Personal Essays

A collection of Essays

Corporate Toothbrushes

I always saw him standing on the other side of the road, and wanted to be on his side.  So, I would go to him, never looking both ways, without caution, without fear, and somehow, always dodged getting hit and landed safely in on the other side.  Usually finding that he had crossed yet another road.  And there I would be left standing with my heart flapping in the wind like some patriotic flag to the nation of him.  I was a loyal citizen. 

The kind that made you believe its president when he said that he “did not have sexual relations with that women”.  Even after the stained dress and photographs.  And in my case, even after the alien toothbrush moved into my medicine cabinet.  And yes, even after there were three toothbrushes, now labeled with our initials.  Three women, with three toothbrushes, in one cabinet.  And no, we are not polymoigists.  Just women who want so despeterly to be loved by the unattainable. 
He was the most charismatic man that I ever layed my big blue eyes on.  He was the kind of man that when you walked in the room, he made you feel as if the ground would fall out from your feet because he looked your way. I could hear the great words of Emily Dickinson:
“ He fumbles at your spirit
        As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
       He stuns you by degrees,

  Those words, that poem played in my mind every time he would sing and then look up at me in the middle of him being lost in the song.  A musician. Please understand that he wasn’t just any musician.  He was my musician.  And that, that right there was the greatest mistake I made.  That the other toothbrushes I shared a cabinet with made.  And all the ones before ours.  He was never ours. He is nobody’s.  He is not a son, nor a brother, nor a friend, and definitely not a lover.  He is the illusiant creature.  Like a unicorn, or the lockness monster.  You want so badily to believe its real, but alas, it’s nothing more that an illusion.  Wrapped in a hug that makes you melt, illuminated by a smile that is infectious, and broken by the desire to want to contain him.  Those women, like myself, whom are “lucky” enough to sustain a long career with this man fall an even worse fate.  I climbed his corporate ladder and was hoping one day I would make partner.  Only to find that the younger secretary that was newly hired every two years or so would replace me.  On the bottom of the ladder of course, so she too could climb.  He would keep me around though.  Purely for consultation.  You see, his company cannot run without me, or the long term employees like me.  We are his history, and without us, he has no basis for reality.  We are all he knows.  We are all he stands upon, like some foothold to his pedestal.  We are his constitution, the firmness of what the country of him was founded upon.  How lonely his valleys, and how high his peaks.  Form sea to everlasting shining sea, he was our god……

I want to be deported.  I want to denounce my faith to his church and call myself Steveist. I don’t believe in his words, his gospel anymore. I cannot sit through one more sermon on how he is the master of some universe where sharing lips and love are thought to be the mainstays of our society. No, the warmth has been stolen from his kisses, and replaced with the seed of resentment.  His face is starting to sag.  His once swollen cheeks are hollow.  I can see his demise around the corner and I am afraid that it is contagious.  So, I back away, toward the corner of the room that I have never been in, but it seems all too familiar.  I always knew Id be here, things fade, loose their shine.  My name is on the door and so, I open it.  And there, are the ones who got away.  I join them, words resonate with me and I am at once, finding home again amongst what he called “the Broken”.  Thank god for crazy glue.  It’s turning crazy that brought me back to sanity.  Sealed my cracks and put me back together.  There are still some visible cracks.  But I like them; they remind me of my time abroad.

And every once in a while, I receive a postcard from the country of him.   It usually entails a promise of love and I must remind myself that the secretary must have quit and he is merely looking at old applications.  Mine just happens to be the one still sitting on his desk, on top of the pile of his written songs, and guitar picks.  Sometimes, I agree to make the trip, only to be slammed back to the reality of a bad flight marked by rough turbulence.  My luggage is lost and I am standing here naked again. 

And it is there that he will rip away my heart. Because, there will be nothing left to take. There is no place to hide it anymore or no room to pretend it’s intact.  He will place it in a museum with the others. It will become his church, where he feels power.  It will be the embodiment of his ego, his conquest.  Tear another down, so he doesn’t have too feel.  To actually feel would mean he would have to care about something other than himself.  And his nation doesn’t believe in that sort of thing.