t and let the words die on her tongue. He made a joke of it and she laughed along.

It’s still stuck to the top of her nightstand with the note he wrote underneath it.

"YOU'RE NOT."