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There shouldn't have been so many reasons to pack up the bags. Sure there were ugly times. No bloody noses and bruised eyes though. Tears streamed for days but people are always crying. We cry when indecency makes decent in movies. When cartoon lions die. When animated robots breakdown. We cry for rain and sun and snow. So why did those tears make any difference?
The weather isn't depressing. It's bright and breezy. If I were wearing shorts the hair on my legs would move. Buses go by. Walkers walk. Bikers spit and growl at cars that growl and spit back. They'll all get to where they're going. Wherever that is. It's not here. Here is no destination for anybody but my left hand writing and right hand drinking.
It's a porter. It's from a microbrewery up the coast and tastes like it—too bitter, too flavorful, too much geometry on the label.
"Close it," she said.
"I did."
"No, it's still open at the edges. I can see it from here."
I inspected it further and saw that one corner hadn't been closed entirely over the lip. I ignored it and put it in the fridge. "It's good enough."
"Damn it, Brian." She stormed past me and opened the fridge to retrieve the offending Tupperware. The marinara sauce had dripped onto the kitchen counter. She had just cleaned it using a spray bottle that championed the cleaning power of orange peels. I didn't believe it. But I didn't care. She bought the cleaning supplies. She could buy any citrus she wanted for the counters.
"See. I told you it was still open." To show me, she spun the Tupperware around causing more sauce to spill out. I couldn't help feeling that perhaps it was just shitty Tupperware. But I held back from pointing this impossibility out for it would only continue the argument. Over time I'd realized the continuation of arguments lead to nothing but a delay in my post dinner drink. It was a Tuesday and I had just received a bottle of The Macallan for my birthday.
She bought the Tupperware from a friend who had convinced her husband it was a good idea to buy lots and lots of Tupperware. I hadn't ever liked the guy but I felt sorry for him. That is, I felt sorry until his wife convinced mine that our house was also in dire need of a Tupperware overhaul. We needed different lids with different numbers and different sealable technology. Soon after, I read that Tupperware lasts longer than most marriages.
That wasn't the last fight, exactly. The last fight was about me fucking another woman. I just need to blame the Tupperware. It helps me sleep at night.
"In early adolescence I believed that if I watched Christie Brinkley surface in the pool in Vacation enough, I'd finally catch a glimpse of her breasts. I never got to see them outside of my imagination, and years later, when trying to watch the movie with my parents on school break, the whole scene was scratchy and distorted. I acted shocked and took out the tape, remembering my childhood debauchery. And as I was talking about what we should watch instead, that old sexual guilt came racing back. Such guilt disappears when I write. My name is Tyke Johnson and I live in Los Angeles."